Beyond: Survivors of a Dying World
The world is ending it has been for a long time. You are the ones who decided to walk toward it, hex by hex, sea by sea, all the way to the dying sun.
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SYSTEM
LEVELS
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$10.00
/ Session
Details
1 player following this game
Weekly / Tuesday - 7:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 2–3 hours
Campaign Length / 10–15 Sessions
0 / 5 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
BEYOND: The Light is a post-apocalyptic fantasy campaign played using the M.A.D. System — a custom TTRPG built around Mystery, Adventure, and Dread. You'll begin in the Province, a fractured stretch of land where the old world still leaves its fingerprints on the dirt, and you'll end — if you make it — somewhere no map has ever charted. The journey takes you across the Last Sea, through the ruins of the World That Was, out into the Galaxy, down onto alien Planets, and finally into the burning heart of the Sun itself, where the gate to Yesod — Heaven and Hell made one — waits on the other side. This is a hexploration campaign at its bones: you chart the dying world, you choose the path, and the world pushes back. Expect strange geography, stranger people, and mysteries that don't resolve cleanly. The M.A.D. System puts the dice in your hands and the story in mine — you roll, and I tell you what it costs. This game is for players who want to feel the weight of a world that has already lost and is deciding, slowly, whether to try again. Who are comfortable with moral ambiguity, with beauty inside of dread, with a long road that changes you before it ends. You don't need to be an experienced TTRPG player — you need to be curious, present, and willing to care about something. The New Sun is not promised. But someone has to go looking for it.
Game style
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Combat Lite
Realm Building
Sandbox / Open World
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Roleplay Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Storytelling, Inclusive, Beginner Friendly
About me
My journey into tabletop started where many do,sitting across from a dungeon, a set of polyhedral dice, and Dungeons & Dragons. What began as a player's curiosity gradually became a GM's obsession: not just with running games, but with understanding what makes them work at the deepest level. I didn't, at first, care about roleplaying, but I found myself soon enthralled after listening to podcasts like The Adventure Zone, and later Critical Role and just fell in love with the game, running it for my friends for five years before the pandemic hit. That obsession reached its peak during the pandemic. With the world paused and the gaming table moved online, I did what any reasonable person does with too much time and too many ideas, I built my own TTRPG from scratch. BEYOND wasn't built in a vacuum, it was shaped by everything I'd played, studied, and loved about the hobby. The M.A.D. System came out of a simple conviction: that every great TTRPG moment you've ever had traces back to one of those three elements: Mystery, Adventure, and Dread. Building mechanics around that belief changed how I think about GMing entirely.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
No prior experience with the M.A.D. System required — I'll walk you through everything. Character creation happens before our first session using my dedicated companion website, which guides you step by step through building your Wayfarer. Everything you need is provided there, so you won't need any books or outside materials. If you fall in love with the system and want to go deeper, the full game is available to purchase on itch.io at durbin-max.itch.io — but it's entirely optional. Show up curious, and I'll handle the rest. Check out the 'BEYOND' SERIES 1. Beyond: The Obsidian Veil 2. Beyond: The Light 3. Beyond: The Stars
You are your character — and more. Attributes don't define you. The M.A.D. System is classless: your specialty comes from what you carry and what you've lived through. When you make a decision, ask not just what your character would do, but what you would do. Your instincts matter here. You work as a team. The players who thrive at this table seek consensus before charging forward. Goals are shared, respect is baseline, and the group accomplishes more together than any individual ever could alone. This is not a table for lone wolves or spotlight hogs. You pay attention. Exploration rewards curiosity. Listen to the details I give you — they are not decoration. There is no single correct path forward, and the players who ask questions are the ones who survive. Take the world at face value and probe it with your imagination, not your suspicion. You think before you fight. Violence is always an option, but rarely the best one. Stack the odds in your favor, talk to NPCs like they're real people, and retreat when the situation turns against you. Death is always around the corner in this world — it will never be random or without warning, but it will come for characters who stop being careful. You respect the fiction. This table runs Fiction First. What happens in the world determines what's possible — not the other way around. I'll always give you the information you need to make meaningful choices. In return, I ask that you engage with the world as if it's real, because at this table, it is.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Before your first session, here's some optional items: Visit the companion website — Head to durbin-max.itch.io/beyond-a-ttrpg-companion-app to familiarize yourself with the M.A.D. System and begin thinking about your Wayfarer. Full character creation will be guided before Session 1. Visit the Discord: https://discord.gg/tbVeNrTj55 Optionally, grab the rulebook — If you want to go deeper before we meet, the full M.A.D. System is available at durbin-max.itch.io. Never required, always appreciated. Check out the BEYOND Series — See where the world begins and where it's going: 1. Beyond: The Obsidian Veil 2. Beyond: The Light 3. Beyond: The Stars
What Maxwell Durbin-Tan brings to the table
I come to every session prepared — that means a living world with history, NPCs who have their own agendas, and an atmosphere you can feel. Expect ambient music tuned to the moment, character voices for the people you meet, and a GM who treats the story as seriously as you do. My style leans hard into roleplay and exploration over combat. Fights happen, and they matter, but they're not the point — the world is. I run Rule of Cool over Rules as Written every time, because the best moment at the table is always the one nobody planned for. If you have a wild idea that makes narrative sense, I will find a way to make it work. What you won't get is a railroad. The hexploration structure of BEYOND: The Light means the road is genuinely yours to chart. I have a world; you have agency. What happens between those two things is the game.
Homebrew rules
The M.A.D. System runs on its own ruleset, but here's one mechanic worth knowing before you sit down: Death Number — Every enemy has a Death Number equal to half their total HP. If you deal damage equal to or exceeding that number in the first round they're targeted, the enemy dies instantly — no further rolls needed. Miss that window, and you fight them down to zero the hard way. It rewards decisive, coordinated strikes and makes the opening move of any encounter matter.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Maxwell Durbin-Tan creates a safe table
BEYOND: The Light deals in dread, loss, and the end of the world — which means we take care of each other at the table before any of that begins. Before Session 1, I send every player a Lines and Veils document to fill out privately. Your responses are kept between us — no one at the table sees anyone else's limits. We'll revisit the broad strokes together during Session 0, but the details stay yours. During play, I use the X/N/O system — X to stop and remove something immediately, N to steer away from where something is heading, O to signal you want to lean in. These can be called out loud or dropped in the chat, no explanation needed, no questions asked. I check in at natural breaks if the material has gotten heavy. After sessions that go to dark places, I build in a few minutes of decompression — we step out of the fiction together before we log off. You'll never be left alone with whatever just happened at the table. I take this seriously because I run games that ask something of you emotionally. That's a privilege, and I don't take it lightly.
Content warnings
Safety tools used