Open Beta Playtest Version—Download for Free!

A GATEWAY TO LIMITLESS ADVENTURE

WONDER × WORLDS is a tabletop roleplaying game engine designed to empower storytelling in any magical, supernatural, futuristic, or alternative reality you can imagine. It’s a collaborative experience where one player serves as the Game Master (GM)—acting as the narrator and referee—while others portray player characters (PCs) in the amazing worlds you create together. The system also enables thrilling solo adventures, placing the entire story in a single player’s hands.

More than anything, WONDER × WORLDS is for storytellers who refuse to be confined to just one genre or setting. 

• Universal tools facilitate the design of any world or campaign.
• Customizable character creation utilizes straightforward attributes, diverse skills, and a vast arsenal of weapons, powers, and gear to realize any fantastical persona.
• Flexible mechanics seamlessly adapt to high fantasy quests, cyberpunk heists, cosmic horror investigations, space opera sagas, superhero showdowns, post-apocalyptic road trips, giant robot battles—and more.
• Streamlined rules and an innovative six-sided dice pool system keep gameplay fast, intuitive, and always focused on driving the narrative forward—with just enough crunch for exciting tactical encounters.
• Extensive Oracle tables effortlessly inspire ideas, enabling solo play and minimizing GM preparation.
• Immediate play is unlocked with Wonderland City, a noir-infused sample setting where arcane forces and advanced technology intertwine—complete with pregenerated characters and a ready-to-play starter adventure.

If you can dream it, WONDER × WORLDS lets you bring that dream to life!  

One system. Every genre. Infinite possibilities.

WHAT YOU GET:

• A 238-page rulebook with stunning illustrations by Adrian Stone.
• A complete Starter Mission: "Bring the Queen of Hearts to Justice."
• A  fully integrated solo play toolkit and more than 60 Oracle tables.
• A suite of useful reference handouts, including fillable character sheets.
  

BOUNDLESS CUSTOMIZATION

Every character in WONDER × WORLDS is built on a foundation of core characteristics like Attributes and Skills—but that’s just the beginning. The real fun starts when you customize your PC with Extraordinary Capabilities. Players can construct any type of weapon imaginable and choose from dozens of Weapon Moves (cool attacks and battle tactics), Power Moves (astonishing abilities), Special Maneuvers (like flight and teleportation), powerful Artifacts, custom vehicles and mechs, and loyal Familiars.

Key to the system’s adaptability is defining Extraordinary Capabilities in terms of general game mechanics, allowing you infinite flexibility to narratively describe them in whatever way best fits your genre and setting. A ranged fire weapon, for example, could be described as a flame thrower in a military sci-fi campaign, heat vision in a superhero saga, or a scorching ray spell in a high fantasy world. The Beast Form Power Move might be described as lycanthropy in a gothic horror story, a polymorph potion in an urban fantasy setting, or a bio-hack in a cyberpunk adventure. You get the idea!

FULLY INTEGRATED SOLO PLAY

Solo play is not bolted on to WONDER × WORLDS—it is woven into every aspect of the game. The core mechanics are built from the ground up to support a single-player experience. Because only the player rolls the dice—and adversary actions and narrative developments are determined by those same rolls—you never have to switch mindsets to “play against yourself.” Quest Loop and Solo Scene Workflow diagrams help structure your journey, while  extensive and highly adaptable Oracles act as your virtual GM—answering your questions about the world, populating your story with dangers and discoveries, and generating unexpected plot twists. A dedicated Solo Play Toolkit appendix gathers all these tools in one place, putting everything you need at your fingertips.

WONDERLAND CITY 

The rulebook provides a complete sample setting, Wonderland City—a rain-drenched, neon metropolis loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Its denizens are a dizzyingly diverse mix of humans and humanoid animals, walking chaotic streets that blend towering skyscrapers with magical moving billboards, shabby tenements, mutated gardens, and alleyways where shadows seem to have a life of their own.

The rot in Wonderland City runs deep. Politicians, the police, the courts—all have been bought or compromised by criminal syndicates. Most live in resigned despair, believing the city is beyond saving. But a bold few still hold out hope for justice and change—and they fight for it!

The mash-up of portal fantasy, urban fantasy, noir, and cyberpunk showcases the system’s genre flexibility and serves as a running example for game mechanics. Pregenerated characters and a complete Starter Mission, “Bring the Queen of Hearts to Justice,” allow you to play the game right out of the gate!

HOW TO PLAY

Players in WONDER × WORLDS create characters who embark on Quests—an exciting journey to achieve an overarching objective or ambition. Within Quests, PCs  pursue Missions to achieve specific objectives. The heart of the game is playing through a series of Exploration, Social Interaction, and Combat Scenes to complete Missions and advance Quests.

All Scenes follow the same pattern: the GM describes the situation, the players say what their PCs do, and the results push the story forward. Whenever a PC attempts something that is risky or uncertain, they “make a Move” and the player rolls the dice to see what happens.

1. Assemble Your Dice Pool. You always start with one Move Die (Md6). Next, you add Advantage Dice (Ad6) for your character’s strengths and situational factors, add Disadvantage Dice (Dd6) representing challenges, and then cancel them out one-for-one. (The MD6 is never canceled.)

2. Roll the Remaining Dice. 

• If there’s at least one Ad6 remaining in the PC's dice pool, you are rolling with Advantage and take the highest result.
• If there’s at least one Dd6 remaining in the PC's pool, you are rolling with Disadvantage and take the lowest result.
• If only the 1Md6 remains, you are rolling Flat. If you roll a 6 or 1, roll again to see if you get a second 6 or 1; otherwise, ignore the second roll and take the original result.

3. Determine and Interpret the Results to Drive the Story Forward. Rolls never produce simple pass/fail outcomes. Instead, the game uses degrees of success and failure to create a range of positive Effects and negative Consequences. Constant twists and turns ensure the story never stalls.

Many Effects and Consequences are tracked using Clocks—a simple visual way to manage everything from a guard’s growing suspicion to a ticking timebomb or a car chase.

An Expanded Move Results Table gives GMs and solo players myriad options to interpret and implement results in any narrative context.

INSPIRATIONS

WONDER × WORLDS is a mix of Old School and New School, drawing on the legacy of Dungeons & Dragons while being deeply influenced by modern indie TTRPGs like Blades in the Dark, Ironsworn, Lancer, Numenera, Spire, and numerous Powered by the Apocalypse and Year Zero Engine games.

HELP MAKE THE GAME BETTER

The Open Beta version has been extensively playtested and has everything you need to dive in. The goal now is to expand the community and gather your feedback to make additional refinements and push WONDER × WORLDS across the finish line!

Your insights are invaluable. Please consider filling out our feedback survey to help shape the final version of the game. If you do, you’ll receive a discount code for 25% off the final version of the game upon its release.

CHECK OUT THE SOUNDTRACK

LOOKING GLASS: A WONDER × WORLDS SOUNDTRACK by Ian Hackett Kahl is available on Spotify and wherever you stream or buy music.

 

CREDITS

Game Design, Writing, and Development: Colin H. Kahl 

Art: Adrian Stone 

Design Consulting and Editor: Will Jobst 

Layout and Graphic Design: Nathan D. Paoletta 

Soundtrack: Ian Hackett Kahl