Category Archives: Beyond Dread Portals

Fun Facts about Beyond Dread Portals

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Beyond Dread Portals is coming to Kickstarter next week.

If someone puts you on the spot and asks about the game, Roll D20 and consult this table!

Roll 1D20 Fun Fact!
1 Fun Fact about Dandies in Beyond Dread Portals. Not only do they fight threats to civilisation from beyond the magic portals, but they look wonderfully stylish and flashing while they do it.
2 Did you know the ancient decedent and ever-shifting architectural wonder that is the infinite ring-city of Ys is now ruled by an undead Autarch?
3 Ys has many Guilds which regulate and coordinate the professional people of the Empire. They struggle to expand their influence across the Five Worlds. Sometimes, that influence is used for nefarious reasons.
4 They say the League of Explorers cannot call itself a guild because of its sloppy attitude and wanton behaviour. Serious academics say that pedants shouldn’t be allowed to smear an organisation essential to the safe exploration and defence of the realm.
5 Wizards in Beyond Dread Portals can be many things. House Wizards of the Five Families, Academic researchers who provide extra magical support for expeditions, glowing Priests of Dawn, not to mention cheeky fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants chancers from the League of Adventurers. They may share a class, but each character is an individual.
6 Beyond Dread Portals uses a rule system that should be familiar if you’ve played the World’s Favourite Fantasy system at any point. It just doesn’t require much pulling out of hair and focuses on having a good time.
7 The setting is a weird fantasy Renaissance City, with all the intrigue that entails, which has a tenuous grip in the worlds beyond the magical portals that it’s magicians’ control. Is this the basis of a viable Empire?
8 Goblins, in Beyond Dread Portals, are a fungal species from the world of Samara. They were added to the League of Explorer’s Bestiary after award-winning work by Associate Sage Sugunus de Arcani, which unfortunately spread them to the rest of the Empire. Classification Vermin.
9 Despite having an inbuilt setting, you can easily use the system for other worlds. For example, I’ve used it effortlessly for adventures set in King James I’s early years with Tudor adventurers working for Dr John Dee, dealing with supernatural threats from beyond.
10 Warriors trade in force of arms. They may have many class specialisms, such as Berserkers, Champion of Dawn, Heavy Infantry, Heavy Weapons Fighters, Sharpshooters, Swashbucklers and Swordmasters. Despite sharing a class, all Warriors are different.
11 There is an illegal trade in souls between the Hag Queens of Erebus and members of one of the Five Noble Houses of Ys. They regularly frame the Guard Dogs who guard the sealed Dread Portal to Erebus to cover up their crimes.
12 I’ve decided to reimagine an adventure, gamers of a certain age would have all played in the 80s, through the lens of Beyond Dread Portals and make it 100% more fun.  See this post for more info.
13 Beyond Dread Portals is nicely contained in a single 6 x 9 book, about 280 pages. The book includes enough character options, spells, setting details and creatures for years of play without overloading the GM or players. Why take three books into the gaming session when you can take one?
14 Erebus is an endless living cave system. The Empire of Ys attempted to set up a colony there, but its environment proved so alien that they barely got a foothold. Due to certain hostile native species, the colony failed and was abandoned. While officially still part of the Empire, apart from the Keep on the Edgelands, the Imperial presence on Erebus retreated behind a closed portal.
15 Nespo is often confused with Erebus because both worlds are officially off-limits. The League of Explorers had high hopes when they discovered the vast ruined civilisation that the harsh desert had eaten up. They, and their powerful patrons, thought it would be never never-ending treasure trove of wonderous magic items and easy gold and jewels. They were wrong. Erebus is where the Autarch originates.
16 Of the Five Worlds in Beyond Dread Portals, Tethys is a water world of many islands. But beware, its seas are infested with pirates, and creatures that love not the land dwellers live under the waves. Here, the adventurous spirit of the League of Explorers finds one of its purest expressions yet one of its highest rates of loss.
17 The Guild of the Black Rose is a rather sinister Merchant’s Guild since it has the firm backing of the Autarch and its Agents. Since the takeover, it has swallowed up all competitors and now spreads its influence through establishing new trade routes throughout the Five Worlds.
18 Gods? Yes, there are Gods in Beyond Dread Portals, including the nameless Dead God who gave up his name to become lord of Everything. With the Empire of Ys under the Autarch’s control, he and his worshipers might achieve that goal.
19 So, do you want to crawl on your knees through the Dungeon or run free exploring the infinite number of worlds Beyond Dread Portals?
20 In the original draft, Dr. Mitch left out the stats for dragons and had to be politely reminded to include them. Don’t be as forgetful as the good Dr. Sign up to be notified when his Beyond Dread Portals launches on Kickstarter next week.

Sign up to the pre-launch page to be notified when the campaign launches and be eligible for an Early Backer gift and entry into a prize draw.

Keep on the Edgelands

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This is a game of Beyond Dread Portals I’m bringing as a convention game to Grogmeet in November, and possibly as a short series of online games.  Its also highly likely to be offered as a stretch goal for the upcoming Kickstarter.

Here’s the pitch…

Come, oh Adventurer, to the Edge of the Empire of Ys!

The Lion Keep is a magnificent border fortress made of yellow brick. It was transported through a giant magic portal from the world of Samara. It now stands in the never-ending cave system that is the world of Erebus. It has some of the staff and traders from its days sitting in the sunlit grasslands of the Lion Empire. The Ysian Guilds also have representatives with offices within the walls.

Officially, the Imperial occupation of Erebus has ended. The colonists are either dead or gone home, and the Keep is the last Imperial outpost on Erebus. But there are regular expeditions into the nearby Caves of Mayhem, sponsored by patrons from the Guilds or the Five Noble Houses.

Good job you are all seasoned members of the League of Explorers. Treasure and glory will be yours. Perhaps you’ll even track down and kill the fabled giant three-headed monster known as the Grognard!

Revisit an old-school classic reimagined through the baroque fantasy lens of Beyond Dread Portals. Take part in the intrigue and power plays of the factions of the fort stuck between unimaginable riches and horrible damnation contained in the nearby Caves of Mayhem. Adventure as third-level characters, using the streamlined and sensible D20 fantasy system created by Paul Mitchener (Liminal, Out of Ashes, Age of Arthur).

Beyond Dread Portals, the End (for now)

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From the Beyond Dread Portals Kickstarter

It is with great regret that I’m cancelling the Beyond Dread Portals Kickstarter.

Since launch, its become clear to me that the campaign will not fund.

So I’m gracefully ending this current campaign at this point.

Your support has been overwhelming, as has the commitment of the production crew.

So I will regroup, replan and relaunch in the Autumn or early next year with a lower goal so the campaign funds quickly and attracts the attention that Dr Mitch’s game deserves.

When I relaunch the campaign, you’ll be notified via Kickstarter email, but also keep an eye out via my social media outlets (Facebook/Twitter and Discord channel, the link to which is on d101games.com).

Thank you for backing this campaign.

We shall be back.

Why I Wrote Beyond Dread Portals

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A guest post from Paul Mitchener (Liminal, Age of Arthur, Hunters of Alexandria, Tombs of the Necromancer to name a few author credits) explaining why he wrote our multi-dimensional Fantasy Adventure game, Beyond Dread Portals.  Take it away Mitch! 

For me, it’s not usually a selling point when I hear that something was over 20 years in the making. So I’ll just say that Beyond Dread Portals is based on ideas I was playing with, and a fantasy campaign I ran about 20 years ago. The campaign was human-centric, without the usual elves and dwarves, world-hopping, and started the player characters off at high level, letting them rub against powerful enemies and make big changes to the setting.

As is the way of such things, I enjoyed it and then moved on to other things. But periodically, I went back to it, sketching more things out in the setting, and started playing more with the mechanical side of things. It still wasn’t something I was aiming to publish, but it was something I was writing for fun.

It was only more recently, though still years ago now, that I started taking Beyond Dread Portals more seriously, thinking of it as something for other people to enjoy. This meant feedback, tightening up the writing, scrapping things which didn’t fit, and overall thinking about the design. Best of all, it meant more play, this time with a view to playtesting. It felt very natural to speak to Newt about this, as someone who likes and has published things of a similar nature and knows about tight game design.

Early feedback from Newt led to something simpler and better at the system end of things, and better presented and explained from the setting point of view. Best of all, he was engaged with it, clearly enjoying the setting and the concepts.

This is drifting away from the question, though… why did I write Beyond Dread Portals as something for publication? The short answer is that I needed to! But more specifically, it started to feel like it offered something a little different. Specifically.

  • Human-centric world-hopping fantasy. World-hopping is nothing new, but being more human-centric is rarer when combined with high magic world-hopping fantasy.
  • Military expansion of an empire and all its ills, while the core of the empire is thoroughly rotten.
  • Exploration of different places and cultures.
  • Political intrigue with competing factions and player characters absolutely changes the setting as a result.

As for the game system, it was a fun chance to design broadly in the OSR space, with all of its creativity, while still doing absolutely my own thing. Beyond Dread Portals began as an AD&D 2e setting but became something fresh and new. The inspiration there – things which effectively gave me permission – included rules sets which changed things to fit a concept, such as Newt’s own Crypts and Things – and systems I think of as post-OSR, which weren’t at all clones of the older D&D books, but changed things, sometimes radically. I won’t give a full ludography here, but some things I wanted from the design were.

  • A broadly familiar feel to the rules, as expected from the base. There are ability scores, classes, and levels – I’ve kept what I wanted for the game, and changed other things.
  • Rules elements that fit the setting along with simplicity. There are three broad classes – warrior, expert, and magician – and setting-appropriate abilities which customise these classes.
  • Less of an emphasis on looting and fighting, but more on exploration and intrigue. The combat rules are solid and streamlined, broadly as expected from the basis, but not everything is about combat. For instance, there are experience rewards for seeing new places, and firm guidance for the use of social abilities.

Taking the DIY ethos of OSR gaming on board, Beyond Dread Portals is my D&D, with my sensibilities. I can’t wait to see it out there so that it’s no longer mine but ours.