Shadow of the Demon Lord

Shadows of the Demon Lord
RPG published by Schwalb Entertainment, LLC
Authors	Robert J. Schwalb
First Publication	2015
Essential Books	Core Rulebook GM Screen Victims of the Demon Lord Tales of the Demon Lord A Glorious Death Demon Lord's Companion V1 & V2 Exquisite Agony Terrible Beauty Uncertain Faith

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a Dark Fantasy tabletop RPG from Robert J. Schwalb, one of the lead writers of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, as well as a contributing writer to the Green Ronin era of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Numenera. And the reason this is brought up is because this game feels like a lovechild of all of these.

The Setting

Demon Lord is described as being loose with the setting, and pretty much everything can be reconfigured to work in virtually any world, even a Mad Max wasteland via the Godless rule/splatbook. Basically, a very powerful thing(s) wants to gobble up the world and everyone in it, and the powers that be are too inept, corrupt, or ignorant to stop it, leaving it up to the players. As for the game's pre-made world, it's like if you took D&D, Warhammer, H.P. Lovecraft, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, The Witcher, Dragon Age, and Numenera, minced it all up in a blender, then poured it out and fried it into a story.

Urth is doomed. We're in pre-apocalypse territory, with the minions of the titular Demon Lord working behind the scenes (and sometimes in the open) to ready the world to usher in their master, a multi-reality conquerer who has eyed this place as their newest prize.

The most fleshed out continent of the setting is Rûl. There are several countries within after the recent fall of the Empire of Caecras due to the death of the Emperor at the hands of the Orc Rebellion, and the rising of the Orc King Drudge who sits upon its hallowed throne. Balgrendia, a former vassal, distrusts the New God, sticking to the Old Wisdom, and is on the edge of a succession crisis as its king's health fails. The Grand Duchy of the West is a backwards, feudal nation, ruled by incestuous bluebloods. The Holy Kingdom once was ruled by the aristocracy, but the papacy of the New God is the real power, with the ruling family being little more than puppets to the Church and their Inquisition. Low Country is pastoral and pretty, but it hides the rot of corruption behind its simple beauty. The Marchlands are the wall of the Empire, fighting to keep the beastmen out of the Empire and in the mountains. And so on and so forth.

The core races of the setting are Humans (the basic choice), Changelings (shapeshifters created by the fae to replace children they steal), Clockworks (souls stripped from the afterlife and bound to mechanical bodies), Dwarves (bearded gold-fuckers with a grudge fetish), Goblins (a race of fae who were banished from their realm for some unknown crime and now spend most of their days in trash heaps), and Orcs (the children of Jotuns who were twisted by the Empire as a perfect slave race, now serving no one but themselves). Later books added Halflings and Fauns to the pile as well as Ferren (shapeshifting were-cats), Hamadryads, Molekin (hideous blobby things that gave off a weird vibe of Duergar sans the orderliness), Naga (snake-men better described as Lamias), Sylphs, Frost Giants, and Yerath (hive-minded bug-folk). Later supplements and books present more races or further details to bring more life to your character.

So in general, extradimensional entities are preparing to eat reality while everyone else squabbles for control. Our heroes are often urchins, thugs, or lackeys, and traditional heroes are rare and becoming rarer as they die or fall to corruption. And though you might win, you've got to sacrifice a lot in the process. Sound familiar?

In general it tries to strike a balance of dark and silly tones with a sprinkling of noble goodness, and it works... usually. Many jokes have been made about Schwalb's apparent obsession with (literal) shit; a few spells, items, and descriptions have to do with poop, and it seems like a few of the races are either obsessed with or have little disgust for shit and other excretions for some reason. It's easy enough to ignore, though it might not be a good idea to let the least mature player in your group play a Goblin.

Mechanics

The basic mechanics of the game require a d20 and a few d6's. Iterating on the system from 5e, the target number of any given challenge is 10, with players rolling a d20 and adding/subtracting via their ability scores (Cut to four core stats that everything is dependent on) and then once again using any boons or banes they gained from their Class and Professions. A Boon adds a d6 to your roll, with a Bane subtracting it. Boons do not stack, instead with you choosing the highest number rolled, reducing the swinginess of 5e's advantage system. Players have access to a meta currency in Fortune, which is gained like Inspiration in 5e but has the same abilities as Fate points from Warhammer.

After choosing their race, players select or roll on a series of tables to determine various facts about their characters, from age to background. They then select (or roll) a profession for their character, and may choose to take a second profession or have their character be literate. Then the level-0 character is set off into the world. From there, they can take paths as they level up, these being the class equivalents. The four novice paths are the typical Mage/Priest/ Warrior/Rogue split, before moving to more specialized Expert paths at level 3, such as the paladin or the oracle for the priest. Level 7 sees even more splits into Master Paths, which specialize even further (or you could pick another Expert Path not unlike 4E's Paragon Multiclassing). Magic, while largely familiar to anyone who's picked up a game of D&D, is split into small schools split by stat-dependence and casting is still locked behind Vancian Casting and the incredibly limited number of spells any caster can attain. However, the magic juice cap counts per spell instead of per rank, so if the spellcasting table says you can cast a rank 3 spell once per day and you have learned two rank 3 spells, you can cast each of them once within the same day. And some spellcaster classes treat the spellcasting table as a suggestion instead of a hard cap, because no d20 system is complete without spellcaster pandering.

The game has Insanity and Corruption meters. One gains Insanity points for witnessing things that men aren't meant to know or being affected by dark magics, while Corruption is gained from acting in an evil way or doing something that aids the Demon Lord in spreading his shadow over the land. The Insanity system, wherein reaching total insanity makes you roll on a table where you can either become a hindrance to the party or have a slight chance of coming out of the madness stronger, resembles the Darkest Dungeon's system. Meanwhile, Corruption borrows heavily from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, where higher corruption causes stigmata and mutation to ravage your character.

In battle, players and monsters have the option of making a Fast Turn or a Slow Turn. A fast move is doing one action: Moving, Attacking, interacting with an object, et cetera. A Slow move is composed of doing two of these actions. Players always move first in the track they are on. This means a player who is just doing one thing will always beat a monster that is just doing one thing, but a player who is doing two things (for instance, moving to a downed ally and healing them) will move after the monster.

If all of this sounds like some weird mishmash of 5e's d20 systems with Warhammer Fantasy's careers, that's because it is and it is AWESOME.