Watch Shadowdark’s Kelsey Dionne Build a Better Paladin
The paladin is one of the archetypal RPG classes, a holy knight whose sacred oath to defend the innocent and smite down evildoers grants them martial and magical powers. Unfortunately, paladins have developed a bad rap over the years, being seen less as stalwart warriors against the forces of evil and more like “Lawful Stupid” goody two-shoes that are no fun to play.
The paladin was recently announced as a new class for Shadowdark, which has received widespread acclaim since its 2023 release for bringing back old-school RPG gameplay and mechanics. But Shadowdark designer Kelsey Dionne didn’t want to simply rehash the paladin as we know it, and in this nearly two-hour-long video, she — with help from folks in the chat — rebuilds the class into something new and unique.
As a nerd, I certainly enjoyed watching Dionne discuss her inspirations (Joan of Arc, King Arthur, Roland) and design game mechanics that would (1) be faithful to those inspirations, (2) pay homage to historical paladin game design, and (3) be fun to play. The resulting class is not a magic-empowered crusader, but rather, a knightly exemplar who cuts down enemies with their blessed blade and inspires allies on the verge of death. Although it’s in beta and requires play-testing, Dionne’s paladin is very promising and I look forward to its official release as part of the upcoming Western Reaches expansion.
But as a writer, editor, and UI/UX designer, I also enjoyed watching how Dionne designed her paladin. Importantly, she outlines the class specs using the Shadowdark rulebook layout rather than an open-ended Google doc, which forces her to write within predefined design constraints.
One of Shadowdark’s major selling points is its very streamlined rules. Each Shadowdark class, for instance, only gets a couple of pages in the rulebook compared to the reams of material proffered by Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Thus, Dionne constantly re-edits her text to make it as economical and readable as possible while still inserting the necessary amount of flavor and maintaining balance with other Shadowdark classes. And, of course, closing any loopholes that enterprising players would certainly exploit.
As someone who’s spent an inordinate amount of their life writing microcopy for web interfaces, I really admire Dionne’s focus on writing text that’s straightforward, unambiguous, and engaging. Granted, it’s way cooler to nitpick over the specs of a warhorse-riding knight sworn to uphold the tenets of law than, say, the text in a delete confirmation modal, but the same general principles of clear, economical writing apply to both.