Introduction

The roads that still exist were built by dead men.

Dyrhal is broken kingdoms, old walls, dangerous roads, and memories that have not had time to die. Three generations have passed since the last great order fell. Long enough for children born beneath its smoke to grow old and die, for ruined keeps to grow ivy, for roads to crack, and for old loyalties to harden into borders. It is not long enough for memory to fade. Dyrhal remembers empire. It remembers conquest. It remembers ruin. It remembers hope.

What remains are small states that hold what they can patrol and defend. A strong gate can mean order. A mile beyond it can mean hunger, bandits, monsters, old grudges, or worse. In the teeth of ruin, life continues anyway. Fields are planted. Bargains are struck. Oaths are sworn. Caravans move. Priests bless the dying. Lords count the spears they can still afford to keep. The world has not ended. It has narrowed.

Steel Age is a game about living in that narrowing. It is about what happens when steel leaves the scabbard and everyone present understands, at once, that something irreversible may follow. It is about fatigue, fear, exposure, hunger, wounds that do not vanish, roads that take longer than they should, and choices made because no clean choice exists.

It is a tragic-fantasy roleplaying game about pressure, consequence, and the people who go where authority weakens: retainers, scouts, caravan guards, guild blades, temple agents, and hard survivors trusted with dangerous work. They are not heroes because the world protects them. They matter because there is no one else to do what must be done.

Violence in Steel Age is not spectacle. It is fast, frightening, and costly. When blades meet, skill matters. So do breath, footing, fatigue, terror, and the sudden collapse of choices into necessity. The body has limits. The will has limits. Sometimes the name survives where the man does not.

Magic is no kinder. It is rare, mistrusted, and paid for dearly. Those touched by omen may learn to shape the Unseen Craft, but power does not come to mortal hands without resistance. What is invoked answers imperfectly. What is forced into the world leaves its mark.

This is not grimdark. It is tragic fantasy. The world is hard, but meaning is real. Fear matters because life matters. Names matter because they are carried on the lips of those who must take their place. A person is measured not by safety, but by what they do when the road darkens and the cost becomes clear. Its heroes are not Achilles in his splendor, but Hector before the walls.

The old empires are gone. The roads are still there. The watchfires still burn. Beyond their fragile light, older truths resume their place.

Find them.

What Kind of Game Is This?

Steel Age is a tragic-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about pressure, consequence, and human beings trying to endure in the fractured world of Dyrhal. It is built for players and GMs who want violence to feel frightening, magic to feel costly, and survival to depend on judgment as much as courage.

• Momentum-based melee: most close combat resolves through one or two opposed rolls, with control, pressure, and fatigue doing the real work.
• Violence is dangerous by design: Opening Order is set once at the start of combat, momentum can persist, and a bad moment can spiral quickly.
• Fatigue is the real killer: endurance matters as much as steel, and survival is often decided by pressure rather than spectacle.
• Violence leaves a mark: wounds, fatigue, and lasting scars matter.
• Magic is rare, feared, and costly: every Working carries risk, and power does not come safely into mortal hands.
• The road matters: distance, fatigue, rest, and exposure remain part of play.
• No classes, no heroic rails: characters grow through hard-earned competence, not scripted advancement paths.
• Contacts and succession matter: characters are tied to living people, and stories can continue through those who must take their place.
• The world does not scale to you: a foe dangerous early remains dangerous later, and survival is not the same as walking away unchanged.

Dyrhal at a Glance

Dyrhal is a continent of fractured states, old roads, and remembered empires. Authority is local, danger is real, and much of what matters in daily life depends on the reach of walls, watchfires, oaths, and arms.

• A fractured continent: more than fifty independent polities — baronies, jarldoms, and starostwa — hold what they can patrol and defend.
• Authority is visible, not abstract: walls, palisades, watchtowers, and armed men mark the real reach of law.
• The old empires are gone, but not forgotten: their roads, ruins, and failures still shape the present.
• Trade survives under guard: caravans, barges, and merchants move through a world where distance is never neutral.
• Faith is practical and local: the Nine Gods shape the calendar, the rites of daily life, and the meaning of omens.
• The Omen-Born are watched: some are touched by powers tied to the Nine, though what that means is feared as much as revered.
• Small bands matter: realms cannot solve every problem decisively, and much falls to those willing to go where authority weakens.

What You Play

Player characters in Steel Age are not chosen ones, destined heroes, or people the world bends itself around. Most begin as ordinary human beings shaped by the world that made them: retainers, caravan hands, shrine servants, guild apprentices, hunters, messengers, laborers, or others whose background has taught them how to survive where they come from.

What sets them apart is not greatness at the start, but the fact that they step into pressure and keep going. Some serve a lord, a shrine, a guild, or a household. Some work for coin. Some carry obligations they did not choose. Others become the hands trusted when something must be done quietly, quickly, or beyond the easy reach of law.

In Dyrhal, most people live inside structures of duty, faith, labor, and fear. Player characters are the people who begin to move at the edges of those structures — between settlement and wilderness, safety and exposure, obedience and necessity. They are not yet legends. They are the people who may become worth remembering.

Core Resolution at a Glance

Most uncertain actions in Steel Age are resolved with 2d6 + modifiers. To succeed, you must exceed the target number. Ties favor the world or the defender.

When the world itself is the obstacle, roll against a Challenge Mark (CM). When another creature is actively resisting you, roll against their Defense Score or opposing total, depending on the situation.

Steel Age uses this same core logic across the game. Combat, magic, travel pressure, injuries, and skills all build from it. The rules may become more specific, but the foundation stays the same: roll 2d6, add what matters, and beat the number in front of you.

How to Use This Book

Steel Age is an integrated game. Its rules are meant to work together: combat, travel, injury, magic, and character growth all speak the same language of pressure, consequence, and limited human endurance. You do not need to master the whole book before you begin, but the game will make more sense if you read it in a sensible order.

If you are a player, start with the Introduction, then read Setting of Dyrhal, Character Creation & Contacts, and Skills & Advancement. After that, read Combat and any later chapter directly relevant to your character.

If you are a GM, begin with the Introduction, then read Setting of Dyrhal, Character Creation & Contacts, Skills & Advancement, Combat, Magic, Travel, Injury, and Running the Game. The remaining chapters can be read as needed.

After that, read outward from what your table needs most. The Rules Index in the back of the book is there to help you find specific procedures quickly during play and to navigate the book without rereading it cover to cover.

A Note From the Designer

Before you dive into the rules of Steel Age and the dangers of Dyrhal, I would like to thank you for your interest in this game.

I read my first roleplaying game rulebook at six years old. I have been reading them ever since. This book is, in many ways, a love letter to the designers who shaped my imagination — all those manuals, compendiums, and modules it was my fortune and pleasure to absorb across a lifetime of reading and playing games.

Steel Age was built to be the game I always wanted to play in: one where the world feels true, where choices carry weight, and where the company around the table goes home from a session having earned whatever they managed to keep.

If this work gives you even a fraction of the joy that those creators gave me, I will consider a small part of that debt repaid.

Now — Dyrhal is waiting.

Contents