Josh McCrowall HIS MAJESTY THE WORM
"The forest's thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground. With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones."
His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities designed for dungeon crawling
The Game Master is given tools to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element.
Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.
Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!
The game has robust procedures. Characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World.
The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Roleplaying drives the game forward.
Everything You Need to Play (Just Add a Tarot Deck!)
The game is intended for a traditional setup between a single GM and 3-6 players. It emphasizes long-term, Metroidvania-like play. The book is 404 pages long, split up over 10 chapters and 5 appendices. It is a complete game with everything you need in one tome (just add a tarot deck).
Third-party content
His Majesty the Worm was designed to be accessible and easily hackable. As such, it has a very permissive open license, letting anybody make content for the game, for free or commercially.
Find more info, play material and a Discord server here!
Co-published by Exalted Funeral Press & Rise Up Comus
USA Import
Hardback
404 b/w pages
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler masterpiece, bridging the way to the next generation of tabletop fantasy games. Inventive mechanics that spur your game forward, it is a must-read for designer tinkerers and a must-play for fans of avant garde roleplaying games.” - W.F. Smith, Prismatic Wasteland (author of Barkeep on the Borderlands)
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler honed to the sharpest edge. The tarot card mechanics are novel while easy to understand. Every design decision and subsystem has been painstakingly hand crafted, with explanation for WHY it exists right here in the book, letting you hack the game into something that fits at your table. The Challenge mechanics reward clever players and tactics, keeping everyone engaged and tuned in for the perfect opportunity to lay down their next card. This game will blow your socks off!" - Ty Pitre, Mindstorm Press (author of Swineheart Motel)
“An instant classic. Brilliant and weird and eminently portable—my favorite combination. The monsters you choose to include in your campaigns and dungeons turn into the powers your players can wield. Love it. The formatting is beautiful and the prose is readable and clear while still being evocative. Fantastic.” - Zephyr Studios
"The forest's thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground. With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones."
His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities designed for dungeon crawling
The Game Master is given tools to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element.
Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.
Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!
The game has robust procedures. Characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World.
The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Roleplaying drives the game forward.
Everything You Need to Play (Just Add a Tarot Deck!)
The game is intended for a traditional setup between a single GM and 3-6 players. It emphasizes long-term, Metroidvania-like play. The book is 404 pages long, split up over 10 chapters and 5 appendices. It is a complete game with everything you need in one tome (just add a tarot deck).
Third-party content
His Majesty the Worm was designed to be accessible and easily hackable. As such, it has a very permissive open license, letting anybody make content for the game, for free or commercially.
Find more info, play material and a Discord server here!
Co-published by Exalted Funeral Press & Rise Up Comus
USA Import
Hardback
404 b/w pages
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler masterpiece, bridging the way to the next generation of tabletop fantasy games. Inventive mechanics that spur your game forward, it is a must-read for designer tinkerers and a must-play for fans of avant garde roleplaying games.” - W.F. Smith, Prismatic Wasteland (author of Barkeep on the Borderlands)
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler honed to the sharpest edge. The tarot card mechanics are novel while easy to understand. Every design decision and subsystem has been painstakingly hand crafted, with explanation for WHY it exists right here in the book, letting you hack the game into something that fits at your table. The Challenge mechanics reward clever players and tactics, keeping everyone engaged and tuned in for the perfect opportunity to lay down their next card. This game will blow your socks off!" - Ty Pitre, Mindstorm Press (author of Swineheart Motel)
“An instant classic. Brilliant and weird and eminently portable—my favorite combination. The monsters you choose to include in your campaigns and dungeons turn into the powers your players can wield. Love it. The formatting is beautiful and the prose is readable and clear while still being evocative. Fantastic.” - Zephyr Studios
"The forest's thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground. With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones."
His Majesty the Worm is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities designed for dungeon crawling
The Game Master is given tools to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element.
Food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play and actually fun.
Tarot cards are used to create an action-packed combat system that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!
The game has robust procedures. Characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in roleplaying-driven camping scenes, and plot long-term schemes in the City at the center of the Wide World.
The relationships between companions, called Bonds, powers the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Roleplaying drives the game forward.
Everything You Need to Play (Just Add a Tarot Deck!)
The game is intended for a traditional setup between a single GM and 3-6 players. It emphasizes long-term, Metroidvania-like play. The book is 404 pages long, split up over 10 chapters and 5 appendices. It is a complete game with everything you need in one tome (just add a tarot deck).
Third-party content
His Majesty the Worm was designed to be accessible and easily hackable. As such, it has a very permissive open license, letting anybody make content for the game, for free or commercially.
Find more info, play material and a Discord server here!
Co-published by Exalted Funeral Press & Rise Up Comus
USA Import
Hardback
404 b/w pages
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler masterpiece, bridging the way to the next generation of tabletop fantasy games. Inventive mechanics that spur your game forward, it is a must-read for designer tinkerers and a must-play for fans of avant garde roleplaying games.” - W.F. Smith, Prismatic Wasteland (author of Barkeep on the Borderlands)
“His Majesty the Worm is a dungeon crawler honed to the sharpest edge. The tarot card mechanics are novel while easy to understand. Every design decision and subsystem has been painstakingly hand crafted, with explanation for WHY it exists right here in the book, letting you hack the game into something that fits at your table. The Challenge mechanics reward clever players and tactics, keeping everyone engaged and tuned in for the perfect opportunity to lay down their next card. This game will blow your socks off!" - Ty Pitre, Mindstorm Press (author of Swineheart Motel)
“An instant classic. Brilliant and weird and eminently portable—my favorite combination. The monsters you choose to include in your campaigns and dungeons turn into the powers your players can wield. Love it. The formatting is beautiful and the prose is readable and clear while still being evocative. Fantastic.” - Zephyr Studios
