>First time playing, what do? Do I want to start playing at level 0?
I suggest starting at 0 if it's your first time playing SotDL. It serves as a great intro to the mechanics and themes, and gives you a much greater appreciation for the threats you'll deal with later. The game remains deadly at all levels but 0-2 are the ones you're most likely to die in, starting at 0 is useful in that regard because rolling up a new PC is super quick, it's couple of choices and a few rolls. I think 0 is the best place to learn that you can't just act like a hero (Unlike 5e), and that fighting is not always the best solution which is incredibly important. Teamwork and tactics become more vital, so getting a sense of the lethality of the game with a PC who is quick to replace and not one you're massively attached to (Or have put a lot of work into) is for the best

0 is a great place to start from a roleplaying perspective too, you start as a normal person and you get to play through the inciting incident to becoming an adventurer. That's something a lot of RPGs kind of skip, and if you're the kind of player who likes the events of the game to shape the characters choices it's great for that too. If your PC had to sneak around a lot you might take Rogue as your Novice path, or maybe you cast an incantation so you go for Magician

For a one shot, A Year Without Rain is great (There is a Novice version of this, so make sure you use the Starting version for Level 0) this has got a bit of everything in it and showcases a lot of what makes SotDL great really well. We ran this with 5 Level 0 PCs and we all survived, if only just. It teaches a lot of valuable lessons that stay relevant throughout the entire game

I'll also recommend Dark Deeds in Last Hope, this one is written by the games designer and serves as an intro to both playing and running SotDL adventures, full of great tips on all the aspects of the game. It ties the PCs into the setting based on their choices, and gives suggestions on a path based on how they acted


>Which supplements do I get?
Short answer: I'll just say I think Uncertain Faith, the 8 Victims of the Demon Lord books on the ancestries, and all the Paths of Shadows releases are really all incredible improvement to the core game as soon as you feel comfortable adding in more thing

Mechanics:
While you can get by with just the core book, the Demon Lord's Companion is Core book part 2 and is really really worth using. Everything in there is just stuff that wouldn't fit in the core book.

The only other main supplement I would say is "needed" would be Uncertain Faith. It adds variant Priest paths for all the major religions and gods. This is really great because it means that the different Priests aren't unique from each other just becuase of their Traditions. It gives them all unique talents, and changes up their recovery talents, each is now more suited to a specific role and there is just a lot more flavour as a whole. Plus all the extra info makes playing a priest more satisfying as you know more about your religion.

Next is the Paths of Power. There are two sorts here, one kind was about tweaking existing paths to be more balanced or usable if your players want to be a Fighter, Berserker, Wizard, or Sorcerer the ones from these books are just a lot better designed. The other sort of release is about giving Novice paths the same sort of treatment Priest got in UF. They introduce variants and options that just give you a lot more choice early on, means you'll have way less overlap in the early levels. (Priest also got a book here, it was for Expert paths and is still very worth using)

Lastly, Victims of the Demon Lord. This is greatly expanded chargen rules for the 8 main ancestries. You might not want to use this on your first PCs (for a one shot it's a lot of work, and they might die fast) but if you stick with SotDL it's one of the best chargen systems around. Each book is full of background on the ancestries and it's full of tables to make their lives more interesting, all of them are totally custom for each too

Lore:
Uncertain Faith contains a lot of information on the various religions and gods but it's more focused around what a believer of that faith does and thinks, as well as including a new Priest path variant for each of them.

Exquisite Agony is all about Hell and its denizens, this is where all the information about Diabolus and his schemes that resulted in the Old Faith and the Cult of the New God is but it also contains information about various types of devils (Including a really great explanation about why Angels are devils, sounds edgy but it makes perfect sense)

The Hunger in the Void contains all the stuff about the origin of the universe and God, the Demiurge, and the genie. It also expands up demons in general, the nature of the soul, and hints at why corruption works how it does. There are rules greatly expanding the effects of the Shadows and in here is information on the various cults that worship the Demon Lord (Although no one knows that's who they worship). It's a great example of SotDL's philosophy of something for everyone, horror of all kinds and just using what you like. You will almost certainly think one of the cults is too much, but just like the rest of the game you're free to ignore the bits you hate. ALSO INCLUDES BETTER SHADOWS.

Snot and Stitches is your go-to for Goblins, it's a book all about them. It not only includes a load of new information about them but also has a greatly expanded list of tables for making one with custom profession lists, starting equipment, tables for family, life experiences and more. It's part of the "Victims of the Demon Lord" line, and there is one for each of the Core and DLC1 ancestries. It's the best character creation system around for my money.

The main supplement Terrible Beauty also has a lot of lore on the fey, including some more about goblins and the Goblin King (Who is David Bowie in the Labyrinth. Not even joking)

I like all of the Lands in Shadow books but a few are worth reccomending specifically.
Kingdom of God this one is all about the Holy Kingdom, the spiritual centre of the Cult of the New God and the Empire as a whole. There is a lot of good stuff in here about the history of the Cult, the Sacred Orders of the Cult, and a lot of deeper information about the surrounding lands, its people, and how the Cult operates.

Caecras focuses on the capital of the Empire, it's history and people, who the Kalassans are that founded it and where they came from, the war with the Wtich-King and the enslavement and revolt of the orcs. Just a lot of really good background information on the most important culture and recent event of the setting.

Weight of the Underworld contains some good information on the nature of souls, why reincarnation works the way it does and more specific information about the origins of the Underworld and Thanatos' goals with it.

The last one I'll recommend is A Land of Dreams and Darkness, this is all about Balgrendia which is a location you might not even know exists because it's barely mentioned in the core book. The history of it is related to Diabolus as it is where his lover, Nox, the Queen of Dreams and Shadows, made a new Hidden Kingdom after Diabolus was exiled to Hell. It's full to the brim with great lore, and it expands this tiny out of the way land into something incredibly interesting.


>How does it differ from D&D?
I hope you and your group end up enjoying it, my group switched from 5e and there is basically no chance of going back. It just feels like an improvement in every way, but I know it's not going to be for everyone. The only other things I would say is before you play talk to your group about the fact their PCs might die horrible deaths, and they should be prepared for that, and about professions and the sort of things they expect their chosen profs to be good for. The rules for them are vague and while that gives a lot of freedom it can feel like the whole system is totally arbitrary. That sort of goes for the whole RP side of this game too, it's all very rules-light. I gave some advice about that stuff if you want to give that a read. I think it's a great way to handle RP personally, but it's not something that was immediately satisfying

When I started playing SotDL I thought the same thing about the social stuff. But I've come to think that it's actually a really fun and easy way to handle the social side of things. The mechanics take a back-seat and it becomes far more focused on actual role -playing than a mechanical interpretation of role-playing. What I mean by that is with professions instead of skills it's more obvious what your characters skills, experiences, and knowledge base actually is so you can use that to shape your choices while roleplaying.

In a skill system you might have +5 Perception, in SotDL it would be City Watch or Hunter. Both of those professions require being alert and watchful but in totally different settings and scenarios along with other unique skills and experiences for each profession. A member of the City Watch would have knowledge of where to find gambling dens or other criminal activity, they'd have a certain amount of authority in which to manipulate peasants and the like with, they'd know other towns and cities would organised their own watches, where as the Hunter wouldn't know any of that yet they'd both have a keen eye. That sort of expression is only possible in a more hands off approach and I've grown to really appreciate the freedom it allows when making characters. It's the same thing for party faces but you might take Courtier or Actor but with different rolls

Adventures are the weakest part IMO and don't do a great job showcasing the system past hitting things. But A Year Without Rain, a starting adventure, starts off with a good amount of investigation into mysterious murders and there is a good amount to uncover and not all of it is even relevant to completing the adventure but it's there all the same. Survival of the Fittest, another starting adventure, is more focused on survival and exploration as you try to path through a forest where just fighting everything will quickly get you killed
Firstly, you can stack bonuses all you need for that is to just take overlapping professions. Want to be the best cat burglar there ever was, burglar, pickpocket, acrobat, spy, locksmith, and anything else you can think of that that would contribute to that sort of thing. Professions can provide anywhere from 1 boon all the way to a instant success and there aren't any rules about only having a single profession help a single roll so if you've got multiple professions that'd overlap you get bonuses from them all. You could also just ask your GM to let you take the same Profession twice, the rules don't expressly forbid it and I don't really see a reason to not let you do that either.

If all that doesn't work for you though, there is a more standard skill system in Forbidden Rules. How that works is you make a skill list for your campaign, the book has examples but the list is up to you and should fit your campaign, the skills are to be divided into three skill groups (Athletic, Lore, and Trade) when you would choose a profession you instead pick one of the 6 profession types. Depending on the type you choose you get a number of points to put into the skill groups (Table included) each point in an skill then gives you one boon to a challenge roll involving that skill. I prefer Profs for a whole host of reasons, but I get it's not for everyone.

As for social stuff, all the 5 social actions are attack rolls and it tells you which stats to roll and roll against for each. There is zero ambiguity of which to roll, so you're just misremembering there. In general though the roleplay aspect of SotDL is rules-light, which I think works in it's favour because it's just more freedom. I've never really needed rules to roleplay, past what SotDL offers but there is some stuff for that in Forbidden Rules too, including an attitude table I quite like. Skills/Profs also apply to social actions, so you can specialise there too.

Challenge rolls are always TN 10, you modify it with boons or banes. It's super easy, everyone knows if you passed or failed. No faff, you can make them on fly for whatever your PCs want to do. It's great for keeping the game moving.

The combat is fast and lethal, the mechanics are simple but there is plenty of opportunity for tactical play. The lethality add a lot of weight to your actions, combat becomes a lot riskier but more exciting as a result, you're more likely to want to find alternate solutions when you know you can die. 5e suffered from the problem that death was only really a threat in name and not something you see too often. SotDL walks a really fine line of having death be a real threat, but a preventable one without feeling too easy or too punishing. PCs are also quick to roll up if you do die.

Paths! Just everything about paths, you can just go crazy with your choices. Novice paths provide the bulk of your ability, so if you go Warrior > Wizard you still end up a competant fighter, you can't build yourself into a situation where you end up sucking. You can specialise or do a bit of everything, and both options work even if you're in a party with someone who did the opposite approach you're still both useful. Not to mention the sheer amount of them, right now it's 232 total. Which is an insane level of choice if you want that. They're also all designed to be taken from a pure narrative perspective too, you are fully free to let your PCs story dictate what you take. Standard class based games don't really have that, you can multiclass a little but you might end up gimping yourself into oblivion. SotDL is designed for it and it's wonderful, the lower level also means you never end up with a dead level where you don't get something neat.
Magic, magic, magic. Magic is handled in maybe my favorite way of any system, there is a huge amount of choice but traditions do a really good getting rid of choice paralysis, you can baiscally pick them from name alone and be happy. You don't get to just have a bit of everything either because you have to discover the traditions first and past level 1 or 2 that starts to be a bad choice efficiency-wise. So casters end up more specialized than something like 5e. This goes a long way to differentiate casters even if you take the same paths you can play totally differently based on your tradition choice. Magic targets attributes instead of defense, this makes attributes way more useful. Magic is also grouped by tradition and ordered by rank so you never have to look through a list of 400 spells that are just all in alphabetical order for some reason

The balance between martials and magic is really spot on too. One of the reasons is the above, casters have to specialise to an extent so you don't have a spell for every situation, if you didn't take Shadow or Illusion you aren't likely to be sneaking better than your Rogue. Martial characters out perfrom casters in survivability, damage per round, and sustained damage but casters have much better utility and CC options as well as AoE. Both have clear advantages and disadvantages and you never feel like one steals the spotlight of the other.
The shorter campaign style is amazing because it lets you actually do all the stuff you want in a campaign. The GM having a limit on the amount of adventures really helps make for far better arcs, if there is a BBEG to fight you'll fight them in at least 12 adventures, the big world ending threats don't just loom in the distance forever, you don't end up milling about doing nothing for session upon session. Having an end in sight is great for keeping a group together too, a campaign feels like an achievable thing, not just something that goes on til everyone quits. It also lets players and GMs do more things, you can play more characters, set up more villains and all sorts. A level each adventure means there is always a substantial reward, and you can use the last campaign as a starting point for the next one. If things went horribly wrong and that evil cult won you can show all the effects of that from a whole new perspective. Adventures are designed to be 1 session but there is so much wiggle room there that you campaign can be any amount of sessions but as your PCs always have a goal for the adventure you never end up spiraling off to do some total waste of time all that much
Monster design and encounter balancing is superb. Stat blocks are layed out wonderfully and show you exactly what you need to know, it's got everything you want with some unique and weird surprises like the Reen who are robot squids from another planet sent as scouts to borg up some peasants and build a portal so their masters can flee to Urth because their world is also being fucked by the demon lord. The tables for encounter balancing are so well done you never have to worry about fucking it up. There are a load of interesting mechanics on enemies that make finding something new truly scary because you never know exactly what something can do until it does it. That sort of tension is great for a horror game.

And the last thing I can think of right now is Victims of the Demon Lord. This is by far my favourite chargen system around right now. It's a massive expansion on the tables present for the main 8 ancestries (From the Core book and DLC1) each table is unique for each ancestry. It takes a little more time than normal but you end up with a really well fleshed out background that has a load of basic info for you to make your own backstory with. It's just a really great system all around and it ties you into the world really nicely too.
That's what boons and banes are for, and also just saying "You can't do that because it's impossible/you'd need X profession/other reason" if the situation calls for it. You should be putting banes on for every things that makes that situation worse if your trying to climb a wall for example, if it's wet it's a bane, if it's got bad hand holds it's a bane, if the wall is old and crumbly it's a bane, and vice versa. A single boon or bane makes a massive difference to a roll, but when you get a feel for all of that it makes a lot more sense.


>D&D Heroic style conversion
It's probably easy enough to be honest, as opposed to trying to fix D&D's problems with a lot of homebrew. Corruption has a whole lore behind it on Urth according to one of the Poisoned Pages, but can easily work in D&D's lore as well considering Hell exists in D&D and is based on corrupting mortal souls. Give Fortune more frequently to make the player characters feel more heroic and nerf some of the monsters (especially demons which are a lot more manageable in D&D than Shadow). Lastly, if the whole insanity system isn't fitting for a more D&D setting, change it to stress and re-do the d20 table for going insane effects.

I've given advice on how to make SotDL work better with a more traditional fantasy setting, so I'll just copy and paste all that here.

Making SotDL more traditional is mostly a matter of reflavouring, and removing mechanics. SotDL is really easy to rip bits out of so it's not actually that hard of a task.

Remove Corruption entirely and ignore all rules that interact with it. Dark Magic traditions should no longer grant boons on challenge rolls for resisting Insanity gain either. Those boons are an offset to the corruption, but with no corruption you don't need to offset anything.

Remove all Paths, Traditions, and Ancestries you don't think work in your new setting. You could reflavour them but no harm will be done by removing a Path or Tradition so long as you're not tearing out huge amounts of them. For Traditions it's basically just Forbidden, Technomancy and Demonology that don't mesh too well with standard fantasy. The master paths for those will have to go too, but outside of a few paths for Demon Lord or Devil worship I don't think you'll need to remove any. For ancestries I would advise against removing any of the Core or DLC1 ancestries any of the others can go though.

Reflavour pretty much everything else. If a creature doesn't work as it describe it in a new way, if an Ancestries lore doesn't fit what you want change it. Some creatures might just need removing (Mostly Demons) and some specific effects might need retooling a touch but there isn't going to be much that reflavouring won't fix

If you want less lethal gameplay, just use the tables you're given for encounter balances and use a lower challenge than you would otherwise. The Regrouping rules from Forbidden Rules will also help. It's basically a short rest mechanic that only heals you. There are also some other rules in Forbidden Rules you might want to use, but nothing needed for this purpose.
Rename Insanity to something you feel is more flavour appropriate. Stress would be my choice but it doesn't really matter, you could outright remove the mechanic altogether but it's a big part of how the game is balanced so I'd suggest keeping it in with some light reflavouring. If you're going to strip this one out it's a lot more work than Corruption as it's a larger part of the game and some creatures will end up being a lot easier than they otherwise would be, but you could get rid of it if you really wanted to.

For Going Mad you can either get rid of it totally, and ignore the cap on Insanity, tweak a few rules so going mad is probably never going to happen, or strip out the effects you don't like and broaden the numbers you need to roll on the remaining ones.
Getting rid of it is as easy nothing special happens if your Insanity reaches you Will

For rules tweaks, firstly ignore things that'd cause insanity that aren't spell effects or creatures (Mutilated corpses, bodily parasites, etc.), secondly add this rule:
"Each time you complete a rest, you can (though you don’t have to) make a Will challenge roll with 1 bane. You remove 1 Insanity on a success"
You will almost assuredly won't ever go mad with those two things, and using quirks very occasionally.
There's also some rules from the Companion book 2 which allows you to be more effective in combat and recover quickly, especially:
"At the start of each adventure, your group replenishes its pool of talent, which is measured in tokens. Your group has a number of tokens equal to 3 + half your group's level. Any group member can expend a token to remove the frightened affliction or to heal damage equal to half his healing rate."

If you really want the chance to go mad but feel the table needs to be changed I'd suggest just removing or reflavouring the ones you don't like, then changing the numbers on the remaining ones in a way you feel is balanced. This is all down to your own personal tastes, hard to give advice there.

Again I'd strongly suggest keeping Insanity the game is balanced around it and it's kind of a pain to take out
How do you handle elves? Elves aren't balanced against the 8 core ancestries, they're way stronger they get shit like Spell Defense at level 0 and a load of professions. But in SotDL that all makes sense as they occupy a different role than a more traditional settings. I have however written up a more balanced version of the elf based on the D&D style of elf. It includes sub-races and it's about as spot on as I could make it while keeping it balanced with the core ancestries.

CREATING AN ELF
Strength 9, Agility 11, Intellect 10, Will 9
Perception equals your Intellect score + 1
Defense equals your Agility score
Health equals your Strength score
Healing Rate equals one-quarter your Health, round down
Size 1, Speed 10, Power 0
0 Damage, 0 Insanity, 0 Corruption
Languages and Professions You speak the Common Tongue and Elvish.
Immune - asleep, charmed
Shadowsight - You see in areas obscured by shadows as if those areas were lit. (I know 5e elves have Darkvision, but if you're using SotDL Darksight should be fairly rare.)
Trance - Like D&D

LEVEL 4 EXPERT ELF
Characteristics Health +4
You either learn one spell or gain Bewitching Presence
Bewitching Presence - Your magical nature alters how others see you and behave around you. You make attack rolls in social situations with 1 boon.

Add the following at Level 0 for you subrace
High Elves - Learn a Rank 0 spell
Wood Elves - +2 speed, and 1 boon to hide in nature environments
Drow - Darksight instead of Shadowsight, and this trait "Impaired by Light - You are impaired while in areas of sunlight and not wearing some kind of covering over your eyes."

A kind anon has posted before his homebrew with all the D&D races adapted into SotDL. If you're interested, you can ask in the thread. Someone will probably provide, eventually.

I suggest running a one shot; however, if your group is heavily experienced with the mechanics of 5e, you could start at level 3 (expert level) in Shadow since the default novice paths presented in the book are pretty basic; the supplemental Path of Shadow materials like Bred for Battle and Natural Born Scoundrels change that though by adding variations to the basic four novice paths.