Back in 2015, a shadow began to creep across the RPG industry. Shadow of the Demon Lord was a game designed by one of the designers that worked on multiple editions of D&D, Robert J. Schwalb. This was a fantasy RPG that was designed for people whose gaming habits had moved toward shorter game sessions and more succinct campaigns.

You started at 0 level, ended at 10th level, and you gained a level at the end of each adventure. The adventures were short and mostly designed to be run in one session. The game allowed for the kind of multiclassing combinations that a lot of gamers wanted but built it into the game in a manner like D&D 4e’s Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Unlike 4e, it allowed for more mixing and matching instead of connecting the Paragon Paths to a particular class.

While those were some of the design concepts, the setting broke from the assumptions of games like D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age. You were playing in a world in decay, one that was likely to fall into an apocalypse by the end of the campaign. The game was built on the idea of a campaign template to show how the signs of the apocalypse were happening. Characters accumulated mental and spiritual damage. There was literally no such thing as good on a cosmic level.

The game seized a lot of imaginations, but the nihilistic overtones made it harder for some gamers to engage fully with the setting, and the built in consequences of some game options made it more difficult to port the system to a less morally devastating setting. That brings us to 2023, and the Kickstarter for Shadow of the Weird Wizard, a game that builds on the mechanical structures of Shadow of the Demon Lord, but with a smidge less nihilistic dread.

Disclaimer

I did not receive a review copy of Shadow of the Weird Wizard, and my copy comes from backing the Kickstarter. I have not had the opportunity to play or run Shadow of the Weird Wizard, but I have both played and run Shadow of the Demon Lord.

 Shadow of the Weird Wizard

Writing, Design, and Art Direction: Robert J. Schwalb
Foreword: Zeb Cook
Editing and Development: Kim Mohan
Additional Editing: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes, Jay Spight
Aid and Assistance: Daniel K. Heinrich, Danielle Casteel
Proofreading: David Satnik, Jay Spight
Cover Design, Graphic Design, and Layout: Kara Hamilton
Cover Illustrator: Matteo Spirito
Interior Illustrations: Yeysson Bellaiza, Andrew Clark, Biagio d’alessandro, Çağdaş Demiralp, Nim Dewhirst—Kasgovs Maps, Rick Hershey, Jack Kaiser, Katerina Ladon, Britt Martin, Maria Rosaria Monticelli, Victor Moreno, Mitch Mueller, Matthew Myslinski, Eduardo Nunes, Mirco Paganessi, Claudio Pozas, Phill Simpson, Kim Van Deun, Sergio Villa-Isaza, Cardin Yanis
Character Sheet Design: Daniel K. Heinrich and Kara Hamilton

The Weird Wizard’s Grimoire

This first impression is based on the PDF of the Shadow of the Weird Wizard core rulebook. I should be receiving the hardcover, but it hasn’t been released as of this writing. The PDF is 274 pages, and is broken down to the following:

• Cover and Back Cover–2 pages
• Credits–1 page
• Table of Contents–2 pages
• Index–6 pages
• Character Sheet–2 pages
• Setting Map–1 page
• Secrets of the Weird Wizard Ad–1 page

If you have seen any of the Shadow of the Demon Lord releases, it shouldn’t be a surprise to know that this is filled with quality artwork. Compared to the Shadow of the Demon Lord art, this art is still often shadowy and ominous, but less grimy and dark. Where the headers and font on Shadow of the Demon Lord were blood red and a little intentionally rough, the headers and fonts in Shadow of the Weird Wizard are purple with a more pleasantly flowing font.

Shadow of the Weird Wizard is less of the full core book, and more like the Player’s Handbook of the game, explaining the general rules, character creation, and player facing options. The sections of this book include:

• Introduction
• Creating a Character
• Game Rules
• Equipment
• Magic
• Expert Paths
• Master Paths

Because this is more of a player’s handbook, there isn’t a lot of discussion of best practices for running a game, and the only monster or NPC stat blocks are ones associated with elements like summoning monsters or hiring retainers. Now that we’ve established the basics, let’s take a deeper dive into what’s in all of those chapters.

Setting and Concept

While the setting isn’t marching towards oblivion the same way the world of Urth is in Shadow of the Demon Lord, it isn’t a bright high fantasy setting. Players portray characters fleeing from the collapse of the Old Country, into the lands once controlled by the Weird Wizard, a despotic spellcaster that dominated the land, warping, twisting, and summoning strange things into his domain.

Characters don’t start off at 0 level as they do in Shadow of the Demon Lord, so the story starts with the player characters in a position of more competence, but the general feeling is less that the PCs are mythic heroes confronting mythic threats, and more like the PCs are competent mortal beings trying to protect humans completely unprepared for a land dominated by dangerous folklore. PCs feel like they are acquiring more and more powers to give them more tools to engage with the supernatural spaces of the world, but until their Master Paths, the PCs feel much more like outsiders trying imperfectly to interact with a mysterious world than fantasy heroes integrated with the supernatural.

On its face, the setting and its tropes almost feel like they play into older concepts of “taming” a wild land for human habitation, regardless of the previous inhabitants, but the game is more aware of the story it’s telling. The humans pushing into the former lands of the Weird Wizard don’t have the option of staying in the Old Country. The exodus of the Weird Wizard has forced the inhabitants of the lands to come to terms with how oppressive their magical despot was. Campaigns are as likely to involve finding detente with fey creatures near their settlement as they are to destroy magical mutated beasts. At this phase of the human migration, it feels much more like the theme is learning how to integrate into the lands rather than dominating them and building new kingdoms.

The perspective of Shadow of the Weird Wizard is distinctly human, although later supplements will provide rules for playing other ancestries. The tropes of fantasy RPGs are remixed with folklore, meaning that some things on their surface appear to be callbacks to older gaming, but with some wicked twists. For example, orcs are a violent threat, but unlike orcs in a setting like D&D, they are the product of a magical disease that makes them more like rage zombies than what most people associate with the species in modern fantasy. Some conflicts with fey creatures may be unavoidable because of absolute interpretations of promises made, but there is also the possibility of finding a way of turning absolute alien understanding of agreements to the mortal’s favor. In some ways, this setting feels like the kind of setting where creepy Muppets from 80s fantasy movies would be at home.

Setting information isn’t presented in a gazetteer fashion. The description of the setting exists in the introduction, with additional elements revealed in discussion of different Paths, magical traditions, and deities. This isn’t radically different than how Shadow of the Demon Lord presents its setting, where even later products that drilled down into particular regions were rarely more than 10 pages, with a few emblematic NPCs, but not a deep dive into exact distances, populations, or heavily detailed timelines.

Rules and Resolutions

The core resolution of the game is to roll a d20, plus or minus an ability bonus, compared against a target number. The target number usually defaults to 10, unless it’s a roll against a character, whose defenses may be determined by their level or degree of threat. Advantageous circumstances grant you a boon, while detrimental circumstances assess you a bane. Boons allow you to roll a d6 and add it to your roll, while Banes have you roll a d6 and subtract it from your result. Boons and Banes cancel one another out, and if you have multiple Boons or Banes, you subtract or add only the highest die to your roll. Critical successes are results that are a 20 or higher, and critical failures are rolls that are 0 or lower. When someone is afflicted with an ongoing effect, sometimes a character may make an ability check to resist or remove an effect, but often, characters make a Luck roll to see if an effect ends, which is a d20 roll that is successful on a 10 or higher.

There are a number of afflictions that can affect your character. These are adjudicated with a variety of options, often by assigning banes that come into play under certain circumstances, or persistently. Some assess a boon to those acting against you, and some cause you to suffer damage at different intervals until they are removed.

Ongoing afflictions that cause damage bring us to another distinction in the rules. Characters have a Health score, but when you get injured, you don’t subtract from your Health, you total your damage and compare it to Health to see if you can still function. One of the reasons for this distinction is that some effects directly damage Health. For example, if you’re on fire, you take damage, but if you are poisoned or diseased, you may subtract numbers from your Health. Characters are injured when their damage equals half their Health, and when a character’s damage is equal to their Health, they are incapacitated. When you’re Health is 0, you die, and many times when you are incapacitated, you remove Health every round until you pass a Luck check.

There are no skills in the game, but a character’s profession either grants them narrative position to do something other characters cannot, or a boon if anyone could attempt the action, but a professional would have a greater chance to accomplish the task. There are some simple but structured rules for discerning information and interacting with NPCs. For example, a character can make an Intellect roll to know something useful to the situation, and there is a list of what is common knowledge in the setting and what can be added to that list of common knowledge based on professions.

Social challenges have different rules depending on what the challenge is. For example, the rules define the following social challenges:

• Transaction
• Appeal
• Argument
• Alliance
• Coercion

Each type of challenge explains the requirements for the interaction and what abilities are used, as well as any situations that would grant boons or banes. For example, an appeal is resolved with Will rolls, while an argument is resolved with Intellect. In some cases, some of these interactions have guidelines for what critical success or failure looks like in the interaction.

Combat assumes tactical positioning, in as much as it assumes actual ranges rather than conceptual ranges or zones. No one rolls for initiative. Instead, there is an order of operations:

• Combatants under the Sage’s control, in any order
  • Combatants under the player’s control can use reactions if applicable, when triggered
  • Roll to resolve any end of turn ongoing effects, in any order
• Combatants under the player’s control, in any order
  • Combatants under the Sage’s control can use reactions if applicable, when triggered
  • Roll to resolve any end of turn ongoing effects, in any order

Characters have one reaction per round, unless some other rule grants them additional reactions. In addition to the standard reactions a character can take, a character can burn their reaction to Take the Initiative and act before the Sage’s characters.

Characters pick their abilities from a standard array, and their Novice Path options are Fighter, Mage, Priest, or Rogue. Characters gain a natural defense score, health, language, and starting path ability from this choice. You gain additional benefits from this path at 2nd and 5th level. At 3rd level, you pick an Expert Path, which grants you additional features at 4th, 6th, and 9th level. At 7th level, you pick your Master Path, which grants you path abilities at 8th and 10th level. The progression looks something like this:

• 1st Level–Pick Novice Path
• 2nd Level–Novice Path Abilities
• 3rd Level–Pick Expert Path
• 4th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 5th Level–Novice Path Abilities
• 6th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 7th Level–Pick Master Path
• 8th Level–Master Path Abilities
• 9th Level–Expert Path Abilities
• 10th Level–Master Path Abilities

This means you may not have your full character concept locked in until you reach 7th level. The Expert Paths are grouped under Paths of Battle, Faith, Power, and Skill. The Master Paths are grouped under Paths of Arms, The Gods, Magic, and Prowess. These correspond to the initial four paths, but characters don’t have to pick a similar path at Expert or Master level. A Fighter that chooses a Path of Battle and a Path of Arms is likely to be very specifically a toe-to-toe combatant, but some paths synergize well across concepts. For example, depending on the type of weapon and tactics a fighter uses, Skill and Prowess paths often work well for various concepts.

Some paths are specifically about synergizing elements across paths. For example, the Spellfighter Expert Path of Skill is all about being a martial combatant that also uses spells in addition to weapons. Some character classes/archetypes that have become familiar from games like D&D, Pathfinder, or 13th Age don’t show up until the Expert Paths, which reminds me a bit of BECMI D&D. For example, Berserkers, Commanders, Martial Artists, Rangers, Paladins, Artificers, Druids, Psychics, Assassins, Bards, and Warlocks don’t show up until the Expert Paths.

Depending on the path, a character might pick up a special ability they can use a number of times per rest, a number of extra spells, a new magical tradition, or bonus damage on their attacks. Multiple dice of damage present an interesting tactical choice, because you can sacrifice 2d6 of damage to make another attack, but that attack must be against a different target. If you get additional spells, you pick them from the traditions you already know.

Since we’re talking about magic, spells, and magic traditions, let’s move on to talking about those things in their own section, because 90 pages of the 274 pages (about 33%) are devoted to magic traditions and spells.

The Many Faces of Magic

Spells in the game are all arranged into thematic traditions, which each feature several supernatural talents in addition to the spells grouped under that tradition. When a character discovers a tradition, they gain one of the talents from the tradition, which are separate supernatural abilities compared to spells. Some of these talents are like cantrips, where they are recurring minor supernatural abilities. Some are more powerful, and once they are used, they don’t come back until you make a Luck roll for them to recharge, or in some cases, until after you have a chance to rest. The traditions listed in the core book include:

• Aeromancy
• Alchemy
• Alteration
• Animism
• Astromancy
• Chaos
• Chronomancy
• Conjuration
• Cryomancy
• Dark Arts
• Destruction
• Divination
• Eldritch
• Enchantment
• Evocation
• Geomancy
• Illusion
• Invocation
• Necromancy
• Oneiromancy
• Order
• Primal
• Protection
• Psychomancy
• Pyromancy
• Shadowmancy
• Skullduggery
• Spiritualism
• Symbolism
• Technomancy
• Teleportation
• War

When you learn a spell, the entry tells you how many times you can cast the spell before you rest. You can pick the spell multiple times to gain the ability to cast the spell more times per rest. Spells under their individual traditions are also grouped by Novice, Expert, and Master spells, meaning if you are allowed to learn new spells when you gain a level, you must pick from a level that is equal to or less than your current character tier. In other words, you can’t pick Master level spells from your available traditions until you are at least 7th level.

Unlike Dungeons & Dragons magic schools, these aren’t cosmic absolutes. Two spells can do very similar things, but will be in two separate traditions, because of the narrative elements of how they create the effect of the spell. For example, Shadowmancy and Teleportation may both create a point from which someone can enter in one place, and exit in another, but Shadowmancy rips a hole through the void, and Teleportation bends space to make two points touch.

Shadow of the Demon Lord always had extremely evocative ways of explaining what could otherwise be perfunctory effects. While Shadow of the Weird Wizard is a little less gruesome in its descriptions, it’s no less evocative. For example, there is a spell that splits your opponent into two creatures exactly half the size of the original creature. An Astromancy spell flashes a foe with ultraviolet light, burns them, and impairs their agility, because they develop a rapid onset of severe sunburn. One of the spells of the Chronomancy tradition allows the caster to summon themself from the future to aid them. One of the Necromancy spells summons a psychopomp to swoop over the target, bringing them closer to death. A master level Technomancy spell lets you summon a huge moving fortress equipped with a massive cannon, which is both extremely hard to destroy and blows up spectacularly if you do manage to destroy it.

Because these traditions contain both talents and spells, many of these traditions play into the theme of different paths as well. For example, Technomancy or Alchemy both pair well with Artificer, to produce a “magical scientist/engineer” with a much different feel. While there isn’t a starting path that indicates that a character is psychic, taking the psychomancy tradition can help flavor a Mage as a psionicist before they make it to 3rd level and take the Psychic path.

Overlapping Shadows

Shadow of the Weird Wizard has a lot in common with Shadow of the Demon Lord. It’s very clearly an evolution of the same system. But I wanted to take a few moments to summarize some of the changes between the two. I know I’ll miss some, but let’s give this a go:

• Shadow of the Weird Wizard starts at 1st level instead of 0
• The scale for health and damage is higher for Shadow of the Weird Wizard
• Insanity and corruption are not tracked for player characters in Shadow of the Weird Wizard (although at least one path introduces corruption tracking for a character with that path)
• The round structure doesn’t use the Fast Turn/Slow Turn structure of Shadow of the Demon Lord
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard adds d6 damage progression to attacks
• Shadow of the Demon Lord paths occur at different levels, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard doesn’t have an option to take a second Expert Path instead of a Master Path
• Shadow of the Demon Lord spells always provided a number of castings based on a spell rank determined by paths taken
• Shadow of the Demon Lord traditions don’t provide talents based on tradition
• Shadow of the Demon Lord’s core rulebook includes GM/campaign advice and a bestiary

Both books are the same size, but Shadow of the Demon Lord had 16 Expert Paths and 64 Master Paths, as well as 30 magic traditions, and 5 additional ancestries in addition to humans. Shadow of the Weird Wizard has 42 Expert Paths, 122 Master Paths, and 33 magic traditions. Obviously the big expansion of player materials is in the Expert Paths and Master Paths, but the Magical Traditions take up more space as well, due to the inclusion of the talents associated with the tradition.

If you were hoping the two games would have compatible material, that’s unfortunately not the case. Health and damage scales differently, making Shadow of the Demon Lord monsters a bit underpowered in comparison. Traditions aren’t compatible because of assumptions about power levels and talents. Novice, Expert, and Master paths all key in their options at different levels between the two systems.

Final Thoughts

One of the reasons I wanted to write this as a first impression rather than a full review is that while the Shadow of the Weird Wizard book is available in final form in PDF, Secrets of the Weird Wizard, the “GM” book for the line, is still in beta. You can purchase the PDF, but it’s still in development. You can play other ancestries or use the monsters and NPCs from that book, but it’s still in the process of being finished.

I enjoyed the customization of Shadow of the Demon Lord when I first encountered it, and Shadow of the Weird Wizard is continuing this trend. While Shadow of the Demon Lord was working towards a very specific feel, and almost everything in that game does play towards the concept of the game, it’s definitely a wise move to remove things like Insanity and Corruption from a core high fantasy experience that doesn’t lean into horror.

When running my Shadow of the Demon Lord game, one of my friends observed that he wanted to make a character that was an effective fighter mage but had a hard time finding the right options to make it work. I feel like the options that are meant to allow for a “multi-classing” feel in Shadow of the Weird Wizard are a lot more transparent in how to mix and match concepts and make them work. As far as spellcasting goes, a lot of that transparency comes from not worrying about the power level and what traditions boost that rating to increase your castings.

While this is much less nihilistic and horror driven than Shadow of the Demon Lord, this isn’t a system that can seamlessly swap in or out for a setting that was written for D&D or Pathfinder. This is less dark than Shadow of the Demon Lord, but the game still has an edge to it, drawing from folklore and older versions of fairy tales. It’s still a game where heroes doing everything right may still see the consequences of evil that they can’t fully mitigate. They might be able to make the world better within a limited scope, and the world isn’t necessarily marching toward oblivion within the next generation, but the supernatural will always be dangerous and at least a little hostile, and life may become less challenging, but will never be easy.

Because this resembles 5e SRD fantasy superficially, I think some people may be unsatisfied or conflicted if they don’t realize that the game is pulling on a more specific subset of influences than a lot of modern fantasy utilizes. It’s easy to infer that a human centric game where PCs fight monsters in a land they are trying to tame, with tropes like “all orcs are evil” is playing in a less mature, older fantasy RPG paradigm. On the other hand, I think it’s intentionally playing in the same space as a game like Symbaroum, where it’s fully aware that people “taming a land” is a fraught narrative, and that the satisfying play space is to understand where to introduce hard decisions and moral choices.

I’ve seen one of the adventures for the system, and even without reading through more of the setting information and campaign advice in Secrets of the Weird Wizard, I’m pretty sure this is a game that wants you to know your heroes can be wrong, but that they also aren’t being relentlessly pushed into spaces where they can’t find a better way. With the number of rules about combat and the number of combat spells, I can see people losing the thread on options that don’t involve reducing enemies to ash. I think the game is deep enough to present more options, while still acknowledging that people want to kick butt once in a while.

Looking To the Future

I enjoyed Shadow of the Demon Lord, not only for the system, but also for the way in which the rules reinforced tone and theme. It was (and still is) a game that can be very satisfying if you know what kind of game it wants to deliver. Shadow of the Weird Wizard is going to be able to do the same thing, with even more clarity of design and transparency of intent with its player facing rules. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version of Secrets of the Weird Wizard, and the rest of the line.