Heroic Dark

Your world will fall unless you risk it all.

Heroic Dark is a genre-flexible game engine for telling high tension stories about danger, death, and deliverance. The heroes must risk death to advance. Once dead, they must pass their mantle to a new hero, as there’s no return from the grave.

“Old school in danger,
21st century in execution.”
– Ben Riggs

This game has the following features:

• The players and GM use genre-bending setting rules to build a conflicted world on the edge. This quick exercise lays out details to spur an epic story about saving the world, but leaves enough unknown that the players can learn and explore during the campaign.
• Players take on the role of vulnerable heroes in this world, with their backs against the wall. The believability-focused mechanics do not make the heroes strong; they can go down just like their enemies.
• The GM brings it all together using rapid session creation rules that make each meeting a challenging yet fair adventure. And at the end of each session, the players’ actions influence the world tracking system: Will the world be saved? Or will the spreading Darkness reign supreme?

This deluxe version includes 50 pages of GM support and setting material not included in the free version of Heroic Dark, such as:

• Nemesis NPC system to put a face on the Darkness
• Additional NPC powers to make more specialized enemies
• Catastrophe event system to keep pressure on the heroes
• Knights of Callisto setting—giant mining robots fighting colossal aliens!
• Grundels Setting—woodland magical creatures terrorized by a cat?
• Fathom Setting—aquatic people facing dangerous climate change!