Robert J. Schwalb

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a medium crunch horror fantasy RPG, set in a collapsing fantasy empire under threat from the reality devouring Shadow Lord. Your heroes battle against monsters coming from the hinterlands, seeping through cracks in reality, and summoned by insane cultists in order to survive another day, and maybe save a loved one or two.

The system was the first (I believe) to introduce the 1d20+k +/- nd6 system used by Lancer. Static bonus are relatively small, DCs are close to show more 10, and circumstances give you boons and banes, d6s which cancel each other out, with the highest one rolled. Combat is quick and simple, with strict limits on actions. One clever bit of game design is that characters can take a Fast Turn, with just an action or move, or delay to later in the round and take a Slow Turn to move and attack. Characters also get one Triggered action, by default an attack of opportunity when someone moves, but later abilities can give other options.

Characters are built from novice, expert, and advanced classes from level 0 to 12. You'll start as simple magician, priest, rogue, or warrior, and specialize from there (Cleric --> Paladin --> Templar, for example). Class choices are big ones, but after that you have relatively limited options to pick in terms of talents and spells. Another part of the character building minigame, magic items, is similarly sparse. Enchanted items are weird rather than powerful. Skills are handled by a profession system: you did something before you became an adventurer, and it's assumed that your good at whatever a professional could do.

The setting has some cool ideas. Souls are reincarnated, with decent people losing their identity as shades in the underworld before returning. Evil people have corruption stripped from their souls by devils, a type of faerie, before returning. Halflings and elves exist, but are not playable, with goblins, changelings, and clockworks standing in. Orcs recently overthrew the Emperor, though the political implications are mostly left implied.

There's a lot of good ideas, but also a few half-baked ones. There's an insanity system which seems to mostly make your characters go non-controllable at the worst possible time, which is a lazy port of old Call of Cthulhu mechanics rather than a reimagining of how adventuring, horror, and mental trauma should interact. Similarly, while this is a game of grim horror and gray morality, there's also objective evil in the form of Corruption, which your character can gain by committing vile acts and learning evil spells, and the Demon Lord and his threats. The setting, while eminently gamable, is better when it leans into sword and sorcery weirdness, and spends too much time in a Warhammer Fantasy mashup.

This is a tighter game than any edition of D&D or my favorite, 13th Age, but it's also more limited and at the end of the day, still a fantasy heartbreaker. I'm becoming one of those guys who says "why not just play Blades in the Dark?", or if I were seeking the new hotness, Massif's ICON. show less

As an avid table-top RPG player, I found this latest edition of DnD to be the best yet to come out of Wizards of the Coast. Granted I have only dabbled in 1st and 2nd edition, but playing 3rd, 3.5, and 4th for the past 11 years or so, this 5th edition book seems to take all the good things in the last few tries and compiles them all together into this version. It was an enjoyable read especially if you read it out loud as I did to my newborn daughter.
Now for a little uber-nerdom fan talk - show more If you follow RPG politics you may know that a lot of 4th edition DnD game designers jumped ship over the past couple years to make their own kickstarter games like Numenera and 13th Age. It's rumored that they did this because they wanted to get back to basics but Wizards of the Coast wasn't having it because it's hard to make a "back to basics" RPG profitable. Having played these recent offshoots for the past couple years now, you can tell that Wizards of the Coast took the hint and decided to get back to their roots a bit and incorporate more "theater of the mind" and storytelling elements into their game mechanics. This is a good thing in my opinion, but some of it seems a bit borrowed. Numenera for instance, has a random roll list of bizarre items that you might come across as a player. The items tend to be weird and quirky, like a two headed cat fetus in a jar for instance. These items are called oddities and add a bit of strangeness to the world but rarely do they serve any real tactical advantage. That's ok because Numenera isn't really about combat, it's about discovery. DnD is however about combat a majority of the time This new version of DnD happens to included a random roll list called "trinkets" which appears to be very similar to the Numenera concept. When I came across the trinkets page in the new edition of this player's handbook it seems a little out of place. Wizards of the Coast also added the idea of "bonds" which seems to be directly drawn from 13th Age. I find this funny because these are probably the kind of concepts that Monte Cook and Rob Heinsoo wanted to incorporate into DnD before they left. Regardless of these interesting asides, the book is well put together, well edited, and contains decent art that isn't too cartoony. I look forward to checking out the new Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide soon. I have also been given a reprieve from DMing by my players since we have a new edition to the family and I don't have a lot time to plan out adventures. So another brave soul is DMing for now and I'm really looking forward to playing through this new system over the next year or so. show less

I was a die-hard fan of 3.5e for a long time but 5e seems to be a worthy successor! I really enjoyed this handbook and look forward to giving it a spin.

I started playing in times of AD&D 2e and this system was unnecessarily complex even then and the worldbuilding was absolutely minimal. So when 3.5e came around it was very refreshing, books looked inviting, it felt epic, and it gave a sense of the world that adventures happen. 5e takes it to the next level - mechanics are simplified, but it show more doesn't limit player's options; the book is full of story hooks and many are baked into character creation (read: mandatory); it provides glimpses of different settings and sets basic themes of each (multiverse in the 1st core book!).

5e seems to be fast and intuitive mechanic-wise and gives a lot of inspiration for both DM and PCs to build an epic story. It gives a variety of options to chose from and basically everything you need to start playing (even without other core books). A lot of OP combos, powers, and spells seem to be nerfed or eliminated, so I hope for a balanced play where every choice (race/class/etc.) gives a player an awesome experience.

My only issue with this book is the lack of a short core mechanics summary. The index is very poor and frustrating, there is no glossary (like in 3.5e), and the book is full of "You will learn more about it in Chapter X". So when you want a summary of what the Proficiency Bonus is for, you need to skip through 4 different chapters of the handbook to get a full picture. show less

This is my 3rd D&D player's handbook and I really like how they've gone back to a more traditional feel to the game while still allowing for (and giving support to) DMs and Players who are used to the miniatures and tiles based play of 4th edition. I'm excited to start DMing under 5e in the coming weeks.