Tavern Watch Plays Shadowdark, Episode 3: What lies below

It’s spooky season here on Tavern Watch, so we’re playing something appropriately spooky β€” Shadowdark! But a spooky old-school-esque system isn’t enough on its own, so we’re diving back into one of the most classic horror tabletop game modules of all time β€” the original I6: Ravenloft for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1E. When new spooky rules meet old haunts, will our heroes survive the night?

Episode three brings our adventurers into possibly the spookiest part of Castle Ravenloft: the expansive crypts underneath the castle, home to a wide variety of creepy things, from garden variety dead bodies to shambling zombies β€” and also, according to the adventure module, three thousand bats. On top of that, Strahd’s deadline from episode 1 is running out β€” he’ll show up to clean up his little adventurer problem on his own sooner or later! Our brave adventurers include:

• Liz as Serl Sparrow (Halfling Wizard), whose destiny is it to enter Castle Ravenloft and emerge victorious.

• Nick as Ninir (Elf Thief), whose destiny is… to steal as much loot from the infamously rich Count as he possibly can.

• Chris as Faran (Elf Priest), a brave and doughty religious elf who will face the darkness or die trying.

This is the finale in a three-part game of Shadowdark! You can check out the first episode here and the second episode here; look for new episodes of our actual plays or news and discussion shows every Monday.

This game was played in Shadowdark, an Ennie-Award-winning tabletop RPG that marries the familiarity of D&D with the stripped-down, rulings-not-rules sensibility of older versions of the same game, yielding something that’s fast, fun, and easy to play. Shadowdark places an emphasis on being easy to understand and easy to run, making it a great game to pick up and play β€” even if it’s your first tabletop game! If you’re interested in picking up your own copy of Shadowdark, you can grab it at The Arcane Library. If you want to check out our adventure in Ravenloft for yourself, you can pick up I6: Ravenloft from the DM’s Guild. (We’re also using Venatus Maps’ Castle Ravenloft Battle Maps to play in these episodes.)

The music in this podcast is β€œSome Amount of Evil” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.