STONEHOLD — Dwarven TTRPG Public Playtest.

FREE PUBLIC PLAYTEST

STONEHOLD 

Work. Delve. Feast. Repeat.

STONEHOLD is a rules-medium, tables-heavy fantasy TTRPG about dwarves being dwarves.

Make your dwarf. Choose your Clan and Job. Build your Standing. Practice your Craft. Take work nobody sensible wants. Descend into forgotten mines and flooded tunnels. Fight kobolds, cave beasts, Draugr, and worse things from deeper below. Then come home, raise a glass, tell everyone what happened—and hope their version of the story resembles yours.

You live beneath the mountain in Stonehold: an ancient dwarven stronghold of clans, craftsmen, miners, brewers, grudges, traditions, dangerous tunnels, and dwarves who remember exactly what you said about their beard three feasts ago.

STONEHOLD uses a fast 2d6 + Attribute system built around five distinctly dwarven Attributes: Vigor, Guile, Beard, Craft, and Stones. Characters can push those Attributes beyond their normal limits, but doing so exhausts them until they recover in suitably dwarven ways.

What’s in the Public Playtest

• Complete character creation with Clans, Jobs, equipment, Standing, Grievances, Craft and advancement
• Fast, dangerous combat and dungeon-delving rules
• Hold → Delve → Feast session structure
• A working dwarven economy, social hierarchy, factions and everyday life
• Crafting, drinking, taverns, feasts, insults, brawls and grudges
• A bestiary of things dwarves would rather not find underground
• Tables. A lot of tables.
• Ready-to-run adventures and adventure-generation tools
• Seal the Crack, an introductory Holdwork assignment designed to get a new crew playing quickly
• Character sheets and a Quick Start guide

This is a public playtest, not a finished game. Rules will change. Numbers may be wrong. Something that seemed brilliant while writing it may turn out to be terrible once actual dwarves get hold of it.

That’s why you’re here.

Grab some dice. Grow a beard. Get to work.