Introduction

The forest’s thickness is lessening, with room for paths of turned earth, rectangular pits, a whiteness as of mushrooms peeping from the ground.

With horror we see from the thirteenth tarot that the underbrush is fertilized with half-withered corpses and fleshless bones.

“Why, where have you brought me, Fool? This is a cemetery!”

And the Fool says, pointing to the invertebrate fauna feeding in the graves:

“Here a monarchy reigns, mightier than you."

His Majesty the Worm is a tabletop role-playing game designed for dungeon-crawling. The Game Master uses the tools in this book to create a megadungeon called the Underworld. The players create adventurers to explore the Underworld in pursuit of their personal quests. Tarot cards are used as a randomizing element.

This is a new-school game with old-school sensibilities. It’s designed to make the “boring parts” interesting. Slice-of-life subsystems like food, hunger, light, and inventory management are central to play.

The game has robust procedures: characters adventure in the Underworld, rest in camping scenes, then plan longterm actions in the City at the center of the Wide World.

The relationships between companions, called Bonds, power the rest and recovery mechanic of the game. Role-playing drives the game forward.

Combat encounters are handled with an action-packed subsystem that ensures that all players have interesting choices every minute of combat: no downtime!

We hope you will have fun with it!