Lethean Age Handbooks
The handbooks are the player-facing tabletop books for the Lethean Age. They teach the RPG in the order people expect to learn it: what the world is, how to make a character, what choices mean at the table, how conflict works, what monsters are, and how a World Master can run the setting.
Handbooks are written in SRD style: clear prose, examples, usable tables, plain-language procedures, and enough atmosphere to make the setting legible without turning every rule into an implementation clause.
Contract
- Handbooks are for tabletop players and World Masters.
- Handbooks may denormalize current canon for readability.
- Handbooks must preserve the meaning of the current numbered rulebooks.
- Handbooks should not introduce implementation-only edge cases unless they matter at the table.
- Handbooks should use Lethean Age flavor: psionics, the Miasm, the Winds, the Lattice, The Law, mental factions, and scientific romance.
- Handbooks should not import D&D flavor: no literal gods, souls, planes, dragonblood, fiends, celestials, fey realms, or divine magic.
Current Books
| Handbook | Audience | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Player's Handbook | Players | Character creation, classes, origins, adventuring rules, equipment, psionics, and table-facing play procedures. |
| Setting Handbook | World Masters, designers, consenting spoiler-readers | The out-of-character canon: the true history, the actual nature of the miasma and the Redoubts, the Vril-ya, Project Challenger, and the Pacific Northwest as the first regional canon. |
| World Master Handbook | World Masters | Running the world, settlements, factions, relics, Redoubts, rewards, campaigns, and lore reveals. |
| Monster Handbook | Players and World Masters | Creature types, monster use, mutation vectors, ecology, stat blocks, and encounter guidance. |
Source Material During Phase One
The current numbered rulebooks remain the fidelity source during this phase:
rulebooks/0-lore.mdrulebooks/1-settings.mdrulebooks/2-creatures.mdrulebooks/3-apocalyptia.mdrulebooks/4-characters.mdrulebooks/5-items.mdrulebooks/6-conflict.mdrulebooks/7-societies.mdrulebooks/gammago/classes/rulebooks/gammago/everett/
rulebooks/8-cardgame.md is a separate product and is not part
of the Lethean Age tabletop handbook migration unless explicitly promoted later.
Migration Rule
When a handbook section is drafted from source material, prefer a vertical slice: copy the meaning, rewrite for the reader, and add a source note until the section has been reviewed. Do not delete or move source material as part of handbook drafting.