---

In December, an old friend and I commiserated on our old college days of playing D&D 4th edition (4E for short). Despite it’s many, many flaws, we spent years of our Saturdays delving into ancient libraries, riding gryphons in the Spiked Peaks, and slaying aberrations from the Far Realm.

The general consensus from the D&D community is that 4E sucks. It was weird to have all the classes structured the same way (why can a Barbarian do an at-will roar that functions like a wizard’s Thunderwave?), parties despised the World-of-Warcraft-esque team composition, and the amount of rules and powers focused on combat disappointed players used to more roleplay and creative spell work.

In the past few years, 4E has had a resurgence in popularity online. Lancer’s acclaim and influence from 4E is part of the reason, but I also speculate 5E’s loose design principles contributed (players moving to Shadowdark, Pathfinder 2E, etc.). 4E’s system is well-designed, many people just don’t enjoy that design for their roleplaying games. I am one of those people.

All the games I ran in 2024 utilized Free-Kriegsspiel elements, and most of them I ran in a Blackbox or No-HUD style. For those unfamiliar, that means the players didn’t have character sheets, rules, or dice in front of them. Their only method to engage with the world was to describe what their character is doing and ask me questions. I used dice and adjudication as I saw fit to determine outcomes. It’s a style I love, and its the furthest thing from a tactical roleplaying game like 4th edition.

So naturally, I spent December and January writing a crunchy, tactical roleplaying game based on 4th edition.

Paladins of Awoudan

Paladins of Awoudan is a grimdark, arthurian, tactical roleplaying game. Players take on the role of Paladins, cursed knights devoted to the Ring Lord. The land of Awoudan is falling to the Great Shadow. If it will one day have a bright future, you will not live to see it.

So, why did I create this game if I prefer Blackbox and Free Kriegsspiel RPGs? The simple answer is that I love games. FPS games, strategy board games, card games, you name it. If you asked me which was the better game, Chess or Dark Souls, I would ask why you’re comparing them?

They may both have kings, knights, and castles, but they scratch different itches. Oddly, I find that I can roleplay more playing Chess than Dark Souls, but that’s a separate discussion.

The point I’m making is this: Paladins of Awoudan is a skirmish game, where players can use creativity, common sense, and roleplay to ignore rules and win battles. It doesn’t fulfill the meaningful, emotive, freeform aspects of most of my RPG play, and that’s okay. Games like Journeyman or Named can do that for me.

Playing Paladins of Awoudan is like Gauntlet or Rogue on a CRT screen, a guilty pleasure of swords and sorcery. It doesn’t have to be greater than that.

---

Thanks for reading! I hope you take a look at the (alpha) version of the game (expect a few rough corners). The game is free and hosted online here: https://paladins-of-awoudan.vercel.app/

I will be starting a new series soon where I describe my design process for Paladins of Awoudan so keep a lookout for that. I will cover topics ranging from the aesthetic, crunchy number balancing of stats, and more.

---

The Dolent Chronicle is an RPG blog produced by Dante Nardo. If you liked this post, please consider sharing it on whatever doomed planes you reside.