Our homebrew backgrounds are subject to unique in-game interactions or tidbits of lore. Note that these are intended for flavor and don't impact gameplay materially. We still suggest you pick one of them, even for your own characters!

Yes. There are unique passages reserved for parties that include representatives of specific races. Note that only the races included in the SRD as well as our own homebrew races are valid candidates for this. The same applies to Backgrounds, Languages, and everything in between.

They do not.

Our modules are built around decently balanced parties. Some combat encounters might be extra tough, and you may have some glaring holes in your proficiencies that mitigate your success in social contexts and skill challenges. But any party composition can be successful with proper execution, muscle-emoji.

Maybe, and yes. We would like to implement a Hardcore difficulty involving tougher versions of every combat encounter, as well as perma-death (or as some RPGs call it, “Ironman mode”). This will likely be part of future Gameplay feature polls. Make sure to vote if you’d like to see that happen!

We do not. A more expansive answer is forthcoming, but it will say that "we do not" with more words.

Per rules-as-written, diagonal movement either consumes 5 ft., or alternates between 5 and 10. We’ve opted for the former for simplicity.

Encumbrance is not a variable that we currently leverage in narrative gameplay. This might change with future survival-themed modules. Over encumbrance does affect your movement speed, which bears a meaningful impact on combat, and we encourage you to monitor & factor that in. As for Coin weight, our advice is to ignore it.

A common debate of realism vs appetite for bookkeeping. We don’t track ammunition at our tables and don’t expect you to in our modules. But feel free to do so if you prefer it.

You can purchase, track and use Rations if you wish, and future survival-themed modules may emphasize this. However, we chose not to for ToM. Paying for room & board is the only form of lifestyle expenses enforced in our first module.

Characters that are unconscious at the conclusion of a combat encounter are stabilized with 1 hitpoint. Otherwise, the same as the rules-as-written. Unconscious characters perform death saving throws on their turn and die permanently after three failures. You may create replacement characters to take over for the deceased or continue with one character short. The later stages of an adventure may or may not involve opportunities to revive the dead.

For anything that has a duration of more than one minute, yes. For things like the ever powerful Bless spell, we advise not to. Many combat encounters are surprises (narratively and/or mechanically), and casting a buff that is limited to a 1 minute duration in advance would be unrealistic. Like most things on RPGW though, this is not enforced in any way. So do your thing; just bear in mind that you may be making encounters easier than intended.

The 5E community has produced tons of awesome homebrew rules that serve to elevate the game. We use some ourselves in our own games, for example free level 1 feats. Use whatever makes the game fun for you and your friends, just bear in mind that RPGW modules are balanced around the ‘Rules-as-Written’.

Per RAW, the target receives a +2 bonus to their AC. This is not currently built into our combat engine, but it might be in the future.

Sorry about that. We try to account for as many outcomes as possible in designing our challenges, but the ruleset’s breadth makes it difficult. With future chapters, we will continue to get better at preventing this.

Unfortunately, per Wizards of the Coast’s Open-Game License (OGL 1.0a), we cannot explicitly support spells that exceed the SRD's (system reference document) selection. Given how our sandbox combat engine is designed, we have no way of policing which spells/features are employed there. But in narration, we are limited to what was made available. The good news is that those options are flexible and numerous enough to handle most scenarios. Our intent is to publish homebrew spells for open use that would supplement the available options. Stay tuned!

None for now. In our experience, 5E is not well suited for single characters. Some tactical RPGs have successfully implemented “lone wolf” options by buffing up the character’s base stats, but that doesn’t translate well to a ruleset that is so heavily dependent on action economy the way 5E is. The decision to support two to four has serious balancing implications, and we’re wary of deepening those by extending the range even more. But never say never!