What the Gates Keep

You're a Traveller going down through the seven gates of the underworld. You put on seven Adornments before you leave, things like a crown of certainty, a cloak of being fine or a ring of being needed. At each gate a keeper stands in the way, asks you a question, and wants something. Each gate is one sitting of 15 to 25 minutes. Roll a die for the keeper, two for their question, one for the Demand. Sometimes a true answer is enough and the Thread mends. Usually they want the Adornment: give it up and write about what it was protecting, or bargain to keep it and pay out strands of the Thread, your only way back. It starts at 7. At the Throne Room it decides your ending: the Return, the Thin Return, or the Stay. We ran the rules through 5,000 simulated games before laying out a page. A middling player gets home about two times in three. Give everything up and you'll almost always make it back, with very little in your hands; bargain for everything and you carry it all, for as long as the Thread lasts. In the book (30 pages): - Rules, the Thread and Demand table, and one gate played out as an example - A setup page, a d6 table of reasons to go down, and 21 Adornments - Six keepers and a 36-entry question table - Seven painted gate pages, each with its own arrival and leaving prompts - The Throne Room, three endings, an Afterwards page and a quick reference The shape comes from the Sumerian story of Inanna's descent, retold from scratch. It's a story game, not therapy. You can skip any prompt, and the Traveller doesn't have to be you. You need three six-sided dice and a pen.