BETA MATERIAL

This is the beta version of the Against the Fall of Night TTRPG.  More about the beta status can be found below.  What this means, in short, is that you can expect limited or no art, formatting, and layout.  Your one-time purchase will entitle you to all updates made, right up until the final beta version.  The final beta version will be the complete text of the game, but will be missing elements like art and layout.  The release version will be available separately when it is completed.

Against the Fall of Night

Against the Fall of Night (AFN) is a TTRPG about fighting against the coming darkness.  The Night will fall.  You can't stop it.  That the fight is impossible makes it no less important.  You can't stop the Night, but by bringing together and protecting as much as you can, you can keep the world together long enough to see the Dawn.

In the world of AFN, Night does not refer merely to what happens when the sun goes down.  Night is an existential force, the terror that lies beyond, the darkness from without, a force and a place that is not of our world, but that wants very badly to make our world like it.  Every day when the world shelters your view from the sun, that's not Night.  That's just an ordinary night.  Night is a longer cycle, when darkness creeps out from the places between shadows.  When silence rings out, clear as a bell.  When every mistake you have made, every fear you have, every dream you have been denied, rushes into your thoughts with crystal clarity.  These things are the first stirrings of a true Night.  Night is a slow corruption of the normal, a destruction of safety, a denial of predictability.  When you hear a strange noise at 3 am, it could be anything.  In the clear light of day, that was obviously just the house settling.  At 3 am, it could have been an intruder or a monster or an extradimensional rift.  These impressions are the leakage of true Night into any ordinary night.  In an ordinary night, it is a passing fear, pushed away and laughed at nervously later.  In true Night; who can say what fear might reveal, or what might pass through the darkness?

Night has fallen before, and it will fall again.  Every time, the Dawn has come, its clear light banishing the Night.  By default, an AFN campaign is set at Nightfall, when the Night is just beginning.  Will your heroes be able to defend the world against the encroaching Night, and protect it long enough for Dawn to end this cursed Night?  Will Night find a way to banish the light of hope, and prevent the Dawn from ever arriving?

Night falls, but heroes rise.  In AFN, you play those heroes.  With unique yet intuitive mechanical innovations, AFN keeps combat fresh and interesting without bogging itself down in the details.  Powered by the Nightfall Engine, AFN aims to make sure that every choice offered to a player is an interesting choice; we don't believe that you need to waste your time making obvious choices or false choices.  Resolution is quick and easy, using a system of Tests and Checks; Tests are rolled on a d20 and always have a fixed target number (10), while Checks are rolled on 2d6 and have varied TN by difficulty.  In combat, characters spend Attack Points, Defense Points, and Magic Points to use combat techniques and cast spells, allowing all characters to make interesting choices with every action they take; but make sure you don't leave yourself open, as an attack that catches you off guard can cause serious harm to even an experienced hero.

Against the Fall of Night also offers a roguelite campaign structure with its system of gameplay phases.  Play proceeds from through the Scouting Phase, Nightmare Phase, Downtime Phase, and Growth Phase.  In each of these phases, players take actions or the world responds to their actions.  The defined procedures provide structure for a GM, so you don't have to just make up everything that happens, while also allowing for specific player choice and actions.  It also includes an Epilogue system; when certain things happen, the campaign ends and you see what effect you had on the world and how successful you were at fighting Night.  After the epilogue, if you want, you can pick back up in the same world while retaining certain elements of previous progression, like doing another run in a roguelite.

BETA MATERIAL

This is a beta document.  The current version is Beta 0.5.  Beta 0.5 contains a full and complete core game system, along with all classes fully playable from level 1-6.  (The level cap in AFN is 6.)  All systems and subsystems planned for inclusion in the final game have been completed and are included in Beta 0.5.

A selection of feats, spells, rituals, combat techniques, monsters, and magic items are included.  More of these have been added in each version since 0.1; further expansion of these elements are planned, though they are now all fully usable and need only minor expansion remaining.

A brief description of the setting, intended to provide inspiration for groups without binding them with too much lore, has been included.

Random generation tables for Nightmare elements are included, along with a procedural generation system for building and evolving Nightmares as gameplay progresses.  These systems are now complete.

There is no art included, and no editing, layout, or sensitivity reading has been performed on the beta document.  It is basically just text.