Coming soon to crowdfunding:

From Chris Powell, author of platinum best-seller
Letters from the Dark: Borderlands

370* pages of rules, stats, and an 18-dungeon sandbox adventure that will take characters from 1st level to 10th level and beyond.

The Rules

Dominion includes tons of rules and resources for players and GMs, including:

• Updated hireling and mercenary rules
• Revamped keep rules, including new enhancements
• All-new domain rules, including militaries, conquest, and more
• Fan-favorite subsystems like mutations, sponsors, and rivals
• Stat blocks for 200* monsters, animals, and humanoid NPCs
• 618* random encounters across 10* biomes

The Adventure

The three-part mega-adventure will bring characters from 1st-level nobodies to 10th-level legends. Its three hex crawls and eighteen dungeons are interconnected: recurring factions, items, rumors, and characters create a cohesive sandbox that can provide years of gameplay. The dungeons can also be played as standalone adventures or inserted into your own game's setting.

These are full-size dungeons, with a total of 430* keyed areas (approximately 24 rooms per dungeon). Each is filled with factions, interesting NPCs, original puzzles, creative traps, and several all-new mechanics you've never seen in a tabletop RPG.

Part I: The Keep and the Caverns (LV 1-3)

© 2011 Gary Dupuis, used with permission

In this remaster of Letters from the Dark: Borderlands, the party is contracted to liberate a keep on the edges of civilization.

Once Darlan Keep is theirs, they must rebuild the fortress and establish a new settlement. All the while, sinister forces of chaos dwell just miles away in the Caverns of Kowse.

Dungeons

Darlan Keep: A randomized dungeon meant as a "tutorial" for players and GMs new to Shadowdark/old-school gaming.

Caverns of Kowse: A seven-faction dungeon designed to promote emergent gameplay. Players are encouraged to negotiate with enemies and pit them against each other to succeed.

Part II: The Dell and the Depths (LV 1-5)

© Daniel Comerci, used with permission.

With Darlan Keep re-established and the Caverns of Kowse cleared, the surrounding wilderness is free to explore.

Players manage their keep and its settlers while crawling through the area's eight unique dungeons. This section includes two hex crawls: one for the above-ground Darlan Dell, and one for the labyrinthine Depths beneath the surface. Several monstrous factions carve out their own territory above and below, so the party must wage wars and negotiate alliances to secure the region.

Dungeons

Heavenly Falls: A deep pit cave with several layers of tunnels. This area is a sacred site to the Redhand beastmen, but some wealthy nobles will pay handsomely for its treasures.

Fort Picklegum: A quaint, treetop village built by forest gnomes and conquered by maniacal goblins. The goblins' careless use of explosives has weakened the structural integrity of the tree, and each area could collapse at any minute.

Shifting Grove: A mysterious forest whose geography seems to constantly evolve. Adventurers must pay careful attention to their surroundings or else become lost in the woods forever.

Ungarith: A massive network of fungus-filled caves beneath Darlan Dell. Ungarith is home to 20 varieties of magical fungi found nowhere else in the world. Adventurers need to learn to identify the fungi or risk eating a deadly species.

Shadowhenge: A circle of standing stones used by sinister shadow druids. These mystics believe in the supremacy of nature and Unseelie fey, and they're willing to sacrifice innocents to achieve their goals.

Skitterburrow: A mountain of dung built by ankhegs and inhabited by insectivorous gnolls. The ankhegs' queen has become agitated recently, and the entire region is suffering the consequences.

Twin Spires: Two towers built deep underground by ancient viperians. Feuding drow and viperians are locked in a stalemate, with each faction controlling one tower.

Bald Mountain: The location of a legendary orc forge, now controlled by duergar slavers. The duergar capture civilians from the Depths and force them to mine resources for their arms-dealing operation, but the spirit of the forge wants to fight back.

Part III: The Realm and Beyond (LV 5-10)

Once Darlan Dell has been claimed by the party, they enter domain play.

While they've done well managing Darlan Keep and its environs thus far, they must now face the challenge of nation building on a continent-wide hex map. Here each hex represents 36 miles, and the remaining eight dungeons will take years of in-game time to explore. Characters will cross between planes, battle demigods, and maybe solve a mind-bending puzzle at the center of the Multiverse.

Dungeons

Ebonpeak Ruins: The dilapidated remains of a wizard school have suddenly appeared in the middle of the desert. Brain-eating aliens wander its halls, but the real villains are hiding in plain sight...

Achelka Noru: Cultists of an evil deity built this monastery before succumbing to a plague. Now that lizardfolk and monkey goblins have moved into the temple, the bones of the ancient cult have awoken, ready to resume their evil deeds.

Roanhovel: A halfling religious sect built Roanhovel as a utopian farming community. The hill giant Mama Hunka and her goblinoid thugs had no problem conquering the pacifist farmers, and she now rules the region with a grubby fist.

Dolgrethann's Tower: Nothing lasts forever in the Borderlands, but no one can remember a time before Dolgrethann's onyx spire. The frost sorcerer is now an immortal lich, and he's filled his tower with traps, puzzles, and decoys to prevent any would-be heroes from destroying his spirit vessel.

Castle in the Sky: Atop a fluffy, white cloud stands the castle home of the Bjornsons, a family of cloud giants. Their daily lives are rather domestic and routine, except when they have to squash pesky small-folk trying to loot their treasures.

Submerged Temple: An Atlantean temple lies half underwater along the Borderlands' coast. Strange chanting emanates from the ruins at high tide, and people in the surrounding region report visions of a creature that sleeps at the bottom of the sea.

Farholme: Settlers established the village of Farholme as a mining colony, but they found something far more powerful than silver in its caves. The colony's sponsor has ceased all contact, and it's rumored that even the gods themselves have abandoned its people.

The Grand Design: Somewhere beneath the arctic ice lies a divine machine that governs the very fabric of the Multiverse. Its mechanical stewards care little about the affairs of mortals, but clever adventurers could use the machine to radically alter their own destinies.

The Book

Letters from the Dark: Dominion will be released to backers as a A5-sized, hardcover, saddle-stitched book meant to lie flat on the game table. The interior will be printed in black and white, but the inside covers will include two full-color maps representing Darlan Dell and the greater Borderlands area.

Books received through crowdfunding will be from a limited, numbered print run and will be distinguishable from any potential future editions. They will be printed in Manitoba, Canada** and shipped to backers from Georgia, USA. All physical book orders will include a PDF book along with digital maps, printable player handouts, and other digital goodies.

The book will be available to most countries,** though international shipping will cost extra accordingly.

As with everything I produce, I guarantee that no generative AI was used at any stage in the creative process. Backers can be assured that every word they read and artwork they admire is 100% a product of human creativity.

The Campaign

The book is 80% written. Once the entire first draft is complete, the crowdfunding campaign will go live. This is expected in Q4 (fall) of 2025.

Updates

You can sign up for updates by clicking here. Each update will include previews of new rules and dungeons, design notes, and even some free adventures that you can run before the book comes out. As per my privacy policy, I will never use your information for anything other than keeping you up to date on Letters from the Dark.

Backer Rewards

Reward tiers are being finalized, but here are some rewards you can expect:

• Name in the Book: All backers can choose to have their name included in the "Thank You" section of the book.
  
• Name an NPC: There are a lot of non-player characters across the 18 dungeons. How boring would it be if I got to name them all?
• Create an NPC: Immortalize your own Shadowdark PC by inserting them into Dominion's adventure.
• Create a Mercenary: Dominion includes 48* recruitable mercenary NPCs, each with their own illustrated portrait. One of them could be yours!
  
• Private Playtest: Take part in a preview playtest of one of the book's dungeons, to be conducted using Foundry VTT and Discord.
• 3D-Printable STL Miniatures: Files to print your own miniatures of some of the adventure's most unique creatures, like the psychic Rat King, the ice lich Dolgrethann, or the twelve-headed Zodiagon.
• Hand-Painted Miniatures: This will probably be a 1/1 reward, but I would be willing to print and paint the miniatures for a particularly generous backer.

Stretch Goals

Depending on the success of crowdfunding, several bonuses could be included in the final release, including:

• Printed Cards: The digital files include several decks of cards to represent items and NPCs. With enough funding, these could be professionally printed on playing cards and delivered along with the book.
  
• Bookmarks: Several artworks in the book are oddly tall and skinny. They would make great bookmarks to hold your place in the adventure or quickly jump to a particular rule.
  
• Printed Maps: Large scale, wet-erase maps of the adventure's hex crawls.
• Video Walkthroughs: Some of the more complex dungeons will be accompanied by video walkthroughs to visualize their unique mechanics.
• Gauntlet: An add-on dungeon for 0-level characters to play before the main adventure.

In the Meantime

Stay up to date by visiting this blog. Chat about it in the Arcane Library Discord. You can also buy any older volumes of Letters from the Dark from my new storefront.

Also check out the new Letters from the Dark Volume IX: Book of the Dead. It's a supplement especially made for 10th-level characters and inspired by Egyptian mythology.

 

*These numbers reflect totals as of the current draft. They are subject to change slightly as the book is edited and revised before printing.

**Subject to the ever-changing landscape of international politics and economics.

Banner includes artwork by Chris Powell, Gary Dupuis, JEShields, Maciej Zagorski (The Forge Studios) John Latta, Daniel Comerci, and Denis McCarthy. © by respective artists, all rights reserved.