Secrets Under Stone: Deep Under Stone vol. 1

Publisher: deep under stone.Gothic Fantasy Roleplaying.
Imagine a village made insignificant by the landscape that surrounds it, its air thick with secrets. There have been disappearances, perhaps, or murders – gruesome ones, loaded with occult significance. Shadowy cabals concoct plots by candlelight, pursued by interlopers with demons of their own. The stash of books in the church’s broom cupboard locates a hidden temple in the woods; gives advice on traversing the labyrinth beneath. Dying gods are glimpsed in the abandoned tin mines by practitioners of forbidden sacraments – and as the darkest stars align, the cult’s agenda ticks like a bomb.
Secrets Under Stone is a Gothic fantasy role-playing game drawing on a vener-able British tradition. Although future volumes of Deep Under Stone will adapt the systems here for a wide range of settings and modes of play, the previous paragraph seeks to evoke what this arrangement will suit best: a mixture of investigation and adventure in a world saturated by hidden knowledge, where wise travellers go both well-armed and well-informed. This is not a game of heroes or plunderers, but scrappy dilettantes with idiosyncratically mixed capabilities, who frequently bite off more than they can chew.
Key features.
An easy to learn but highly versatile skills-based 2d6 system, adapted from Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Troika! but with some key changes (there are three core Ability Scores rather than just Skill, combat is a fast a deadly sequence of rolls against your relevant Skill, and encumbrance directly determines your initiative in combat).
Character creation that is lightning-fast and fully random without being unfair: every character is good at something, but you’ll have to discover what it is. The full character creation rules can be read in the PDF preview, so have a go!
A focus on readability and useability at the table: everything you need to know about a subject fits on a printable two-page spread, meaning you can print them off and give them to your players.
48 pages of content including everything you need to get started: character creation,  item descriptions, example monsters, Rituals, and Patrons, and more.
Knowledge is power: rules for immersing yourself in occult disciplines including Astrology, Augury, and Demonology.
Magic that feels part of the world: form contracts with powerful patrons for a share of their magic, or learn dangerous Rituals through study. 
An implied setting that draws on centuries of Gothic writings.
Beautiful black-and-white art adapted from the work of Renaissance masters.
A modular and flexible system, with notes on adapting it to a wide variety of settings a play styles.
The first instalment of Deep Under Stone, a zine that will take the core framework presented here in vastly different directions.
Price: $8.00
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