Shadow of the Demon Lord
| Designer(s) | Robert J. Schwalb |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Schwalb Entertainment, LLC |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Genre(s) | Horror Fantasy |
| Playing time | Varies |
| Random chance | Dice rolling |
| Skill(s) required | Role-playing, improvisation |
| Website | http://schwalbentertainment.com/shadow-of-the-demon-lord/ |
Shadow of the Demon Lord is a horror fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) created by Robert J. Schwalb. It was funded through a Kickstarter campaign launched on March 12, 2015.
The game takes place in a world standing on the brink of the apocalypse. The cause is The Demon Lord, a boundless evil being of staggering power who authors the catastrophes blighting the landscape. Each new horror released reflects the Demon Lord's approach, the touch of its shadow, and its growing hunger for not only the planet but the entirety of all things. Although near, the Demon Lord remains outside the cosmos, rattling the cage of its prison as it strains to escape the Void to visit catastrophic destruction to the world.
The game provides several catastrophic templates which can be used to model how the world is falling apart. These templates represent the Shadow of the Demon Lord; wherever the Shadow falls, chaos and upheaval are born. The Shadow might let loose global pandemics, famines, droughts, earthquakes, demon princes to stomp across the countryside, living dead, and other world-spanning disasters and threats.
Alternatively, the game can also be played as a less perilous dark fantasy role-playing game.
Shadow of the Demon Lord is played with two types of dice: a d20 and a d6. Instead of using a scaling set of numbers to model easier and harder tasks, the game uses banes and boons. For each positive circumstance that could help the player succeed, he has a boon. For each negative circumstance that might prevent his success, he has a bane. Banes and boons cancel each other. When attempting to complete a task, for each bane or boon, the player rolls a d6 with his d20. Of the numbers rolled for boons, he adds the highest number rolled to the number he rolled on the d20. Conversely, of all the numbers rolled for banes, he substracts the highest number rolled from the number rolled on his d20.
Characters may gain insanity when they see or experience something that strains the way they understand the world or something that harms them in a way that’s difficult to accept. Examples of events which can inflict insanity: Coming back from the dead; suffering a grievous wound; seeing a loved one brutally killed; seeing a 30-foot tall demon riddled with drooling maws from which slime covered fleshy monstrosities spill as it waddles across the countryside.
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