A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the Fittest by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is a Starting adventure.

This is an eight page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.99 but was purchased for a mere $0.01 during a sale. Approximately half of the first page is taken up by an illustrations and a quarter by the Credits; the rest is content.

Starting adventures for Shadow of the Demon Lord are, as they suggest, for characters who are just starting out. This was the first adventure of any kind published for the system, and is not only intended for starting characters but starting players.

The characters start just after their caravan has been ambushed by bandits. The ambush happened on the edge of the Old Wood. It’s not stated in the supplement where this is, but it’s in the March Lands at the southern end of the Empire. Which is a bit odd, as the region that was covered in the most detail in the core rulebook is the Northern Reach, literally at the other end of the Empire. Still, the Old Wood could be replaced with one of the forests in the Northern Reach.

The characters, after the ambush, have to make their way through the Old Wood to the settlement of Fletcher’s Rest to which they were originally heading. There is a hex map of the area with some fixed encounters and some random encounters for travelling through the wood; essentially a hex crawl. There are some notes on forest combat as well.

Perhaps with this being an adventure intended for those just starting out, there is far more detail on the encountered monsters than might usually be the case. Nearly two pages is taken up with content on interpreting creature stat boxes that is duplicated from the core rulebook, which admittedly makes it easy to access during the adventure, and the stat blocks and descriptions of the creatures take up nearly another two pages; again, this makes reference easy.

Survival of the Fittest in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and doesn’t really require them at this length. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a full colour two column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a few colour illustrations – one might be custom, the others look as if they came from the core book – and a black and white hex map of the area.

This is a starting adventure and it is very much designed as such. There are duplicated rules, so that the GM has it easier looking things up, and the adventure itself is pretty simple: make it to a destination without dying. This helps introduce new players to various aspects of the game system as well. With it being designed this way, players and GMs who are more experienced with the system may not find it as useful. Survival of the Fittest is a nice little introductory adventure and it can be found by clicking here.