Writober! Shadow! 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 “Shadow”.

Shadows in Shadowdark make a pretty strong case for identifying monster templates that were common in the 3e D&D days.  Honestly I love them as quick ways to make merge monsters. I get that folks don’t want to have many extra rules in the OSR world, but they are more of a prep tool that a new subset of rules that bog down your game session.

So a Shadow ‘template’ would be something like the following:

• Add 1 to the creature’s level and adjust HP.
• Add “2 touch” if the creature doesn’t already have a touch attack, although if it has a bite or some other non-weapon melee attack with a modifier and damage appropriate to the level.
• Add the drain ability to that attack and the action:
  Drain. DC __ CON or target’s STR reduced by 1. At 0 STR, target dies and becomes a shadow.
• Consider increasing the amount of STR damage based on level, just as you would the DC.

And that’s how you can make a ‘shadow’ version of any monster!