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• CHARACTER SHEETS

ColophonIllustration - Rob Matthews, 2022
Introductory Ordeal written by Jared Kimbrell, 2023
Additional Writing - Jeb Alan Rosebrook and Jared Kimbrell.Typeface is Syne Mono - Bonjour Monde, Lucas Descroix, 2017The Pathetic Appendix: Alighieri, The Inferno - Bergman, The Seventh Seal - Buehlman, Between Two Fires - Bullington, The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart - Boorman, Excalibur - Cervantes, Don Quixote - Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales - Egerkrans, Vaesen, The Undead, Dragons - Eisenstein, Vasilev, Alexander Nevsky - German, Hard to Be a God - Gilliam, Jabberwocky - Herzog, Auguirre, the Wrath of God - Lang, Die Nibelungen - Pavelka, Ganaj, Felvidek - Platiboo, Vermis - Poe, The Cask of Amontillado - Poe, Corman, The Masque of the Red Death - Shakespeare Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest - Yanes, Alatriste

PLAYTEST version - SUMMER 2024
Playtesters
Josh Dunham, Chris Lazar, Nick Lazar (Playtest Dealer), Tyler Lindsay, Dylan McCusker, Stephen Ngo, Jacob Rich, Trevor Heydt (Playtest Dealer)

© Delvers Guild 2024
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.Designed by Calen Heydt
Chicago, IL

SETUP

I. DeckOne player shuffles a standard deck of 52 French-suited playing cards. This player is the dealer.Other players create delvers.
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II. DiceAssemble six dice:
d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, & d20.Think of this dice pool abstractly as your entire character. The dice pool defines your capabilities and state of being.The number of sides on a die is its strength.During the game, you will roll one or more of your own dice against a difficulty set by the dealer. Dice that roll a 1 are considered Pathetic and removed from your dice pool.
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III. LotYour delver had a lot in life, before you found them.
Roll one d6 on the table below and record the results.

Equipped Dice
To begin, delvers may choose one die from their pool to wield their starting weapon. Such dice are equipped dice.Armor, shields, weapons, grimoire, and torches are objects that require at least one equipped die to wield. Otherwise, the item is held in your inventory with other objects.
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IV. CraftYour craft is your only real skill. It might save your life.Distraction is expertise in the art of diverting attention.
Forgery is flawless imitation of notes, heraldry, or seals.
Rhetoric cleaves to the nerve of even the most stubborn foe.
Torment is the art of inflicting pain, grief, or suffering.
Alchemy affords one the ill-conjured brew, elixir, & potion.
Sabotage compels entry through even the strongest of wards.No matter the situation, you can perform your craft by making a roll with your strongest die. On a 1, the die is considered pathetic and removed from your dice pool. When using your craft, any roll better than pathetic is enough to succeed, but when a pathetic die is cast, your craft fails.Narrate failure and try again if you must. You can keep attempting your craft as long as you have dice to roll.
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V. FealtyYour fealty is an oath by which you are bound. It ties you to a faction in the world, allowing for the use of altars.To begin, you are a delver in The Delvers’ Guild. Write either phrase in the field for fealty and add a torch and a spade to your inventory, compliments of the guild.As the game plays out, you may take on new titles or you may remain a delver, even as you traverse The Pathetic Realm, find loot, make allies, slay foes, and swear new fealties.Being in The Delvers’ Guild means your altar is any place where the dead are entombed, as well as basic holy shrines.
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VI. IdentityDescribe yourself and roll once on the table below for your name. Optionally, roll once again for the late noble house you once served. You may also choose at will from the table or bring your own name and house to the game and its world.Delvers who shared the same noble house are not necessarily related, but are likely to share a history, for good or ill.

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Playing Without a Lot - Barbaric DelversPlaying without a lot allows you to start out stronger but utterly deprived of abilities, gold, items, or weapons.They will call you barbarian - uncouth, unwashed, and altogether uncivilized. However, you begin with more dice.Roll on the table below or choose.

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VII. Plight
Roll once for every three delvers at the table.

Here Ends Setup

• CHARACTER SHEETS

Illustrated by Rob Matthews

TAP IMAGES TO PROGRESS TO THE NEXT CHAPTER

GAMEPLAY

The dealer will throw you into a world of peril and pity.
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Peril
Roll your dice to save yourself from peril.With as many dice as you deem worthy, roll a total above a difficulty set by the dealer- to avoid harm, traverse dangerous ground, or do just about anything else where failure is perilous. You should only roll when in danger.Example:
To thwart the local constabulary, the delvers were made aware of some very powerful potions, created by a long-dead wretch that lived up in the church steeple.“None have dared retrieve the old crone’s corpse, or her accursed elixirs. The climb is impossible, you see, what with the rotting wood, housing several hives of wasps. There are no steps and the heavy bell is held by a thinning rope.”In this, the dealer can see many opportunities for peril. As play resumes, she has the players roll to navigate these dangers, should they wish to prevail without wound or death.
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Rolls & Risk
You are not particularly skilled in anything other than your craft. In fact, delvers are uniquely unequipped to salvage the ruins of the realm. Every roll of the dice represents the full measure of your will to press onward through peril.The dealer should only ask for a roll in the most dire times when failure would lead to grievous injury, or death.Which dice you roll comes down to what you are willing to risk. Roll a 1 and the die is destroyed. The die is considered Pathetic and is removed from your dice pool.LOSE ALL YOUR DICE TO KILL YOUR CHARACTER.Think of every individual die as a small part of yourself. The casting of a Pathetic Die is treated as something erosive to your body or mind. If you lose a die, perhaps that part of you was always missing.Rolling a 1 does not mean you fail, necessarily. You can lose a Pathetic Die and still have a strong enough total to resolve the roll successfully. In this instance, all seated may agree to a success at a cost. The dealer narrates their action as a success, but a detriment of some kind is added to increase tension. The result of 1, while indeed pathetic, still counts toward your total.Dice Destruction
Place your Pathetic Dice off to the side, in a pouch, in the center of the table, or with the dealer. Fear not, they may yet return to your pool, in time.
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Darkness & Blight
Without a source of light, like a torch or lantern, darkness closes in and you are subject to Blight. Those Blighted must treat any die that rolls a 1 or 2 as Pathetic. Tenacious, hungry, Blight stalks in places where darkness has lain unscathed for too long. When the darkness starves, it leaches on trespassers. Light is your only protection.Magic seeps into open wounds and flesh infected by venom. Treat infection like Blight, a leach upon your mortal coil.Blight stacks in every new area until dispelled by light. After treating 1 or 2 as Pathetic, a new stack of Blight demands a 3 be counted, and so on.
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Area Difficulty
Each new area encountered by delvers has its own difficulty.Example:
The players have spent the day learning more about the potions they found in the church steeple. The apothecary has been amiable, but the townsfolk regard the delvers as crazed pilgrims. The dealer tells them that this is a safer place than most, as long as they keep the apothecary happy. She sets the difficulty for the apothecary shop at 6. Any and all rolls herein need to beat this difficulty to succeed.Some time later that night, the shopkeeper tells the delvers of a thriving rathskeller underneath the apothecary. This hidden tavern is a place for scoundrels to lay low, so the odds of a knife in the back are high. The delvers are on edge, alert, but overcome with the feeling they are unprepared. For what? They don’t know, and that’s the point, they’re in the underbelly now. The dealer decides that the difficulty for any perilous action taken in this rathskeller, whether it be carousing, thieving, hiding, fleeing - all of it is rolled against a difficulty of 15.
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Abandon All Hope
Dice may become weak and few, things may look grim. Perhaps you cannot always rely on yourself. Maybe it's best to quit while you're ahead. That's up to you, just remember:Eventually, you will be gone.
Pity is all that can save you.
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Pity
Pity marks a moment when Fate took regretful notice of your meddling, deciding to bequeath unto you magical boons.Draw a card from the deck each time you lose a die. These cards make up your hand of Pity. Possession of these cards does not keep you alive should your dice run out. However, should you meet an untimely end, your spirit will remain.Pity can be played in three ways:- to lower difficulty
- to recover dice
- to perform ritesTo Lower Difficulty
Pity can be played to lower the difficulty of a roll by the number on the card. Pity may be played in combination to lower a roll’s difficulty further but all Pity must be played before rolling. Court cards cannot lower difficulty.To Recover Dice
By the light of a candle at an Altar, you can play your Pity to recover lost dice. You may even end up with more dice than before. The numbers on the cards tell you the strength of your recovery, and can be combined to great effect:Tithe a 2 and a 4 to recover a d6 to your pool. Give two 4s to recover a d8. To tithe is to surrender Pity to the flame.To Perform Rites
Court cards serve as the keys to unlocking real magic. Only with the right hand of cards can hidden wisdom be revealed.After rites have been performed, altars crumble to dust.

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Pitiful Characters
Once Pity has been played, it leaves your hand. If your hand of Pity exceeds 3 cards, you are considered Pitiful.You have not played your Pity and some say you resemble the undead. While Pitiful, treat the number of cards in your hand as your new threshold for Pathetic Dice. If you hold 4 cards, any die that rolls 4 or under is considered Pathetic.Example:
Josh has a hand of 3 Pity cards. They cast a Pathetic Die and gain a fourth card. Josh is now Pitiful. With a hand of 4 cards, Josh's dice will be destroyed on any roll under 5.

INVENTORY

Equipped & Unequipped Items
Delvers can hold anything as long as they can justify it.
However, weapons, armor, shields, and torches are slotted as equipped items. Your inventory is for unequipped items.Equipped items have usage dice of the player’s choosing.Some items like armor or shields may come with intrinsic dice that the dealer will hand over to serve as the item’s usage die, while others demand dice from your own pool.
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Weapons & Ammunition
There are two slots for weapons.Ranged weapons fill one slot, but require ammunition to be of use. A quiver of arrows, for example, fills one slot.When casting Pathetic Dice to attack or defend, the equipped item breaks unless unbreakable, in which case it is dropped.Armor & Shields
There is one slot for armor.
When casting a Pathetic die to defend, the armor breaks.There is one slot for a shield.
When casting a Pathetic die to defend, the shield breaks.Torches & Lanterns
There is one slot for your chosen source of light.
When casting a Pathetic die as an attack or when its light wanes, the torch burns out entirely. A lantern’s light can be shielded to avoid detection. Unlike a torch, the light can be extinguished and reignited without destroying a die. The die is instead returned to your pool until a new die is equipped to the lantern.
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Adding Usage Dice
Weapons, armor, torches, and ammunition can be improved if taken to a blacksmith or magic crafter. It may be that fabled weapons of yore carry more than one, two or even three dice. A torch can be improved to a lantern, or even be imbued with magic, allowing for more dice to be packed in.

WEALTH

Wealth can be spent for items, knowledge, magic, and hirelings, but looting gold comes with a roll of dice. The dice rolled cannot be equipped to an item in a slot.Finding Gold
When gold is found, any combined roll of your unequipped dice nets you gold in equal amount. This can lead a delver to perish in the pursuit of gold. If finding gold kills a delver, the gold is Cursed, as are any who dare take it.Chests
A chest can be carried in its own separate slot. Chests don’t have usage dice, but they do take up space, especially for a Miser, who can hold a chest in any slot, even choosing to fill every available slot with a chest. A Miser may also choose to assign a usage die to a chest, in order to wield it as a weapon. Rolling a Pathetic Die when attacking ensures it bursts into pieces, scattering its contents.Locked chests hold untold riches known only to the Dealer.Coins & Bribes
Gold is most commonly found in the shape of Coins, but the right amount can be counted as a Bribe. When you possess 100 coins, you can pool them into a bribe. When paying somebody with a bribe, you may roll your strongest die not already equipped in a slot. Any roll better than Pathetic ensures the bribed party is satisfied with their newfound gratuity.A bribe amounting to 200 coins is always successful and a chest may be used as a bribe. These will always prove satisfactory to the recipient, even without a roll.

HIRELINGS

Offer gold or persuade non-player characters to recruit them in your struggles. The base difficulty for hiring help is 6.Rolling a 1 to recruit a hireling could entail any number of unexpected outcomes. Maybe a hidden blade is revealed and the would-be acolyte tries to make off with all your coin. Pathetic dice might represent the pain of rejection by a potential ally opting for solitude over companionship.Hireling Dice
When you recruit a hireling, the Dealer will give them a usage die to roll for everything. Casting a Pathetic die means they perish. The Troubadour can choose to hand over a die of their own to save a hireling, or bolster their defenses, given the die is not already equipped in a slot.A Troubadour’s hireling may have more than one usage die.The willing dismissal or murder of a hireling will destroy their die as readily as misplacement or deadly neglect.If the only die remaining in your pool is lent to your hireling, congratulations. You are now them.If you happen to survive, earn Pity and visit altars. Rekindle your dice pool and venture forth unto new perils.
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Hireling Behaviors
When the players run into a non-player character, roll on the table below to see how they might behave under your employ, with insight into their lot in life.Roll a d6 thrice. Your hireling is a…

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Hirelings have no house, but they have a name and age…