Glyndain is a city in a world of mobile phones and magic spells, mass transit and malevolent demons, the supernatural intermingled with the everyday. It's a strange world but one all too familiar to you.

In Glyndain when peoples trauma hits a breaking point their troubles manifest physically as a psychodungeon full of monstrous nightmares. Specialists called psychoplumbers are called in to clean out the dungeons and close them off. It’s difficult work. Dangerous. The kind that follows you home. Part adventurer, part handyman, part therapist. Still, it’s a living. You’ve got bills to pay and rent to make. It’s time to go down, down into the PSYCHODUNGEON.

What is PSYCHODUNGEON?

PSYCHODUNGEON is a post-dungeon fantasy concerning a group of poor cityfolk acting as psychoplumbers. Within an individual delving job there are three asymmetric roles in the game; the Dungeon itself, the Client it has manifested from, and any number of psychoplumbers who will delve down. Players have access to a variety of moves, specific things they can do to impact the world. The moves run on a token-economy and as different kinds of moves are made the players will gain, offer and lose tokens to guide play. Thought the book is full of advice on facilitating a game of PSYCHODUNGEON no role or player has singular responsibility for leading the game. Players work together to shape the world, set the mood and tone, create trouble and look for solutions.

The Dungeon acts as the physical landscape itself along with any monsters that inhabit it. They gain tokens by manipulating the emotions of the Client and the psychoplumbers and spend them to act aggressively. Dungeons have different Textures to help shade them in. Textures reflect the real world troubles of the Client.

The Client is any individual whose traumas have been made manifest. While the dungeon is active they feel near-completely drained of energy, a general malaise and physical uneasiness. If left unattended the dungeon will eventually completely consume the mind it sprang from, leaving just a burnt out husk.

The game's token-based system was built on the Belonging outside Belonging framework by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum, originated in Dream Askew and Dream Apart. 

What people are saying about PSYCHODUNGEON

"PSYCHODUNGEON is a post-Blairite, post-Dungeon, modernist nightmare laced with hope. Imagine if the adventuring party sent to accompany you into the labyrinth spawned from your traumatic past are employed by the same company who decided to skimp on COVID protections for their care homes as it made more money than ensuring nobody living in them died, and overseen by the government department tasked with making sure nurses are as overworked/underpaid as possible. Sure, this band will try their best to help (most of the time). But also, their lives are hard as fuck. They are gonna be messy and imperfect and it is going to get weird somewhere along the line. Truthfully, I'm surprised this game didn't first appear as a strip in 2000AD." - Tanya Floaker (The Connection Machine, Solstice, Be Seeing You)

"PSYCHODUNGEON does what some of the best Belonging Outside Belonging games do, which is create a setting that is a powerful mirror to our own, and then weave that setting into the very marrow of the game. The setting, its dungeons, clients, and psychoplumbers are inescapable in the best way possible because you don’t want to escape it. You want to dive in and see and feel everything that the postdungeon city of Glyndain has to offer. And then come out the other side changed by the experience." - Josh Hittie/Ostrichmonkey Games (Vibe Check and DEATHGRIND!!MEGASRUCTURE!!)

"PSYCHODUNGEON is one of those rare gems of a game that are at the same time strong death-of-capitalism critique and interesting dungeon delving. Most importantly, the way characters are very much not-ok is fresh and stimulating. I want to go and be not well in a psychodungeon." - Paolo of Lost Pages

Own PSYCHODUNGEON in physical form!

Pre-orders are still open if you want to be included in the orders being fulfilled from the Kickstarter. Once fulfilment is finished the book will be available to order from the Rat Wave Webstore.