This project adapts the Dungeons & Dragons fifth-edition 2024 rules framework for a specific job: historically grounded, strictly nonmagical play in the world of 1865–1890. It contains regional characters, locations, encounters, factions, period equipment, plausible animals, and rules for travel, weather, supplies, and combat.
The layers
Each layer answers a different question:
- Rules/ answers what do the rules say? The Core Rules, Glossary, equipment references, hazards, encounter tools, and balancing guidance are the reference layer.
- File types answer what is stored, and what is derived? Character sheets store decisions and play state; computed fields derive modifiers, defenses, attack lines, and other values. Classes, backgrounds, weapons, and monsters are structured inputs, not just prose.
- Game Master Instructions/ answer what does the GM actually do? Standing instructions and event triggers form the runtime, as opposed to the reference material.
- Content records are the nouns: human characters and historical figures, ordinary equipment, plausible animals and human opponents, locations, regional starts, factions, encounters, and lore.
A real rule change often touches a pair: the text players read and the schema or instruction that makes it true in play. Change how Exhaustion affects rolls and you must check both the rule page and the formulas reading exhaustionLevel; one without the other gives you a game that says one thing and does another.
The license, precisely
The rules text comes from the SRD 5.2, © 2025 Wizards of the Coast, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Keep the attribution statement in the project settings when you share or adapt this project. Do not use trademarks, artwork, settings, or other material outside the license without permission.
The two lines this project holds
The 2024 revision, on purpose. A sibling project carries the 2014 rules; this one deliberately uses the 2024 framework. Backgrounds carry ability score increases, species carry traits only, weapons have mastery properties, Heroic Inspiration rerolls, Exhaustion uses the cumulative −2/−5-foot track, and subclasses begin at level 3. The standing 2024 Rules Wording instruction is the guard on that line.
The historical, nonmagical line. Active play uses human characters, Frontier classes, ordinary period equipment, and historically plausible people and animals. Religious, spiritual, and folk beliefs may appear only as documented beliefs, accounts, and human practices—not as confirmed supernatural effects. There are no spells, magic items, supernatural creatures, fantasy settings, or opt-in supernatural mode. The Historical Realism and Start Preferences instruction is the guard on that line.
