Review: Shadows of Camelot

 

Today we're looking at Shadows of Camelot by William Harshman. Mr. Harshman also has a Youtube channel called Runeforged Tabletop gaming. Dungeontubers have a pretty spotty record when it comes to writing adventures. Will we buck the trend?! 

It's tempting to say that Shadows of Camelot is similar to the Cursed Scrolls, but that's not exactly fair. Camelot dispenses with the addition of new classes and focuses on the hexcrawl and adventure. What we get in return for skipping the player options are beefier hex descriptions and more structure overall to hang a campaign on. A welcome tradeoff, in this author's opinion. 

The setting is "post-Arthurian" with a dash of Robinhood. Important to note that there was no filing of serial numbers here. The figures of those legends loom large, including specific names, events and places. Folks that spend a lot of time playing TTRPGs are like to have at least a passing familiarity with these stories. Some might be surprised and delighted to get involved in this sort of pre-existing story. Others might not. I think this product is for a very particular audience. I'm not any kind of expert on Arthurian lore so I'll judge the product on its merits. 

We get a hexmap with about 200 hexes and 27 points of interest. It's a similar ratio that you see in the aforementioned Cursed Scrolls, but still I might have compressed it a bit to cut down on travel times. That's a personal choice. What's not a personal choice, but is an objective truth, is that the hexes should be numbered. The hex map in Camelot has labeled points of interest but no numbers. The hex descriptions are listed in no particular order and it makes navigation more difficult than it should be. It would also make keeping track of any points of interest you add to those empty hexes needlessly difficult. This is a solved problem. Put the numbers on the map.

The hex descriptions themselves are a cut above what I typically see in this type of product. Each one has a half-page description and provides opportunities for adventure and connections to other locations. The alpha wolf in the wolf den is actually an inquisitor (tie to a faction) that was on pilgrimage from Mont St. Pyre (tie to a location) and can be turned back to a human by dressing him in the robe from Hunter's Hall (tie to another location). In another place, the druids of the hidden enclave (tie to a faction) lost their leader while she traveled to Dol Morwyn (tie to a location) and they want to flee but are prevented by a monster in the woods (opportunity for adventure). These things are really the lifeblood of a hexcrawl because they keep up the momentum by chaining locations together with tangible goals, and give reasons for the PCs to go out and explore. It keeps the game moving and constantly presents impactful choices.

Unfortunately the random encounters don't rise to the occasion in the same way. We get different tables for each location, which is a good practice. But none of them goes beyond a list of monsters and NPCs. No activities, motivations or interesting situations are presented so that is all left up to the GM. I would prefer to see smaller tables with more detail - some thoughtful situations that will teach the players about the setting and further draw them in. Of course it's possible to do this with the given encounters, but the book is no help. Dolmenwood gives two methods for adding interest to random encounters - at the very least, you can roll on the activity table with entries like "in combat with ?", "resting/camping", hallucinating" etc. But in addition to that, each of the monster entries has a list of four example encounters, like the bestial centaurs "pursuing 1d3 blessed unicorns, intent on butchering them and bringing their horns to the Nag-Lord." It's a great way to fill the time in those long stretches of empty hexes.

Otherwise we do get an exhaustive bestiary with all the characters mythical beasts from Arthurian and adjacent lore that you could want. Each of them is nicely fleshed out with unique and flavorful abilities. Well done.

The magic items leave a little to be desired. Almost all of them are "cursed" to affect the holder's alignment, moving it "one step" each time it's used. This mechanic doesn't have any additional explanation anywhere, so we can only assume that one step from lawful is neutral, and two steps is chaotic, and vice versa. Alignment doesn't have much in the way of mechanical impact in the game, so I prefer curses that are gameable and maybe less open to the player's and GM's interpretation. The curses in the core rules are good examples. 

The final bit of the book is a short level 1 adventure called Tomb of the Headless Knight. It's only 6 rooms, but makes the best of them. Each location has multiple things to interact with, and the set dressing and environmental details provide meaningful information about the setting to the players. It's a bit by-the-numbers taken on its own, but as a jumping off point for a campaign in this setting it is excellent, providing multiple leads for the party to follow up on across the realm, and and delivering those leads in a very natural way. It has virtually no modularity, and couldn't really be used anywhere else. But it delivers what's needed for this setting with élan.

The only thing really missing here (besides numbered hexes) is an overview of factions and key NPCs with goals and schemes. As it is, the details are a bit scattered in the various hexes and some are easy to miss. If I was rearranging this I might move the NPCs out of the bestiary and sort them according to faction in their own section, along with the aforementioned goals and schemes.

But as it is, Shadows of Camelot is clearly a labor of love and one of the better hexcrawls for Shadowdark I've read. It understands what's needed to keep an exploration-based campaign moving, with tons of interconnectedness and potential energy packed into its various locations. It's biggest weakness is that the setting is so specific and tied to Arthurian lore that it might be a turn-off to tables that want a more original story or don't want ties to pre-existing figures of myth and legend. With the right group it would absolutely sing.

On a scale of 2-12, Shadows of Camelot gets 9 stingbats.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528767/shadows-of-camelot