Print & Play Kit
Print this kit, grab a d20 + tokens, and open the Game-Master console on a laptop — it narrates as the Curator, rolls dice, and draws events for your table.
How to Play (Hybrid Rules)
The printed board is the world; the /gm console is the Dungeon Master.
Setup. Each player prints a character sheet and picks a Race, Class, and Subclass card. Lay out the Descent board. Open /gm on a laptop — it is the Curator (your live game master).
A turn. On your turn, move your token one space along the Descent. The GM console reveals the room (it announces it aloud), then you resolve it: fight an Enemy card, open a Treasure, brave a Trap, etc. The console rolls all dice and narrates outcomes.
Combat. To attack: roll d20 + your Attack vs the enemy's AC. On a hit, roll the weapon/ability dice for damage. Enemies act when the GM says so. Drop to 0 HP = downed.
Checks. Roll d20 + ability modifier vs a DC the GM sets. Ability modifier = (score − 10) ÷ 2, rounded down.
Floors. Clear a floor's rooms, then choose to Descend (deeper, richer, deadlier) or Extract (bank your Marks and end the run). Every third floor the audience votes (GM draws a Modifier). Watch for Weather and rare Realm Fractures.
Win. There is no winning the Descent — only how deep you got and how good the story was. The Curator keeps score.
The Descent — Board
A floor is a track of rooms. Print one per floor (or reuse with a floor counter).
START
DESCEND
/ EXTRACT
Trackers: Floor ▢▢ · Marks ▢▢▢ · Hype ▢▢▢ · Corruption ▢▢
Room Cards
One deck of rooms; the GM console reveals which you face.
Lineage Cards (Races)
Adaptable wanderers of the broken roads, quick to learn and slow to break.
Trait: Resolute — gain 10% more XP from every victory.
Ageless children of the old forests, keen-eyed and deft of hand.
Trait: Keen Senses — +2 to Perception and ranged accuracy.
Stone-born and stubborn, forged in the deep halls beneath the Sundering.
Trait: Stonehide — start each battle with +2 effective armor.
Tusked survivors of the wastes, whose fury outlasts their wounds.
Trait: Savage Blood — deal +2 melee damage when below half health.
Small, lucky, and impossibly hard to corner in a fight.
Trait: Lucky — once per battle, reroll a failed attack.
Class Cards
Each class lists its starting kit, subclasses, and ability cards.
A bulwark of steel who solves most problems edge-first.
A scholar of the shattered weave, hurling fire and frost from afar.
A shadow with a knife, paid in coin and the silence of guards.
A vessel of a fractured god, mending wounds and smiting the unclean.
A hunter of the wilds who never misses what they mean to hit.
A silver-tongued performer who turns wit and song into a weapon.
An oathbound knight whose blade carries the weight of the divine.
A keeper of the wild places who calls on thorn, root, and storm.
A disciplined martial artist who strikes faster than the eye can follow.
A scholar of death who drains the living and drags the fallen back to their feet.
Loot, Rarity & Perks
A reliable blade of pitted steel.
Quick blades that reward a hidden approach.
A focus for the shattered weave.
Holy weight, brought down hard.
Yew and sinew, death at a distance.
Crude, but it bites.
A blade grown from a sliver of Aethyr. It hums.
Woven with faint protective sigils.
Supple and quiet.
Interlocked rings, heavy and sure.
Battered full plate from a fallen knight.
Restores 12 HP.
Restores 30 HP.
Restores 10 MP.
For doors that prefer to stay shut.
Cold, heavy, and clearly important.
A warm light that steadies the heart. +1 max HP per level when carried.
A fragment of the world's broken heart. Gather them all.
Technically a weapon. The crowd loves it.
Standard-issue crowd persuasion.
Someone's pride and joy. Now yours.
Fires a slug at an unreasonable speed. Ad plays on reload.
Crinkly, hot, and weirdly protective.
Looted from a former SWAT enthusiast.
Servos whine; the brand decal is peeling.
Restores 12 HP. Tastes like blue.
Restores 30 HP. Do not exceed one. (You will.)
Restores 12 Weave/mana. Side effects: clarity.
Opens doors that the System forgot to lock.
Redeemable at any Black Market terminal.
A flair of corporate favor. The crowd notices you more.
A band of worked metal, faintly enchanted.
A pendant that hums with worn power.
Smelling salts laced with life-magic — revives a fallen ally to 25% HP.
Enemy Stat Blocks
The GM console draws and scales these; stats shown at base (Floor 1).
A wiry thing with too many teeth and a stolen knife.
Its eyes catch a light that isn't there.
It is a chicken. It should not be this confident. Its eyes promise violence.
Desperate, armed, and not interested in talking.
Bone bound by the Sundering's spite.
Robed and chanting, eyes glassy with devotion.
A mountain of grey muscle that smells of rot.
A wound in the air shaped like a person who is gone.
A construct of stone and shardglass, ancient and patient.
The one who broke the world, wearing a crown of floating shards.
A hovering eye live-streaming your every mistake.
Still clutching a clipboard. Still furious about your lawn.
It accepts no coins and dispenses only violence.
Skipped leg day, not arm day. You will learn this firsthand.
A bloated bureaucrat-thing in a dented hardhat, here to enforce 'quotas'.
Chrome, patient, and authorized to use lethal customer service.
The smiling host of the whole bloody program, wearing a headset and your future.
Scarred and cautious — it has watched its kin fall to you.
It has united the warrens against you, and it is furious.
Crowned in scrap, the apex of everything you taught it to fear.
Bigger, hungrier, and it remembers your scent.
The pack leader, grown vast on the bones of its lessers.
A wolf the size of a wagon, sculpted by your relentless violence.
Reassembled with armor and a grudge.
It commands the dead you keep making.
Death taught it everything it knows. You were the teacher.
Relic Cards
Legendary boons, cursed bargains, and forge-only Amalgams.
+1 DEX to the whole party each time you descend. It snowballs.
+25 max HP to every hero.
+3 STR to every hero.
+3 INT and +3 WIS to every hero.
Doubles Marks gained — but elites prowl more often.
Once per run, the party rises from a total wipe.
+4 STR/DEX/INT to all — but the party bleeds each combat round.
+50% Marks & Hype — but every hero's max HP is halved.
A free relic each floor — but each floor also hides an extra elite.
+3 to all abilities.
+35 max HP and +2 CON to all.
+5 STR & +5 DEX — a weapon of pure offense.
Floor Decks — Themes · Realms · Weather · Modifiers · Traps · Sponsors · Companions
Themes & Realm Fractures
Glowing fungi pulse in the dark; spores drift like lazy snow.
Pistons hammer, gears grind, and everything here is made of malice and machinery.
Stained glass weeps red light over pews of bone. Something here still prays.
Mirror-bright crystals throw back a hundred warped reflections of you.
Black water laps at drowned streets; the dead here never stopped wandering.
Vast skeletal wings arch overhead — the boneyard of things that should not rise.
Reality tears open onto a screaming red waste. The air itself is hostile.
Blinding order; choirs of judgement. Even mercy here has edges.
An endless server-temple of grinding logic that wants to optimize you away.
A dead-white silence where the cold is a predator with patience.
Weather
Whiteout snow howls through the halls.
Corrosive drizzle hisses on every surface — it stings as you move.
The ceiling rains burning rock.
A red moon bloats overhead — the foes here are bigger, the rewards richer.
Darkness swallows the floor; the crowd leans in.
Audience-Vote & World-Event Modifiers
The crowd voted for greed — Marks doubled this floor.
The crowd wants carnage — packs run larger.
The crowd summoned a boss onto this floor.
A wave of audience goodwill restores the party.
The crowd jeers — enemies hit harder this floor.
Every vault gleams — treasure is guaranteed legendary, Marks doubled.
The floor is falling apart — fewer rooms, richer rewards. Move.
The monsters turned on management — the boss arrives weakened.
Vendors flood the floor — extra Black Index terminals.
Everything is lethal and everything is lucrative — enemies brutal, treasure legendary, triple Marks.
Triple Marks, vaults everywhere — and triple the elites guarding them.
Every foe is a monster of legend. Survive and the rewards are enormous.
Traps
a spiked pit
a swinging blade
a dart volley
a gout of flame
an arcane glyph
Sponsors
+30% Marks. Quest (Floor 6): a free relic.
+2 STR & +2 DEX to all. Quest (Floor 6): 60 Marks.
+3 INT & +3 WIS to all. Quest (Floor 6): 60 Marks.
+25 max HP to all. Quest (Floor 6): a free relic.
Companions (trust at your peril)
A jittery wizard peeks from behind a pillar. "I-I'll ward you with something powerful! Just... don't let anything hit me."
A goblin spreads a blanket of "definitely real, definitely legal" wares. "Friend price! Friend price!"
A knight bound in rattling chains kneels. "Lend me purpose, and my strength is yours — though the curse may yet take me."
A grinning treasure hunter waves a map. "Partners? I know where the good stuff is. Sixty-forty. My favor, obviously."
A gaunt prisoner clutches the bars of a broken cell. "Free me and I'll watch your back. I swear it."
Character Sheet (print one per player)
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