Go Play Shadowdark (7/18/2025)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: John Powell, Carl Nelson, Andy Munich, Amy Sundberg, Brednan Albano
System: Shadowdark

Welcome to part one of a three session Long Con at Go Play! Promoted by John Powell to run Shadowdark (he had GM’d but never had a chance to play, it didn’t take much to convince me), I decided to run a continuous game of Hoard of the Sea Wolf King where each session would lead directly into the next.

I played with the same Amaranth setting and starting situation (escaping the Grix labor camp and taking refuge in the dungeon) and reprinted the characters, beliefs, and crimes so they could be customized for the Go Play crew. The one difference between this and my open table at home is that we didn’t reset back to the entrance at the end of each session. When a session ended we left the characters exactly as they had been in the previous session. Players still got to pick characters so we had a bit of swapping out (some folks wandered off and others appeared as they fled the Hobgoblins) but most of the time, folks picked characters who had already been played, especially if the characters were in bad situations!

Pics from the game. Thank you photographers Andy and Amy!

Note keepers journal

[Text in brackets are mechanical bits, Sean’s additions or corrections]

• Amaranth Isle
• Horth. Goblins, Orcs [Hobgoblins], Bugbears
• Five nations. Humans, Elves, etc.
• Grix. Prison camp of the Horth
• Gods of Law and Chaos fighting. Madera losing control of reality.
• Party: Solveig (Amy), Sraxl (John), Malchor (Brendan), Ixil Lochrain (Andy), Rosk (Carl)

~

• Escaped [Grix], horns of pursuit, poled the raft to the mouth of a sea cave.
• Chambers built by the Dverg (rumor)
• We traded with Ruggamort in these caves [Lizardfolk knowledge]
• Met goblins at mouth of the cave. Ixil offended the greatly.
• Malchor has calmned them slightly. Solveig clams further.
• Trees, goblin leader, wants to charge 8 GP for passage.
• [These are the] sea caves of the Sea Wolf King Skorgald (Ixil divines this!)
• Horn heard. The hobgoblins approach!
• The party promised to return their leader Baz and offered 2 GP in exchange for torches and passage.
• Told by the goblins SE: Bats. N: Dead.
• Pole the raft across the river, get stuck immediately on a sunken raft in the river. Abandoned raft, headed N.
• Sraxl creates crocodile illusion to slow down our pursuers [Shadowdance: 3 rounds]
• We head NW
• Chamber with ancient torches, statue of the Seer Agatha [known by Ixil and Solveig]
• Hall of pillars.
• Pursuers arrive at cave entrance, slowed by the illusionary crocodile! [Failed their morale check]
• Pillars have figures [grotesques made by Dverg hidden among the depictions of great warriors]
• Sraxl jams the door behind us with a crowbar.
• [Find a huge] boat in chamber, dragon figurehead.
• Figure draped in linen in center of the boat.
• Stole 3 rings from her fingers [brutally desecrating the body], spooky wind blows through the room [and a ghost appears.]
• Malchor falls in the river, Sraxl saves him [by wedging a 10′ pole in the river bank. This will be important later. MVP pole]
• Solveig bargains with the ghost of Agatha. She demands Solveig hunt down the Defilers of Skorgald (his shitty descendents).
• Baz found chowing down on spooky feast. Cursed?
• Lost our torch [Sraxl rolled double Nat 1s]
• Bats and Hobgoblins approach!
• Bat [Stingbat] bites Ixil, latches on, Ixil [tries to pry off the bat with a crowbar, fails] and jumps into the river, struggles against the current and is left behind [but catches the 10′ pole!]
• Graffiti on rock says “Skorgald, a greedy miser who left nothing for his sons!”
• Mordeme, beloved son of Skorgald was betrayed by his brothers and they were cursed…

Torch timer, you did it again! The Singbats (random encounter) fled the Hobgoblins and went into the room with the player, they were mostly hiding in the corners, but when the lights went out and Ixil stumbled into one of them, it attacked. Ixil was at 1HP and impaled by the stingbat’s proboscis. After failing to pry it off, she elected to jump into the river (in the dark!) hoping the stingbat would let go…and it did (failed morale check). Yay, the bat flew out of the water but now she was lost downstream, bat still flying overhead, only saved by a 10′ pole!

Thank you note taker Carl!

Cartographers sketch

This map connects up several different ways. Thank you for this artifact cartographer Brendan!