Preface: Welcome to Hell’s Broker
The world of Hell’s Broker is a place of deals struck in blood, tattoos etched in living flesh, and truths hidden in the shadows of cities that look very much like our own. In this game, you step into the shoes of Brokers, Witches, Debt Hunters, and other dangerous souls who walk the razor’s edge between the mortal world and the infernal realms.
Here, magic is not cast from books or whispered with wands. It is burned into your skin, traded for in contracts, bargained with Names, and paid for in scars. Every decision shapes not only what your character can do, but also what they become. Power always comes with a cost, and Hell’s Broker is about choosing which costs you are willing to bear.
What This Game Is
Hell’s Broker: The Roleplaying Game is built using the Dungeons & Dragons SRD 5.1 under the Open Gaming License. If you have played a d20 game before, you will recognize the heartbeat of rolling dice, adding modifiers, and testing your luck against danger. But this is no dungeon crawl. It is a descent into a world where:
Every tattoo is a spell etched into your flesh.
Every contract is a weapon waiting to turn on you.
Every scar is a story—and the story is yours to tell.
The Design Philosophy
The game rests on three pillars of play:
Ink & Flesh — Tattoo magic is power carved into the body, with pain as the fuel.
Pacts & Contracts — Every bargain matters. Words bind as tightly as chains.
Corruption & Resonance — All power leaves marks. Your scars and echoes shape what the world remembers of you.
At the heart of the design lies the Rule of Thirteen. The number 13 recurs everywhere:
13 Lineages to choose from, each tied to bloodlines, bargains, or corruption.
13 Backgrounds that root you in the Profane World or infernal politics.
13 Classes that define the paths of Brokers, Tattoo Witches, Veil Walkers, Soul Engineers, and more.
13 Levels of advancement, enough to grow powerful, never enough to escape consequence.
When you pass beyond Level 13, you no longer advance in numbers. You advance in Resonance and Scars: the narrative imprints of your choices. These are the echoes of deals struck, Names broken, or tattoos burned too deep. They allow you to bend reality itself, but they also bind you to the story you have made.
No one becomes a god in Hell’s Broker. They only burn brighter in the darkness.
Your Role as a Player
You are more than a sheet of numbers and dice rolls. You are the teller of your character’s story, their bargains, their sacrifices, and their victories. Around the table, you will work with friends to spin tales of shadowed alleys, ink-stained parlors, and courts of demons where law is both salvation and damnation.
In one session, your group might:
Negotiate with a vampire clan in Philadelphia while your Broker Council license hangs in the balance.
Carve a Burn Mark tattoo into your arm to lift a car off a pinned ally, taking the pain into yourself.
Face the Chorus of the Second Mask in their dream-stage, where every lie is punished with a verse sung in your own blood.
Walk the River Below in a bone canoe, trading memories to cross its storming currents.
The Journey Ahead
Over the next few months, the design team will share weekly Designer Notes, peeling back the curtain on how this world and its mechanics came to be. You will see the scaffolding of tattoo glyphs, the building of contracts, the philosophy behind corruption, and the thirteen-fold structure that keeps this game balanced between grit and grandeur.
Soon after, the gates will open for a public playtest. That is when this book truly comes alive. Dice will roll, tattoos will flare, contracts will break, and scars will be written into the story, not just by the designers, but by you.
Because Hell’s Broker is not just a game. It is a negotiation. A test of what you are willing to pay, and what you will risk to get what you want.
Get to Know the World
If you want to dive deeper into the story behind the game, explore the Hell’s Broker serials. They follow Larissa Sabine Osborn and her allies through the Profane World and the infernal realms, blending urban fantasy and occult noir with tattoo magic, contracts, and rebellion. Reading the serials is one of the best ways to get familiar with the tone, stakes, and living world of the RPG. You can find them all collected at linktr.ee/ghostthreader