Shadoworld: Loose Ends

The original Shadoworld logo, built long before I knew
how to make logos.

I am the Warden!!

These past couple of days have been remarkably emotional for me as I pour over all my old Shadoworld notes to compile everything for Shadoworld: The Finale. And it's been amazing and refreshing how much I can still remember with just a single name, reaffirming once again that my RPG design work has helped me regain confidence in my cognitive functions. After reviewing everything I have, a checklist of concrete plot points for this final adventure stand at the ready.

But I'm not writing about those individual points because my players read this blog and most of that checklist revolves around the revelation I call The Answer, the truth about why everything happened in the campaign. The Answer has existed since before designing the first encounter of the first adventure nearly 10 years ago and has only been tweaked here and there to account for new details, new PCs, and sudden moments of awesomeness waking me up at 4 in the morning.

My point being the entire campaign has been about revealing The Answer. So why am I still unwilling to write it down for the purpose of telling it to the players?

Shadoworld: The Beginning of the End

I am the Warden!!

For the past week-and-a-half, I've been plugging away at Killshot, producing 45 pages of material for rules and character creation and enhancement. Now I must put all that aside - everything involving the Optional System, for that matter - to start working on something I never thought would come: the end of my old Shadoworld campaign.

When I say "Shadoworld," I don't mean the campaign setting released by ICE. I didn't even learn about their work until a random Google search years ago. My Shadoworld is a D&D 3e campaign started back in 2001 with my good friends and regular gamers, Derek, John, and Kurt. It was a very intense, heavy-roleplaying, action-packed series of adventures simmered in a long-stewing backstory. Everything hinged around the PCs trapped in a prison world known only as Shadoworld to its inmates (which is Barsaive from FASA's Earthdawn game, except the Horrors actually finished off the Name-givers) run by an enigmatic figure called the Warden. Now you know where I got my name.