The Archivium 2nd Edition

The Archivium: Second Edition The books are waiting. So is something else… By day, you are a student at a prestigious university, attending lectures, studying for exams, making friends (and occasionally enemies), and navigating the peculiar social rituals of campus life. By night, you are something more. A Custodian of the Archive , sworn to maintain a secret collection of living knowledge. Books that rearrange themselves, relics that whisper, visitors who may or may not be human, and rules (so many rules) that must never be broken. The Society tells you the Archive must be protected. That some knowledge is too dangerous to leave unattended. But the longer you work among its collections, the more questions you'll have about what the Society is keeping down there, and why. Meanwhile, you still have an assignment due on Monday. A Solo Journaling RPG of Cozy Horror & Dark Academia The Archivium is a solo journaling roleplaying game about university life, secret societies, forbidden research, and the questionable career prospects of someone responsible for maintaining a supernatural library. Create your own university, choose what to study, build relationships with the people around you, and work your way through an academic career that becomes increasingly complicated by your responsibilities to the Archive. Your story develops through playing cards, dice rolls, journaling prompts, and the decisions you make along the way. Some days you'll uncover something deeply unsettling. Other days you'll go to a party, argue with a classmate, or spend an afternoon in the campus café. You might even get some studying done. What's New in Second Edition? Quite a lot, actually! Second Edition brings the original game and its Expansion Codices together into one extensively revised and reorganised experience. The rules and systems have been reworked into a unified core game, supported by four dedicated setting books. Everything fits together from the beginning, so you can spend more time playing and less time figuring out which expansion introduced which rule. What You'll Receive: Digital Collection = Five PDFs Core Rules The Core Rules contain the mechanics and systems that make up your university experience, including: Academic life, coursework, examinations, and progression through your studies. Hobbies, personal projects, and downtime activities. Character creation and prompts for building your own university and secret Society. NPC creation, relationships, and ongoing social interactions. 7 shared campus locations available in every game, regardless of which Appendix you choose. 4 Appendix Books Each Appendix provides a complete setting for your academic career, with its own atmosphere, places to visit, people to meet, and mysteries to investigate. ♥ Hearts | Cosmic Horror A university of scientific discovery and increasingly questionable experiments. Study nonhuman intelligence, investigate impossible phenomena, and follow signals from places that shouldn't exist. The data is very interesting. Your supervisors would prefer you stopped asking where it came from. ♦ Diamonds | Religious Horror A prestigious institution steeped in theology, philosophy, art, and centuries of ceremony. Investigate sacred mysteries, forbidden doctrines, angelic visitations, and the considerable trouble caused by people who believe they have divine authority. ♠ Spades | Gothic Horror History has a habit of lingering here. Study archaeology, mortuary sciences, and the preservation of things best left undisturbed. Examine funerary artefacts, recover forgotten records, and meet the dead, some of whom remain remarkably committed to their former responsibilities. ♣ Clubs | Folk Horror A university surrounded by woodland, old customs, and a close-knit rural community. Study ecology, folklore, and the relationships between people and the land. Share a meal, learn the local traditions, and take care with promises whose terms you don't fully understand. Each of the four setting books contains: 5 complete themed degree programmes , with their own academic subjects and progression. 20 elective classes to broaden your studies. 8 clubs and extracurricular activities to join. 16 experts across 8 arcane research fields , with strange knowledge to share. 6 increasingly unsettling Archive locations to unlock and explore. 5 additional campus locations and 2 off-campus locations , each suited to the setting. 20+ pages of themed oracles covering campus events, everyday discoveries, supernatural encounters, and plenty of other peculiarities. Do I Need All Five Books to Play? No! You only need the Core Rules and ONE Appendix. PDF & Print Editions The current PDFs are designed for on-screen reading. A printer-friendly, print-at-home version is planned and will be added to the digital edition free of charge . I'm also hoping to make physical print-on-demand editions available. The intention is to offer the Core Rules bundled with individual Appendices, so you can purchase the setting you actually want to play without paying to print the entire five-book collection. Print-on-demand availability has not yet been confirmed, but I'll share more information when those plans are finalised. What You'll Need A standard deck of playing cards 2–3 six-sided dice (d6) A journal, notebook, or digital writing space No GM, gaming group, or previous roleplaying experience required. Whether you want to catalogue an entire collection of impossible books, uncover the secrets of a centuries-old Society, or spend your university years making friends while occasionally confronting something unspeakable, there's plenty to keep you occupied. Your student record has already been opened, and your tuition has been paid. Please report for orientation. Already Purchased the First Edition? Second Edition is yours, free of charge! GET IT HERE If you purchased the original Archivium, thank you for supporting the game while it was still growing. Your feedback and enthusiasm helped shape much of what eventually became Second Edition, and I wanted to make sure you could enjoy the finished version without having to purchase the game again.