About

When the world ended, humanity was presented with a choice: stand together as one or stand alone, each person for themselves. We chose greed, violence and loss. We chose to tear ourselves apart.

The year is 2044 and nothing has been right for a very long time. Society collapsed when a mutated strain of the cordyceps fungus found a way to infect human tissue and turned living bodies into little more than breeding grounds. Infected hosts became silent and withdrawn, then suddenly and inexplicably violent.

Before anyone was able to mobilise a search for a cure, billions across the globe were already dead or infected. Governments crumbled, communications infrastructure fell apart and the power stations went offline. The world became quiet and dark, and only small pockets of survivors remained. Of the roughly sixty-six million inhabitants of England, Scotland and Wales at its peak, perhaps one million now remain.

In this shattered world, death is only ever a single decision away. We made our decision and divided we fell.

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Divided We Fall is a very high threat psychological horror system. Combat is mostly opt-in and based on unmodified Nerf style blasters and melee weapons. There are just as many ways to die outside of combat as in it and great deaths are often rewarded. The timeline up until 2023 (when infection brings about the end of society) is the same as our own. Characters are created from a set list of archetypes, each with their own skills and abilities. The options are:

Chef
Inventor
Military Training
Scientist
Wanderer

This is a system which aims to be as inclusive as possible. It is a world where the most resilient survive, not the most physically able. In fact, over-reliance on physical strength is more likely to get you killed than anything else. Those who last the longest use their wits, their skills and their innovative thinking. This world often favours the neurodiverse, the chronic pain sufferers and people with disabilities. Those who were excluded before the end of the world learned to cope in a world set up with no care for their needs, and they adapted better and faster when society crumbled.