Sheen - Shadowdark Solodark
Background
Been struggling with gamer's block and trying to work through it as well as some disquiet about gaming and stakes of gaming.
So we've been experimenting with a variety of games (boardgames & RPGs, roll-and-write, solo journaling…) and trying to figure out how/why… and what to do about it. Something about system kids, and risk-taking, big game worlds being "too much" and how invested should we get -- a big jumble we've been trying to work through for months. So we have things to say/obsevations about our Crisses Day (2026) game session to break down -- potentially break-through…
We have a different Shadowdark "campaign" (we got big in worldbuilding rather than actually putting playing first) with 4 adult characters we're not very attached to. It felt like all stakes on the table using the "darkness-is-deadly" Shadowdark/Solodark rules…the kids try to play, get all anxious, and we get bolluxed.
We like the nostalgia that Shadowdark has -- being very like B/X D&D, our first official RPG system.
Character Generation
We held our nose and leaned in to "attachment" and immersion by creating a character we would have a real link to.
Concept: What if we got our childhood wish?
As a kid we were desperate to get out of this world (see Magpie - offsite) and we always tell people if a portal opens up we would jump in without a second thought.
So -- what if that happened. Not now, as an adult. But what if there's an alternate reality where a Crisses jumped into a portal as a pre-teen? What if we landed in a world as gritty and potentially deadly as Shadowdark? We wanted to go to Narnia, but even Narnia wasn't 100 years of peace even with the reign of Peter, Susan, Edmund & Lucy. What our "little kid" heart desires is unlikely to have been sunshine and roses and fields of flowers and endless comfortable sunny days (which is what one pocket dimension we have in our inner world is like).
So -- we decided to collaboratively (as a system) make a version of us as a child to jump into this gritty world. What would we be in terms of character class? How would we survive? We'd have to be gritty, and independent and it would be dangerous and lonely. But let's see what that looks like?
We went through the Players Companion for ShadowDark's classes and started figuring out what worked and what didn't, collapsing our decisions between classes too similar until we boiled it down to 3 classes we felt reflected the situation. Urchin, because being a homeless kid in a gritty city that's really the essence of what we'd need to survive, and frankly what we'd be. Shaman which has an out of body scouting talent -- because even at a very young age we were doing trance and out of body work. And Beastmaster which has an animal friending & taming talent -- because we have always been great with animals, rescuing feral and stray cats, always had pets, and eventually even became a petsitter including farm animals -- this is an obvious inherent strength even as a kid.
So we said screw it. Why not all 3? We took 1 class talent from each of beastmaster & shaman, grafted that on to Urchin. We're multi-classing, even if the RAW don't include multiclass characters. It's my solo game, and the rules lawyers don't exist at my tabletop.
What "ancestry" or species/race to be was next. We figured we'd go through all the ancestries in the PCfSD and pick one eventually -- but it was the first one that caught us and we were like "That's it! That's the one!"
Changeling. I mean -- come on. We are autistic, we are neurodivergent, we are plural. As we were growing up grownup friends of the family often astutely observed with shock & awe that our "personality suddenly changed" when we were 5 years old, like overnight. Almost the definition of changeling. Our eye color kept changing. And of course, who we actually were was also constantly changing. We are a changeling. And damn proud of it. In the game, changelings come with the ability to change their face (in terms of a "perfect disguise" one time a day, and it stays that way until they change it again. Ok, we can work with that. And it works perfectly with us, and with a street urchin character.
A name. A name is an important and powerful thing. Can't be OUR name, nor any specific headmate -- that's 'too close for comfort' but also can't be a total stranger's name either, that's too distancing. We thought and thought and found a perfect name. "Steen". Some folks called us "Big Christine" when we were growing up. It was never the right name, but it's what people slapped on us. "Steen" is the part of the name that didn't fit, but was still stuck on us, but we were never called "Steen"…. so this is Steen, the What If…? character of the reality that wouldn't have fit what we wanted and needed from our get the fuck outta this place fantasy.
Having all of that, next is to outfit the character…
Solo Module - Goblins Crash the Party!
So how does an urchin with starting "cash" actually deck themselves out for an "adventure". Why, they go where the people are, and where people are distracted, and they use their amazing "I am beneath your notice" and tiny size to creep around and liberate their gear from festival-goers pocketses. Someone put down their backpack -- swiped. The dagger-throwing booth had some extra throwing daggers in a box in the back -- mine now. So technically we shopped the same list every other starting character does, and kept to the same budget a starting character would -- but we just figured we acquired them with a 5-digit discount.
So our pretense for being at the festival when the poop hits the propeller is that we were loading up with gear and goodies (like rations) when the goblin raid started.
(more to come)
Into the sewers… Axebane's Deck of Many Dungeons + Shadowspark Dungeon Encounter cards
So we used a deck of cards to build a small dungeon section -- with Dane our mastiff companion, and we managed to clear a very small sewer/basement area with a few rooms without toooooo much anxiety about it. Now the character has a place to stay (after spending most of their gold on carousing).
The last room had a sprite trapped in it, so a sprite was rescued, but couldn't really speak to each other (different languages). but the sprite seemed grateful. (The cards had a sprite, the game we're using doesn't seem to have one in the rules we have, so we guessed at what was going on.) Could be sprites are always evil & mean ("Fairies bad, go around!"), who knows, but I don't see why every encounter needs to be "angry things want to kill you."…we asked some yes/no questions, guessed the likelihood, and made some story. Plus this gave my character a room with a lock and a relatively "safe" place to sleep. So that "dungeon" is clear (for now) and my character has 1 possible "hideout" or whatever. HQ.
Maybe will lead some other urchins down there so they can keep it "warm" for me.
Oh and Sheen leveled up. So a little less squishy at 2nd level. And that opens up befriending level 2 critters. I don't think there's any other bonuses, so it's just as hard, can't carry more equipment, etc.