Writober! Contagion! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, each day throughout the month. But I’m borrowing the daily drawing prompts for a series of (usually short) writing prompts. Today’s prompt is “Contagion”.

Contagion reminds us that Shadowdark embraces the ‘rulings not rules’ OSR point of view. But even D&D 5e’s doesn’t rely on its pre-built list of  conditions for a ‘diseased’ condition. On the other hand, a disease can list which conditions it may cause (exhaustion, poison, etc.) but diseases themselves vary widely.

So what makes a ‘good’ disease, game-wise? A GM needs to think about what is the purpose. Most diseases are going to be speed-bumps (albeit unusual ones–not just another battle or trap) in the overall plot. In many cases they are just a side effect of certain creatures (rats & otyughs) and can be cures with the 3rd level restoration priest spell.

But if it serves a purpose, they can be so much more! Diseases can have really any effect you want and require special ingredients to cure. This serves a few other purposes:

• Diseases can put time pressure on the group to find a cure in time.
• They can cost the players resources.
• They can force the players onto a side trek that may serve an additional purpose in your game: Make a new ally, open up a new plot line (the priest of ___ will only heal you if the group does ____), take the characters to a new area, etc.