Beyond the bottom and looking straight up, where bits of the inverted well-rim broke free and tumbled into open sky, it became clear I hadn't found my mark. One shotty knot - that, or something cut the rope - and I was set to confront it directly. Unfamiliar lands stretched out beneath, foreign stars glared from on high, nothing but cold air in the interim. Behind me, the suspended well-mouth pinched into a line and faded, spitting one last brick into the clouds.

Have you read the stories? Along the ever-twisting bristles of the Outer Kosmos, there is a lowest-layer, where the chitinous legs of the Carrier coil like a knot around a perfect pinhole. Rumor and legend obey the same thesis—here, amidst a torrid sea of unmarried truths, there is a common end, the Last Stop. Terminus. Evensink, the Teeth of Ages, world-wound - the bedrock of the universe. No going back now...


Down the Worldwell is a game about broken places and the timid folk that claim to own them. It is about the strains, stresses and disorders of an old, unpredictable world at the bottom of the universe, the last stop on every limb of the outer kosmos. The homesteaders call it Dornn--the Broken Lands-- so frequently visited by catastrophe the ground itself can no longer properly hold shape without falling prey to broken worldlaw and magic malpractice. Held and burned for millenia by the vaunted legions of the old world, stolen by the temperamental shoves of the immortal Human Empires, desperately protected by the surviving Inheritors, it is a knotted sprawl of superstructural ruin and discordant anti-nature.

In these suffocated lands, now governed only by recluses, immortalesques and deranged ideologues, where no map nor road can reliably lead you where you wish to go, it falls to the Travellers to keep the world alive.

Players will pilot these Travellers, the bold-or-foolish few who forsake the paranoid comfort of ruin-state life to hunt for fame, money, history, truth and purpose across Dornn's ever-shifting frontiers. Life is a challenge in the Dornnian wilds, where disaster-warped creatures of unknown intent stalk the realm, world-law is fickle, the gods are unresponsive and magic is terribly unstable.

Taking inspiration from both OSR-style high-stakes low-fantasy and ultra-high-magic nonsense beyond even D&D's scope, Down the Worldwell's system is a medium-weight TTRPG about strange abilities and strategic sacrifice. A traveller's prowess and experience will be measured by the versatility of their skills and the myriad manipulative spells and abilities they learn, pulled from from the arc charts and spellbooks of Dornn's many Tactical Occupations. Be wary, however--combat is highly lethal, injury is difficult to rectify, and everything hinges on the delicate balance of magically-induced strain on the stability of the real. Sometimes, the answer lies elsewhere...


Though the setting guide for Down the Worldwell is not yet complete, this site will always contain the essential information for players to create characters and GMs to acquaint themselves with the setting. Eventually, if you're willing to wait it out, I might just publish a full-meat system and setting guide. In that strange far-future world, the guide may even include stuff like this:

• 13 playable ancestries with a lot of weird history and bonuses
• 15 "tactical occupations", extended power trees that describe different combat pursuits.
• More than 100 occupation-agnostic abilities you can throw at your players.
• Hundreds of strange items, where they came from, and who wants them.
• Many accounts of the warped and cruel creatures inhabiting Broken Lands.
• A positively stupid amount of tables for generating people, places and things.
• Hundreds of pages of gibberish lore, locations, relationships and systems to use as idea fodder.
• A long timeline upon which you can etch your campaign stories anywhere.

The links at the top will take you through the basics of the system. The System will teach you the rules, The World will give you way too much information about the legendary realms of Dornn, Character Creation will help automate some of the fiddlier aspects of making a new PC, andThe Assembly is for my West Marches players only, for now. There are no physical materials for Down the Worldwell (yet!), and much of this site is currently under construction. This project is currently a noncommercial hobby by a single person. Progress will be immeasurably slow and bound to my real-world obligations. My apologies for the wait.

While the system-particulars of Down the Worldwell do not prescribe a particular tone, there are a few implied content warnings. Your table ought to be comfortable with more grounded depictions of severe injury, death, mental strain and various traumas. In addition, the included material on the Dornn setting will occasionally depict the social and political issues that plague the varied fantasy species of the realm. While no content in Down the Worldwell is intended to represent or resemble anything in the real world, there will inevitably be familiar concepts.

If anything at all reads poorly or makes you uncomfortable, please reach out to me at iznaroth@gmail.com.