In 2023, Shadowdark hit $1.3 million on Kickstarter and won multiple awards. Two years later, and Kelsey Dionne‘s The Arcane Library looks set to repeat and better that tally with The Western Reaches setting.
Also on offer in the Kickstarter are premium slipcases and edition core rules. You can see on the pitch page.
Shadowdark is a sandbox setting and so this Kickstarter expands the world through locations to explore. The Kickstarter adds to the Cursed Scroll zines, a series which has previously added material.
There’s also two guide books which take some of the previous zines, combine and expand on what’s gone before, weighing in at about 200 pages each. The first is Player’s Guide to the Western Reaches and Game Master’s Guide to the Western Reaches the second.
There are some overlaps, by design, in the new books and old.
For ease of use and to prevent having to jump between books constantly, we merged the five hex crawls from Cursed Scroll zines 1-5 into the Game Master’s Guide to the Western Reaches. That said, the GM’s Guide has about 10 Cursed Scroll zines worth of new hex crawl material. We also included all class, ancestry, spell, and gear options from Cursed Scrolls 1-6 in the Player’s Guide to the Western Reaches. The Player’s Guide has new character options as well that do not appear in any of the zines.
You can support the indie darling by spreading the news of the crowdfunding campaign across social media.
At $45, backers get print and PDF copies of the new Cursed Scrolls.
The Western Reaches setting is added to the rewards at the next tier, which is set at $59.
Print versions of the Western Reaches guide are the twin rewards, complete with PDF copies, once backers get to $85.
The new Cursed Scrolls are added in as print zines, with the core rules and the popular $129 tier.
Once backers hit $149, the premium items open up, and the slipcase set joins the print rules.
Shadowdark starters, people looking to go from nothing to fan, will be interested at the $199 tier. All the main Shadowdark products from Kickstarter are on offer at this level.
At $269, the premium everything tier lands and over a thousand backers have found the funds to join it.
The top tier, $349, cuts to the chase and offers everything.
The Arcane Library estimates a delivery date of December 2025 for all the tiers. The crowdfunding comes to a close on April 10th.
