Downcrawl 2E

Systemless Setting by Aaron A. Reed

Explore cursed mazes. Build stalactite cities. Get addicted to mushrooms.

Welcome Down.

Downcrawl is a tabletop roleplaying toolkit that helps you build and explore a weird, wondrous underworld so far from the surface that the sun and sky are only legend. Compatible with any TTRPG system, or 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. 

Revised and expanded from the original 2017 edition (a DriveThruRPG Platinum seller), Downcrawl 2E features totally revamped and improved mechanics after years of additional playtesting, new optional rules for solo or GM-less play, and an optional add-on card deck to make sparking weird underworld adventures easier than ever.

Cheerful skeleton bards sing ballads on fragile lutes. Antlered children race giggling through shell-paved streets. Faceless cultists worship huge red worms, chanting behind obsidian walls. This is the Deep, Deep Down.

• Introduce a weird, wondrous underworld called the Deep, Deep Down to your campaign
• Compatible with any TTRPG system, or stands alone with a lightweight Fate-inspired ruleset (requires only d6 dice to play).
• 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. 
• A communal Map tracks the realms of your underworld discovered so far, but watch out: connections are mercurial, with old passageways collapsing and new tunnels opening up after each journey.
• Get into mushrooms with rules for Fungal Foraging, discovering strange new mycelial species with unpredictable effects. Refine them into more potent fungal drugs, with only a slight possibility of all-consuming addiction…
• An extensive Session Zero chapter guides you through building a world and characters for a new Downcrawl game, step by step
• Inspiring Tables help you generate everything from ad-hoc story hooks to random locations to underground terrain types:

Play How You Like

Downcrawl 2E supports a range of play styles. Play with a GM as in a traditional roleplaying campaign, explore together with no GM using the rules for Impromptu play, or explore the Down on your own via Solo mode. Rather than last-minute add-ons, the rules have been carefully designed from the beginning to work well with all three play styles.

Downcrawl is designed to enable just-in-time, zero-prep generation live at the table (though GMs can still prep between sessions if they like). The moves and tables are built to help you quickly improvise new places, peoples, and encounters on the fly, either alone or together.

Downcrawl 2E is available through DriveThruRPG in Print and PDF.

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