Domains of Shadow
A downloadable roleplaying system
Domains of Shadow has been fully completed and is no longer in-development!
You had immense power once. Perhaps you still do.
Either way, there is nothing you regret more.
The world suffers from your actions.
The actions you once thought were so heroic.
Now that you have plunged your world into Domains of Shadow,
Will you ever find the light?
This is Domains of Shadow, a GMless and Rules-Lite Storygame of Gothic Horror and Shakespearean Tragedy. A system made for telling the stories of fallible humans whose corruptibility, flaws, and secrets lead to their tragic downfall. Not only that, but Domains of Shadow is specially built to tell stories that would be just as enjoyable to an outside audience as the players themselves, in the form of actual plays. It was primarily designed by Nathan Cavaliere, voice of Wheel of the Weird Roleplaying. You can get the complete 52 page Domains of Shadow Guidebook, as well as its supplementary guidebook, Visions of Chaos, for free on itch.io or DriveThruRPG.
There are two elements at the foundation of Domains of Shadow. The first is a non-continous story structure consisting of multiple distinct scenes where the role of creating the introductions to scenes rotates between players. The second is the Blight, which represents the influence of the Otherworld on the human mind, and the way that it drives people to their loss of composure and possible tragic downfall by promising them inner strength and dark occult power.
Three documents are provided here: the Domains of Shadow Guidebook, the supplementary guidebook Visions of Chaos, and the Character Sheet.
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The Domains of Shadow Guidebook was updated with some slight grammar and formatting improvements.
Really well developed and thoughtful system, I love the blight vs composure checks, the summary pages are really helpful for checking your knowledge after the initial reading. I really like what you added with the Visions of Chaos characters and settings, it's great for finding ideas for other stories. I know the art is not yours, but you use it really well and put together a really evocative galley for gothic classics.
I would definitely use this system to build a world for a GMed game, it has great elements for allowing the setup of interesting and tragic characters. So excited to use this.
Thank you for the review! Although I hadn't really considered it, I do see how the (albeit brief) prep process for Domains of Shadow could be used to board for Gothic stories in different systems. Blight and Composure would take some effort to translate, but the other elements are all general enough to be used for good stories in any system. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!
I think it's one of the strong suits, though I don't mean to take away from the GMless system itself. I'd adapt the Blight and Composure system as a means to track the inevitable collapse, if you think of certain events or the passage of time adding ticks of Blight, pushing players against the clock to understand their situation before the breaking point is reached and they tumble into chaos.
Some slight grammatical changes where made to the Visions of Chaos supplemetary guidebook.