This is not a game about saving the world. It is a game about preserving yourself long enough to change some small part of it.

Deadwake Role Playing Rules is the complete narrative roleplaying system for the Deadwake universe: a post-apocalyptic science-fiction setting in which survival depends upon more than weapons, equipment, and physical endurance.

Seventy-five years after the Feedback Cascade shattered civilization, humanity survives amid corporate arcologies, frontier settlements, ideological movements, scavenger enclaves, and the ruins of a world saturated by the Cognitive Static. Every expedition, confrontation, and difficult decision can threaten not only an operative’s body, but memory, identity, trust, and the integrity of the self.

Create Your Operative

Build a character from twelve distinct Roles and seven Origins. Combine background, training, abilities, convictions, equipment, and personal history to create an operative shaped by the fractured world of the Wake.

Characters are defined through three public attributes:

• Mettle, governing physical action, endurance, aggression, and survival;
• Interface, governing technology, perception, analysis, and interaction with complex systems; and
• Influence, governing persuasion, command, deception, social pressure, and human connection.

Beneath them lies Threadlock, a private measure of the forces holding memory, personality, and identity together. Players know what their operatives can attempt. They do not always know how close those operatives are to becoming something else.

The Resonance Roll

Deadwake uses a unified dice-pool system for physical action, technical interaction, social conflict, survival, investigation, combat, and exposure to the Cognitive Static.

Build a pool from the relevant attribute and circumstances, roll six-sided dice, and count successes. Exceptional results may generate Overload, allowing the player to channel excess resonance into a more powerful effect.

Overload offers real advantages, but its deeper cost is tested against Threadlock. Power in Deadwake is rarely free, and the consequences are not always immediately visible.

Body and Mind

Operatives possess two separate condition tracks:

• Vigor measures physical injury, exhaustion, and bodily survival; and
• Cohesion measures psychological stability under fear, trauma, psychic pressure, and exposure to the Static.

An operative may survive a confrontation physically while emerging psychologically fractured. Trauma, unstable memories, damaged relationships, ideological pressure, and altered convictions can persist long after wounds have healed.

A World of Consequences

Deadwake is designed for continuing narrative play. Decisions reshape relationships, factions, settlements, and future missions. Trust can be accumulated and destroyed. Convictions can sustain an operative or place them in conflict with companions. Success may solve an immediate problem while creating a larger one.

The game emphasizes uncertainty, hard choices, psychological pressure, competing loyalties, and the consequences of action in a world where no institution possesses a complete understanding of what humanity has become.

Inside This Book

• Complete character creation using twelve Roles and seven Origins;
• The Mettle, Interface, Influence, and Threadlock attribute system;
• The unified Resonance Roll mechanic;
• Overload and the hidden risks of Cognitive Blowback;
• Vigor, Cohesion, injury, trauma, and recovery;
• Skills, equipment, advancement, and operative development;
• Social conflict, trust, suspicion, and conviction;
• Exploration, investigation, survival, and faction interaction;
• Rules for exposure to the Cognitive Static and the erosion of identity;
• Persistent campaign consequences; and
• Guidance for Facilitators creating missions, conflicts, journeys, and long-form campaigns.

What You Need to Play

This book contains the complete Deadwake roleplaying rules. Players will also need ordinary six-sided dice, character sheets, writing materials, and a Facilitator to present and adjudicate the world.

Introduction to Deadwake is recommended for a broader introduction to the setting, history, factions, technologies, and central conflicts of the Wake, but it is not required to use this rulebook.

The separate Deadwake Miniatures Combat Rules are not required for roleplaying play. They may be added when a group wants to resolve larger tactical engagements with miniatures and carry the consequences back into the narrative campaign.

Book Details

• Author: Jon Compton
• Publisher: Canvas Temple Publishing, LLC
• Format: Paperback
• Length: 106 pages
• Dimensions: Approximately 7.44 × 9.69 inches
• Language: English
• Publication Date: May 9, 2026
• ISBN-10: 1969445084
• ISBN-13: 9781969445088

The digital edition is sold separately through WargameVault. This listing is for the physical paperback edition.