ShadowDrifters: Classless Adventurers

"What's This 'ShadowDrifters' Stuff About Then?”

ShadowDrifters is an alternate character creation and advancement sub-system for Kelsey Dionne's goal-smashing old-school RPG ShadowDark. The ShadowDrifters zine and cards give you a fun and easy way to make randomized talent trees for your adventurers to progress upon. Whether your campaign calls for traditional class-based characters, options for dual- and multiclassed PCs, or even completely classless characters for maximum versatility, ShadowDrifters empowers your table to summon not the heroes the realm needs, but the adventurers you discover along the way!
 

“So How's ShadowDrifters Even Work Then, Eh?”

Using the guidelines set out in the ShadowDrifters zine, the players and GM decide on how to use the ShadowDrifters class decks to seed the progression of the campaign's PCs. Pick one of the described systems for single, dual-, or multiclass characters, or let PCs go totally classless. From there, each player assembles a deck that holds all the potential directions their character could go. To begin, you'll get Origin cards to establish foundational heroic proficiencies, and some talent choices for your first fork in the road. These cards go down in your character's Talent Territory, a mapped group of options for you to grow through --- a randomized talent tree on a map! As your character gains Experience Points from their ill-gotten booty, you spend XP to develop talents within your reach, or to draw fresh cards to add to your horizon.

“Wait — A Map You Say? Go on…”

In sooth, a map! The cards you get for your character, in addition to showing what talents you can learn, show roads, citadels, noxious gambling pits, forlorn townships, and secret monasteries, creating a Talent Territory that you assemble draw by draw. On one hand, it can simply be an aesthetic way of presenting your character’s inner world, but on the other, it gives GMs the inspiration to build out in-world locations for training guilds, proving grounds, and hidden masters to seed onto a hexcrawl. Visiting these sites in your explorations can trigger training montages, mini-games, or XP rewards!

“Cut To It, What's In The Crowdfunding Campaign?”  

This campaign is raising funds to finish design, writing, layout, and especially art for the ShadowDrifter project. The project includes a zine with basic and advanced procedures, and four decks for characters of the classic archetypes — fighters, priests, thieves, and magic-users. The zine and decks are still in development, so page count is uncertain. The zine should be about 50 pages long. Each deck is 30-40 cards, so about 140 cards total. Everything will be Print on Demand through DriveThru RPG.

“I Don't Know, Is That An Ink Stain?"

What you see here only represents a prototype --- a show of my due dilligence in doing the math, catching the winds of inspiration, finding killer art, running playtests, incorporating feedback… In short: I'm doing the work, but the final product is still in development.

“Well, I'll Be…”

Yes, yes you will! And so will I! But what won't be is any insufferable basilisks and vampires of human potential. ShadowDrifters uses no AI in the design, writing, art, etc, and vows to uphold the pinnacle of human creativity as it's banner! Roko can go choke on a bag. Or several.