Vaarn is a science-fantasy tabletop RPG setting from an Ennie-winning author and illustrator. It draws inspiration from novels such as Dune, Hyperion, The Book of the New Sun, and the graphic works of Moebius. Vaarn is a surreal and colourful world: a post-apocalyptic, post-human landscape, where the dividing line between flesh and machinery has blurred and the borders between magic, science, and faith have likewise become obscured.
Click here to download a preview PDF containing the introductory material, basic rules, and PC generation procedures. This preview is not final, and is subject to change.
The sun is going out, it is the end of history, and everything that could possibly happen has already happened and faded to dust. No two sources agree on the details of Vaarn’s etiolated past, and in truth such debates hold little significance. However, there are some facts that every resident of Vaarn can agree upon:
Vaarn is a sky-blue desert littered with the ruins of the far future.
Vaarn is chiefly inhabited by true-kin (non-mutated humans), cacogen (mutated humans), synths (robots), newbeasts (sapient animals), and mycomorphs (fungal revenants).
The sun is a dying red giant. It won’t go out in a human lifetime, but synths have reason to be concerned.
Vaarn is both archaic and futuristic. Think sword fights inside the wrecked husks of ancient spaceships.
To the south lies the New Hegemony, a proud, expanding true-kin empire. Theoretically the Hegemony rules Vaarn, but they have little presence besides a few fortified border towns.
Nanomachines are inside everything, and it’s normal to see wild animals with cameras growing out of their flesh or humans with parasitic artificial limbs.
Nobody can agree on the cause, but there was a Great Collapse, which destroyed most of human civilisation.
Before the Great Collapse the planet was dominated by the Autarchy, a dictatorship enacted by a dynasty of genetically modified God-kings.
Before the reign of the Autarchs, the Urth was ruled by AIs called the Titans. Something happened to them and they were overthrown, but the details are lost to history.
Finally, and most importantly, Vaarn is never the same twice. The fall of the dice determines how your version of the setting develops.
Mock-up for promotional purposes. Does not show actual size of book.
No Vaarnish nobleman would be caught dead without a cybernetic War Camel.
Vaults of Vaarn: Second Edition is a luxuriously produced hardback book, which contains the core rules for playing the acclaimed science-fantasy adventure game.
The game emphasises intuitive rules that are easy to remember, while being robust enough to do the hard work for you, leaving Referees and players free to enjoy the game without constantly looking things up. Less than 10 pages of the book are taken up by rules, with the remainder being dedicated to lavishly illustrated and evocatively written content which you can immediately use at your gaming table.
Sample layout - not final product.
The Book Includes:
10 playable Ancestries, detailing the sentient species of Vaarn. Players can embody haughty non-mutated True-Kin, mutated Cacogen, Newbeasts (ascended animal species), Neoblooms (sentient plants), Mycomorphs (fungal revenants), Synths (sentient machines), Lithlings (crystalline scholars), and the two-dimensional Planeyfolk, who are living casualties of hypergeometric experiments.
Procedually-generated equipment, including weapons, armour, adventuring gear, and Exotica, the far-future relics that everyone is searching for.
Characters can install cybernetic implants, open their minds to learn Mystic Gifts, study hypergeometric codexes, recruit followersandmercenaries, ride bizarre steeds, and tame the strange pets that inhabit the polychrome wasteland.
A freeform and creative magic system, where players spend HP to use Mystic Gifts defined by randomly generated keywords.
Abestiary of over 100 unique science-fantasy monsters. There are no orcs or elves here: instead players battle bizarre horrors like self-replicating Copycats, paradoxical Fractalisks, or colour-leeching Chromavores.
Fully-featured procedural map generation. With just a handful of dice dropped on blank paper, Referees can create fully mapped Vaarnish settlements, underground dungeons, and vast tracts of bluewilderness, all ready for exploration.
Gnomon, the City of Shaded Markets. A handcrafted Vaarnish city setting featuring seven NPC factions, which run the gamut from water-hoarding militias and clandestine cannibal cults to sun worshippers and gladiator lawyers.
Sample adventure locations, including Khenet Rock, Eigin Oasis, The Tomb of Nassak An-Rah, The Fount of Illustrious Flesh and Caeba in the Maw. These locations provide four challenging dungeons and two safe havens for your PCs.
Additional content generation tools allow for unique and surprising gameplay that will delight Referee and players equally. Generate entirereligions, assassins, books, drugs, meals, and poisons with just a handful of dice. Vaarn will always surprise you and is different every time you play.
A domed arcology, in which the true strain of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse.
The book is a B5-sized hardback, 320 pages long, with smyth-sewn lay flat binding and two-colour printing throughout. It is fully written and illustrated by one person, and represents the culmination of five years of work on this project.
Sample layout - not final product.
Mock-up image for promotional purposes. Not final product.
Referee Screen
The official Referee's Screen for Vaults of Vaarn: Second Edition. A four panel screen printed in full colour, with an expansive Vaarnish vista on one side and a comprehensive rules reference and selection of random tables on the other.
Autarch Art Print
A full colour print, on premium quality paper. Portrays one of the fearsome Autarchs of Vaarn. Design subject to change.
Deep Vaults & Daylight soundtrack album
A collection of soundscapes for gameplay. Immersive and world building while remaining unobtrusive and loop friendly. For the ruthless treasure hunters and fearless explorers, there are soundscapes to mix and match for any adventure in Vaarn. Written and performed exclusively for backers by Out On Our Own.
The fourth issue of the original Vaults of Vaarn zines takes readers beyond Vaarn's sky-blue deserts to the Great Wall, a towering megastructure so large that it contains entire civilisations within its ancient, decaying bounds. The Wall is inspired by the superstructure depicted in Tsutomu Nihei's manga Blame! and the overgrown industrial environments of the videogame Rain World.
The Wall can be used as a palette cleanser in a long-running Vaarn campaign, or it can be a campaign setting in itself, with the PCs hailing from the societies that have established themselves within the colossus.
Pariahs of Vaarn #1
A bestiary zine for Vaults of Vaarn. Thrill to the exploits of thirteen new creatures that prowl the blue wastelands at the end of time. Sentient concrete blocks, time-travelling knights from an unimaginable future, an immortal anteater, fatally misguided moth doctors, psychic parasites, quantum daemons, and more science-fantastical foes await you within these pages.
Each monster has its own spread, complete with detailed descriptions, full colour illustrations, and in-game stats. This content is not included in the core rulebook, with the exception of the Quantum Daemon pages.
Vaults of Vaarn is based on the acclaimed Knave system, with plenty of mutations to make it a different beast. The PCs are post-human misfits who delve into the eponymous vaults of Vaarn, far-future ruins buried beneath the blue desert. The game is designed so that you are playing in the world, not playing against the rules.
The core resolution system is d20 roll-high, using ability scores that range from +1 to +10. All rolls can be made by players, leaving Referees free to set the scene.
Character generation is classless, with characters being defined by their Ancestry and their equipment. Rather than an elf wizard, you could be a fungal Mycomorph who fights with paralysing spores, a brittle Lithling scholar wielding a gravity hammer, or an agile Cacogen mutant with retractible claws and a pleasing aroma.
Slot-based encumbrance rules take the tedium out of equipment management, while keeping the focus on what really matters: whether it's better to carry a spare pistol or a gourd full of antigravity gel.
Get weirder, not just more powerful. Characters can grow extra heads, lose their limbs, and become infected with nanomachines.
Combat is fast and dangerous, with low HP totals and no safety rails. Players will become adept at negotiation and fleeing as well as fighting. Incurring wounds during combat can disfigure your character, at least until you can find a Limb Salesman in the next village.
Become immersed in a boundless and surreal world. Vaarn’s rules prioritise player creativity and ensure a reactive world that responds to your decisions. No adventure paths, no scripted fights: just a big blue desert, a hover bike, and a Referee who is confident that wherever you choose to go, they have the tools to make it exciting.
Click here to download a preview PDF containing the introductory material, basic rules, and PC generation procedures. This preview is not final, and is subject to change.
Five years ago I released a 48-page zine, which detailed the rules I used for my home campaign set in Vaarn. The response to the zine was beyond what I could ever have imagined: players worldwide began their own Vaarn campaigns, and have been creating stories in the blue desert ever since.
A Glass Tiger, one of many extrasolar species brought to Urth from the stars.
From that humble beginning sprang four more zines and a hardcover book, originally published in 2022. Since publication the Deluxe Edition hardcover has become difficult to find. I want to make a beautiful hardcover collection available to more people, and I want to take Vaults of Vaarn to the next level, and integrate the material written since 2022.
All of this points to one solution: a new edition of the game,refined and expanded beyond the original releases. If you are a returning customer, first of all: thank you. Vaarn would be smaller and less colourful without all its supporters. If you already own and enjoy the original publications, you might wonder why a new edition is needed:
There is previously uncollected material in the Second Edition. I have included selection from the many blog posts and subscriber-only Patreon material for this hardback. This includes 60+ new monsters, the new Neobloom Ancestry, a new 'spell book' system, Alchemical concoctions, and reworks of the Settlement and Vault generation procedures that introduce additional depth to the world creation process.
The Second Edition benefits from three more years of playtesting the rules that were published in the 2022 release. I have clarified and expanded on several points that caused gaming groups trouble, as well as overhauled Mutations, given further guidance on using Mystic Gifts, and rebalanced the Lithling ancestry to keep them in line with other PC options.
The production value is going to be really good. The book has a larger format, more artwork, and a proper index.
Ensure the future of Vaarn. If this core book is successful, I will be able to work on further volumes of 100% new material. Your support now makes future Vaarn books viable.
The core second edition hardback does not contain the Wall-crawl content from Vaults of Vaarn #4, nor the bestiary zine Pariahs of Vaarn.
'An electric shock to the creative parts of the brain. Some of the most evocative tables out there, ensuring a game with a deeply evocative and adventurous science fantasy vibe while every GM's personal Vaarn evolves in a unique direction. A sleek game as excellent as it is blue. It's very, very, blue.' - Joel Hines, author of Desert Moon of Karth and Tide World of Mani.
'Imagine The Dying Earth, add it to Gamma World with the goofiness turned down a few notches, and add the tiniest, tiniest sprinkling of something like Dark Sun and stir well.' - Andrew Walter, illustrator for Troika! and Dolmenwood.
'If you’re looking for post-apocalyptic adventure that’s light on mathematics ... this is probably the best thing on the market.' - Playful Void
'Once you step foot into the blue sands of Vaarn, it never really will leave you. Simultaneously drawing upon a variety of science fantasy inspirations, it manages to be something entirely new yet entirely familiar.' -Omniczech, Vaarn Discord Member #7
'Inspiring, weird, and amazingly easy to play. It's provided some of my most memorable gaming sessions and is now one of the first games I grab when introducing TTRPGs to new folk.' - DungeonMaestro 'One of the best RPG products page-for-page on the market. Every page drips with imagination, and the rules are strong enough to point you in the right direction, but never so cumbersome as to get in your way.' - Quint Nigro
'The world is so cool and and tightly woven into the mechanics it constantly creates these little moments that just feel like something's snapped together in your head, in the collective head of the table. it's like a giant sky-hook dragging you into the reality and logic of the world and fun as hell. Play this game!' -danieljosephoneil, via itch.io
'The setting is wild, it feels like the author took Numenera, Gamma World and Dune and got them drunk, put them in a big vapourwave-themed hotel room and let them go at it.' - Pod Of Blunders
The book is currently 90% drafted, and 50% illustrated. The remainder of the work is revision and editing of the text, and completing the illustrations. As soon as the campaign ends and funds have been collected, I will release a full preview PDF to all backers so you can begin playing immediately.
Projected Production Timeline
30th August 2025: Backerkit campaign ends.
September 2025: pledges are collected, rough preview PDF released to all backers.
October 2025 - April 2026: book text is finalised and edited. Illustrations and layout are completed.
May 2026: polished preview PDF released to all backers. Indexing and document hyperlinking begins.
June 2026: contents finalised for print. Files sent to printer by end of month.
July 2026: I should receive proof copies from printer.
August 2026: If all goes well, I approve the full print run.
September - October 2026: fulfillment of finished books.
Challenges and Risks
There are some potential challenges in bringing this project to life. Finishing the manuscript is not one of them - I have been a professional writer and illustrator for a decade and I do not abandon projects. In case of severe unexpected delays relating to illness or misfortune, I will update all backers as thoroughly as possible.
The main hurdle is that I have not produced an offset printed book before. This is not an insurmountable challenge, but preparing the files for printing is going to take me longer than just clicking 'export PDF'. I have some advisors who work full-time in graphic design, as well as a patient printing house who know I'm a first timer. Any technical problems will be solved, but this is why I'm scheduling several months in summer for getting the print files correct.
Another risk is that international trade is currently quite volatile. Shipping and paper prices are fluctuating, and nobody is clear how the US tariffs are going to play out. I am addressing this by keeping the campaign rewards simple (no knickknacks or dice bags) and therefore ensuring that your parcels are classed as books (which are historically exempt from tariffs and VAT). All I can do in the face of uncertainty is try to minimise risk and reduce the number of moving parts, which I have done.
Shipping Estimates
Shipping will be charged separately through Backerkit before fulfillment. I cannot guarantee that shipping prices will remain static between the campaign ending and fulfilment, but I will work tirelessly to keep shipping as low as I can.
These estimates are given in GBP. The estimates assume a single copy of the hardback book, sent via tracked mail.
The project is written and illustrated by Leo Hunt. Leo has been a professional writer for over ten years, authoring four novels including 13 Days of Midnightand Phantom. He has also written for the old-school RPG scene with work like the critically-acclaimed Vaults of Vaarn setting, the ENNIE-winning OSE adventure module The Shrike, and the vampire crime game Bloodheist. He is currently creative lead on Scourge of the Sarafan, an upcoming Legacy of Kain TTRPG.
The digital soundtrack is composed and performed by Out On Our Own, an instrumental and experimental solo artist based in Leeds, UK.
