Hexmaster Modern

Core Rulebook by Rutibex

A Post-Digital OSR d20 System Money is XP. Attention is Danger. Advancement is Paid in Blood and Dollars.

What Is Hexmaster: Modern?

Hexmaster: Modern is a gritty, rules-light yet tactically deep tabletop RPG that treats the modern world like a dungeon crawl — filled with hostile institutions, bureaucratic traps, and surveillance instead of dragons. Designed with Old-School Revival (OSR) philosophy and built on a streamlined d20 engine, it rewards creative play, risky decisions, and strategic downtime.

Forget balanced encounters and cinematic immunity. In Hexmaster: Modern, you survive by spending smart, hiding your Heat, and knowing when to burn it all down for one last level-up.

Core Features

• Capital Is XP – Advancement comes only through laundering and burning real in-game money. No handouts. No freebies.
• Heat & Exposure – A pressure system that replaces wandering monsters with hostile institutions, surveillance, and retaliation.
• Six Attribute-Based Classes – STR to CHA, each one representing a method of control in a dangerous world: brute force, systems mastery, narrative leverage, and more.
• Advanced Classes – Unlock post-human evolution, command institutions, manipulate global media, or master cyberwarfare — if you survive long enough.
• Downtime is Half the Game – Advance, recover, reduce Heat, or build your empire — but you can’t do it all.
• Tools, Not Tropes – No narrative plot armor. Every rule justifies itself in the fiction. If it doesn’t make sense in the world, it doesn’t exist in the mechanics.

Built for Hackers, Designers, and Sandbox GMs

• Modular and open-ended for easy customization
• Perfect for campaign sandboxes, faction warfare, and procedural worldbuilding
• Ideal companion system for cyberpunk, crime thrillers, occult conspiracies, post-collapse dramas, and modern horror

Inside This Book:

• 6 core attribute-based classes (Enforcer, Operator, Survivor, Analyst, Sentinel, Influencer)
• Complete core mechanics and streamlined d20 resolution
• Capital-burn advancement system and downtime rules
• Heat & Exposure threat engine
• Gear, assets, vehicles, and urban exploration as dungeon crawl
• Institutions-as-boss-monsters model for long-term play
• Full sandbox-compatible philosophy with zero handholding

Hexmaster Modern is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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