Number 20 in the #CharacterCreationChallenge is Natinel, an elven priest in the world of Shadowdark, by the Arcane Library.

A priest of the goddess Gede, Natinel braves the dangers of the dark lands beneath the world of elves, humans, and other children of the light to keep the unnatural at bay. The fact that treasure awaits those that do so is purely an added bonus, and he gives a large percentage of his discoveries to those who tend the groves as places of comfort, rest, and healing.

He took up the adventurer’s call after witnessing the destruction wrought by those were once dead but refused to lie buried. Gede whispered in his heart that he could wield her powers to do battle against these foul beings of the dark.

Shadowdark

A newcomer to the RPG scene, Shadowdark made quite a splash with a highly successful KickStarter campaign.

The ruleset is very reminiscent of old school D&D – all the stats we’ve come to expect, ancestries (races), classes, and levels. And, just like old school D&D, you roll your stats in order, without any bonus dice, and see where they land. You’re permitted to do a full reroll if no stat is at least a 14, and my own character resulted in just one of those, though the majority of my stats are reasonably average to slight above.

Natinel may be no powerhouse, but he’s not severely deficient, either.

While I chose his ancestry and class based on those stats and the character type I could envision, I let the dice determine pretty much everything else and I have no complaints that I got stuck with bad choices.

All in all, the process was quite easy given my familiarity with D&D and similar fantasy RPGs.

Choices are nicely limited – yes, I think limited choices let you go deeper into a character and embrace what you get. It also avoids analysis paralysis that some other RPGs induce or seeking out that power build over character development.

The provided character sheet doesn’t include space for your weapon stats, meaning you’ll need to record them separately or just refer to the book. Of course, nothing prevents you creating your own sheet with the things you’d find most helpful during a gaming session.

There’s a free quickstart guide up on DriveThruRPG that can get you going to see if it’s something you might be interested in. It’s a true OSR style game and the awesome artwork evokes some of those same feelings I got back in the late 70s.