Shadow World of Ketu
A grim-dark medieval fantasy world two decades in the making — and the system forged to play inside it.
The System & The World
KETU RPG is a grim-dark tabletop roleplaying system built on a single, unforgiving principle: every contested action resolves the same way, and lower is always better. It is classless, setting-agnostic, and lethal by design — characters live or die on 1 to 3 hit points, and the same engine runs swords, spells, and social ruin alike.
Beneath the system lies the Shadow World of Ketu — a setting more than twenty years in the making. Two continents, dozens of warring states, ancient clans, and a history written in catastrophe and slow recovery. It is a world that remembers its dead, where empires rise from a single barony and fall in a single week.
No good. No evil. Only motivation, decision, and the weight of what follows.
The Creator
KETU is not a product built by a studio. It is the work of one person — over 14 years of system development and more than two decades of world-building, tested across countless campaigns and shaped at real tables with real players.
With a background spanning applied physics, philosophy, and a quarter-century of game mastering, the goal has never been to copy existing systems — but to build something honest: a game that is dangerous, modular, and deep, and a world worth getting lost in.
The Vision
KETU is built to grow — openly, and with its community.
The core rulebook is free. The community is open. The world is waiting.
