Strange and interesting. It really is a system in and of itself, and can possible be applied to other RPGs without much issue. A lot of crazy and interesting stuff can happen, and I find myself sitting back and wondering how some of it is supposed to be run at the table. Should this be managed between sessions? In the middle of sessions between adventures? It's hard to say.

I find myself a big fan of the events that have 1d6 permutations, though I think there should have been a much higher chance of nothing happening in a given week so that your players don't end up with event fatigue. I also think that the choices for actions empower players to make a life for their character that the GM is not constantly adjudicating over. If that was the design goal, it's met here. Overall, I do consider this to be worth my money, and I'm curious to run it at the table.

One of the best SOTDL adventures I've seen. I got it for free during the Holiday season, and I find myself wishing I'd paid for it. It manages to incorporate investigative elements along with a brief creepy dungeon crawl and advice for what to do if players just ignore everything. New and intresting monsters really cement this as an adventure worth having. Fun, flexible, and better than a Holiday-themed product even should be.

This adventure has about three intertwined story lines in its seven pages. I had to read through it a couple times to get it all straighten out in a way that I could reveal to the players in a natural way. There is a lot going on in the small timber village of Checqwood: deceptions, hostages, hauntings, monsters, greed, vengence, mutilation, and death.

There are some interesting ideas in “Blood Will Run”. It has good illustrations but ugly maps. I had to tone down the deadliness of a big combat and cut out some of the more “edgy” aspects of the scenario, but that was easily done. I had fun, my players had fun, it was well worth the time and the price.

This is essentially a port / hack of Shadow of the Demon Lord with more swearing (a lot more swearing, over 300 F-bombs in a sub-200-page PDF, to the point where reading it is honestly kind of tiring) and some extra rules bolted on. Fair enough, it's not trying to pretend to be anything else, but, despite typically strong SchwalbEnt layout and production values, many of those extra rules feel quite rushed. There's a charisma / personality table despite charisma being a numerical stat now (I guess because Demon Lord had one). Speaking of which, there are now eight stats rather than four and I really don't understand why - Demon Lord did just fine with four, and the elegance was honestly part of what I liked about that game.

What really sunk this game for me, though, was the firearms rules. As written, they're pretty much unworkable. Every single gun in this game has a 1 in 3 chance per attack to fail, either jamming or blowing up in your face; bizarrely, this is actually much less reliable than the black powder weapons of Demon Lord. I'd get this if the game downplayed guns, but they're everywhere in the art and setting to the point where bullets are your basic currency.

Between this, the stat split, the wonky mutation rules, the tone, and a pretty uninspired setting which I think is trying to be satirical (but the fact that it's hard to tell isn't a great sign), I really can't recommend PunkApocalyptic.

A huge amount of content. An excellent resource for SotDL campaigns.

The idea sounds nice, but due to the spells in SotDL rarely having long-lasting effects, things like "double the AOE range" and "increase duration from 1 minute to entire 2 minutes" are mostly useless, when the rituals take a long time to perform.

Top notch design and quality, as always. Plenty of creatures for different power levels and terrifying lore.

Damn this game is fun. Sure, it's juvenile and often very, very gross but a @#$%ing. I've played through all of the published missions and a few of my own with two different groups with widely different conclusions to the tales presented. Both groups really loved being able to randomly create characters and dive right in. The twisted shit that players have come up with to do to themselves, each other, and the world at large has been memorable. Shadow of the Demon Lord while more horror and decidedly metal, Punkapocalyptic is definitely more irreverent and, well, punk. If there is one thing I will remember more vividly from being sheltered in place during Covid-19, it's this game.

This was a suplament that I enjoyed a lot. It takes the most common and under appreciated ancestories. This gives a lot of good player options to the shadow of the demon lord players who like to be only human.

This game actually gives the right number of fucks in the right places. The world’s a fucked up place. Then shit-heel motherfuckers found new and even more fucked up ways to ruin it with a fucking apocalypse.

Now, you’re one of the poor wastoids that has to try and make it in the world, and you’re probably the correct kind of fucked-all-over to make a difference. Good or bad is up to you, but shit’s gonna change. The Demon Lord system lets you advance your character on drastically different paths to become the right kind of unique weirdo that you want to be, all within a simple and straightforward ruleset that covers anything the imagination conjures without bogging itself down in simulationist hell.

Buckle up fucko, it’s the end of the world, and you’re about to make it a whole lot nastier.

Dark fantasy in a brutal world - a Mephisto review

For the world of Urd the end is near. The mighty empire crumbled after its army of orc slaves has killed the emperor in a bloody uprising. But this civil war is only a symptom of a much worse truth: the shadow of the demon lord has fallen on Urd, and the terrible entity of the void is pressing to destroy the world. The cracks between the worlds are still too small for the Demon Lord himself to break through, but his influence is continually expanding...

Even with the significant threat in the background, at first Shadow of the Demon Lord seems like just another fantasy roleplaying game in which daring heroes face the forces of evil. However, if you take a closer look at the roleplaying game, you quickly realize that at least heroes are less than radiant. Even the selection of races for the player characters is not the typical standard. While humans and dwarves are certainly found in most fantasy roleplaying games, there are also unusual candidates: Goblins - outcasts of the fairy folk who live in the dirt and have disgusting habits; Orcs - the bestial slave soldiers who have fought for their independence; Clockworks - mechanical creatures powered by stolen souls and changelings that can change their appearance. The game statistics are not determined by the roll of dice but are fixed. Physical traits, strange habits and backgrounds can be rolled to emphasize further that the player characters also have their dark sides.

The characters start at level 0, with the whole group always advancing one level - up to the maximum of level 10. The game is designed so that at level 0, the characters are ordinary people who have regular professions. From level 1, players choose an apprentice path that includes the usual classes such as warrior, priest, rogue and warrior. At the next levels, expert and master paths are added, which further develop the character and give them special abilities or access to individual magic schools. These career paths are not hierarchical, but the player can choose freely: A character who started as a warrior can also learn magic later. Magic is divided into a vast arsenal of different schools, each with their own spells and in some cases special rules. Some schools change the personality or appearance of a character - and some evil schools corrupt it. Despite all the advancements, the characters always have a limited number of health points and are also threatened by corruption and madness, which can make life even harder for them.

Many of the rule mechanisms are based on D&D and Warhammer and developed further in a meaningful way. For example, there are advantage and disadvantage dice, which are included as d6 with the standard d20 roll.

The game world is presented with a wide range of regions and challenges. Rules, tips for the gamemaster and the inevitable bestiary round off the book. The book's illustrations make it clear that Shadow of the Demon Lord is a tough setting, and the game starts by stating very clearly that the player characters not only have a good chance of dying, but that their death is definitely a relevant game element. The world is dirty, ugly and brutal, and there is little room for shining heroes.

Thus, Shadow of the Demon Lord succeeds in carving out its own niche in the broad field of fantasy setting. From my point of view, this is a unique roleplaying game. The rules are coherent, the background is exciting, and the game has its own flair. However, Shadow of the Demon Lord is certainly not a roleplaying game for everyone, because of the very dark and drastically brutal world (both in description and illustration). The clear message that players have only little chances here will not please every gaming group. Friendly fantasy is something else, but here players will find a very exciting and also quite easy to learn challenge (which is probably brutal enough to kill the player characters often).

(Björn Lippold)

I knew when i read the Page 4 Tone section, that this game was going to use as many fuck bombs as it could, that i had made the wisest fucking purchase of the year.

I can't wait to play this. I can't wait to tell every human being i know to stop fucking around and play Punkapocalyptic, including my parents and my church group, if i had one.

It did what i wanted which was to give me an Post-Apocalypse setting and encourage the maniacal fun side of things, and it exceeded all of expectations on read/review.

I cannot wait to give you more money for future supplements and follow-up material for the line.

Easily the most complicated addition to the streamlined paths system as of yet, but Christ is it worth the complexity. Rather than making a number of new novice paths like they did for the priest and the warrior, and with no existing class-central customization like the rogue, when the time came to expand the magician, they made it modular. Whenever you gain a new feature from the magician class, you can replace it with a number of options depending on what traditions you know at the time.

Want more castings of level 0 spells? Replace cantrip with the Arcana option. Don't plan on using sense magic, but want to get a burst of speed to charge your enemies at the start of combat? With Battle, you can make that choice. Want to be a master at avoiding damage? If you have the Soul tradition, you can give up counterspell to enhance the effects of damage-avoiding challenge rolls. Want all three of these for some reason? Sure, just have discovered the Arcana and Battle traditions by level 1, and the Soul tradition by level 5.

10/10 would trade soul for again.

I love Nessus. I love the idea of it, I love the history that it was given, and I love the execution. I've even got a full 0-10 campaign set in Nessus waiting for an opening in one of my gaming groups, and potentially to be added to the Disciples lineup. With rules for relatively quick generation of playable ruined areas, a number of threats that could be the focus of either an adventure or campaign, and a number of neighborhoods separated by miles of monster-infested ruins, you won't be disappointed with your purchase. It seems a little pricey for a Lands in Shadow expansion, but given what you find within, I'd put it on the same level as Tombs of the Desolation, and more than worth your money if you plan to spend any amount of time within the city or any similar ruins.

An expansion of the warrior novice path that is essential for anyone who wants to build a martial character in SotDL. Whether you want to play a monk and punch people, a soldier and gain and provide benefits from and to those around you, an armiger and exemplify mounted combat, or a spellguard and start arguments over whether or not you're overpowered, you'll find what you need herein.

10/10 would buy again.