14 July 2019

Cold Shadows - is it any good?


Cold Shadows is a Cold War espionage RPG published by Gallant Knight Games after a successful Kickstarter. It was delivered late, due to the unfortunate and unexpected death of the publisher Stewart Wieck in the period after the Kickstarter concluded. The core book is great, although it does suffer from a few issues related to the game system editing (which were addressed with an errata). It has two sourcebooks; Cities in Shadow (which details locations for your game to visit) and the Black Book (details agencies and characters). It was like catnip to me as I'm a sucker for the genre, and I backed it the moment I heard about it.

At the moment, I'm still mulling over what to run for my final slot for this year's Furnace, as at least two other people have already offered Alien in other slots and that was my original choice. I've recently been listening to a BBC World Service podcast about the mysterious death of the Isdal woman in the middle of the Cold War, and it's put my mind to running Cold Shadows in a riff on the story that's unfolding.

I dug out my rules, and started to look for resources or after-action reviews on the internet and, to my surprise, I found virtually nothing. The publisher's website has very little material as well. Is this a sign of a bad game? Is this the sign of a game that's too hard or difficult to run?

I guess there's only one way to find out...

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