In Downcrawl players and gamemaster collaborate to build and explore a strange, endless underground called the Deep Deep Down. A full journey system gives you rules for structuring dangerous journeys between underworld places. Gather intel before your journey to increase your odds of success, manage your Tack along the way to keep from getting Lost, and face intriguing story-based encounters (randomly assembled from hundreds of possibilities) as you travel.
Both as a toolkit compatible with any RPG system, and as a complete standalone game, Downcrawl offers evocative prompts to generate new places, peoples, and encounters on the fly, and helps improvise stories of dangerous journeys, curious creatures, and strange underground empires. Play with a GM as in a traditional roleplaying campaign; explore together with no GM using the rules for Impromptu play; or brave the Down on your own via Solo mode.
Downcrawl's new and improved Second Edition revises all the rules from the ground up (or down). Generation of weird places and peoples happens live at the table, rather than offline between sessions. (By default, anyway – you can still do it the old-school way if you prefer.) No Folk or Volumes exist in the world until the moment your players need one. When they do, you generate just enough detail to meet the needs of the current moment. If later the players want to investigate this place further, or plan a journey to visit it, you can generate additional information, enhancing your picture of this place.
It's up to you and your table who generates these answers. The GM might do it in secret, behind a screen; the players might do it and announce their results, leaving it to the GM to synthesize them. Everyone gets to discover the world at the same time, together.
Learn more at the October 2024 BackerKit campaign page and Aaron A. Reed's website. "Solo Play in Downcrawl" (Oct 2024 blog post).
Downcrawl Delver's Guide (60pp, retail price $5): The Delver's Guide is a reference guide that gathers all the Downcrawl 2E Moves and Tables into a 56-page handbook that works as a quick reference for the GM, to pass between players, or to keep beside you for solo play. All page numbering in the Delver's Guide is consistent with the page numbers in the main Downcrawl rulebook, so a page reference in either book works for both.
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