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Review: Soulblight – Hamartia
Today we are looking at Soulblight – Hamartia by Laurin-David Weggen. Hamartia is billed as a “hexcrawl setting” and also includes a 40-room dungeon, all wrapped up in the vibes of Reconquista-era Spain. The region is a collection of islands that serve as a penal colony for the nearby kingdom of Verocia. I hope you like words because Hamartia…
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Review: Take the Tower
Today we are looking at Take the Tower, a level 0 gauntlet adventure by Alex Dworman. It takes place in a 33-room wizard’s tower where the players will command a horde of would-be heroes dying gruesome and often hilarious deaths as they try to make it to the top or at least steal everything that…
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Review: Crownphage Vol. #1: Stone Tears
Today we’re looking at Crownphage Vol. #1: Stone Tears, a city supplement and level 2-3 investigation adventure by Arthur Marques. It’s got a basilisk right on the cover, so I’m in. The first impressions are that the designer approached this with thoughtfulness and intentionality. They did their homework and read some of the classics and sought…
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Review: The Breeding Pools
Today we are looking at The Breeding Pools by Nick Campbell aka Cri aka Made by Idle Hands. At least I think it’s by Nick. He didn’t put his name on it anywhere but I downloaded it from his itch.io so that’s what we’re going with. Regardless of authorship it’s a 12-room dungeon for “low” levels…
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Review: Righteous Vow Vol. 3 – The Mountain Dragon’s Brood
Update Feb 9, 2026: The author has graciously made the Nazulgrath expansion free. In consideration of this very positive change I am updating the score to 5. Today we are looking at Righteous Vow Vol. 3: The Mountain Dragon’s Brood. This is a 176page regional adventure with a hexmap and a few keyed dungeons, similar…
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Review: Curse of the Velvet Morning
Today we’re looking at Curse of the Velvet Morning by Dave Silberstein. It is a small region-based adventure for levels 1-3, focused around investigation and mystery. This one’s a bit different from the usual fare. For one thing, it doesn’t have any dungeons. surprisedpikachu.gif For another thing, we are told right off the bat that it’s inspired by Lee Hazlewood’s…
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Review: The Shadow of Sharad
Today we’re looking at The Shadow of Sharad by Michael Benoit. It is a crawl through a 14-room cultist hideout aimed at level 1 PCs. Full disclosure: I provided some design feedback to the author early on. So if there’s something I don’t like it’s partially my own dumb fault. The setup is brief and sticks to…
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Elements of OSR Adventures Particularly Valuable for Shadowdark
Friend of the blog and well-seasoned Shadowdark GM Dollface Killah made some excellent comments over on the Arcane Library discord server about what differentiates a good OSR/classic D&D adventure from a good Shadowdark adventure, and what elements can really enhance system synergy. He formatted into a blog post and I highly recommend that you read…
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2025 Retrospective
I started this blog for three primary reasons. 1) To entertain myself and 2) to try and bring attention to what I felt were the best adventures in an unfathomable sea of content and 3) provide a counterpoint to the well-meaning but perhaps overdone positivity that exists in the Shadowdark community around 3rd party adventures.…
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Review: A Haunting in Glass
Today we’re looking at A Haunting in Glass by Jesse Winter. It’s a 30-room tower adventure for levels 3-5. The page on DriveThruRPG has some recommendations from folks like directsun (author of Aberrant Reflections, one of my favorites) and Joel Hines (author of Desert Moon of Karth, also one of my favorites) so I was…