FA L L E N

A Game of Crawling Back to Heaven

By Grant Howitt
 INTRODUCTION
In FALLEN you’ll build a world through the lens of a powerful deity,
shape it with the rest of your pantheon, and then watch it fall apart in
your hands at the tyranny of outside forces. But all is not lost. Bound
into human form, you’ll have the chance to take back your throne in
Heaven, but it’s not going to be easy.

FALLEN is a group storytelling game that doesn’t have a traditional

Gamesmaster role; instead, each player takes turns starring in scenes,
controlling the scenes of others, and playing incidental and recurring
characters. This means that every player must be willing to improvise,
lead, react, and work together to craft a great story.

You don’t need to worry about learning a bunch of rules – FALLEN is

intentionally as simple as possible. Your God is defined by their Facets,
reflections of their power on earth, and they act as your stats and skills.

The game can be played in one sitting, which will take around five hours
(and is generally better played throughout an afternoon) or as two
shorter sessions of around 2-3 hours.
 CREATION
In the Creation phase you and the other players will build a world to-
gether. The concept of World is malleable, as you’ll see below, but you’ll
create the boundaries and elements which you’ll use to tell the story of
your Gods.

GUIDES

Guides are optional restrictions for your World which you’re free to
select – I’d recommend choosing a few to give yourselves a means of
focusing creativity, as creating a world from whole cloth can sometimes
be intimidating and lead to a disparate, unconnected set of Gods. Of
course, if you’re happy to make up a world through collaboration alone,
go for it.

Select a few phrases – one to five - from the following tables and write
them down. Feel free to come up with your own, if you’d like. Rolling
random results is a great way to get your imagination going and start
thinking outside of your normal parameters. Rolling up two or three dif-
ferent scenarios and seeing which one grabs your group’s attention is fun
too, and gives you some perspective on your choices.

If you end up selecting one that none of you like or that simply doesn’t
fit, feel free to scrap it and try another.
CIVILISATION (D10) GODS (D10)
1 Pre-historic 1 A pantheon
2 Ancient 2 A warring family
3 Feudal 3 Parts of the same being
4 Pre-industrial 4 Unknowable alien beings
5 Industrial 5 Ancestors
6 Modern 6 Tied to geographic features
7 Futuristic 7 Ascended heroes and villains
8 Star-spanning 8 A mix of Gods from different ages
9 Non-human 9 Folk tales
10 Ageless 10 Urban legends

LOCALE (D20)
1 Galaxy 11 Ocean
2 Planetary system 12 Plains
3 Global 13 Sky
4 Ice wastes 14 Swamp
5 Tundra 15 Industrial
6 Desert 16 Urban
7 Forest 17 Suburban
8 Jungle 18 A single neighbourhood
9 Mountain 19 A single building
10 Subterranean 20 A single human being

THEMES (D10) TWISTS (D20)

1 Glass 11 Nomadic
1 Death
2 Fire 12 Chains
2 Life
3 Storm 13 Sand
3 Magic
4 Blood 14 Time
4 Unknown histories
5 Ghosts 15 Smoke
5 Piety
6 Lost 16 Brass
6 War
7 Keys 17 Silk
7 Peace
8 Dragons 18 Honey
8 Knowledge
9 Love 19 Beasts
9 Spite
10 Savages 20 Flood
10 Hubris
EXAMPLE: Grant, Mary, Chris and Vicky are playing a game of FALLEN.
They all decide to pick one word in secret and then reveal it to the other
players as the Creation phase starts – they could also roll on the lists and
pick at random, pick one from each list by deciding as a group, or have
a single player pick all of them. They pick the following: Subterranean,
Ocean, Industrial, Death.

That gives them a lot to work with – Grant immediately has notions of
black ghost-barges sailing on silent seas under starless stone. What powers
the industrial machines? Why is Death so important to the world? This
will all be answered in time.

IS THERE A DEFAULT SETTING FOR FALLEN?

Sort of; I assume a pre-industrial human fantasy landscape with over-

tones of magic and previous, lost civilisations. It’s fairly close to Dun-
geons and Dragons, but without all the Orcs/Elves/Dwarves etc. Yours
can, and should, differ. You’ll note in all of the samples I do I end up
resorting to this theme, so apologies for that – it’s hard to give useful
examples for every possible combination of things that could be wor-
shipped.

SHOULD THERE BE AN UNDERWORLD

AND OVERWORLD?

If you’d like, yeah, but don’t put too much detail into it as most of the
game will take place in the world of Mortals. A sentence or two about
each should suffice.
 GODS
After picking themes, players must create their God and form the world
through their actions and abilities. Each God has five types of Facet
(Domain, Wonder, Tribe, Cult, and Temple) and a Greater and Lesser
aspect of that Facet. Gods also have names, but wait until the end of the
process before naming your God as that can often be the hardest part.

GREATER AND LESSER

While your God may have many Facets and abilities, we’ll only detail
the two most important. The Greater part of each Facet is the crown-
ing glory; great temples, vast nations, potent domains, pious cults, and
so on. The Lesser is still important, but less so and often fragmented; a
series of roadside chapels, a nomadic tribe, a niche domain, a small but
important group of worshippers. Work together to decide the scale of
your Facets to make sure that every player is on the same level.

DOMAIN

Your God’s Domain is the part of the world that they have power over;
narrow Domains are more interesting than wide ones. Making them too
narrow can lead to difficulties, but difficulties often make for the best
stories! Try to pick domains which compliment or contrast each other.

Sample Greater Domains: Love, War, Beauty, Life, Death, Journeys,

Seasons
Sample Lesser Domains: Madness, Revenge, Gold, Sea Creatures, Soil,
Music

Example: Grant, playing in the game referenced earlier, picks Necromancy

as his greater Domain and Machines as his lesser. In this and all other
steps, he discusses his choices with the other players to make sure that no-
one’s doing the same thing twice and to help build a coherent world.
 WONDER

Not all of your power is contained within your being – you have passed
Wonders down to the world, items and creatures of great power, that
allow Mortals access to magical abilities or guard your sacred places.
Try to create Wonders that would have people fighting over them for
control. Don’t worry too much about establishing exactly what they do if
you can’t think of anything in particular; just come up with an evocative,
flexible name, instead.

Sample Greater Relics: The Ship of Stars, The Clockwork Giant, The Eye
of Storms, The Shadow Manticore
Sample Lesser Relics: The Silver Tongue, The Blooded Claw, The Bul-
wark Shield, The One-Eyed Kraken

Example: Grant thinks it would be cool to have an enormous vehicle pow-

ered by ghosts under his control so he writes down The Wailing Behemoth
as his Greater Wonder. He imagines a lumbering, groaning thing of metal
and bone the size of a small village that’s been handed from side to side
over centuries of warfare. He can’t think of anything specific for his Lesser
Wonder so he writes down The Oroboros Device and leaves it at that until
later.

TRIBE

Tribes are nations or groups of people, bound by geography or shared

culture, that predominately worship your God and portion off a section
of their time and resources towards doing so. They’ll come to your aid
if called, but they might have problems of their own which need solving
before they can help.

Sample Greater Tribes: the G’shrak desert nomad throng, the warring
plains tribes of Strife, the walled island nation of Bastion, the Hell-
cursed straits of Crucible
Sample Lesser Tribes: roaming sea-gypsy families of Wrightson and
Broughter, the fiercely defended citystate of Auros, the frozen waste-
lands of Colossus
Example: Grant imagines a grim, sparsely-populated island nation of
manufacturers and ghost-slave owners called Brass, which has a limited
ability to relocate with the shifiting tides and seasons, so he puts that down
as his Lesser Tribe. He struggles a bit with his Greater Tribe and writes
The War-Torn City State of Wrack, hoping he’ll find something to do with
it later on.

CULT

Cults are organisations devoted to worshipping some aspect of you and

acting out their piety in a particular way; there is no limit on the scale of
Cults, but especially large or powerful ones might well be better-placed
as a Tribe. Cults can be located in one place or throughout the world;
they can have millions of members or just one, in which case they’re
often referred to as Heroes.

Sample Greater Cults: The Knights Salvatem, The Lords of Dust, The
Council of Ways
Sample Lesser Cults: The Hollowmen, The Rat Kings, The Millers of the
Corn

Example: Grant wants to have his believers embedded in every society of

the world, so he selects The Gentlemen of Bone as his Greater Cult – a Ma-
son-like group of elite magicians who can create and repair necromechani-
cal devices for use in industry and warfare. He’s got to get those ghost-
slaves from somewhere, so he creates The Hades Irregulars as a smaller
faction that are excellent at capturing and breaking the will of the undead.

Maybe together they create possessed suits of armour that fight for Wrack?
He writes that down somewhere and tries to remember it for later.

TEMPLE

Temples are buildings, sites and monuments to your power, often held
in great regard as places of worship or pilgrimage by your followers.
They may be man-made, naturally-occurring, or a mixture of both.

Sample Greater Temples: The Great Nexus of Crystal, The Flying Citadel,
Heaven’s Fall Impact Crater
Sample Lesser Temples: The mountaintop shrine of Outlook, The shift-
ing tunnels of The Red Maze, the roadside temples of Traveller’s Lost

Example: Grant creates the Temple of Dust as his Greater Temple, a

deathly-silent building staffed by a legion of bound skeletons and ghosts
that sees thousands of worshippers walk barefoot and bloody through it
every day. As his lesser, he creates a string of lesser temples in each city
that serve the Gentlemen of Bone and their lesser disciples, calling them
the Dead Lodges.

NAME

Choose a name for your God. As ever, make sure all the players are
working together and have a good idea of what names should sound like
– whether they’re Cthulhuian selections of random syllables, corrup-
tions of existing Gods, archaic-sounding human names, nouns related to
their power, or anything in between.

Example: Grant likes the phrase “The Corpse God” but can’t use that on its
own; he has a read through the names of old Gods of Death on Wikipedia,
picks one he likes, and tries to pass it off as his own. He ends up with “Anko
Drouk the Corpse God” and leaves it at that.

PRAYER, TABOOS, MISCELLANY

If you’ve got time, consider what mortals pray for when they ask you
for assistance, and write it down as a prayer. Consider what actions or
materials you might find taboo, and which ones please you. Consider the
quirks and mannerisms of your worshippers and note them down, too.

Example: Grant decides that Anko Drouk attracts fairly pragmatic wor-
shippers, so a common prayer would sound something like “Oh Lord Anko
Drouk who reigns over Death in Life, please visit upon this machine your
blessing so it may perform its blessed task without mishap or malfunction.”
He also figures that, for high-ranking priests, performing acts of labour is
considered taboo and they must rely on bound spirits to do it for them.
Many of his worshippers carry tiny charms of brass and bone, some of
which leak an ectoplasmic oil which is believed to be beneficial when used
on necromechanical devices.

A HISTORY OF CONFLICT

No pantheon of Gods ever got on well with each other, and yours will be
no different. During creation, each player should pick a Facet that they
used to try and exert their will over at least one other God at the table;
their armies invaded their lands, their wonder razed a capital city for
sinning, and so on. These can be great or small conflicts, but they should
always focus around the nature of the God and the Facets involved.

Each player should roll a D6 after the nature of the conflict has been es-
tablished. The player who rolls higher wins and narrates the outcome of
the conflict, and the player who rolls lower earns a Scar for their efforts
(see below).

Players can repeat this process once with each other player, if they want.

Example: Grant decides that Anko Drouk’s appetite for the bodies of the
dead would bring him into conflict with Golanth, a ferryman-like God
of transport and passing played by Chris. Chris mentioned that he’s got
fleets of Corpse-barges, and Grant decides that he’s going to send his Hades
Irregulars to steal the flagship. Both players roll a D6 – Grant gets a 2,
and Chris gets a 6. Chris narrates the necromantic rituals that the Irregu-
lars tried to use malfunctioning, and their life-force draining out of them.
He and Grant settle on “Half-Dead Followers” as a social Scar for Anko
Drouk.
 DESTRUCTION
Now you’ve started to build your world together, it’s time to destroy it.
Something bad – really bad – happens that forces the Gods to Earth and
wrecks their power, reducing them to husks of their former selves.

THE CALAMITY
Roll on each table below to determine what force is behind the Calamity
and what shape it took. Use D4s, or use D6’s and re-roll results of 5 or 6.

SOURCE

1 The Mortals. Mortals took matters into their own hands and meddled
with things that they shouldn’t, and now everything’s gone wrong. Sor-
cerers, magicians and cult leaders are common causes.
2 The Kin. Gods like you are responsible for the Calamity, and they’re
escaped unharmed. How many there are and what form they take is up
to the group.
3 The Others. Hell, Hades, the Netherworld – whatever you call it, there
is a realm opposed to Heaven full of Bad Things, and they’re acting
against you.
4 The Elders. There are things beyond the ken of even Gods; older pow-
ers from outside this realm. They’ve made their move and now things
are in ruins.

THE REASON

“People no longer worship you because...”

1 “... most of them are dead.” Something caused the death of most of your
followers. What happened?
2 “... to do so is Heresy.” Something happened and following you became a
very dangerous idea. How are you going to fight it?
3 “... because their prayers no longer work.” Something cut off your power
and cast you down to Earth. How do you gain access again?
4 “... because someone’s better at your job than you are.” Your power just
wasn’t enough when compared to what came after, and it took over.
How are you going to beat their home advantage?
Example: Grant’s group rolls 3, The Others, and 1, “... most of them are
dead.” Between themselves they decide that a great uprising of demons and
ghosts spilled out of the centre of the world in a great whirlpool, consum-
ing many nations. Now, what’s left of the world is formed into communi-
ties that cling to life on a series of floating islands, struggling to make ends
meet.

THE FALL

Roll ten six-sided dice and discard the two lowest, then consult the table
below to determine the results. In turn, go round the table and assign
one result to each of your facets ASIDE from Domains – those can’t be
touched, for now.

If you roll the same number on four or more dice, you can re-roll them if
you want to.

At one point during The Fall, swap a dice with another player and assign
the new result to one of your facets, explaining how the two of your
interacted. Perhaps a Tribe held back enemy forces long enough for an
ally’s Cult to escape, but was severely damaged in doing so. Maybe two
Cults stood back-to-back but both were almost wiped out entirely.

STATES
1 Shattered. Broken apart and tossed to the winds. Very hard to rebuild.
2 Corrupted. Taken from you, twisted, and actively used against you.
3 Stolen. Taken from you. Imprisoned, guarded.
4 Adrift. Lost, wandering, denied to you, or forgotten.
5 Damaged. Hurt or broken in some way, working at reduced capacity.
6 Survived. Escaped without major harm or misfortune: how?

Example: Grant assigns a 2 – Corrupted – to his Gentlemen of Bones.

They’re now working to actively rot and destroy necromechanics from the
inside, meaning that they’ve become fat and useless on their increased
repair revenue. They worship some perverted Life Demon instead and see
themselves as secretive freedom fighters.

He swaps a 4 – Adrift – with Foltha’s player Mary, who gives him a 3

– Stolen. He decides that The Wailing Behemoth has been stolen by a once-
great island nation and fallen intro disrepair, functioning as a massive
floating shanty town. She assigns her Adrift to her lesser Temple, the Boat
of Storms. Together they work out a brief explanation of what happened
– that her Boat of Storms was the centre of a massive battle against the de-
mons, and to save both it and The Wailing Behemoth from destruction, she
summoned a great tempest that cast them both to the ends of the earth.
Grant is happy with this.

THE MAP

Throughout the Destruction phase, the players will work together to

create a map – they can either do this during the Fall or afterwards
once the fate of all their Facets has been determined. Taking turns, they
describe the location of one of their Facets – aside from their Domains,
which have no earthly representation - and mark it on a piece of paper
until all their Facets are accounted for. Note that not all Facets need to
be represented, but it’s nice to have a visual reminder where everyone
can see it.

Players can either take turns to mark their map or entrust the job to the
most skilled artist or cartographer in group and instruct them appropri-
ately. Note that this doesn’t have to show the entire world and might just
indicate a short stretch of coastline or a single street, but it defines the
limits of the play space for the upcoming sections.
 THE ASCENT
Cast down from Heaven, the Gods must now work to earn their path
back home. They find themselves incarnated in Avatars – idealised
earthly forms – and their powers stunted and reduced. Using what little
they have left, they attempt to take back what was theirs.

The Ascent is divided up into four Labours for each player. Once all the
players have performed their Labours – whether they were successful or
not – they will be forced to make their move and reclaim Heaven.

THE LABOURS

Labours are the trials that a fallen God must undertake to gain entry
back into Heaven. They focus around rebuilding and reclaiming that
which is lost and broken so their strength can recover – reuniting scat-
tered tribes, taking back stolen relics, and repairing shattered temples.

Each God must undertake three Labours before they will be powerful
enough to take on whatever forces deposed them; at the end of each La-
bour, they will increase in Divinity by one step (more details on divinity
below).

Gods define their own labours at the start of each Ascension step by
choosing a Facet that is Damaged or worse and describing how they will
fix or recapture it. Go around the table and take it in turns to describe
what your God will try to achieve with this Labour using the following
template: “[GOD NAME] set out to [METHOD OF RECLAIMING] the
[FACET]” - feel free to add extra details if you want, like the location of
the Facet, the Facets you’re using to help, or the forces which are stand-
ing in your way, but try to keep it below a sentence for now.

Example: Grant’s first action in the Ascension phase is to retake the Gen-
tlemen of Bones, his Corrupted Cult, from the hands of the Life God who
has perverted it. He states “Anko Droug, the Corpse God, set out to liber-
ate The Gentlemen of Bones from the tyranny of the Demon Roshanna,
Princess of Abundance.” He made up Roshanna on the spot, but he didn’t
have to.
Once each player has spoken the nature of their labours, the first to
speak plays out their scene. The player sat opposite them (or in odd-
numbered games, the player sat to their left) takes on the role of Games-
master for their labour. All other players will play either their own Gods
or NPCs and miscellaneous characters as the GM decides.

In terms of narrative time, scenes can play out over seconds, hours,
days, or years – it all depends on what’s at stake. Settling a lost tribe in
a fabled grove could take ten if not twenty years; seducing the eldest
Prince of a corrupt and powerful nation could take a single night. In real
time, scenes should take around five to ten minutes each.
 THE GAMESMASTER
The role of Gamesmaster switches throughout a game of Fallen, so I’ve
done my best to keep it as codified and simple as possible. In addition to
the narrative responsibilities of controlling the story and creating NPCs,
the GM must determine how mechanically challenging the scene is.

DIFFICULTY

It’s up to the Gamesmaster to work out how difficult the Labour will be
to perform; before the scene starts. Look at the Facet that the God is try-
ing to reclaim and consult the following table:

If the Facet is Lost, the difficulty is 3 + D6.

If the Facet is Damaged, the base difficulty is 5 + D6.
If the Facet is Stolen, the base difficulty is 7 + D6.
If the Facet is Shattered, the base difficulty is 11 + D6.
If the Facet is Corrupted, the base difficulty is 13 + D6.

Roll a D6 and note down the total that the God much reach; you can re-
veal this to the player if you’d like, but it might be more fun to inject an
element of uncertainty and not tell them. It’s up to you. Players will need
to equal or succeed this number during the scene; if they fail, the Facet
is lost to them forever and their God is Scarred (see below).

CHALLENGES

As the GM, it’s your job to push the player opposite you into difficult
situations and give them every opportunity to engage in drama. If their
Lost wonder is hidden in a sunken city, have the cave where it’s located
the home of a vicious sea monster. If they wish to sneak into an enemy
stronghold, have patrols dog their trail. Things break. People rebel. Plans
go wrong.

When they describe their scene, think what would be the most interest-
ing thing to happen to them and describe it. It’s up to them to use their
Facets to struggle against the challenges you create.
 THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T DESCRIBE

Don’t take control of another player’s God whilst you’re the GM; let
them state their actions. Don’t describe serious harm unless you’re giv-
ing a Scar to a God after a failed action. Don’t describe a God’s death.
When you’re not the GM, make suggestions for cool things that could
happen but never state them outright.

NPCS

NPCs (Non-Player Characters) an important tool in your arsenal, as

the thing that people care about most is other people. If you can put a
human face on an organisation, nation, temple or wonder, do so. Don’t
worry too much about names if you’re no good at coming up with them
on the fly; work with roles and adjectives instead. Things like “The Zeal-
ous Cult Leader” and “The Pompous Sultan” and “The Drunkard Cap-
tain of the Guard” are all good.

If you’ve got a good idea for an NPC, describe them in brief detail and
then hand control of them over to one of other players. They are then in
charge of them for the rest of the game, and can come up with a name or
additional details as and when they feel necessary.

BOONS AND BANES

Using a scalpel where a sledgehammer would be better suited can be fu-

tile; the reverse can be devastating. If, as GM, you feel that a player is at-
tempting to use their Facets in a way that they’re not suited to, ask them
to take a Bane dice on their roll (explained below). Conversely, if you
think that their use of the Facet is really suitable or genuinely inspired,
give them a Boon dice to use on the roll.
 OTHER PLAYERS

Don’t feel that other players have to sit in silence if they’ve not been as-
signed an NPC! If you’re not in a scene but you have a killer idea for an
event, then speak up. The GM gets final say on what happens, but this is
a collaborative game and I don’t expect you to be perfectly quiet when
it’s not your turn.

SCARS
Even if the players fail, something interesting happens to their God;
stories like this don’t allow themselves to be boring. If they run out of
Facets to call on and can’t borrow any from another God, they cannot
reclaim their Facet and instead get a Scar – a constant reminder of what
happened that they can draw on for strength, at a cost.

Work together with the player to determine what category the scar falls
under – Physical, Social, or Mental – and have the player note it down
on their character sheet. When they next act, they can volunteer to take
a Bane dice on the roll, stating how their Scar impedes them. Once each
Scar has been “activated” like this, the ire and shame it triggers is worth
1 Boon dice on any roll of their choosing.

Scars can only be activated and used once; they don’t necessarily go
away, but the character has learned to overcome them and can draw no
more strength from the adversity that they bring.

Example Physical Scars: wounds, maimed or missing limbs, blindess,

binding chains, sicknesses, bizarre and unsettling aura effects, twisted
flesh, horns or disfiguring growths, loss of property

Example Social Scars: shame, curses, hexes, unsightly or difficult fol-

lowers, bad reputation, humiliation, unwillingly signed into a contract,
blackmail

Example Mental Scars: phobia, irrational hatred, bound up in love, mel-

ancholy nature, fixation, compulsion, addiction
 SCENE RESOLUTION
At the core of it, scene resolution in Fallen is pretty simple. Players
describe their God’s actions – and NPCs react – and, each time they use
one of their Facets they roll one or more dice. If they run out of Facets
to use, they can call on the assistance of other Gods. Once they’re out of
Facets and goodwill from other Gods, their total score added together
must equal or exceed the scene’s difficulty for them to reclaim the Facet.
If it’s below the scene’s difficulty, the Facet is lost to them forever.

SO... WHAT CAN I DO?

Pretty much anything, within reason! Your powers are limited by your
Divinity (see below) which should give you a rough idea of what you’re
capable of in narrative terms, but don’t worry too much about things
like “Can I climb this wall?” or “Can I silence this guard before he shouts
for help?” You’re more in the realm of “Will my spies poison the water
supplies before my army reaches their gates?” and, at later levels, “Can I
hold off this rockslide until the other Gods show up?”

The GM will narrate problems for you and you narrate your solutions
– when you feel like you want to use a Facet to overcome them, roll dice.
Try not to hog the spotlight in terms game-time, and if you feel a scene’s
dragging on, draw it to a close.

BOONS AND BANES

Certain states add a Boon or a Bane dice to your roll – Boons are good,
Banes are bad. A pool cannot contain both Boon and Bane dice; they
cancel each other out until there only one kind, or no extra dice at all,
remain.

If you are rolling one or more Boon dice on your action, pick whichever
result you like and discard the rest. (It may not always be best to choose
the biggest number for reasons discussed below) If you are rolling one
or more Bane dice on your action, pick the lowest result and discard the
rest.
 FACET STATES

The Facets you can use are limited to their states – Corrupted, Damaged,
and so on. Whether the Facet is Greater or Lesser can also come into play.
Consult the table below to see which Facets you can and can’t use in any
given roll and how many Bane or Boon dice you’ll need to use:

Destroyed, Corrupted, Stolen or Lost Facets cannot be used.

Shattered Facets add 2 Bane dice to any action.
Damaged Facets add 1 Bane dice to any action.
Intact Facets add no dice.
Greater Facets add 1 Boon dice to any action.

AVATAR

Your Avatar is your form in the mortal realm. Once per scene, before
you roll dice for an action, you can invoke your Avatar – perhaps your
Avatar is leading your armies into battle, or writing a powerful magical
tome, or parting some great sea. When you do this, add your Divinity
bonus (see below) in Boon dice to your roll. Even if you’re personally
involved in all the actions you take, you can only channel your Avatar in
one of them.

BURNING BRIGHT, FLICKERING OUT

Nothing lasts forever. If, after discarding any spare Bane or Boon dice,
you roll a 1 or a 6 on an action, something bad has happened to that
Facet – maybe you pushed it too hard, or it suffered from some unex-
pected disaster. Describe the fatal flaw, pyrrhic victory, or annihilation
of the Facet and reduce it to Damaged status. If it is already Damaged,
reduce it to Shattered. If it is already Shattered, it is Destroyed and can-
not be used or rebuilt.

Domains can be damaged in this way, just like other Facets.

If all of a God’s Facets are Destroyed, they have no more power left
and die.
 OTHER GODS

You can, at any time in your scene, call for assistance from other Gods
– even the GM’s God – to help achieve your goals. They can lend the
strength of one of their Facets for the scene, but any lent Facets cannot
be used this phase – so can’t lend Facets that they’ve already used, or use
Facets that they’ve lent.

Make sure to describe what happens when Facets are lent to other Gods,
and how the God is able to help them from their current position in the
World.

RECLAIMING FACETS

If at any point during the scene your dice pool exceeds the scene’s dif-
ficulty number, you have reclaimed the Facet. Consult the table below
and describe what happens, then change the status of the Facet on your
character sheet.

Damaged Facets become Intact

Shattered Facets become Damaged
Lost Facets become Intact
Stolen Facets become Intact
Corrupted Facets become Damaged

If you want to try to improve the same Facet again in a subsequent scene
(repairing a now Damaged Facet to Intact, for example), go for it.

Remember that completing a Labour - whether you succeed or fail - in-

creases your Divinity by 1.
 DIVINITY
Divinity is a measure of how far from Godhood your God currently
stands- each God starts play as Uncanny following the Calamity. At the
end of every Labour – whether succeeded or failed – each God increas-
es in Divinity by one step as their notoriety grows. The examples listed
below are fairly generic God-type stuff, so don’t worry if they don’t all
apply to you.

UNCANNY. You aren’t especially remarkable unless you let people

know it, and while your abilities and powers are impressive, they could
probably be explained away by sceptics. True believers will know you for
who you are, though. (Avatar confers 1 Boon dice)

HEROIC. You’re starting to take on elements of Godhood; if you were

good-looking before, you’re beautiful now. If you were fearsome, you’re
verging on terrifying. You can exert obvious magical powers over the
world around you, but your range and potency are limited. You’re in
peak physical form – no matter what you look like – and it would take
ten armed men to even hold you down. (Avatar confers 2 Boon dice)

LEGENDARY. Whatever you do, people will write about it for centuries
to come. You look iconic, more than anything, a dictionary definition of
everything else, the light from the mouth of the cave. Your powers are
impossible – you can bring bloodthirsty crowds under your control with
a single glance, smash great boulders with your palm, and withstand
hideous punishment without a scratch. (Avatar confers 3 Boon dice)

DIVINE. You are a God bound to Earth, and nothing less than that. You
bear an unearthly countenance and are definitely supernatural. Armies
part at your approach. You can hold mountains on your shoulders and
summon the elemental forces of nature in huge, roiling forms. The only
thing that can stop you now is another God., or some massive force of
unbelief. (Avatar confers 4 Boon dice)
 EXAMPLE SCENE
Grant, playing Anko Drouk the Corpse God, is attempting to free his Cult
from the sway of the Demon Roshanna. The GM, Chris, describes the
building they’re now based in as the scene begins:

Chris: It’s an enormous structure, glistening with gold and brass and silver.
A vehicle of some sort pulls up outside and disgorges a load of the cultists,
all grown fat and wearing their trademark grey suits but each bears an ap-
ple icon on their lapel. They waddle past the guards, nodding to them.

Grant: All right. I’m going to go inside.

Chris: The guards stop you, crossing what look like glaives made of steel
and bone rigged with repeater flintlocks in front of you. “Sorry sir,” one
of them says, “Gentlemen only past this point, I’m sure you understand.”
Mary, can you take on the role of the Guard?

Mary: Sure.

Grant: I shout at them - “Can’t you see who I am, you little simpleton? I
am Anko Drouk! I am the master of undeath! You will let me past!”

Mary: “I bloody won’t. Now get out of here before I run you through, you
daft old bugger.”

Grant: Cool, okay – I’m going to use my Domain of Machines, here. I con-
centrate for a second and trigger the mechanisms in the guards’ flintlocks,
setting them both off – as they’re pointing at each other, they drill each
other through the head and collapse to the floor.

Chris: I like it! Sorry Mary, that was a bit of a short role. Okay Grant, roll
a dice for the Facet.

Grant rolls a 4.

Chris: Cool, okay, you’ve a way to go yet. You see inside that there is a pair of
great brass doors, behind which the sounds of music and laughter can be heard.
Grant: Music? Laughter? In MY temple? I’ll show them the error of their
ways. I pull back my arms and swing them forward, blowing open the
doors in a big gust of wind that causes all the candles and oil lamps inside
to flicker out. We’re okay with that, yeah? Gusts of wind?

The other players all agree that it was pretty cool and sits within the limits
of his current Divinity, which is 1.

Grant: Okay, so all the Gentlemen are sat around stuffing their faces off big
golden platters of food, washing it down with wine from expensive-looking
goblets.

Vicky: Oh, they should have a cauldron! A big cauldron full of wine in the
centre of the room that’s bubbling, and when it bubbles, fresh fruit of all
different kinds floats to the surface.

Chris: I like that! Okay, they all turn to stare at you, seeing as you just
bashed their doors in. Vicky and Mary, take on the roles of the Gentlemen,
both of you all fat and arrogant and gross.

Mary: “Who on earth are you?”

Grant: “You forget yourselves, worms! You forget what you once were,
strong men of graft and honour, and have fallen into slovenly disrepute!
Look at you! Look at how fat and useless you’ve become, worshipping this
WHORE DEMON with her cauldron of delights! I ought to scourge you all
from the face of the world!”

Vicky: “Oh ho, oh my, I think we’d know Anko Drouk if he came here! Good
fellow, you seem a little confused – how on earth did you slip past our
guar-”

Grant: “SILENCE, WORM.” Okay, I’m going to use my Domain of Nec-

romancy. I raise my hands up and a swarm of screaming ghosts appears
through the floor, hands grasping at the fat old men, grabbing their knives
and upending their wine glasses. Everyone in the room is screaming and
running around, now, on their fat little legs.

Mary: Maybe they’re driven off by the cauldron, as it’s so full of life.
Grant: Yeah, okay – there’s an invisible barrier around the cauldron that
the ghosts are grabbing at. The wine seems to hurt them, to drive them
back.

Chris: Cool, roll a dice.

Grant: Okay, I’ll going to channel my Avatar through this one as I’m really
keen to do well and not have it burn out. That’s one dice for my Avatar,
and two for the Domain as it’s a Greater Facet.

Grant rolls two 2’s and a 5.

Grant: Perfect! That’s me up to... 9. That’s still quite a long way off my tar-
get of 16, though.

Mary: One of the Gentlemen stands up and shouts - “Where were you, in
our hour of need? Where were you when they came from below?” He takes
a mouthful from his goblet of wine and spits it in the face of the ghost in
front of him - it hisses in pain and starts to fade away.

At this point, Grant could use one of his other Facets – he has a Damaged
Oroboros device in his possession, although out-of-character he still has no
idea what it does. He could call on one of the other Gods for help, perhaps
asking Mary’s God Foltha for access to her Facet of Drowning, so the wine
could catch in their mouths and choke them.

If he gets over 16, he will gain control of the Gentlemen of Bones, although
in their current state they would could as Damaged if he used them in a
subsequent scene. If he can’t get over 16, he’ll be struck with a scar – and
Chris is already looking at that bubbling cauldron of wine as a catalyst.
 ENDING THE GAME
Once all players have played out their third scene, they are ready to at-
tempt to enter Heaven – and even if they’re not ready, they’ll need to act
soon as malicious forces are massing against them.

As a group, the players must decide what their attack will look like
– and, indeed, whether it will be an “attack,” as it could be represented
through courtly intrigue or an exchanging of words or a game of chess.

Each player works out what part their God will take in the assault and
describe their actions in turn, each rolling a dice as and when they use
their Facets to help them. As ever, the player sat opposite them will be
their GM and narrate the actions of their enemy.

As a group, the players must meet or exceed a total of (20x the total
number of players).

If they fail to reach that value, they are cast down again and shattered
apart – they might survive, reforming in ages to come in different forms,
or they might be utterly destroyed.

If they survive and ascend, players should describe what happens in the
aftermath. Do the Gods with more intact Facets take assert dominance
over Heaven? Do some choose to cede their divinity and live as mortals
amongst their worshippers? Are some burnt out by the effort? How do
the survivors clean up the mess that’s left of the world? Have another
drink and talk it out.
 APPENDIX
THINGS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE
FOR THIS GAME EXISTING

Polaris, which does the whole “rotating GM” thing pretty well
Scion, for getting the core idea down but covering it in so many rules I
had to write a different game so I might be in with a chance of experi-
encing the story
Wushu, for teaching me about Task Numbers and loose narratives
My wife Mary and my friend Chris, for listening to me waffle on about it

SOME NEAT IDEAS FOR GAMES OF FALLEN

The Gods of a modern city are forced to deal with civil war
The intangible ghosts of post-singularity civilisations flit across the stars,
converting mortals
The aliens come back to Egypt and activate the pyramids
The Garden of Eden appears on Earth and the modern gods of vice and
sin are chased from heaven
Lost jungle Gods buckling under the weight of industrial deforesting
 FALLEN Character Sheet
God name/s: Player name:

FACETS CURRENT STATE

DOMAIN
Greater:

Lesser:

WONDER:
Greater:

Lesser:

TRIBE:
Greater:

Lesser:

CULT:
Greater:

Lesser:

TEMPLE:
Greater:

Lesser:
 FALLEN Character Sheet
SCARS

Source BANE? BOON?

PRAYERS, QUIRKS, TABOOS

 FA L L E N
FALLEN is a game of lost Gods - of Lords and Ladies cast down to Earth
and forced to claw their way back up to Heaven. Players will create a
God, forge the world through their power, and control them as they at-
tempt to undo whatever Calamity forced them into the mortal realm.

FALLEN is GMless rules-light storytelling game for 3-5 players, and

takes around four hours to play.

Copyright Grant Howitt 2013