Storytellers Forge has announced the upcoming Kickstarter launch of The Black Ballad: Second Chances, a tabletop roleplaying game zine designed for the Shadowdark RPG system. The project expands the award-winning Shadowdark ruleset with new mechanics focused on death, memory, and consequence, allowing campaigns to continue beyond character death rather than ending at a total party kill.
Set within The Black Ballad, a dark afterlife setting, Second Chances reframes what happens when adventurers fall. Characters do not simply vanish from play. Instead, they awaken in the Sunless Crossing, a purgatorial realm where survival, identity, and memory are gradually stripped away unless they earn the right to return.
Designed for Shadowdark from the ground up, The Black Ballad: Second Chances also provides guidance for groups transitioning characters from 5e-style play into Shadowdark’s more lethal, torch-lit design philosophy.
“The Black Ballad uses death as a jumping off point for a heavy metal opera as players journey through a dark underworld. Death is rarely the end for characters in fiction and mythology. If Wolverine can come back to life over and over again, why can’t a beloved rogue?” – Rob Weiland, Forbes.
The zine includes new playable options, expanded modes of play, original monsters, spells, and a complete adventure that introduces characters to the afterlife itself.
Key Features Include:
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72-page zine available in PDF and physical formats
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Two new playable classes
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Two new ancestries
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New gear, magical items, and equipment
20 new spells designed for Shadowdark’s casting framework -
17 new monsters drawn from the Black Ballad setting
Multiple new modes of play, including systems that support repeated death with escalating consequences -
Guidance for adapting 5e material into Shadowdark
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A complete reusable afterlife adventure that begins when the characters die
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40 minutes of in-universe professionally narrated letters and tales of the dead for immersion.
Rather than negating danger, Second Chances leans into Shadowdark’s lethality. Each return from death carries lasting consequences, unraveling characters mechanically and narratively as memories, abilities, and identity are worn away.
🔗 Follow the campaign on Kickstarter
Extras Available Through the Kickstarter
Backers will also have access to optional physical and digital extras, including:
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DiAmorte Soundtrack: A custom heavy metal score inspired by The Black Ballad
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Breachers: A Shadowdark setting by the designer of Second Chances
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Crossroad Coin tokens
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To Slay A God – A Black Ballad Novel by Brian Fitzpatrick
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The Chronicles of the Crossing Novel Series for the Black Ballad
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Tour-style T-shirt
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Purgatory Adventure Journal for the Dead – Special Edition!
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…and of course, the full Black Ballad campaign book.
For more news and information on The Black Ballad: Second Chances, follow Storyteller’s Forge on Twitter (X), Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the official website at www.storytellersforge.com.
