Right now I’m playing a halfling thief in a Shadowdark campaign, and today was a session worth talking about.

Now Shadowdark is a new roleplaying game. So new, in fact, that the paper edition isn’t out yet. But my game master and I got in on the Kickstarter (with copies coming for the other players too).

Shadowdark is part of the OSR movement. Now, a lot can be said about that movement for good and ill. And most of it, I don’t care about.

What you need to know about the OSR movement — at least for this — is that the movement originated to “revive” an “old school” approach to gaming. Back when newly made characters weren’t competent enough to be characters in a novel. They were more like the people aspiring to become characters worth writing novels about.

These games were more lethal than most modern games, at low levels, and Shadowdark has that feel, for a high fantasy game. But with a modern, streamlined approach to game mechanics.

Now, our previous game session was a good example of the lethality of such games. Our party found ourselves at a severe tactical disadvantage against superior numbers and almost got wiped out entirely. (Which would have been a total party kill or TPK.)

The reason it wasn’t? Because my character escaped. You see, halflings in Shadowdark have the ability to become invisible for three rounds, once per day.

So when two of our characters were killed, and two more knocked unconscious, my halfling thief turned invisible and fled. Scrambled, wounded, back to town with his tail between his legs.

(Metaphorically, that is. Halflings don’t have tails. At least, not in Shadowdark.)

So, my halfling returned to town and recruited help. The player who’d missed the near-TPK session returned with her halfling fighter, and the two players whose characters had been killed rolled up a pair of elves — one a wizard, one a priest.

(Side note: I really wish Shadowdark called those classes magic-user and cleric, which would a better old-school feel because those were the D&D terms of old.)

Thus refortified, we once more entered the dungeon. My character led the way to the same area, where we slowed down and did our best to sneak.

Down a long stone corridor, my thief — scouting out at the front of the party — spotted firelight in the distance.

It could only be a cook fire, because the creatures we were after, boglings, could see in total darkness. Alas, though, the stench of their lair pervaded many of the corridors down here, and gave us no more information.

I slipped into the darkness and approached.

It was the boglings, all right. Their chieftain, who had personally killed at least one of us, and taken down another, sat chatting with two of his warriors. Another lay sleeping, near a couple of noncombatant boglings.

And sleeping on the other side of the fire from the chieftain — their shaman with his deadly spells.

I returned to the group with my plan. I would sneak down and use my halfling invisibility to position myself to kill the shaman in his sleep.

Murder? Maybe. But we were after these boglings in the first place because they’d been stealing children from a nearby town — for food.

So in character I felt absolutely no compunction against killing this shaman in his sleep.

My plan was amended by our fighter — also a halfling — who offered to sneak along invisibly to position herself so that the moment I killed the shaman, she could shoot an arrow at the chieftain.

Then we would retreat down the corridor to fight alongside the rest of our party, drawing the enemy to us.

Now, something to note here is that I was giving up my escape ability, my invisibility, to start this fight.

This was a roleplaying decision. My character was going in there ready to do whatever it took to rescue those two captured characters before they became food, or die in the attempt.

I killed the shaman. Our fighter nailed the chieftain with a solid arrow shot.

This initiated what’s called a surprise round, so we now got one more set of actions. She hit the chieftain with another arrow, and took off down the corridor. I took the dagger in my hand, still wet with the shaman’s blood, and threw it into the chieftain as well, then took off to join my party.

But that chieftain, he was a tough bastard. He was still up. And those boglings could jump farther than we could run.

The battle began in earnest. Our wizard’s spells failed him, leaving him defenseless. He began a retreat.

Our priest covered his retreat, while the fighter and I tried to finish things.

But our dice had turned on us. Miss after miss. It looked as though we might have to retreat as well, and the others encouraged me to join them in retreat.

I couldn’t do it. My character needed to see this through.

Despite the way the dice had been rolling, I took a shot at the chieftain.

Straight through the throat. Down he went. While my character screamed in fury and triumph.

The boglings held firm, but we evaded their attacks.

My party hung with me. Either the fighter or the priest killed one (I don’t recall which). I killed another. And the last tried to flee.

We finished him off though. And we rescued the two members of my party who had not yet become food.

We returned to town triumphant.

Some people don’t like having character death on the table as an option. I think that it all comes down to story. If a character’s death can have meaning, or — as it did in this case — drive story, then in my opinion it’s a good thing.