The Well is a game of exploration, undead monsters, and survival.

The Well is an RPG with simple dice rules, a handful of tactical consideration, and a lot of player contribution. Climb the Well, defeat your undead ancestors, and come home bearing lost treasures and indelible scars.

Buy the PDF now at itch.io or DriveThruRPG, or order the softcover!

The first supplement, Additional Denizens of The Well, is now available in PDF in the SPG store or at itch.io!

Listen to the game played on the One Shot Podcast or the Cast Die Podcast!

Gravediggers make a point of being prepared.

Unique Setting

The Well takes place in an underground city, generations and generations after anyone remembers there even being an “above ground.” They mine needed resources out of the earth around them, entomb their dead, and when they’ve run out of materials or space, they move downward. They go down along the Well, a massive shaft of empty space running straight up and down, farther than anyone knows in both directions. Down leads to new tunnels, new resources, and more distance from the tombs they’ve left behind.

Only a few brave or crazy souls go back up, because some malicious force animates their dead ancestors. These people, called gravediggers, go up to put down the unquiet dead and reclaim lost treasures, usually left behind as grave goods.

Unique Monsters

Simple shambling dead and clever revenants are the most common abominations of the Well, but the magic that animates them creates whatever twisted reflections of life it can manage: bats made from skulls with wings of hands, snakes assembled from unused spines using animal skulls from teeth, spiders of all sizes built out of bones, and the tangles of shapeless flesh and bone that resemble nothing at all.

These little fellows are some of the most popular abominations.

Five minutes, then it’s time to climb the Well.

Fast System and Fast Character Generation

The Well features an original system that uses simple dice rolls and gives players lots of control over their levels of risk and the consequences that befall their characters. Character generation can take as little as five minutes, letting you get to the gaming faster.

Roll a single die, “play a gambit” to add bonus dice based on just how risky you want to be, and add them up. You can do well and suffer complications at the same time, and no roll is wasted: even a poor roll gives you some progress toward your goal.