Shadowdark

It's no secret that sometimes when trying to convince people to give a tabletop RPG other than Dungeons & Dragons a try, one of the protests that often crops up is, "it's too hard to learn new games!" To those of us already acquainted with other games, this seems ridiculous, but it's worth examining: after all, if you've only learned the rules to one game, and that game is wildly complex from the get-go, what evidence do you have that every game isn't like that?

At GenCon 2024, three of tabletop gaming's most prestigious awards -- the ENNIES -- were swept not by a certain toy conglomerate who wants $180 for a half-edition revision bump, but by a tabletop game that escaped many gamers' notice until its win: Shadowdark.