One of the things I realized a long time ago, but Sly Flourish article “How to Survive a Digital D&D Future” really cements, is that Wizards of the Coast will never release the Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) that DMs need. No, I’m not talking about one that will “teach them how to DM,” which the current one does, and which the next one is arguably going to do better. Teaching how to DM is great, but you also need to provide tools for a DM to identify and create good content for their game. People crave exciting games, filled with fun content.

I’m talking about having a DMG that’s packed with the tools necessary to generate a campaign and a dungeon top to bottom in a format that goes beyond vague advice and stylistic choices. I’m talking about procedural dungeon and campaign creation. Procedural NPC creation. Procedural adventure and encounter table generation. One with tons of evocative ideas that show DMs how to turn that content into good, fun content for the players to engage with.

What I’m really talking about is all the nifty tools that Shadowdark just won multiple ENNIE Awards for doing. Let’s take look.

Shadowdark’s Content Creation Engine

Shadowdark won four ENNIE Awards this year:

  • Best Game
  • Best Layout and Design
  • Best Rules
  • Product of the Year

While there’s obviously a lot of reasons for it to win each and every one of these awards, I personally voted for it from a Dungeon Master’s perspective, since that’s what I usually am. And what Shadowdark does that no other games I’ve seen before do in nearly so complete a package is give you the tools you need to start using it right away. Not just as a player, but also as a DM. And not just right away, but also forever. Here’s how it succeeds over everyone before it.

Let’s start on page 130 with Shadowdark Maps. Pick the size of your dungeon, and roll the number of d10s indicated on a sheet of paper. (You’ll note the smallest dungeon uses 5d10, which squares with 5 Room Dungeon design.) Draw a circle around each die: those are the rooms. The number on the die tells you what table to roll on to populate that room: Traps, Hazards, Monsters, NPCs, Treasure, Boss Monsters, etc. A couple more dice rolls tells you the type of dungeon (Cave, Tomb, etc.) and danger level (how often you roll for random encounters).

Why is this so handy?

  • The dungeon type then corresponds to a d100 encounter table that is more of an adventure hook generator than it is filled with your typical “2d6 goblins” entries.
  • The trap, treasure, and monster/boss monster tables don’t give you a specific monster or trap or whatever, but instead give you details and relative power levels, and then you populate it with what sounds good. You could simply roll on other tables related to that subject matter, or you can pick something more tailored to your group.
  • You could roll an entire randomly generated dungeon, start to finish. Or, equally as easily, you could use these initial tables to then tailor the dungeon to your whims.

Overall, this system gives you everything you need for a few sessions of play in a format that’s easy to execute, relies on simple internal references to other tables and subjects, and ensures you get something playable every time. It saves time, reduces the amount of things a DM needs to develop whole-cloth to zero, and inspires creativity as the DM develops context for the monsters, traps, and NPCs.

But it doesn’t end there. We get the same methodology for building an entire world: overland hex maps, settlements, and finally taverns…where every adventure begins, of course! There are similar tools for NPCs, Rival Adventurers, Traps, and Hazards that follow different procedures, but have the same result: immediately playable content that ensures fun gaming material. In a dozen or three dice rolls and 15 minutes of your time, you have the scaffolding of an entire campaign good for 6 months of weekly game sessions or more.

Not Just Procedural Content

Looking back at yesteryear, similar tools were found in the very first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, what we now call OD&D, and to some degree was found in the ever popular B/X edition that games like Old-School Essentials and Knave really model themselves after. But even back then, not all of these tools were present, with some elements being left to prose-written guidelines rather than immediately executable random generation. And those tools that existed as random tables were often bereft of any story hooks. That’s what the DM gets to create, those books decided, often with the fault being that they have relatively few working examples of any hooks.

Meanwhile, Shadowdark gives you all the generators plus the adventure hooks. The encounter tables aren’t just massive, they are expansive. They aren’t just a dozen or so terrain types, and/or a climate or three. There’s a ridiculous number of tables covering…

…Wilderness regions:

  • Arctic
  • Desert
  • Forest
  • Grassland
  • Jungle
  • Mountain
  • Ocean
  • River and Coast
  • Swamp

…Dungeon types:

  • Cave
  • Deep Tunnels
  • Ruins
  • Tomb

…And even settlement Districts:

  • Artisan
  • Castle
  • High
  • Low
  • Market
  • Slums
  • Tavern
  • Temple
  • University

They are loaded with cool ideas, so to prove they are more than just tables of randomly appearing monsters to fight, here’s a few random entries from various tables:

  • Arctic, 28-29, “Fire-hating treants pose as a grove of silent pine trees”
  • Artisan District, 22-23, “An arrogant warrior on a warhorse tries to kick a PC aside”
  • Castle District, 78-79, “A cowled figure subtly hands a scroll to a passing woman”
  • Cave, 46-47, “A wounded, outcast drider skitters along the ceiling”
  • Grassland, 8-9, “1d4 giant dung beetles roll manure toward a towering pile”
  • Tomb, 100, “A secret cache holds 1d4 items from the 7-9 treasure table”
  • University District, 92-92, “A clumsy wizard breaks a glass bottle housing a naga”

Yes, there are quite a few that are what you’d expect, but they always contain a hook or activity beyond just itemizing the creatures in the room/hex/street:

  • Tomb, 48-49, “2d6 thieves leap out and demand the PCs’ plunder”
  • Tomb, 50-53, “3d8 zombies fight each other to eat a surrounded bandit”

Hooks Teach DMs What’s Fun

These are adventure hooks, all. Even if they won’t fill an entire game session, they are a hook that shows that the monsters and NPCs have lives, are doing something that may or may not concern the PCs. Or, better phrased: these are situations that the PCs walk into, not plots with a predetermined end. I’ll paraphrase what I heard first from Levi Kornelsen: create situations, don’t tell stories.

First, I want to say that hooks are neat, but good hooks are hard to come by. Importantly, not all hooks work for all game tables and situations, but here’s a secret: if there’s no hook, whatever you’re presenting in the game is going to be boring. As the DM, your job from the player’s perspective is entirely “how you frame each scene” (or moment, or encounter, or city, or setting, etc.). If you frame an encounter as “2d6 goblins appear out of thin air” then you’re going to have stakes that are at best flat. It could be life and death if it’s a fight and the PCs are low level, but regardless, it’s not about anything else. Why are the goblins fighting you? What do they gain? What do you gain by defeating them? What might you gain by keeping some or all of them alive to question them? What do they know? Those questions are a thousand times more interesting than no question at all, and these hooks provide that dramatic question.

Secondly, hooks are powerful because they can be ignored or changed at any time. In fact, every time, if you want! A major problem with publishing adventures is having hooks that work for some, most, or all groups. It’s a virtual impossibility to get it a one-size-fits-most hook. It does make things easier when the hooks are built into the gameplay loop. Shadowdark proves its value in both nailing the core gameplay loop (getting treasure means getting XP), as well as by providing well designed situational hooks in its encounter tables. They ask or answer dramatic questions. Anyone reading these hooks gets to see how to develop clever situations from a one-off encounter to a potential adventure seed that could fill sessions or campaigns.

  • “Fire-hating treants pose as a grove of silent pine trees” – Why are the treants posing as a grove of normal trees? Why are they specifically called out as “fire-hating”? A single lit torch or a campfire could enrage them. Or it might be a bigger campaign-worthy question about some fire giants in the mountains nearby.
  • “A cowled figure subtly hands a scroll to a passing woman” – Who is the cowled figure? Who is the woman? What’s on the scroll? Is it a deed to property the PCs might be able to purchase and hire mercenaries to defend their riches? Or is it something sinister connected to one of the faction plots in this or a nearby settlement?

Tools DMs Need

So, why don’t we see this in modern versions of Dungeons & Dragons, and why won’t we see things like this from Wizards of the Coast in the future?

Mike’s article (rightly) doesn’t touch on trying to forecast exactly what WOTC’s model means for the content of its upcoming books, but if there’s one thing we haven’t seen from WOTC even going back to their first (main) foray into D&D with 3E are solid, procedural, functional tools like Shadowdark has for generating adventure content. That’s not to say it doesn’t have advice and tables—even extensive tables, back in the 3E-era days, or found in the many random tables in the 5E DMG—but rather to say that they never make the connections between their advice and tables that lead to a procedure that can generate adventures and campaigns quickly and easily.

Because that’s what their content is: adventures and campaigns. That’s where they make half of their money; the other half is in endless character options for the “character build” side of the game. A monetization strategy is going to immediately fail if they give you the tools to easily build your own stuff. Especially if the stuff you can build on your own isn’t just easy, but has a baseline level of quality that isn’t “totally sucks.” Shadowdark clearly knows some meta stuff on building good content: you wouldn’t see the Shadowdark Maps small dungeons start specifically at five rooms if it didn’t. It’s top to bottom tried and true content generation based on 50 years of advice and people hacking D&D to make it run smoother and better.

Conclusion

I wish I was more positive about the future of Dungeons & Dragons, specifically. In fact, I’m sure it will make a boat load of money. But the business direction of a corporation beholden to shareholders is one that’s going to cut many very specific corners when it comes to giving us content that can be virtually endless and of high quality. They simply won’t do it if they aren’t making a buck off of it, and that’s a sound business decision for that model.

Luckily, we’ve got Shadowdark, and it’s got everything you need. Its compatibility means you can literally lift sections like Shadowdark Maps or Overland Hex Maps and use them verbatim with any edition of D&D, including 5E. Or Pathfinder. Or anything vaguely D&D-like.

Sprinkle some of the random tables from Knave Second Edition on top and you’ll never lack for content in your games again.