Getting Started

If you're brand new to Yellow Dawn then grab the character sheet, roll-up some stats, build some personalities and throw them into the grinder

Download a Character sheet: as included in the Yellow Dawn Primary Rulebook. Download

Jump into one of the free starter scenarios: there are a bunch of scenarios listed below, quick and easy to pick up they cover some key themes of the Yellow Dawn world

SCENARIO #1 - First Job: characters sign-up for a tour of duty with the CRC, City Recovery Corps and go on a Dead City Run. This is an effective way of bringing disaparate characters together into a team and gives them a taste of city life and the wilderness, and straight into the horrors of the InfectionDownload

SCENARIO #2 - Tough Gains: a quick one session scenario, based in a Living City, where characters are involved in robbery and revenge. It provides action and awareness of city life isolated from the horrors of the wildernessDownload

SCENARIO #3 - Wild Dog Gorge: characters are hired to hunt down a strange beast that is murdering people in this remote settlement. A great way of getting a new team of characters "on the road" and is an introduction to the cosmic horror of the Cthulhu Mythos. Download

SCENARIO #4 - School of Elemental Knocks: written as an introduction for characters interested in magick or becoming a Road Mage View

SCENARIO #5 - I'm a Survivor! Get Me Out of Here!: written as a team builder. Characters are thrown together in a “controlled” environment and strive to win the prize – but must face off rivals, and possibly each other in a situation that rapidly brings the true horror of Yellow Dawn into focus View

Peruse key aspects of the Yellow Dawn game system: a blog article discussing some of the USPs of the game and what makes it different from other RPGs of its genre. Although there are comprehensive combat rules included, Yellow Dawn focuses on drawing out the abilities of a character rather than the size of their gun. View

UTOC: United Table of Commerce (UTOC) is a global power with vast influence in the world of Yellow Dawn. Understanding what it is and how it operates can be useful for GMs and players entering the world for the first time. View

Grab some context: read a free preview of the first few chapters of the Yellow Dawn novel, Dog Eat Dog. It'll give you a flavour of the disparity between life in a Living City and the grim reality of surviving out in the Wilderness. Read Preview

The struggle of post-apocalyptic survival: Brief article about how hardships lead players to push desperate characters towards considering crime or taking more risks. It’s a good case in point, that keeping the characters poor and hungry for the first few sessions really builds up the tension of survival. Read article

Scenarios

Some small items to get your game going. Ideally you can drop almost any kind of scenario from other RPGs into Yellow Dawn.

Red Desire ¦ Cold Murder: a small scenario that starts in the Living City of New Tokyo and takes the characters into a defended enclave within the Dead Zone there. Drug dealing, gang turf wars and some seriously tough moral choices. Suitable for three or more characters, with a Living City background or access to modern technology and weapons. Preview/Buy

Baruch's Burden: a small scenario that can begin in any Living City or any wilderness settlement with transport links back to civillisation. The characters are hired as cheap labour to help support a "tourist" expedition of the wilderness; but the itinary goes sharply awry after an encounter with a group of local Orcs (The Changed). Suitable for two or more characters with Wilderness backgrounds. Preview/Buy

Kingdom of Shadows: a free scenario for Yellow Dawn RPG based on Roman Polanski’s classic occult thriller – The Ninth Gate. View

Dreaming of Fire: A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

A Bad Father: A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

A Vintage Villain: A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

Deep rumblings and fatal erruptions: A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

The Mansion on Knútr Marsh: A free scenario idea from Scenes of terror and trouble. View

GM Resources

Useful tools to help GMs manage the game

Street Chases and Mob Attacks: Bolt-on rule module providing GMs with an elegant system to resolve street chases (urban Living Cities and rural settlements) and the behaviour of mobs when they attack. Download

Nanomech & Synthology: Bolt-on rule module providing GMs with new technologies to introduce into their game (as of April 2012 this is still a work-in-progress). Download

GM Guide to NPC Revenge (Occult & Mythos): This 10-page PDF is a self-contained system to provide GM's with a way of measuring the ability of Occult & Mythos orientated NPCs to strike-back against characters and the scale of severity of the revenge; it also allows GM's to quantify the motivation of the NPC to do so. It contains lists of revenge options from kidnap and sacrifice; to Conjuring non-human entities to capture and kill; through to massive manifestations of Mythos horror. Download

Rogues Gallery: A collection of generic NPCs to populate your world with. Download

House Rules & Case Studies: This is a collection of micro-systems and one-liners that have evolved out of actual game play. Download

Recovered Relics (Collection #1): A collection of occult and mythos artefacts. Download

Free RPG scenario ideas : From Scenes of Terror and Trouble through to a single paragraph seed of an idea, this is a collection of thumbnail plot sketches. View Free RPG scenario ideas here .

Relics of the Occult & Cthulhu Mythos: Objects made by non-human hands or forged in the minds of maniacs; items of power for good, bad or disaster. Written to be used within the world of Yellow Dawn (RPG) but could easily be adapted to Call of Cthulhu, D&D and Shadowrun. View them here.

The Red Peril: A free resource from Scenes of terror and trouble. Consequence on character of talisman, curse or encounter with Outer God View

Use Hero Ranks against PCs: some GM advice on how to stop characters with a high Hero Rank from creating too much imbalance within a game View

Case Study: Rationality or Cool during decision making, threats and violence: Yellow Dawn RPG is written around character (and NPC) interaction – and allows GMs to separate the strong and weak aspects of their own personalities, and the players, to allow the fictional characters to step forward with gusto, or crumple like cowards.View

RPG: Weapons of Arcane Technology – Rathssagua Ray Gun: Potentially small damage but with a cumulative, life-threatening effect that goes beyond the original wound. View

Player Resources

House rules and items that have come through YD Player Groups

Hero Bonuses & Spending Hero Points: More hero bonuses and a guide to spending existing hero points for dramatic effect. Download

Combat & Wounding - Player Reference: 8 pages of tables and commonly required combat options, extracted from the Yellow Dawn primary rulebook (2.5) and condensed so that vital information is at your fingertips - keeping players aware of their options and the combat fast and fluid. Download

PDP Options: small bolt-on to give players additional flexibility in design of character. Download

Rank Bank: reduce frustration for players who lose characters at a high adventure rank. Download

The Art of Magick: a quick overview of magic in the world of Yellow Dawn. View

Case Study: Building a Sanctuary in a Post-Apocalyptic World – Or What to Tow Behind You: Yellow Dawn allows you to strip resources from abandoned buildings or move in and do them up to live in. View

Monsters of the Mythos

Things your characters do not want to meet

Monsters of the Mythos: This free to download supplement expands upon the concept of the Cthulhu Mythos, introducing a raft of new Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and non-human species for characters to encounter. Download

Miscellaneous

Top drawer of the closet. Have a dig through for anything useful or of interest.

Introduction to Yellow Dawn: a lengthy PDF that shows what happened during Yellow Dawn and the decade that followed. Lists major organisations and corporations to have survived. Plus details of the City Recovery Corps (CRC): Download

Welcome to the Sixth Age of Extinction - Are You Sitting Comfortably A blog piece I wrote about the history of extinction and glimpse into where we might be heading View

Player Calendar for Shadows of the Quantinex: a resource to help players map out clues and timelines in this globe-spanning campaign. Download

UTOC "WARNING" notice: download and print. Download

Newbie gets into role-playing with Yellow Dawn (Pictured): Fun way to enhance your social life. Roleplaying games are gaining a new popularity amongst people who have never played them before. Read Post

List of Pre-Modern Professions: useful resource for post-apocalyptic settlements. View

My Yellow Dawn Session Notes: post-game write-ups and notes from each session of Yellow Dawn with my player group in Bristol. View

Photo of the gang: a photo of David J Rodger and some of the long-time game testers, taken at Hayling Island during a weekend of playing Yellow Dawn in a remote house by the sea. Image taken by Norwegian photographer Hågen Landsem (far left). Others shown are: Tony Jordan; David J Rodger (centre); Chris Halliday and Kelvin Wright. View

Case Study: a blog article discussing new rules added to Yellow Dawn 2.5, and using research to find weaknesses in Mythos or Occult bad guys to exploit. View

Podcast: Two players, one new to role-playing and both new to the world of Yellow Dawn, get thrown in at the deep end by signing-up with the CRC; they'll have to journey to a Dead City and scavenge enough resources to fulfill their contract - whilst avoiding the horrors of the Infected. Listen

GMs don't always follow the rules: A very brief overview of two new players experiencing a Dead City for the first time, explaining why I don't always follow the rules (even my own) to the letter or dice roll. An important guide-of-gut-feeling for any GM who wants to balance the danger of the game with the ability to generate a fun player-experience. View

Necronomicon Anti-FAQ: Written to counter the naysayers.View

Post-Apocalyptic Case Study: Lykov family survive 40 years in wilderness without human contact. Incredible story of survival and the tenacity of the human spirit to cope with extreme hardship. View

Get your geek on : play games in public places: View

Sneak peek at the novelised version of Shadows of the Quantinex: First chapter of the epic, globe-spanning post-apocalyptic story that reveals the truth behind Yellow Dawn: View

What is the Wilderness: A Definition

Guidance that can help shape your early games

Following the event known as Yellow Dawn, distorted weather patterns and the alien meteorological phenomenon of Storm Curtains (resemble the ghostly and enchanting aurora borealis except are a dirty amber in colour) are responsible for planet-wide disruption to digital satellite communication systems.(!) How much disruption is down to the GM and creates the pivot point for scale of isolation the GM wants for characters in their game.(!) As is the distance between survivor settlements when out in the wilderness. Read this brief article to see examples of how GMs can adjust their game to suit the flavour they want for their player characters. Read article

Bile Weed

This bolt-on for the core Yellow Dawn system demonstrates the way in which the Infection has been designed to evolve within the game. In other words, the things survivors mistakenly call "zombies" can change as time goes on, creating further drama and intrigue about what is really going on and intensifying the horror.

You can Download the PDF here.

Dragomir

Take Yellow Dawn 10,000 years into the future. Several decades after the apocalyptic event called Yellow Dawn struck Earth and ushered in the Age of Hastur, the Mythos arrived in force. Wars raged. Temples to the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods were erected by the monsters that worship them, puncturing the Quantisphere and leading to humankind being pushed ever closer to the brink of total extinction. Skip 10,000 years into the future and the human race has survived and evolved to a point where life is almost medieval. New races exist and the horrors of the Mythos remain as a fact of daily life rather than lurking in the shadows of denial. NOTE: this is very much still just a concept in development. Take a peek and let me know what you think.

Go to the Wordpress blog post to download the new world map and PDF of setting.