#RPGaDay2025 - 13 Darkness

A lot of my games have “Darkness” as a thematic component. Some of them have darkness as an in game physical component, where effects relate explicitly to shadows. I haven’t created a game yet that uses darkness as a physical component outside the game, something like “Ten Candles”, but it’s an idea I’ve played with a couple of times.

In my regularly gaming sessions at ‘The Press”, the environment that we play games in is dark. This has really had an impact on the way I’ve developed character sheets and rule for the games we play there. I’ve had to increase font sizes, because the standard sizes of fonts on pre-generated character sheets are often too hard to read in low light. I’ve had to increase contrast to improve legibility. I’ve had to make sure any play aides are more auditory, more tactile (… I haven’t played with tastes or smells in game yet). In this vein I even remember a game session that was proposed by a game writer at the pub after a convention back in the late 90s. In that game everyone would be blindfolded and had to remember their character’s stats that would be shown to them for 5 minutes at the start of the 3-hour session. (There weren’t a whole lot of stats for the characters if I remember correctly).

For the moment, the SNAFU SRD finishes with an adaption of “Darkhive”, which might be really well suited to playing with physical darkness as a thematic component, and a physical one. We’ll see where it goes.