Befallen

(Print versions available on DriveThruRPG)

What is Befallen?

Befallen is a dark fantasy RPG about obsession and corruption set in a low-magic world where gods are many and eldritch powers lurk in the wings, waiting to ensnare those who walk too close to the darkness.

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.

How does it work?

ROLLING THE 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.

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.

Solo and GMless Play

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.