Shadow of the Demon Lord

Warning: Reading this book may cause temporary bouts of
insanity and lead to corruption.

I recently picked up Shadow of the Demon Lord and I have to say, I've not been this excited to run a game in a while. +Mark Craddock's posts over at Cross Planes were one of the big reasons I picked it up. Also the announcement that there would be a Freeport book for it may have further persuaded me.

• The genre is fantasy/horror and it feels a lot like a mix Diablo/Warhammer Fantasy. 
• This game is metal as Hell. There's a spell called "Hateful Defecation."
• There's a bit of steampunk. You can play a clockwork creature.
• Simple, but complete rules that are easy to pick up, especially if you've played D&D.
• That being said the game has some interesting original concepts like short turn/long turn and bane/boon (which are similar to disadvantage and advantage, but there own thing).
• There are lots of charts to create random everything. I think this gives the game a fun chaotic element and adds to the replay value.
• You start the game a normal (read 0 level) person. You gain a level the end of each adventure. 
• You don't pick a race, you choose an ancestry. This gives you your starting attributes and abilities. You also gain new things at higher levels for your ancestry. The ancestries are human, changeling, clockwork, dwarf, goblin, and orc.
• Instead of classes, you choose paths as you level up. Your first path is novice and is taken at 1st level, at level 3 you choose an expert path, and at 7 you get to pick a master path.  Currently, level 10 is the max level.
• The game is designed for shorter campaigns. With only 10 levels, most campaigns should only be 11 adventures long.
• The bestiary is brutal. There are some familiar faces, but there are also some extra nasty beasts.

This is one of the good ones. You should definitely check it out. I have some plans for it. I think it'd be a great system to do some Witcher content for. It would also be a good system to do a Bloodborne game with. Hell now that I think about it, Bloodborne is basically a Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign in video game form.

This is one of my favourite illustrations. I just love goblins.