Interview with Rob Schwalb Published by on

We were lucky enough to have sat down and not only talk to Rob Schwalb, tabletop industry veteran and creator of Shadow of the Demon Lord last week about his upcoming products, but we also got to him to join us as a player to kick off our Campaign!

There was a lot of stuff covered during our live stream so I’ve broken it down for you all here, but be sure to hit the YouTube videos at the bottom of the post to soak it all in, we’re only going to hit the bullet points here. Enjoy!

Update: We’ve included all new and official info from Schwalb Entertainment here and will continue to update up until the Kickstarter launches.

Occult Philosophy

This is going to be a big huge book (192 pages) on magic for Demon Lord, the Kickstarter will launch on November 12th and is going to be one of the last for the game and if it goes well, we should be seeing some really kick ass stretch goals. Here’s some highlights on the Occult Philosophy book itself.

New magic for all traditions, about 800 spells in total. Two new rank 0 for each, and brand new spells for ranks 6-10 for all 42 traditions.

Rank 10 spells will be game-changing stuff that can change the landscape of your entire world/campaign.



Rules for play beyond level 10.

Blood tradition from Tombs has been absorbed into Necromancy.

Brand new Madness tradition for all you Cthulhu / cosmic horror fans.

New expert and master paths.



Occult Philosophy Cover Art (WIP)

Stretch Goals:

Return of the Witch King – Ashrakal returns to reclaim his throne!



Modern Plugin for running Demon Lord in modern times.

Sci-Fi plugin for running Demon Lord in space.

More Monstrous Pages and Lands in Shadow supplements.



Unspeakable Things – A monster codex full of awful things.



War Codex – mass combat rules.

Vault of the Demon Lord – enchanted items, relics, and trinkets.

Misc rules for things like land management, and more.



Demon Lord Second Printing

As a stretch goal for the Occult Philosiphy Kickstarter there will be a 2nd printing of the Demon Lord core rule book, containing all errata and updated art to reflect the broader spectrum of Demon Lord that we’ve come to know over the past few years. The book will also contain updated tech line up with to what’s been released in other supplements (mainly ancestry mechanics), as well rules clarifications (selecting magical traditions, etc.) and a new Foreword by Chris Pramas.

Please keep in mind this is not a second edition of the game, and its pagination will remain the same, this book will not be required in any way to play or enjoy Shadow of the Demon Lord.



Demon Lord Board Game



Prototype, not final representation of box.

Kickstarter coming March of 19′. It will be a cooperative board game tentatively titled Against the Shadow where players each take up patrons working against the Demon Lord as light and corruption manipulate the landscape.

It will be board-based (as opposed to tiles, etc.) and all of the patrons will also be statted out for use in your Demon Lord games. The game has undergone many iterations (some of which us at BCG have personally gave feedback on) and is finally blossomed into something truly awesome.



The Forest Hymn & Picnic



Inspired by things like The Wind in the Willows and Over the Garden Wall, The Forest Hymn & Picnic is a game with the SDL engine at its core. It’s set across the backdrop of a very absurd, unending and often haunted forest. Players take up the lives of oddballs such as precocious Animal Folk, lost People, or costumed Ghosts. It’s also somewhat family friendly and is currently live on Kickstarter!

Punkapocalyptic

Set for a June 19′ Kickstarter, Punkapocalyptic uses the SDL engine and is full of wasteland chaos that includes magic, mutants, killing nazis, and more!



New SDL Engine Games

As we discussed with Rob, the next 2 things are potentially big stretch goals for the aforementioned Occult Philosophy Kickstarter but we decided they too deserved their own subsection here because they’re just so, so juicy.

Free Companies of Four Towers

A “Loveletter to Greyhawk”. Although Rob hates the term, it’s probably the best way to describe this game. He also noted that it’s influenced by a book he loves entitled Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames.

Rob would like to go back and capture the ethos of Greyhawk – scoundrels looting dungeons of their treasure. This would be a more family friendly game than Demon Lord also. Players would go in and build companies within a huge city that sits on top a massive dungeon, the city itself contains 4 big towers full of scary things and portals set in place by mad wizard ‘Bor Bawlsch’. The game will focus on dungeon sprawls full of terrifying things and piles of loot!



Us: between hearing about these 2 games.

Abaddon: The Angel in the Void

In this game, players wake up from stasis and have a sort of cryo-sickness, feeling weak and feeble on a spaceship overrun by demons, mutants, and monsters. As players progress by completing missions and fighting for their lives, the sickness begins to abate and their memories start returning. So they are not actually improving, but rather recovering memories of their lives and abilities. Rob described it as “DOOM meets Demon Lord”. Of everything we’ve discussed so far, this is perhaps the most enticing thing for us here at Black Candle, if only by a margin.



Full Coverage

If you want all the details, including some descriptions of the spells within Occult Philosophy and a lot more granular info hit up part 1 of the interview below. Rob answering questions from Twitter, along with us badgering him about vegetarianism, metal, movies, cats, the Spice Girls, and much more be sure to check out part 2. Lastly, if you’d like to witness session 1 of our campaign wherein Rob plays “Felch”, a very NSFW goblin, hit up that last video.



Don’t forget to follow Rob on Twitter and check out Schwalb Entertainment for more info and news on releases as they come. If you’re feeling especially kind you could also toss us a follow on Twitter and/or Twitch and subscribe on YouTube!



Our main interview with all of the juicy Schwalb Entertainment / Occult Philosophy info.

Questions from Twitter, and our hearts. We pick Rob’s brain about random stuff.