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📚 Guides

Short, plain-English explainers for the table — each paired with the tools to match.

Your First Descent into Gallowmere
The game's own rules: starting classes, checks, combat, costly relics, endings and saved progress.
How the Random Generators Work
The fixed source tables, probability rules, privacy choices and limits behind names, NPCs, loot, encounters and the oracle.
Dice Notation Explained: What "2d6+3" Means
Read any weapon, spell or trap at a glance once the NdX+M format clicks.
Advantage & Disadvantage, Explained
The simplest good rule in d20 games — the math, when it applies, and why it doesn't stack.
How to Run Your First Combat
Initiative, turns, hit points and calling the fight — the whole loop, step by step.
How to Play a Tabletop RPG Solo
Swap the GM for an oracle and discover the story as you go — no group required.
The GM's Improv Toolkit
Use generators to conjure a living world the moment your players go off-script.

Choose a path

If you came to play the site's browser adventure, start with the Gallowmere guide. It documents the game's actual checks, combat controls, save behavior and endings without spoiling the routes. If you are using a random tool at your own table, read the generator-design guide first: it separates fixed source material from the random combination and gives the core encounter and oracle rules.

For a first tabletop session, read dice notation before advantage, then use the first-combat walkthrough as a checklist. The probability examples in the advantage guide are calculated from all 400 possible pairs of d20 results, and its calculator lets you verify a target and modifier. Solo players can combine the solo loop with the oracle and journal. Game masters who already know the rules can jump to the improv toolkit for ways to turn a generated result into a connected scene.

What these guides cover

The rules pages describe either Crypt Table's own implementation or broad d20-style conventions. They are not substitutes for the rulebook used at your table, and the guides call out assumptions where systems differ. Examples use playable situations and explain why a tool produced its answer, rather than simply repeating a button label.