Beyond Dread Portals – Preview Edition – PDF

Beyond Dread Portals is a roleplaying game of world-hopping fantasy. The rules are built up from a core based loosely on the world's first fantasy roleplaying game but heavily tailored to fit the setting.

Ys is at the centre of the setting, a baroque fantasy city that rules territories on three different worlds. The worlds Ys is in contact with vary in nature, with some being Earth-like, others less so.

Magic is common and an accepted part of Ysian society. The key reason for Ys's success is its army and powerful magical guild working together in territories outside the city.
These territories include the ocean world of Tethys, with its traders, undersea monsters, pirates and religious zealots. Then there is Marn, a world of many small human kingdoms, intelligent humanoid lizards, and vast reptilian monsters. The most recent of the Ysian conquests is Samara, a world of warring kingdoms and a strict caste system. There are stranger places. Ys has a presence on the blasted desert world of Nespo, with its war machines and undead. At the fringes of Ysian knowledge is the Burning Heaven, a place which may be literally heaven or hell. And connecting them all are the endless tunnels of the world of Erebus.

But the heart of Ys is rotten. Its overlord, the Autarch, is literally a monster. His lieutenants, the Agents of the Autarch, sow discord in the city. The Autarch leaves the apparatus of government and the rule of law to crumble and divide the city's other power structures, ensuring that nobody can depose him.

This 92 page preview version of this fantasy class/level-based game has a full set of rules up to the 5th level and an introductory adventure.

Note it is pulled from the work-in-progress draft and has not been laid out or fully proofed.

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