«The cold is the timer»: A conversation with Anmia, author of “On The Ledge of My Seat” for Shadowdark RPG

If the icy cold winds don’t get you, the fall most definitely will.

Some of the best adventure modules come from a single, stubborn idea...

For Anmia, the idea was a question: What happens when you replace the horizontal sprawl of a classic dungeon with something vertical instead? What happens when you swap the torch for the cold? For Anmia, who by day works in IT, but at night GMs at Outland or tinker with tabletop games,  the answer resulted in “On the Ledge of my Seat.” (OTLOMS)

This is the second issue of Seidmann Games’ Shadow Delves series, where different writers and designers come together to create modules for Shadowdark RPG. We sat down with Anmia to talk design philosophy, deliberate frustration and why she thinks survival beats combat every time.

After you’re done reading, check out the adventure itself by heading over to DriveThruRPG.

From EVE Online to the Dungeon table

Anmia’s way into tabletop RPGs is, looking back, quite indirect. She was originally supposed to play D&D with people she know from EVE Online. However, time zones got in the way and it never came to fruition. A few years later, a session with her cousin kicked things off properly. From there, curiosity took over.

“I started buying other rules than D&D and trying them out,” she says. “From there I ended up writing my own little game, which is a bit rough around the edges.”

The instinct to try things, break them apart, and build something new is visible in OTLOMS.  This isn’t written by someone who spent years perfecting classical dungeon design, but rather written by someone who took another approach. And that’s precisely what makes it interesting.

Verticality, cold and a different kind of pressure

The original idea was spatial: “The initial idea was to replace the horizontal nature of most dungeons with verticality,” Anmia esxplains. Chinese temples in valleys came into the picture for a while, pulling things back towards the horizontal. Then a new mechanic arrived and changed everything: using the cold climate as the pressure mechanic, instead of the torch which is prevalent in most Shadowdark adventures.

In Shadowdark, the real-time torch, burning for one actual hour while the Game Master (GM) watches a hidden timer, is one of the system’s most known design touches. OTLOMS takes that same logic and applies it to temperature. Every thirty minutes of real time, it gets cold enough that improperly dressed characters can straight up die. The cold doesn’t announce itself, it just arrives.

When asked what kind of experience she wanted to create, Anmia is quite honest: “A bit of frustration, maybe? The players are locked in with few good ways out. It’s unfair, and that's sometimes just how it is.”

OTLOMS isn’t trying to give players a fair fight. It’s trying to put the somewhere genuinely difficult and see how they think their way out. Anmia is quick to note that there is, theoretically, a way through without combat or serious risk, but figuring that out is entirely up to the players.

Why Survival Beats Combat

One of the clearest threads in how Anmia talks about her work is a preference for survival and pressure over straightforward combat encounters. The reasoning is practical: “Combat is fun, but it quickly becomes round after round around the table. Survival often creates more immersion and tension. It requires a different kind of collaboration.”

This feeds directly into what makes OTLOMS  feel different from a more traditional dungeon crawl. The threat isn’t primarily monsters, it’s the environment, the clock, and the limits of your character’s preparation. Players who come in expecting to cut their way through will find the module frustrating in exactly the way Anmia intended.

The Design Details She’s Most Proud Of

Ask Anmia what she’s most satisfied with in the module and she answers without hesitation: using AC as DC.

“Someone else suggested it, but now I can finally watch the grin fade from the paladin or fighter in heavy armour.”

It’s a small mechanical inversion with large table consequences. Armour Class, normally a defensive stat that protects you, becomes the difficulty of certain checks or interactions within the module. The better armoured you are, the harder some things become. It’s the kind of twist that makes experienced Shadowdark players do a double-take, and it fits perfectly with the module’s broader philosophy: the things that usually protect you might not help you here.

On Shadowdark as a System

Anmia is clear-eyed about why Shadowdark works for this kind of adventure, and honest about the fact that OTLOMS  might have been written for something else entirely if she hadn’t been making something specifically for the system.

“It’s the OSR part that stands out most,” she says. “Where some systems and genres call for high detail and story, OSR adventures lean more toward a framework you can build and tinker with. That statement will probably earn a comment or two.”

She also flags something that matters practically for independent designers: the Shadowdark licence is flexible and creator-friendly, making it easier to publish third-party content without legal friction. That openness is a big part of why the Shadowdark third-party ecosystem has grown as fast as it has , and why Shadow Delves, Seidmann Games’ monthly Shadowdark adventure label, has been able to bring Norwegian designers into that space.

What’s next for Anmia

There’s more coming. At minimum, another Shadowdark adventure, already somewhere in the backlog. She also mentions work for Twilight 2000 and Delta Green, updates to existing releases, and a roleplaying idea she needs to find time for. The restlessness that led her from EVE Online to dungeon design isn’t going anywhere.

Her advice for GMs running On the Ledge of My Seat for the first time is characteristically no-nonsense: read it through, punish players for stupidity, think carefully about what each area looks like and what happens there. And remember; every thirty minutes, the cold comes.

Anmia can be found sharing thoughts about TTRPG, design and other tid bits over at BlueSky.

On the Ledge of My Seat and Dawn of the Goat are both available on DriveThruRPG. These are the first two issues of Shadow Delves, Seidmann Games’ Shadowdark RPG modules, made by northern designers and writers making out Dark North Conglomerate. The adventures are often built for a single session. Easy to run, difficult to survive. To get updates on all of our releases and happenings, subscribe to our newsletter.