Shadow & Fae Houserules (An OSR for 5e's Lost Children)

Core Rules, GM Screen

Character Sheet, Digital Character Sheet, Party Sheet

How Did We Get Here?

Several years ago, after listening to a handful of D&D podcasts we loved, my siblings and I decided to play it. It was a big step for us. 

We were raised in a Christian home where D&D was seen as occult. Meanwhile, we, along with our parents, loved Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Terry Pratchett. Now, we're all still Christians, but we've grown up a little and realized that Jesus never said "Thou shalt not roll dice." Actually, he seemed to love sitting at a table with a bunch of friends and laughing and talking about life. Even had a glass of wine. I'd like to think one of the occupations of Heaven is telling stories, and given Jesus's own penchant for parables, I may be on to something.

Anyways, we started our foray into D&D with 5e. I rolled up a massive, overly complicated world full of politics, and lore, and then we tromped off into it, playing as guardsmen akin to those in Terry Pratchett's, Night's Watch and Feet of Clay.

We had a blast, and Copper the Troll and Tony Two-swords are still some of my favorite characters, along with the rest of that gang.

That campaign derailed with characters shopping for fine clothes and attempting to get into a ball with the BBEG. Someday, maybe, we'll go back.

In the meantime we've played 2 more campaigns and have a 3rd about half-finished. And... I've started seeing some of the flaws of 5th Edition. Specifically, it bloats certain aspects of the game - looking at you, combat - while effectively ignoring things like travel and how to run a dungeon. It really ought to be called Dragons & Their Hoards, as the point of the dungeon seems to be little more than a backdrop for said reptilian overlords.

At the same time, all my siblings have devoted a good amount of hours to understanding the beast that is 5e, so can I really change our standard system?

Well... I think I can.

With the power of GLoG.

What's a GLOG?

Shadow and Fae is an abomination my best attempt to write a ruleset that uses 5th edition terminology and philosophy, and then trims out A LOT of fat, while bringing in solid rules for Travel, Dungeon Crawling, and even Roleplay situations. 

To create it, I've delved into the Old-School Revival (OSR) movement quite a bit to determine what made the origins of the game fun. Specifically, I've been hanging out with a bunch of awesome weirdies in the GLOG (Goblin Laws of Gaming) community, which was initiated by Arnold K of Goblin Punch. And I've come out with gold. Actually, kind of literally, or at least philosophically.

D&D was a game where you faced legitimate danger in order to seek awesome reward. The dangers were mysterious in nature but certain in severity. The rewards were worthy of legend. There was gold, yes, but also Connection - relationships with important and mysterious figures - and Influence. High level characters were expected to become kings, guild leaders, and high-priests.

But to get there, one must face the dangers of winding dungeon halls, shrouded forests, and the blank expanse of baked dunes. The dangers served as testing grounds for these heroes. Many poor adventurers died facing them, but some emerged victorious, legendary power in hand, and used that power to drive back the darkness.

I read The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams a few years ago, and it was an interesting take on the classic Arthurian tale. Once you get past the first few chapters (or was it half the first book, I can't remember...) the story launches into a brilliant telling of a peasant boy traveling through perilous wilds on a quest to save his homeland from the insidious machinations of an evil sorcerer. It's a heart-pounding, hilarious, fun story, and it's everything I want my games to be.

So, how to capture it?

Characters on an Adventure

First, the game is about the adventure and how the characters unexpectedly grow to face its challenges. Notice the word unexpectedly. One of the OSR's issues with 5e is that half the fun is building powerful characters. That's all well and good, but it's shocking when these characters die. They're super-heroes. The thing is, the assurance of victory before a fight begins - and then playing out the hours long battle anyway - is decidedly not fun.

At the same time, we don't want characters to be underpowered or trivial.

I like the way GLOG deals with this. Characters are simple. As they progress in their class, they get some decent abilities, but nothing crazy over-the-top.

I know, the first thing people coming from 5e are going to say is "Where's THAT feat?" And you might look at the rules for building characters and say, "It's not there." But the thing is, it is. It's not on the character sheet though, it's somewhere in the world. Go find it.  I love that. More than I can put in this post. You want to be crazy powerful? Great! The answer isn't calculating how many level 0 pigs you have to kill to get to level 20 (It's 35,500), the answer is going on an adventure to find magical artefacts or the boon of powerful beings. But if you go on that adventure, you might not come back at all.

So we play as the characters willing to risk it. We play as noble-hearted blacksmith's daughters on a quest to save their village from the clutches of the Necromancer. We play as pirate rogues who've been cursed to wander the land until they can appease the Queen of the Sea. We play as treacherous knights looking for the Crown of Fangs in order to seize the throne for ourselves. (But that guy's coming back as an evil NPC if he manages it.) These are characters willing to risk their lives in pursuit of their goal, and they've heard rumors about that goal out there, in the wilds.

Into the Shadow and Fae

If you're going to seek those rewards, you must face their trials.

Lord of the Rings is not a story about a short guy throwing a ring in a volcano. It's a tale of the dangers and wonders of the open road, and the people we travel it with. Most of the excitement in the books comes from the characters traveling along the road and then dealing with the dangers it presents. Sometimes those dangers were natural, sometimes they were magical or man-made. Sometimes they ran into an entire army of orcs. Hey, it's the road. All sorts travel on it.

Another grievance of mine with 5e is that the road is meaningless. "Can we skip travel?" Is a pretty common question. It teaches us that the most important part of a story is its end. But no journey is just its destination. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum made the choices they did at the top of Mt. Doom because of the people they became while they traveled the road.

To capture the importance of the road, I've done my best to include a simple, efficient system for traveling through the wild and dangerous places of the world, including dungeons. A system that reveals, little by little, the story of the world the characters are living in.

Now, I think I'm going to settle down with a cup of tea, and start building this world I dream of.

It will be a dangerous place, where happy lives are hard won. 

It will be a place full of secrets both wonderful and terrible.

It will be a realm steeped in Shadow and Fae.