Welcome to Thaumaturgis
Thaumaturgis is a dark fantasy setting on the continent of Mundu, run using the Dungeons & Dragons 2024 ruleset. If those words mean nothing to you yet, that is exactly who this page is for. By the end of it you will know what kind of game this is, what you need to do before your first session, and how to build a character you actually want to play.
The short version of the world: magic is real, and it is running out. Mundu is a continent of marsh kingdoms, desert holdfasts, and iron cities living through the long twilight of a magical age — and nobody can agree whether that twilight is a tragedy, a test from the gods, or simply the way of things. Your characters live inside that argument. Some sessions are desperate fights. Some are tense negotiations. The best ones are the quiet moments in between, when a choice actually matters.
A session runs about three hours over Discord and Foundry: the GM describes, you decide, the dice answer. Work through the sections below in order if you are brand new. If you have played D&D before, skip to What Makes Thaumaturgis Different — that section and the links at the bottom are the setting-specific core.
What Is Dungeons & Dragons?
At its heart, D&D is a conversation. The Game Master (the GM) describes a world and the situations you find yourselves in. You describe what your character does. When the outcome is uncertain, dice decide it. That is the whole engine: describe, decide, roll, see what happens.
There is no winning or losing in the way a board game has. The point is the story the table tells together — the choices, the risks, the moments where a single roll changes everything.
The GM runs the world
One or more people share the other side of the table — the monsters, the merchants, the weather, the consequences. They are not your opponents; they are the narrators and referees.
You play one character
You control a single hero: their actions, their words, their decisions. You will build this character before you play — the rest of this page walks you through it.
Dice settle the uncertain
The twenty-sided die (the d20) is the one you will roll most. Higher is better. Add your character's relevant bonus, compare to a target number, and you know whether you succeeded.
Try it — this is the whole game
GM: "The cellar door is swollen shut in its frame. The scratching on the other side has stopped."
What do you do?
That exchange is the entire game in miniature: you say what you want to do, the GM picks the check, the d20 plus your bonus meets a target number, and the story moves either way — success and failure are both content. Combat, magic, negotiation: everything else is that loop with more detail. The full rules live in the Player's Handbook (2024); you do not need them to sit down and play.
What Makes Thaumaturgis Different
If you have played D&D before, most of what you know still applies. But Mundu is not the Forgotten Realms, and the differences are the point.
Magic is dying
For thousands of years, magic has been draining out of the world. Spells falter, ancient artifacts go dark, and the great workings of past ages stand as ruins nobody can rebuild. People call the raw current of magic the Wyrd, and everyone feels it thinning, but nobody agrees on why. The Param Sangha preaches that it is the will of the gods. Scholars argue for natural cycles. Others whisper darker theories where the Church cannot hear them. In play, this means magic is precious, unreliable, and never taken for granted — casting a spell is an event, not a convenience.
The world leaves marks
Some people are Wyrdtouched — changed, subtly or otherwise, by exposure to unstable magic. Some places are Wyrdrents, where harmonic instability has scarred the land itself and the normal rules stop applying. Both are survivable. Neither is safe.
Your mind is a resource
Thaumaturgis uses a Sanity system. Violence, helplessness, and things that should not exist all take a toll, and that toll is tracked. Characters can break, adapt, and recover — and the bonds they keep with other people are what hold them together. Read the Sanity page before your first session; it shapes how you play more than any other house rule.
Dark, not hopeless
This is a world in decline. Victories cost something, consequences persist, and the GM will not fudge you out of a bad decision. But it is not misery for its own sake. Hope matters here precisely because it is scarce, and what your characters choose to protect will define the story more than what they kill.
New classes and species
Alongside adapted standard classes, the setting has its own: the Sant-Rakshak, Witch, Psion, Pugilist, Inventor, and Scholar — plus nine playable species you will not find in the Player's Handbook. All of them have full write-ups on this site.
What You Need to Play
Less than you might think. For a game run on our Foundry table, the short list is:
- A computer and a browser. Everything runs in Foundry, in your browser. Nothing to install. See the Foundry guide for the full walkthrough.
- A character. Built ahead of time using our character creator. This page helps you decide what to make.
- Discord and a headset. We talk over Discord while the game runs in Foundry. Most of the game is conversation, so being able to hear and be heard matters more than anything else.
- About three hours. A typical session runs an evening. Come rested and ready to pay attention.
- The Player's Handbook (2024) — eventually. This website and the character creator cover everything you need for session one. When you want the full rules, the PHB is the one book worth owning; everything setting-specific stays here on the site.
Picking a Class
Your class is the single biggest decision about how your character plays. It decides what you are good at, what you do in a fight, and what tools you bring to a problem. Do not agonise — pick the fantasy that excites you and the mechanics will follow.
A rough guide to the broad shapes a class can take:
- If you want to stand at the front and hit things — look at the martial classes. Durable, straightforward, reliable.
- If you want to bend the world with magic — look at the spellcasters. More options, more to track, enormous range.
- If you want to be clever, sneaky, or silver-tongued — look at the classes built around skills and guile.
- If you want a bit of everything — several classes blend steel and spell, or skill and support.
Browse the full list with descriptions on the Classes page, and see how each fits the setting. When something makes you think "that one," you have your answer.
Signature classes. Thaumaturgis has classes of its own alongside the adapted standards: the Sant-Rakshak (a sacred guardian whose conviction is their power), the Witch (bargains, hexes, and old craft), the Psion (the newest power in the world — minds Awakening to something that is not magic), the Pugilist (fists, grit, and no patience for spellbooks), the Inventor (machines that work where magic fails), and the Scholar (knowing the right thing at the right moment). Each has a full write-up on the Classes page.
New to all this? An honest tip: spellcasters in Thaumaturgis carry extra rules, because magic here is unreliable by design. They are brilliant — and better as a second character. For a first outing, the Pugilist, Fighter, or Sant-Rakshak give you a clear job at the table and room to learn as you go.
Building Your Character
Once you know your class, building the rest is mostly a series of small, guided choices. Our character creator walks you through each one and does the arithmetic for you. In broad strokes:
- Species — what kind of being your character is, which shapes a few traits. Browse the Species page.
- Background — who they were before the story started, giving skills and a hook.
- Ability scores — the six numbers underpinning everything. The creator helps you assign them.
- Starting gear — what you carry into your first scene.
- A name and a face — the part that makes them yours.
How we roll scores: at this table you roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die, six times, then assign the results to whichever abilities you like. Roll in the creator, or bring real dice and roll where the GM can see. Recommended order for the whole build: class first, then species, then background, then roll your scores — knowing your class tells you where the big numbers should go.
Assign the six totals to any abilities you like. Rolling here is for practice — at the table, the first roll is the roll.
Your First Session
Show up a few minutes early, get your Discord audio working, and open the table. You do not need to remember the rules — that is what the GM and the other players are for. A few things that make a first session land well:
- Ask questions. Nobody expects you to know everything. Asking is how you learn, and it never slows things down as much as you fear.
- Describe what you want to do, not the rule you think applies. "I try to climb the wall" is perfect — the GM tells you what to roll.
- Lean in. The players who enjoy it most are the ones who commit to the character and the moment.
One more thing, and it matters: Thaumaturgis is a dark game. It deals with fear, loss, and things going badly for people who did not deserve it. If a scene or theme lands somewhere you do not want to go, tell the GM — before a session, during it, or after. Adjusting content is a normal part of how this table runs, not an interruption, and nobody will ask you to justify it.
Table-Ready Checklist
Everything on this page, boiled down to one list. Tick things off as you go — when the list is done, you are ready for session one. (The list resets when you leave the page; it is a worksheet, not a record.)
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