Onyx Sky explores our world after a devastating global war and environmental collapse plunge humanity back into the stone age.
In Onyx Sky, players create characters who’ve been safe inside a military bunker, government facility, fallout shelter, or scientific vault. After decades hidden away, they emerge from their haven.
They find a world in ruin, its communities struggling to endure against roaming marauders, autonomous battle droids, and metal-eating nanites.
The players’ characters, armed with contemporary knowledge and ideals, are thrust into a world in technological and cultural freefall.
Onyx Sky, from the ENnie award-winning designer of Hero Kids, Forge Engine, and Heroes Against Darkness, is:
- All In One RPG: Everything you need to play a campaign; Player Content, Game Rules, GM Guidance, Campaign Guide, and Adversaries.
- Relatable Future: Onyx Sky’s post-apocalyptic setting is a possible future; grounded, plausible, and terrifying.
- Full Color: Over 100 full-color illustrations.
- No Wasted Words: Tightly written and jam-packed with gameable content.
Onyx Sky includes:
- Game Rules: The game rules cover character creation and development, attribute tests, skills, exploration, combat, downtime, and travel.
- Player Content: Everything players need to create, develop, and run their characters; traits, general skills, martial skills, and equipment.
- GM Support: Instruction for game mastering Onyx Sky campaigns.
- Adversary Templates: Onyx Sky includes 28 adversary templates for Grunts, Strikers, Tanks, and Commanders.
Onyx Sky’s Game Rules use a streamlined, refined, and optimized iteration of Hero Forge Games’ engine:
- Attributes and Skills: The simple attribute and skills system allows players the freedom to create their character.
- Flexible Character Building: Flexible character building and development, with general and martial skills, as well as skill specializations for extra customization.
- Step-Die Progression: Character attributes use step-die progression, starting at d6 and progressing through d8, d10, d12, d16, to d20 and beyond.
- Dice Pool Resolution: The opposed resolution system gives meaningful degrees of success.
All this is included in the FREE PDF VERSION of Onyx Sky, which is ideal to share with players to create characters and familiarize themselves with the game system.
The DELUXE FULL VERSION of Onyx Sky also contains 72 extra pages of Setting, Campaign, and Adversary content (144 extra pages in the upcoming print book).
- Campaign Guide: The deluxe version of Onyx Sky includes an extensive campaign toolbox overflows with setting background, campaign design guidance, adventure seeds, unique encounters, hazards, locations, groups, and companions.
- Adversaries: The deluxe version of Onyx Sky includes 78 illustrated human, animal, and droid adversaries.
Onyx Sky’s Setting takes players into our near-future:
- Our World: Thirty years from now, global war and environmental collapse have decimated the world’s population.
- In Decay: Microscopic nanites consume metal to replicate themselves, stripping the world of metal piece by piece.
- Naive Newcomers: The players’ characters emerge into this world after three decades sheltering safely in a fallout shelter, military facility, survival bunker, or research.
- Relentless Droids: Military battle droids roam the land, seaching indescriminately for targets.
- Depraved Adversaries: Communities of survivors struggle to survive in this degraded world, struggling against opportunistic raiders, brutal warlords, and mercilous autonomous battle droids.
Onyx Sky’s Campaign Guide includes content and prompts to support game-masters running an Onyx Sky campaign:
- Campaign Bible: The Campaign Bible introduces Onyx Sky’s broken world, including its themes, tone, and denizens.
- Character Origins: Varied examples of the government, scientific, medical, and civilian facilities where the player characters have sheltered.
- Character Goals: Guidance for building an engaging Onyx Sky campaign by matching player preferences with an appropriate narrative style.
- Campaign Elements: Hundreds of elements to fill out your world; unique encounters, hazards, locations, groups, and companions.
- Adventure Seeds: Seeds to inspire you with grounded and open-ended adventures.
Onyx Sky’s Adversaries section includes 78 challenging and versatile animals, droids, and humans:
- Animals: With the human population greatly reduced, animal predators are resurgent, including big cats, bears, snakes, wolves and dogs, hyena, and more.
- Droids: During the great war, the military-industial complex perfected autonomous battle droids; simple workhorses, experimental hunter-killers, drones, and huge titan-class units.
- Humans: In the devastated world, other survivors might be allies or enemies, with adversaries including bandits, ferals, cannibals, slavers, reavers, nutes, neonates, militia, and cultists.
I know that’s a lot. But that’s not all!
Onyx Sky also has a FREE INTRODUCTORY ADVENTURE, Salt City Dogs:
- Introductory Adventure: In Salt City Dogs, the players are a group of prisoners who are forced into an experimental military cryogenic hibernation program.
- 30 Years Later: The prisoners wake – disoriented – and find themselves in an abandoned military research facility; when they venture outside they find the world in ruin.
- Learning Through Play: Salt City Dogs seamlessly teaches the players Onyx Sky’s system and rules through play.
- Mini-Setting Guide: The Salt City Dogs adventure also includes a mini-setting guide for the post-apocalyptic Salt Lake region, supporting GMs to transition the adventure into a full Onyx Sky campaign.
- Packed With Content: This free adventure is 44 jam-packed pages, including easy-to-run scenes, compelling and flexible encounters, and location and region maps.
Grab Salt City Dogs for free here!
COMING SOON: Onyx Sky in print:
- Digest 6×9: Onyx Sky print book is a compact 6×9 softcover book.
- Full Colour: The Onyx Sky print book is full colour.
- 366 Pages: Onyx Sky softcover is 366 pages of our post-apocalyptic future.