One of the coolest things about tabletop RPGs is you can borrow ideas from one game and use them in another. I’ve been doing it since the early ’80s, and it’s one of the easiest ways to improve your game without reinventing anything.
Shadowdark RPG has been getting a lot of attention since it came out, and for good reason. It’s a fantastic rules-light system with some genuinely clever mechanics. But if you don’t want to switch from 5e, you can still benefit from what Shadowdark does well. Every Shadowdark rule I’m about to share can be adopted as a simple table rule in your 5e game. Most groups already have a few table rules anyway, so this is just adding to the list.
1: Initiative
The first rule we’re going to borrow from Shadowdark is how it handles initiative. Organizing the beginning of combat in 5e, especially if you roll individual initiative, is a tedious pain. Its premise is arguably based on reality, using the individual dexterity of each character, NPC, and monster to determine who goes first. Fair enough.
But reality versus efficiency in a tabletop role-playing game are like opposite sides of a teeter-totter. When one goes up, the other suffers.
Shadowdark uses an easy set-it-and-forget-it method. Like 5e, everyone rolls a d20 and adds their DEX bonus. The DM does the same for all NPCs as a group, and all monsters as a group. Whoever gets the highest net roll goes first, and then combat order is clockwise around the table after that. That’s where the efficiency comes in because it’s easy to establish and easy to remember.
2: Skill Checks
Fifth edition is all about checks and dice rolls. In my opinion, 5e takes a lot of gameplay out of the player’s brain and puts it into stats on a character sheet.
5e character sheets feel like you’re managing a spreadsheet instead of playing a TTRPG.
Even the concept of perception rolls seems counter to the whole premise of role-playing games. You roll a die to see if you passively notice something? At that point, you’re just a passenger, not a driver.
Shadowdark simplified this in a dramatic way. Page 81 says, “Usually, you succeed at what you’re trained to do without needing to roll a check.” It gives examples, such as a thief always finding a trap when searching in the right area. That makes total sense to me.
Some might say rolling dice is part of the fun of D&D, and I won’t argue that. It absolutely is. The point here is having to roll checks to see if you succeed at something you should reasonably be able to do in the first place.
3: The Torch Timer
One of the coolest parts of Shadowdark is the one hour torch timer. Since none of the ancestries can see in the dark, but all monsters can, all player characters must use torches or lanterns. The rules state that these light sources only last one hour of real game time.
Many tables use a small hourglass to visually make it obvious when their 60 minutes is up. It builds tension and gives everyone something tangible to watch as they explore underground.
You could use this concept in 5e, except that many of the ancestry types in 5e have darkvision, so you can either get rid of that, or find some other way to use the timer idea. I really like that concept of one hour of real time matching one hour of in-game time, so finding a way to tie those together in your game seems like a fun thing to experiment with.
4: Knockout Punches
It wouldn’t surprise me if this rule already exists in 5e buried somewhere. But one thing Shadowdark describes on page 89 is the knockout punch.
If you’re in combat and you reduce your opponent to 0 hit points, you can declare that your final blow knocks the creature unconscious instead of killing them outright. AD&D had a rule where you could declare at the beginning of combat that you were attacking to subdue rather than slay (typically for dragons or other intelligent monsters), but Shadowdark puts that decision on the final blow.
I love this mechanic because it gives the players options they wouldn’t normally think about. A knocked-out opponent can be bound and interrogated, held for ransom, or used as leverage. A dead opponent is just something you step over after you loot the body. The players in my group started using this immediately once we adopted it, and it opened up encounters in ways I hadn’t expected.
5: Carousing
Shadowdark’s connection to old-school rules is highlighted by how experience is earned. Not only does slaying or overcoming monsters convey experience points, but so does gathering treasure. Shadowdark goes one layer further, however.
The party can do something called “Carousing,” and I think this is brilliant. You spend gold to go party and gain experience from that experience. If you use milestone leveling in your group, this may not apply but it’s a fun addition to the game that I think deserves a try.
In 5e, you gain experience from slaying monsters or from awards granted by the DM for cool deeds, but that’s about it. The Shadowdark carousing model gives you a great reason to spend your gold, and that gives you a reason to go adventure and get more gold. It creates a loop that keeps the game moving forward.
6: Distance
In my experience, 5e combat is fairly technical. Players choose tactics that optimize the distances their characters are from monsters and from each other. They plan their combination of actions and movement down to the individual square.
This can make combat last a while, which is fine if you like that sort of thing. But if you don’t, Shadowdark has some simplified rules that streamline it.
Distances are grouped into three categories. ‘Close’ is essentially melee range, about 5 feet. ‘Near’ is up to 30 feet, give or take. ‘Far’ is about the limit of where you can see.
There’s one more aspect of Shadowdark combat movement that I like. In 5e, you combine your actions and movement, in any order, up to your maximum movement rate. In Shadowdark, if you don’t take an action, you can double your movement. I think that’s brilliant and would be super easy to implement in your 5e game.
7: Roll to Cast Spells
In 5e, spellcasting is automatic in many cases. When you cast a spell, it will either work or there’s some saving throw involved. The spell may or may not take effect, but the spell still ‘occurs.’ A few spells have attack rolls, but otherwise they just work. Shadowdark does something more interesting.
When you cast a spell, you roll a d20 and add your spellcasting ability modifier. Hit the target number for that spell, and it fires. Miss it, and the spell fizzles. But here’s the key part: as long as you don’t roll a 1, you don’t lose the spell and you can try again. If you do roll really low, there can be consequences depending on the spell.
Give this approach a shot in your 5e game. Set a target number for different spell levels, low for cantrips and progressively higher as spell levels climb, then roll whenever a spell is cast. Keep the rule where the spell can fizzle but the caster gets another chance. It adds tension to magic without punishing the player for trying.
8: Wandering Monsters
In Shadowdark, taking too long or making too much noise has consequences.
When the party lingers in a dungeon or gets too loud, the DM rolls to see if wandering monsters show up. I’ve been doing this as a DM since the early days, with the loose table rule that if the players are arguing, their characters are arguing, increasing the odds of a wandering monster showing up. Shadowdark makes it a canonical rule.
In 5e, I see players argue about a decision for ten minutes without a second thought. If they know there’s a wandering monster check tied to time and noise, I’ve noticed they magically seem to reach decisions a lot quicker.
It makes the dungeon feel more alive and dangerous.
This pairs naturally with the torch timer listed earlier. Together, they create a sense of tension that makes dungeon crawling feel genuinely dangerous, which is kind of the whole point.
D&D is an incredibly versatile game. The ability to change it to suit your preferences has been an essential and intended part of it since the beginning. Taking ideas from one game system and using them in another is one of the best ways to improve the way your group plays the game.
I’ve covered eight rules from Shadowdark that can work in a 5e game, but I’m sure there are others, not just sourced from Shadowdark, but from other games too. What rules have you taken from one game and used in another?
