An epic and heroic fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) about difficult choices and consequences that carry real weight. You decide what you attempt. The dice decide how cleanly it goes.
Join the AdventureTales Of Valen is a collaborative TTRPG built around difficult choices. You decide what you attempt, the dice decide how cleanly it goes, and the GM decides what it costs. Some sessions are fights, others are quiet decisions, and a few are strange plans that somehow work out. The rules support all of it without forcing your table into one lane. This is not a game about winning or losing. Nothing here has a final ending, only stories that unfold, conclude, and give way to new ones.
A party's Archetypes, Ancestries, and skills each bring something different to the table, and learning to rely on one another is what gets you through what lies ahead. The Dice of Valen decide how cleanly your plans come together, whether you are climbing a crumbling ledge, interpreting a strange device, or striking an enemy at exactly the right moment.
Valen is many worlds pressing against each other at the edges, from desert to jungle, tundra to open sea. No two Holds share the same customs, rulers, or relationship with power, and no two Ancestries carry the same inheritance. Every region has shaped the people who call it home into something distinct.
Campaigns can last a single session or span many years. If a character's story ends, another can take their place, and the world stays open for players and the GM to keep shaping together. Choices at the table carry real weight, and the rules step aside when the story needs room to breathe.
The world of Valen has now entered an age unlike those that came before it. The great wars have been fought, and the wounds of the past are finally healing. Civilisation has had time to grow beyond fear and ruins left by the gods and their enemies.
Whilst this is an age of peace, it is not without danger or conflict. The Holds of Valen now have tensions across borders and for resources. Nobles scheme against one another whilst factions struggle for influence, with old grudges holding a threat of violence yet these dangers are no longer the defining struggle of the world. Armies protect the Holds, guards protect the streets, and governments work to supress threats such as cults or hostile factions.
This is the Age of Adventure. Beyond the protection held by civilisation Adventurers confront the threats that Governments and Armies cannot always easily handle, whether they’re seeking glory, fortune, a chance to leave their mark upon the world, or they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, being an Adventurer had become a career like any other, just with a higher risk for a greater reward.
The Realm of Valen is made up of several Holds, each containing the cities that serve as the seat of Physical, Political, or Religious power for the people who call them home. The Red Desert, the Bittercold Tundra, the Ziggurat Jungle, the Ashen Coast, the Kanaka Badlands, the Ortovh Wetlands, Shiala, the Sunrise Kingdom, the Crystal Isle, the Mon-Mon Archipelago, and Valish all sit under this same realm, and none of them share the same rules for survival.
The Red Desert and the Dijmanti Desert are harsh ecosystems shaped by restraint. Settlements survive through strict rules about water, shelter, and movement, and waste is treated as a death sentence rather than a moral failing. At the borders, Gate Watchers hold posts where civilisation presses directly against hostile land, standing guard not for glory but to delay disaster. Some serve the Crimson Gate against the heat and desperation of the Red Desert. Others serve the Frost Gate beneath the Frostback Mountains, where cold, silence, and sudden violence define the post. In Royal Valish, the capital of power, ceremony, and inherited authority, noble families shape politics through alliances and quiet influence, and reputation functions as both weapon and shield.
A character's Ancestry is one of the most defining aspects of who they are. It shapes the languages they speak, the abilities they carry from birth, and the way the world around them responds to who they are. Ancestry is not a role or a profession. It is heritage, physiology, and culture, and it stays relevant throughout a character's life. As a character grows, their connection to it deepens. Inherited traits do not appear all at once. They unfold gradually as the character matures, adapts, and comes to understand themselves.
Orcs hail from the great Grim-Tribes of the Kanaka Badlands, and their culture is forged by strength, resilience, and survival. Many walk a path of duality, either upholding the fierce traditions of their ancestors or forging new lives far from a reputation earned in battle. Beneath that fierce exterior, orcs often carry loyalty, honour, and a deep connection to their kin and traditions.
Some characters are Crossborn, born of two Ancestries, inheriting traits from both and drawing on the balance of their upbringing, physiology, and cultural inheritance. Ancestry in Valen is not something a character outgrows, It is something they grow into.
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