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Playtest 4 is now live, November 2025! Hexingtide is in the best, most refined state it's ever been: clearer GM guidance and robust play options. I'd love to get your feedback!

Hexingtide is a minimalist TTRPG love letter to monster heroes - from modern comics, the pulps, and old tales of folklore and myth. Inspired by:

  • Hellboy & the wider Mignolaverse
  • Dan Brereton’s Nocturnals
  • Eric Powell’s The Goon & Hillbilly
  • Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  • Kevin Grevioux's Underworld films
  • and the various incarnations of The World of Darkness…

About these rules:

Hexingtide is a rules-light tabletop RPG in a black and white, 8.5" x 11"  format.

  • Rules are hyper-focused on the most monster-y parts of the PCs: their powers (Powers), their inhuman vulnerabilities and threats (Portents), and how they remain tied to the mundane, mortal world of humanity (Pacts), using a point buy system with open-ended descriptors, allowing for maximum narrative flexibility by the players and the GM. Think Fate Aspects.
  • Players roll a single die of their choosing: their Inhumanity Die. It is double-edged, directly tying success, danger, and escalation to the nature of your monster. Roll high to succeed with your Powers. Roll low to withstand the disastrous pull of your Portents.
  • Structured gameplay procedures with six distinct Scene types: Challenges, Exposures, Investigations, Temptations, Interludes, and semi-structured Narratives. These act as a versatile toolkit for Storytellers and help groups collaboratively lean into the specific genre motifs of monster stories.
  • Roleplay-Based Advancement: XP is earned by deliberately embracing or struggling against your defined Monstrous and Human Impulses, rewarding roleplaying that advances the character's internal conflict.

Hexingtide is in active playtesting.

More information
Updated 3 hours ago
StatusPrototype
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(20 total ratings)
AuthorWill Phillips
GenreRole Playing
TagsTabletop role-playing game, zimo, zinequest

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Hexingtide_0.4.6.pdf 21 MB
Hexingtide_0.4.6_Pregen_Babbage_Lvl1.pdf 4.4 MB
Hexingtide_0.4.6_Reference.pdf 471 kB
Hexingtide_0.4.6_Reference_XP_Costs.pdf 217 kB
Hexingtide_CharacterSheet_0.4.6.pdf 3.8 MB
Hexingtide_Pregen_Xmas_2025_Krampus_Lvl3.pdf 5.2 MB
Hexingtide_Pregen_Xmas_2025_Santa_Lvl3.pdf 5.8 MB

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Comments

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kain bodom2 years ago(+2)(-1)

looks really interesting. cheers.

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Will Phillips2 years ago

Thank you!

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kumada13 years ago(+5)

Hexingtide is a gothic supernatural action drama ttrpg in which you play as occult creatures in the modern day.

The PDF is 12 pages, and they're all clean and easy to read, with excellent layout.

Lore and mechanics-wise, you could think of this as a super slimmed down World Of Darkness.

The fluff and crunch are tightly interwoven. Your character is built from advantages, disadvantages, and relationships. Your unique supernatural type defines your play experience. And a d10 is involved.

Because Hexingtide is lighter weight than WoD, there isn't a skill list or predefined stat page. Instead, you define the parts of your character you care about. You could have Strong 2, or Cat Knowledge 1, or The Tommygun Of My Ancestors 4.

Oddly, your disadvantages (called Banes) serve as your HP, and your relationships (called Bonds) can be used to refill them. So a character made of all downsides and messy entanglements has serious staying power---which is genre appropriate as heck. I like it a lot.

There's other cool flourishes in the system too---including a rocks-paper-scissors elemental system that uses the medieval bodily humors. And an option to risk your HP to boost skill checks. And meaningful, non-death consequences for HP 0. And a rest system that's personally meaningful---you recover through spending time with things you care about, not simply through sleeping.

As far as GM tools, there really aren't many. There's guidance on how to use the rules, but there isn't a bestiary or a sample adventure or any roll tables. The system is easy to use, but you'll have to do the heavy lifting to set up your session.

Overall, if you like World Of Darkness, BPRD, Dresden Files, Underworld, or other high drama modern supernatural settings, this is a great way to play them. Every mechanic is tight and meaningful, and with a little work on the GM's part you can have an excellent several session game. Absolutely check this out if you can.

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AJMartinNZ3 years ago(+2)

Instead of "Bonuses" use "Boons". Like this:

  • Rules are hyper-focused on the most monster-y parts of the PCs: their powers (Boons), their inhuman vulnerabilities and threats (Banes), and how they remain tied to the mundane, mortal world of humanity (Bonds).
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