Robert J. Schwalb has started the Kickstarter for his Shadow of the Demon Lord RPG. The Kickstarter campaign has funded ($30,000) in less than a day and the first stretch goals have been revealed.


Shadow of the Demon Lord is a roleplaying game of dark fantasy—a genre that weaves elements of horror into a fantasy world. In the game, you create and play characters struggling to survive in a land sliding toward oblivion, a place infested by demons, roaming mobs of undead, strange magic, unhinged cultists, and all in the ruins of the last great empire of mankind. If you love Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Ravenloft and Midnight settings, Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, Glen Cook’s Black Company books, or heavy metal music, then this is the game is for you.

The game takes place in a world standing on the brink of the apocalypse. What is the cause? Who is responsible? The Demon Lord, of course! This being of staggering power and boundless evil authors the catastrophes blighting the landscape. Each new horror released reflects the Demon Lord's approach, the touch of its shadow, and its growing hunger for not only the planet but the entirety of all things. Although near, the Demon Lord remains outside the cosmos, rattling the cage of its prison as it strains to escape the Void to visit catastrophic destruction to your world.

The apocalyptic tone is on a dial. If you don’t want to blow everything up right away, tune it down low and the game plays fine as a less perilous, dark fantasy roleplaying game. But if you are inclined to crank up the volume, the game provides several catastrophic templates you can use to model how the world is falling apart. These templates represent the Shadow of the Demon Lord; wherever the Shadow falls, chaos and upheaval are born. The Shadow might loose global pandemics, famines, droughts, earthquakes, demon princes to stomp across the countryside, the living dead, and other world-spanning disasters and threats.

The game system helps you tell interesting and exciting stories. To make this happen, the game system is easy to learn, plays fast, and requires little preparation to play. All these ensure both novice and veteran players can enjoy the game together.
I've been a playtester since the beginning and I've seen the game evolve and mature into the game it is now. We've been playtesting it for over a year now and the games mechanics are tight and fast. One of the comments I heard most about the game when I ran demos at GMX last October was how easy it was to pick and play and how the games mechanics didn't get in the way of actually playing the game.

Rob's experience in the gaming industry speaks for himself. He's worked on the 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of Dungeons & Dragons, both as a freelancer and as lead designer. He's won Ennies for his design work from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game and Black Company campaign setting to the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying game.

The funding goal gets us a 128-page, full-color softcover rulebook. This might seem slim, especially since I have over three times the number in pages of fun and terrifying content just waiting to be released into the wild. This said, the offered page count gives me enough room to include everything you need to play and run the game. Here’s the thing, though. The more stretch goals we hit, the bigger and saucier the book becomes. We all like saucy.