The First Righteous Vow Mixes Sandbox And Storyline

Sandbox and storyline campaigns often feel like they are on opposite ends of a spectrum. Storyline campaigns feel like a custom movie built for players that respond to their actions. Sandbox campaigns engage in the joy of discovery and allow players to pursue the locations and characters that interest them the most. Righteous Vow Vol. 1: The Lich King of Ul primarily positions itself as a sandbox campaign with multiple locations for players to visit in their battle against the big undead bad guy in the title. It’s a short Shadowdark campaign that pits players against a heap of undead as they seek ways to defeat the Lich King. Is the campaign righteous or bogus? Let’s play to find out.

Righteous Vow Vol. 1: The Lich King of Ul starts off with a pretty basic setup. The players meet a shadowy dwarf in a shadowy tavern with a tale to tell. His lands are ruled by a lich king and his people toil in the dirt because their titles have been stripped and their gold stolen. The dwarf hands over a map with six castles marked on it. One of these locations is Castle Zardu where the Lich King rules with a skeletal fist. The others are occupied by members of his family, each one cursed in their own way by the dark magic the King embraced for his immortality. It’s up to the players to find the King, find his weaknesses and bring light back to the darkened kingdom.

While the setup is a little wobbly in spots, I appreciate designer Bill Harvat’s commitment to Shadowdark’s brevity. The main castle can be randomly placed in one of the locations on the map. Each location gives some guidelines in what order they should be tackled, though DMs are encouraged to let players find this out the hard way. I also liked this structure allowing players a chance to have some wilderness encounters or drop off loot in town in between dungeons. This could have easily been a multilevel megadungeon, but this play cycle keeps the players on the move rather than worrying if something has moved into a level they’ve already cleared.

The minibosses at the end of each dungeon function in two ways. They are naturally the big combat at the end of the exploration but they also serve as characters in the greater story of the Lich King. Some are tragic, some are monstrous, some are villainous but they each played a role in driving the overarching story. It gives the players more incentive to check out each castle beyond their being more loot in them thar keeps. Each dungeon features around 10 rooms or so, which puts this campaign at around 20 sessions or so depending on how frequently the players have encounters in the wilderness or take a trip back to town to shop.

I would probably add a few bits were I to bring Righteous Vow Vol. 1: The Lich King of Ul to my table. Fleshing out the town gives players NPCs and reasons to fight the bad guy beyond treasure and XP. I’d probably add in some bits from Into The Wyrd and Wyld for some memorable encounters in the woods. I’d also consider mixing up some of the encounter types in the manor houses. It makes sense that a lot of them are undead variations given the overarching villain, but I’d want to change a few things up to keep players from spending too much money on silver weapons and vials of holy water. While not a complete campaign beast like Castle Whiterock or something similar, there’s a good spine to build on for people looking to try out Shadowdark.

Bottom Line: Righteous Vow Vol. 1: The Lich King of Ul is a solid start to a Shadodark campaign that offers freedom and a compelling storyline at the same time.
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