Explore. Discover. Survive.

Enter the Zone - a quarantined region warped by catastrophe, filled with mystery, danger, and strange things beyond our understanding. In this tabletop roleplaying game inspired by the STALKER video game series Escape from Tarkov and Twilight 2000, you are a scavenger, survivor, and seeker - known as a stalker. You have come to the Zone either by desperation, curiosity, greed, or something else. Whether alone or with others, you’ll explore a shifting landscape filled with abandoned outposts, strange anomalies, hostile factions, and mutated threats beyond natural laws.

Zones utilizes a fast and lethal d20 roll-under system, accompanied by lightweight rules for character creation, tactical combat, survival mechanics, and hex-crawl exploration. It’s fully playable solo or with a group. It supports emergent storytelling through many procedural tables, mission generators, oracles, and world events. Designed to be gritty, flexible, and atmospheric, expanding on the Mausritter SRD, Zones doesn’t care how you survive, just what you leave behind.

What's Included:

• A core rules with solo and group play, with or without a Game Master using the Mausritter system

• Fast and lethal combat for both ranged and melee, adding some strategic depth for gunfights and mutant ambushes

• Inventory management using limited slots that ensure your gear defines you

• Simple stats and roll-under d20-based saves

• Systems for settlements, factions, world events, anomalies, scavenging, downtime, artifacts, and weather

• Full support for emergent storytelling with oracles, NPC generators, location types, hexcrawling rules, and more!

All you need to play is this book, the character sheets, a collection of polyhedral dice, and the will to brave the unknowns.

Delve into ZONES. The deeper you go, the more you discover.

The Zone remembers you.

*The Zone changes you. *

Actual Plays

Check out this quick and easy play using Obsidian, by Axebeard!

Part 1: https://artofjohnblaze.substack.com/p/zones-new-solo-campaign-and-setup

Part 2: https://artofjohnblaze.substack.com/p/zones-solo-play-part-2

Credits:

Cody Barr (Sasquatch Games) - Design, Layout, Writing

Anna (Windlass) - Art

This work is based on Mausritter, a product of Losing Games and Isaac Williams, and is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.