Kelsey Dionne, creator of Shadowdark RPG, has teamed up with Kobold Press to write for Dark Halls, an upcoming expansion built directly for her old-school system. The crowdfunded project marks a deliberate pivot back to third-party publishing for Kobold Press, following the studio’s recent push to establish its own standalone fantasy ruleset.
Listing its campaign base out of North Vancouver, British Columbia, Kobold Game Studio Ltd plans to launch the Kickstarter in 2027. The announcement arrives amid significant staff movement within the Pacific Northwest design corridor, coming just days after former Senior Game Designer Celeste Conowitch departed Kobold Press to join Wizards of the Coast.
The project translates Kobold Press creature design and player options into Shadowdark’s minimalist framework. Production plans centre on two hardback core volumes alongside three dedicated zines:
| Release | Format | Contents |
| Crawler’s Codex | Hardcover | New player options, classes, and crawl gear adapted for the darkness. |
| Game Grimoire | Hardcover | Bestiary entries and GM toolkits adapting classic Kobold monsters. |
| Adventure Zines (x3) | Softcover / Zine | Standalone crawl modules, tables, and short-form dungeon scenarios. |
The aesthetic returns Kobold Press to the black-and-white, ink-heavy presentation of its early Warlock zines, matching the stark visual identity Dionne established for The Arcane Library. Rather than building an independent offshoot, the team positions the books as direct supplements for existing game tables.
Jeff Quick, Editor at Kobold Press, said in a statement:
Kobold has our own batch of modern, streamlined game material, so it was a gimme that we could cook it down to fit Shadowdark. But we didn’t just want to ape the good work Kelsey had already done, so we called ours Dark Halls. It’s not a different game at all, but it is a Kobold take on Shadowdark. We already love playing with it, and we hope you will too.”
Adapting classic Kobold monsters requires stripping away complex multi-layered stat blocks to match Shadowdark’s swift, deadly combat pacing. Including Dionne directly on the writing credits provides essential mechanical oversight, ensuring these rules mesh cleanly with the core system rather than bogging it down with modern bloat.
Kickstarter preview pages are now live, with digital previews and early access PDFs planned ahead of the 2027 funding drive.
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