The Dark Lands Redux

THE DARK LANDS REDUX

Rage. Rage against the dying of the light. The light wanes as incursions from other Realms invade. Few points of safety remain, and those that do are torn apart by politicking and warfare. For while magic is rare and power, men and beasts are far more deadly. Will you save the Dark Lands or plunge it into eternal cold night?

The Dark Lands Redux is a recreation of an adventure setting that I wrote and published for Dungeon World in 2015. Much like with my other Dungeon World project from 2014, the original manuscript has been lost. This PDF is a recreation from my lone physical copy. The text is mostly left intact and represents my experimental design phase at the time. I have made some very minor text adjustments here and there, editing spelling and grammar mistakes, rewriting minor passages for clarity, or to reduce redundancies. I have also swapped out the amateurish illustrations I did for the original book with wonderful Creative Commons art.

Revisiting The Dark Lands in 2023 has been a lot of fun. This book was very experimental for me and I tried a lot of things that didn't quite work. It's mechanically wonky, but the weird, dark fantasy setting still sticks out to me as exciting to explore. Oddly, reading it now, I'm hit with the realization that I should have explored FROMSOFT's Souls series much, much sooner, as there are many ideas in The Dark Lands that would be right at home in those games.

Happy gaming!