At No Land Beyond’s Flagons & Dragons last night, I played my first game of Shadowdark, a relatively new B/X-derived dungeon crawling game.

Five adventurers entered a ruined fortress rumored to be haunted by a monstruous scarlet minotaur, the citadel’s last ruler, cursed by Oros the Bull-god. They were Tilly the wizard, Gabba the goblin, the priests Eli and Ord, and Jyles the thief.

Initially, the ruins seemed deserted; no one or thing greeted the party upon their opening the doors of a southern entrance. But, when Tilly discovered a silver bull horn hidden behind a mosaic, a hissing sound from above alerted the group to a humanoid creature with arachnid features clinging to the ceiling, eight eyes locked on the object in Tilly’s hand. Even after an arrow from Jyles’ bow dropped it to the floor, the being remained fixated on the silver horn, mumbling the word “Treasure…”

It reached out a hand towards Tilly, whereupon Gabba ran up and sliced it off with his trusty cleaver. The creature scuttled off with a shriek and Gabba took the severed the limb as a trophy. The party moved on to the next room, but before Jyles used an iron spike to secure the door through which the spider-creature had fled.

The next chamber appeared to be a store room – stoppered terracotta jars were piled in the corners. Somewhat disconcerting was the sulfurous smell and hissing sound emanating from them. Of the two doors in this chamber, the most intriguing was the one with “RIP Orwin the Younger” carved into it. On the other side of it, Jyles found a life-sized bronze statue of a bull pinning a corpse – presumably the late Orwin the Younger – to a wall. It seems that the statue was a devious (and brutal) trap and Orwin’s comrades, unable to extricate the body, made the room into a tomb. Orwin’s loss was the party’s gain: from the body they scored some sundry adventuring gear and Jyles found a silver locket containing an inscription and a picture of red-haired woman.

Moving on, the next room was decorated with murals depicting people making offerings of gold and grain under the watch of bronze-armored soldiers. Two niches each held a wide bowl; after examining the murals, Gabba tossed a coin into one of the bowls and immediately felt like his luck had changed for the better (the GM awarded Gabba’s player a luck token). It was only then that Gabba noticed a figure cowering behind the bowl. The sole survivor of another adventuring party, he urged the group to leave.

But Gabba was having none of it; with a toothy grin, he dubbed the foundling his “canary” and made him walk at the front. The party wended their way through a curving corridor that ended in a bronze door decorated with a bull head. Perhaps trusting his keen senses to suss out any ambushes, Gabba kicked the door in and thrust his erstwhile retainer through the threshold. On the other side of the door was the largest chamber they’d yet encountered. At the far end was a massive black stone statue of a bull, in front of which stood the infamous minotaur, who immediately charged at the adventurers.

Ord was felled by the minotaur’s greataxe, but soon revived by Eli’s healing touch. Tilly sniped from the doorway with magic missiles, while Jyles relied on non-magic ones. Gabba used the “canary” as a ladder from which he jumped onto minotaur’s back and began stabbing with his blades. After Ord whittled down the beast’s life with a sword infused with his holy magic, the minotaur made another charge, trampling over Jyles, Tilly, and the poor bastard Gabba had found. Speaking of the goblin, it was he that struck the killing blow, plunging a sword through the minotaur’s eye while still clinging to his thick neck.

With the threat of the minotaur removed, Eli brought Tilly and Jyles back from the brink of death. Jyles seemed no worse for the wear, but Tilly remained in a daze. As the adventurers began to explore the room, a pack of beastmen burst through a side door. However, when they saw that the minotaur was dead, they hailed the party as heroes.

It was around this time that last call was announced at the bar, so we packed it up for the night.

*****

It was either Tom Fitzgerald or David McGrogan (I can’t find the original quote to cite) who once compared basic D&D to 4-bar blues: the fundamentals were easy to pick up, but could be endlessly iterated and embellished. Playing Shadowdark really reminded me of that. There’s a part of me that enjoys super-crunchy games like 5th edition D&D. (I’ll continue to go to bat for 4th Edition, too. That game was fun.) But I also appreciate being able to throw together a character in less than half an hour let ’em rip.

I didn’t get a chance to look at the full rule book, just one of the copies of the quick-start pamphlets (which you can get for free) the GM provided. Nothing I read jumped out as being unfamiliar; it hews closely to the same B/X framework as Old-School Essentials. One interesting variation is that light sources (torches, light spells, etc.) all last one hour of real time. For example, when I said my character lit a torch, the GM asked me to set a 1-hour timer on my phone. It makes for a new spin on the old “STRICT TIMEKEEPING IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY” canard.