Why play heroic fantasy? In most games, the question answers itself: you play to become a hero. In Doom’s Dawn, you already are one.

Your story isn’t about gathering strength, but about how you spend what strength you possess. Progress lives in you: in your emotions, your quests, your resolve, and what you’re willing to risk for them.

Old-school fantasy thrives on procedures and survival. This game doesn’t. New-school fantasy often centers on character advancement. Here, that growth begins at the height of valiance, and from there, your legend may ascend or erode.

Yes, the odds can seem harsh: a one-in-six chance for a clean success. But the real story isn’t whether you succeed: it’s how everything changes when you take a risk. Even failure can move the tale forward, if you face what follows.

For Primes, a single zombie isn’t really a worthy opponent. You’ll probably cut it in half without a roll. And when you’re facing an ancient black dragon, it’s likely that you won’t hack and slash. 

Doom’s Dawn aims to build a space where true danger isn’t the monster before you, but the look in someone’s eyes: the one that makes you heed, love, or fail. Now that can be the ultimate enemy.

The Primes

Each of you carry a shard of Doom. You are more than common heroes. You are flawed, noble, tragic, bound instruments of the world’s balance, bearing burdens you did not choose.

Your Doom is a central theme you are drawn to, cosmic and specific. Unquestionable. Unemotional. It’s a fate-driven imperative, perhaps not fully understood yet, but always consistent in tone. 

As you seek your own Doom, you still are bound together: not necessarily allies, but entangled. The roads cross. The worlds rhyme. One’s Doom might open a door for another. You don’t know whether you’re destined to help, hinder, or replace each other.

It’s also possible that you are fractured pieces of a single story. Maybe each Doom is an expression of one larger, hidden purpose. The Primes think they are walking different paths, but fate will bind them in the end. Eventually, they may have to choose: merge their truths, or resist the synthesis.

Marches

Each March is a self-contained realm: a reality, a city, a dream-scape, or a fractured land. It has geography, tone, and physical or metaphysical rules shaped by all players. The cosmic Balance tilts toward Law or Chaos in every March. A tension between these forces reflects the outer multiverse’s instability, the realm’s fracture point and the inner pull of the Primes. 

A March can be large as a continent or small as a fortress, but it is a place you live in for some time, not just pass through. The March is the current stage of the story: everything that happens takes place within its bounds until a change occurs. The Primes manifest in a March because it calls for them through summoning, invitation, or omen. A Quest awaits, whether they recognize it immediately or not.

A March ends or shifts when a Quest is fulfilled or failed, its tensions are exhausted, the Primes cause a mythic upheaval, or Balance topples completely. When leaving a March, Primes review and count their Wake: chaos, witnesses, broken promises, high-profile Foes, unjust killings, harm to innocents, and trails left behind all count. The final tally of Wake reveals the legacy the Primes leave behind.

A Quest is what anchors a March. It’s mythic, fatalistic, but flexible, and is easy for players to recognize in play. It’s the narrative spine of play, defining the reason the Primes remain in this realm at all.  You don’t necessarily arrive to a March knowing your Quest. It’s not a mission, not a fetch list, not a plot. You play to find it out.

What’s in this Ashcan

• Complete rules for play: character creation, world-building, and narrative resolution.
• Guidance for the table: principles for players and the Guide, narrative authority, and how to run the game.
• A curated set of example Quests to showcase tone and structure.
• Conceptual scaffolding, touchstones, and orientations to clarify what the game emulates and how it feels in play.
• Enough content  for playtesting over a full campaign across multiple Marches.

Supporting this work will help prepare its first official edition with in-depth content and proprietary art.