This is Dreadnought!
Dreadnought is a TTRPG that pits nobledark heroes against cosmic horrors borne from depthless ice and sea.
Players must work together to survive and overcome their dreadful ordeal before they succumb to madness.
One player is the Dread Maker. They use the game's unique Dread mechanic to build tension, drive action, and move the players' story forward.
Dreadnought is our third full length book in a shared world.
Our first book — Nolan Locke's Exquisite Corpse — is a system-neutral guide for telling RPG stories. It introduced the mad mariner Nolan Locke and the drowned world known as Weiroads. Below those seas, The Deep Things see without eyes and plot to drown what's left of the world to feed their eternal hunger.
The second in the series — Inquisitor Kada's Exquisite Corpse — introduced Inquisitor Kada and the far side of Weiroads where the deserts are possessed by grief-mad angels known as Eidolons. Her book offers system-neutral tools for world-building that you and your players explore together.
Together, these two books define the moments and spaces where characters become heroes and choices become stories of grimdark adventure.
Dreadnought: War of The Heretic King brings all this together in a final epic struggle between what you've been told and what is true.
Between entropy and eternity, ruination and rebirth.
What's inside
In addition to the expanded rules for Dreadnought, here's a quickview of what's in the book.
A vast and evocative world to explore and customize
27 interconnected characters with illustrations and backgrounds
27 illustrated horrors with lore and game mechanics
27 illustrated relics with lore and tie-in quests
9 war machines
9 playable character archetypes
3 new Great Cities with cultural, political, and religious lore
6 Lightless Wastes with tons of lore, illustrations, and a suite of maps
Tons of rollable tables for world-building and story design
Vandilar, The Frozen West of Weiroads
Weiroads is a world cursed by madness, dead gods, and heretic kings. Folks dwell in ancient cities clinging to the last defensible positions or else set out to the frozen west where the sea dies and ice reigns.
Dreadnought introduces a new wilderness: Vandilar — the frozen crown of Weiroads. Inside the ice, dead and dormant things wait for someone to find what was lost and forgotten before the world drowned.
You can explore environments like the Woods of the Oneblood or search for truth in the twisted catacombs below The Waking Mausoleum.
Relics
In Dreadnought, items and equipment are called "relics," and this book includes 27 of the most deadly and cautionary relics from a world at war. Each is illustrated and includes lore written to inspire your next quest and horrify your players.
Horrors
No RPG is complete without dreadful shadows creeping in from the edges of night and sanity. Dreadnought includes 27 monsters from our ice-locked world like mutating Ursathropes, shadowy Stygians, and carnivorous Bone Briars.
Some are legendary — older than time and deeper than memory.
All are yours to customize.
The Dread Maker
One player is the Dread Maker. They use the game's unique Dread mechanic to build tension, drive action, and move the players' story forward.
Characters
Dreadnought includes 27 new, interconnected characters with backgrounds and illustrations. You can use these characters as written or customize them for your own story.
How to play
Dreadnought is a rules-light game with no stats and simple mechanics that fit on a single sheet. It's designed to be about the characters and their story. The rules are built to drive the narrative forward using an Apocalypse Engine with a dreadful twist.
Dread controls the game; players control the story.
Dread is represented with a creeping die that starts as a d4 and grows as the players encounter increasingly dreadful horrors and events. Players make moves and take action by rolling the challenge dice — 2d8 — trying to roll higher than the dread die.
Archetypes & Factions
Players choose an archetype to play. Each archetype benefits from a unique ability and specialized moves.
Players choose a faction for their hero, then roll a d6 to learn what past deeds led them to join it. On a 5-6, that faction becomes their enemy, and they are bound to no faction at all.
