Veteran game designer Robert J. Schwalb is proud to announce Shadow of the Demon Lord, a dark fantasy roleplaying game to be published by his new company, Schwalb Entertainment, LLC.
Schwalb founded Schwalb Entertainment, headquartered in Murfreesboro, Tenn., earlier this year to offer a rich, immersive gameplay experience in the worlds of dark fantasy and science fiction.
In Shadow of the Demon Lord, the player characters are embattled survivors struggling for existence in the ruins of the last great empire as the world teeters on the brink of the oblivion at the hands of the unspeakable Demon Lord. It is a landscape littered with ancient relics, suffused with dark magic, and rife with abandoned cities and ruins infested with terrifying creatures spawned from nightmares.
Monte Cook of Monte Cook Games, publisher of Numenera and The Strange, says, “Rob’s a fantastic designer, both on the imaginative/story end of things and the mechanical/design end. He’s one of a very small number of designers who command my attention with every new project.”
With over a decade of experience working in game design and development, Schwalb has been preparing for this game for years. He draws on his time working as a member of the design team for the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, as lead designer on A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying (based on the bestselling novels by George R.R. Martin), and as developer of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. These experiences, as well as others from his work as designer and developer of many other tabletop roleplaying game products, have helped him make Shadow of the Demon Lord an exciting and entertaining play experience for both casual and hardcore RPG enthusiasts.
Chris Pramas, president of Green Ronin Publishing, says, “Rob worked for Green Ronin for many years and I’d hire him back in a second if I could. Few designers in RPGs can match his talent, passion, and, let’s face it, evil.”
In spring 2015, Schwalb Entertainment, LLC will launch a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the game’s production.
“With the design nearly complete, we should be able to get the product in the backers’ hands before the end of next year,” says Schwalb. In the event of a successful Kickstarter campaign (which seems likely), Shadow of the Demon Lord will be available in shops and through book retailers by winter 2015.
Players of Shadow of the Demon Lord can explore the game’s bewildering and terrifying landscape and fight (or flee from) the terrors they find as they search for ways to delay or prevent the collapse of their world. Shadow of the Demon Lord supports any play experience, from one-shot sessions to complete campaigns, playable in as few as eleven sessions or for as long as the Demon Lord allows the characters to walk the world.
“I’ve always loved mixing elements of horror into traditional fantasy roleplaying,” says Schwalb, “and in Shadow of the Demon Lord, horror takes a front seat. I like to think of Shadow of the Demon Lord as the unholy spawn of D&D and Warhammer in that the familiar bits are there, but with a dark twist that makes you feel nervous and uncomfortable.”
For more information on the game and on Schwalb Entertainment, visit schwalbentertainment.com.
