For the shadowdarklings not in the know, Cursed Scroll issues 4-6 are being developed and released to backers of last year’s Shadowdark kickstarter, “Shadowdark RPG: The Western Reaches Setting.” I have been using these zines as part of my campaign, and while I have found them useful for expanding Shadowdark’s core rules, I was never overly impressed to the point where I felt it was worthwhile enough to talk about. With Issue #6, that all changes.
This zine is literally unlike the others in scope and scale. While others have been a smorgasbord of new rules, classes, and small regional hex crawls, this one instead shakes up the format by introducing Meridia, “the city of masks.” This is a fantastic city setting that got me excited enough to pick up the pen and start writing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to run a great city-based campaign lately, and this zine is stuffed full of tools to help you do that. I’ll be focusing on that today, but if you want a full breakdown and review of Cursed Scroll #6, I suggest you watch this great walkthrough and review by LichHouse:
Before I drop into my discussion about the city and how I would use it to run a campaign, here’s a quick list of my personal feelings on this issue:
Strengths:
New downtime activities.
This one is fun and gives the characters a nice way to dump cash outside of shopping and carousing. I think I may want to define it as something that happens during the day, not something they can tack on to a night’s rest.
Expanded carousing tables.
I love that this has been expanded to a larger table that utilizes the setting. Combined with the mishaps, there's plenty of great inspiration here to help build a unique, character-led story in your campaign.
Meridia, “The City of Masks.”
Personally, I think Kelsey and team nailed the level of detail here. Being terse enough to quickly use at the table and deep enough to build sessions' worth of play from. More on that in my detailed thoughts and approach to running the city below.
The new city travel rules.
These are great. I believe they are the perfect level of complexity. Just enough procedure to be helpful and nothing more.
Maybe not for me:
Renown
I like the sentiment of this one, but I think it feels a little tacked on. Adjusting carousing rolls is interesting, but it feels a little too “heroic” to me for my game. Renown basically equates to fame, and that might even be problematic for the NPCs, depending on the campaign you are running. So I’m firmly mixed here.
Quibbles:
Art is limited.
They packed a ton into this issue; it seems like the artwork paid the cost.
The organization is chaotic.
This criticism is sort of aimed at the Cursed Scroll series as a whole. Being a grab bag of content has made it confusing to navigate through, to the point where I have ripped all the classes out of the PDFs and combined them into one printout for my players to use. There are two classes and a collection of lawful wizard spells that are great, but just get in the way of the main content of this zine. As more of a standout issue, I personally wish they had dropped the conventional formatting for this one and just made it about Meridia.
NPCs lack stats.
A small quibble, but you know I would like it. Given a more focused issue, as I mentioned above, I think this could have fit. But we can always stat the NPCs ourselves.
How I Would Run Meridia, “The City of Masks.”
So what do you do with it all? Well, cities, like other sandbox games, can be tricky if you don’t know what to do with them. Part of the fun of running a city is giving players the tools to aid exploration, stumbling upon locations and NPCs they might never have sought out, and, on the other side of the coin, is the problem of making the world understandable to them. Luckily, most of the tools necessary are present in this zine, and I’ve got some ideas for others to fill in the gaps.
First, we build off the zine's content.
The Factions, Laws, Holidays, and Locations are all great. Taking them as inspiration, I would decide if there is anything I would like to add or change to customize it to my campaign. Then I would look at the rumors table and modify it to work with any adventures I might want to run inside the city. I like to maintain my rumors list in an editable format, somewhere I can adjust it over time, removing the ones the characters have already interacted with and introducing new ones as the story develops. Rumors are the glue that keep a sandbox running, and it's important to keep them evolving as the world changes. It’s also important to know that you can select from them and make new ones up on the fly during a conversation if it keeps the action lively. Tools like rumors are there to help you; there is no wrong way to use them.
What I would add during my prep:
With a strong start.
Yes, your players can find the city as part of a bigger world, but if you plan on beginning your campaign in Meridia, you want to open with something memorable. A gauntlet that winds up dropping the players inside the city can be a great way to handle that.
A reason to stay in the city.
What will keep the players exploring the city? Some initial rumors that offer a deeper look into the not-so-obvious sides of the city can be compelling. So can factions, joining them in their goals and helping to progress their agendas.
If you are interested in tackling your strong start and running a campaign where the characters are faction members, consider my forthcoming Zine Quest Kickstarter, “The League of Dark Few.” It details everything you need to run a guild of “influence brokers” who silently help the nobles pull the strings of society. It starts with a brutal initiation ceremony (a level 0 gauntlet) and helps you build a home for the characters inside the chaos of the city.
Follow the project and download the free Level 1 adventure “The Crypt of the Forgotten Duke” when it launches on February 10th.
An approach to chases and laying low.
Inevitably, there will be a situation in which the characters end up chasing someone through the city’s streets, or they themselves are being chased. And, when they run afoul of the law, you are going to want to know how to handle the repercussions. DCC’s Lahnkmar boxed set (now out of print ☹️) has some great resources for handling that, or you can choose an approach that’s less mechanically intense, but it's best to plan ahead for the inevitability.
Some hidden locations.
Maybe 2-3 per district, places the characters can stumble upon or that rumors can lead to, and aren’t initially on the map (I provide my players with a map to speed up play). Ben L. has some great examples of how to handle hidden locations in his 2020 article, “Rules for Citycrawling,” if you want some mechanical inspiration.
A couple of extra adventures.
I like to have 2-3 short published modules ready to go with some pre-canned hooks if the action starts to slow down. You can always have an NPC approach the party with one of these hooks if the session is going a little slow.
Build competing faction interests.
Cursed Scroll #6 does a great job laying out all the major factions in the city, but I find it easier to bring life to the setting if their goals are at odds with one another. It helps me to think about how the city would change over time. For example, are the Beggars in conflict with the Cult of the Plague Mother? Has their disease made the Beggars' numbers dwindle? Have they started attacking the cultists on sight? If you are looking for some mechanics to help with faction play, I suggest reading pg. 30 of Mausritter, which has some wonderfully simple rules for tracking faction progress that can easily be used in your prep for any system (The PDF is even free!).
What’s the benefit of all this prep?
This extra foundational work will make Meridia your own and equip you with the tools to make the city feel alive. More importantly, it should make the city feel deeper than its first glance, and when you can reward the players’ curiosity with a thoughtful response, they become more interested in exploring.
So, Is Cursed Scroll #6 Worth It?
I would resoundingly say yes. What you get in 68 digest-sized pages is a mid-sized city that you can drop into most worlds and run successfully with little prep. Great formatting and gameable content make quick reference easy and fun at the table. That remains true even if you don’t run Shadowdark — I have even started using it as a setting in some of the DCC games I am running.
