C1 S0 - First Cuts
Session Zero! I’ll create my adventuring party and start building out the world for this first solo campaign.
This session played May 29-30, 2025.
First, we roll up four characters!
*For now, I will keep information that changed over time (e.g. HP, AC, Talents, Spells, and Gear) abstract, since I did all that bookkeeping with a pencil & eraser on the same sheet of paper. TBD if one day I’ll start recording that data; we’ll see if it’s fun or not.
RYARN (she/her), Elf Wizard
STR 10 / +0 INT 14 / + 2
DEX 10 / +0 WIS 9 / -1
CON 15 / +2 CHA 9 / -1
TITLE: Apprentice
ALIGNMENT: Lawful
BACKGROUND: Scholar
Bought Crawling Kit (-7gp)
Bought Dagger (-1gp)
DENTON (he/him), Human Priest
STR 12 / +1 INT 12 / +1
DEX 6 / -2 WIS 16 / +3
CON 8 / -1 CHA 8 / -1
TITLE: Seeker
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
BACKGROUND: Cult Initiate
DEITY: Ord
Bought Crawling Kit (-7gp)
Bought Shield (-10gp)
Bought Longsword (-9gp)
DAENIEL (he/him), Elf Thief
STR 6 / -2 INT 11 / +0
DEX 11 / +0 WIS 8 / -1
CON 15 / +2 CHA 9 / -1
TITLE: Robber
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
BACKGROUND: Scout
Bought Crawling Kit (-7gp)
Bought Leather Armor (-10gp)
Bought Longbow (-8gp)
Bought Arrows x20 (-1gp)
BROLGA, Half-Orc Fighter
STR 13 / +1 INT 15 / +2
DEX 5 / -3 WIS 13 / +1
CON 11 / +0 CHA 10 / +0
TITLE: Squire
ALIGNMENT: Lawful
BACKGROUND: Orphaned
Bought Crawling Kit (-7gp)
Bought Greataxe (-10gp)
Then we create The World.
I built out the hexmap for my starting area by placing a settlement in the center hex and prerolling on Shadowdark’s Overland Hex Maps rules for the surrounding eighteen hexes, to give myself the lay of the land:
Rolled up a swampy mess with a METROPOLIS smack in the center.
Danger level for each hex is rolled on a d6 ranging from 1 (safe) to 6 (deadly):
Roll 19 danger levels: 2, 6, 6, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, this place SUCKS, jesus, 6, 1, 5, 3, 5, 5, 3, 4, 5
Roll 18 points of interest: 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
Consider how to start; roll for starting hex?
What am I even doing?
In my first Actual Play post, a quick introduction to Shadowdark RPG and a couple of secondary tools I’ll use to get started with the campaign.
Welcome to my Actual Play section! The posts that follow will be my way of publishing the adventures I’ve stumbled through in my head. My journey began back in May of 2025, so the majority of my first posts here will be publishing my backlog of sessions. There’s lots of weird stuff coming down the pike, so strap in and get ready for some solo roleplaying! What is solo roleplaying, you ask? I’ll have a blog post for that.
I’m dedicated to keeping this hobby fully analog, but when bringing the logs onto the World Wide Web I’ll lightly edit my sessions for clarity and consistency. Since thinking, playing, and recording all takes brainpower, I’ve found that sometimes I lose track of my own canon as it develops; I’ll leave those imperfections (as well as bad rolls, rules mistakes, etc) intact here rather than retconning anything. Playing forward from whatever’s happening now is a meditative challenge with this hobby that I think is part of the fun.
So, it’s time to set up the first campaign! We’re playing Shadowdark RPG by Kelsey Dionne. Kelsey describes Shadowdark as “old-school gaming, modernized.” It’s fast, and life is extremely cheap (when the rules are followed, at least!). One of its differentiating mechanics is light management: torches, lanterns, or light-emitting magic are all that push the extremely deadly darkness back. Light sources are all costly and temporary, lasting just one hour of real time before sputtering out, and hanging out in Total Darkness means the player suffers disadvantage on most tasks (disadvantage: player rolls 2 d20’s and takes the lower result; advantage would have the player take the higher result), and experiences random encounters (usually dangerous run-ins with monsters) are triggered every turn. It doesn’t matter if you’re a level-zero nobody or a godlike level-10 veteran, everyone is equally squishy against the crush of Total Darkness.
In addition to the core rules, I’ll supplement with SoloDark, the official solo rules for Shadowdark. SoloDark provides oracles, some helpful random tables, and a few mechanical tweaks as well. Most relevant right out of the gate, the solo rules recommend allowing torches to last ten turns rather than one real-time hour; that allows for the slower pace and more flexible session times that distinguish solo play from traditional group play. As the campaign (and my skill at running the game) evolves, I’ll be adding and removing rules and tools to try and find a fun balance of narrative freedom and simulationist “crunch.” But for now, it’s just two books, a three-ring binder with character sheets and hex map templates, and roughly a pound of dice. Without further ado, let’s get the [adventuring] party started.