Befallen
Befallen is a dark fantasy game of obsession and corruption for one or more players.
In Befallen, you’ll create your character, take on quests, unravel plots, fight monsters and thwart dangerous otherworldly entities intent on gaining a foothold in our world, all while unraveling your obsession—the mystery that you have dedicated yourself to solve. It can be played solo, or as a group of 2-4 players, with or without a GM.
Content Warnings: The corruption mechanics of Befallen center around becoming corrupted by otherworldly entities. The form that corruption takes differs between each corrupting power. Individual content warnings are included with each of the corrupting powers so you can choose whether to engage with specific content as you play.
How does it work?
DICE. Each time you make a roll in Befallen, you'll build a dice pool incorporating d10s from your skills, knowledge, stamina and character abilities—your Skill Roll. You'll compare this to the result of your Challenge Die—a single die you'll roll and add a modifier to to determine the difficulty of your task. Any skill dice whose result beats the challenge die result is counted as a success. If you're playing with physical dice, you can denote a specific color of die as your challenge die; that way you can roll everything in one go.
In Befallen, rolling a 10 on a d10is always a critical success and rolling a 1 on a d10 always adds a complication to what you're trying to accomplish, meaning that even the best and worst laid plans have a chance to beat all the odds and succeed, or go awry and cause all new troubles.
GAMEPLAY. The gameplay in Befallen revolves around 3 things:
- OBSESSION. This is the singular goal your character is working towards and what will drive your adventure forward. You will choose your obsession during character creation and spend the game traveling from place to place, searching for clues to its resolution. Once you’ve found enough clues, you’ll have a chance to resolve your obsession, ending your journey.
- PLOTS. Plots are the large events happening in the settlements you visit that make being in that location more dangerous. While a plot is active, everything in that settlement is more dangerous, but if you resolve it, you’ll earn some renown with the locals, gain some resources to help you progress your journey and get some clues that will help you unravel your obsession and lead you to the next stop on your journey.
- QUESTS. Quests are short tasks that you can undertake from local residents of a settlement. Completing quests increases your reputation with other characters and rewards you with resources that you can spend on crafting items, buying equipment and paying for living and travel expenses.
MAGIC AND CORRUPTION. Any character in Befallen who is skilled in Occult can learn Hedge Magic—a system of charms, rituals and enchantments that allows you to perform small feats of magic, such as scrying or turning luck in your favor. However, truly supernatural magic is reserved for those who interact with the corrupting powers. The powers are eldritch beings that are trying to gain a foothold in The Fallen Lands by corrupting the souls of those who come into contact with them. Some, like Revelry (who infects you with an all-consuming feeling of joy that erases all other emotions) are worshiped as gods, while others, like Verdant Growth (a superconsciousness of plants wishing to return the world to a green and untouched state) or The Endless Halls (an extradimensional maze of endlessly twisting hallways) are less understood.
Solo and GMless Play Support
Befallen is built from the ground up to be played without a GM. The system is built on a methodology of giving you the details of the problem and asking you "what do you want to do about it and how do you want to do it". The book includes:
- 9 pre-generated settlements, which have multiple paths for replayability.
- 2-3 plots per settlement. These are large quests, which start with a mystery or rumor about something going wrong in the settlement. Once you have successfully investigated the mystery, you'll roll on a table that will tell you what you discover and set you on the path to resolving it.
- Tables of 6-10 quest hooks per settlement for short tasks and adventures when your character needs to generate some money.
- Descriptions of key locations and NPCs for each settlement.
Most characters will visit 3-5 settlements per playthrough. With the branching paths, you can experience between 6 and 10 different plot paths per settlement, meaning even if you don't create your own settlements, there's still plenty of replayability.
What does it come with?
- 326 page rule book
- interactive pdf character sheets and settlement worksheets to streamline play
- 11 character classes
- 84 pages of prewritten scenarios, broken into settlements
- a 73 page bestiary of opponents to confront
- A Community Content Agreement to make and sell your own content for Befallen, or use its dice system in your own creations.
- Alt text for all images (a proper screen reader friendly pdf is coming - some of the overlapping image and border elements are a little rough, so I'm sorting that out)
For Media: If you'd like a press kit, or review copy, please email me at dmarkiwsky@gmail.com.
Purchase
In order to download this TTRPG you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $7.50 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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Community Copies
If you're interested in the game and can't afford it right now, please help yourself to a community copy. If you like the game, you can always support me by purchasing a copy later.
Thank you to everyone who purchases the game, allowing me to give away community copies.
Comments
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This looks really cool. Can you tell me what the general game play loop is like? On the scale of journaling to crunchy, where would you place this TTRPG? Is there a skill tree system or different types of loot/equipment?
For sure. The main goal is to find clues that help to resolve your Obsession (the main goal you set for your character during character creation). So the game loop is:
You'll encounter the Corrupting Powers throughout this process. Once you've encountered one, they mark you, increasing your chances of being corrupted by them, but also giving you the opportunity to corrupt yourself further in return for turning a failed roll into a success. Higher corruption levels unlock special abilities from those powers, but put you in danger of losing yourself to them.
You'll start with skills and a starter ability from your class, but as you finish quests and plots, you'll gain skill points to spend on more skills and abilities. There is some basic equipment classes you can choose from (light armor vs heavy armor, etc.), but the magic items are tied to these Corrupting Powers.
As for Journalling vs. Crunchy, you can play this game entirely without journaling if you want, though I tend to play it with some light journaling. The pregenerated settlements tell you what the problem is and what limitations you have, then you choose what to do about things and how you want to tackle the problem.
Hopefully this helps! Happy to answer any more questions you have.
A game centered around corruption and obsession... that actully sounds pretty interesting! If you are currently handing out review copies, I would love to feature it in my Youtube channel, is there an email where I can contact you?
Hi there!
Drop me an email at dmarkiwsky@gmail.com and I'll send you a link to the press kit. Thank you!
Thanks! Email sent.
The illustrations are wonderful! The concept is good too.
Thank you so much!