last updated January 22, 2024
The dreaded Mdrà of Telostic
This Website includes our Shakhàn FAQ and Supplemental Information Page. This contains much useful information not included in the Shakhàn rule set (for example, background on the sinister Shadowed Empire) and will be continuously updated, so surf over there today and find out!
Shakhàn is a complete pen and paper fantasy game system. The Shakhàn 2000 archive files, now in .PDF format (!) that you can download from this Webpage contains everything you need to play. (You do not need other game rules of any sort, although you will of course need the miscellaneous items such as polyhedral dice, paper, pen, etc. that are commonly used in conventional FRP games.)
Shakhàn is "semi-freeware": that is, as long as you don't try to pass it off as your own creation or profit commercially from it (if you want to do the latter, give us a call!), you can download it, play it, send a copy to your friends, whatever... all we ask is that you retain the references to our copyrights and trademarks so that it's clear that we still own Shakhàn.
Shakhàn is played in the conventional FRP manner with a
"live" referee, written notes and rules and "live" players in
the former's direct proximity. The players use their
imaginations, and the supplementary material and decisions
provided by the referee, to act out the roles of characters on
the imaginary world of Telostic, starting with a weak alter ego
and slowly building him, her or it up to a position of power,
fame and fortune.
Relative to other conventional FRP games, the Shakhàn system is complex, richly detailed and meant for an adult or late teenage audience of players. (For example, its combat system is highly realistic... to the point that it may dismay players who are used to fighting "within 1 Hit Point's worth of death" and then feeling 100% fit for combat, the next morning!)
The planet Telostic, showing its eastern hemisphere
The game is set on the planet of Telostic, a world in which a once-mighty civilization has degenerated over thousands of years to a level roughly equivalent to that of Earth's early Middle Ages. It's an environment much different from those with which most FRP devotees are familiar... to find out why, you'll have to play it, or one of the other variants described below!
While we do know of groups of players who have successfully
integrated Shakhàn with the famous TSR Dungeons and
Dragons® system, it has little in common with the
assumptions and historical baggage of D&D®. (For
example, there are no "elves", "dwarves" or "hobbits" on the
imaginary world of Telostic, so there are no rules covering them
in Shakhàn. But see further
below, for an update!) So if you're looking for an
add-on to D&D®, you'd probably have better luck
elsewhere (except... see below).
Please also note, Shakhàn,
while theoretically playable by FRP enthusiasts of all ages,
contains a small number of graphics and game setting concepts
(for example the sexual rituals of perverse Vaeran
Kikiri) that some parents might consider to be inappropriate
for young children. We made a conscious decision not to censor
our source material to make it totally unobjectionable to
everyone, but if you or your players do not want to be exposed
to this type of material then you may want to try another
game.
Similarly, we deliberately do not have
"trigger warnings" for this game and consider the entire
concept frankly ridiculous... given that the entire point of a
fantasy role-playing game is to imagine oneself in a
completely alien, different environment, it is (to put it
mildly) counter-intuitive to then expect no part of that
environment to be "upsetting" or "stressful".
Here again, if you are worried about being "triggered" by some aspect of the Shakhàn setting then perhaps you should try a less realistic and exciting FRP game.
If you want to view or print it yourself, it is available for FREE by downloading the following files* :
Shakhàn 2000 Downloadable Files
* Note : Due to an oversight, the URL to Book "G" had been omitted, from approximately 2015 to 2023.
This is purely a stylistic issue, but even if you don't install the two abovenoted fonts, Shakhàn will still paginate properly and can be perfectly well used for FRP play-- but to see the game in all its glory, we advise you to install these two fonts first.
We have had a few reports of these fonts not installing properly on some instances of MS-Windows; we are investigating this and will fix it as soon as we are able to isolate the cause of it.
Shakhàn 2000 .PDF File Format
The September 2000 edition of Shakhàn also marks a
milestone in that it is the first version of the game available
in Adobe's .PDF (Portable Document Format), or Acrobat,
file format.
The Acrobat format has been selected for Shakhàn
for a number of very good reasons, foremost among which is, an Acrobat
file retains its look, feel and print pagination consistently
across a wide variety of computer platforms (IBM, Macintosh,
Unix, you name it). However, in order to access a .PDF format
file, your computer might need to have the appropriate version
of Adobe's Acrobat Reader program installed on it
(also, some browsers can read and display .PDFs natively).
You can download Acrobat Reader from www.adobe.com for free, or you can get its installation files on many public domain or game CDs.
Shakhàn has been engineered so as to be backward compatible with older versions of Acrobat Reader, but if you encounter any anomalies in bringing it up in your .PDF reading application, please notify us and we'll see what we can do to accommodate you.
...And Night Must Fall: Originally planned for posting in Fall 1998, this is the second fully-developed Shakhàn scenario, as run at CanGames 1998. It is a hybrid adventure, starting where The Streets of Ṛlon (Revisited) left off, involving a sinister plot and... well, you'll have to download it to see for yourself! The archive includes a WinWord 2.x instruction document, four CorelDraw 4.x map files (two for the players and two for the Referee), as well as an extensive list of pre-created characters in Microsoft Excel 4.x spreadsheet format.
The Tombs of the Elder Kings of Jèglur: This third Shakhàn scenario of the Ṛlon triology was introduced at CanGames 1999. It is an Underworld adventure featuring an extensive map, higher-level characters and extensive game and map notes. The Tombs of the Elder Kings of Jèglur is an excellent scenario to use for your more experienced Shakhàn players and characters... but make sure they watch their backs, as one never knows what lurks behind the next bend in the tunnel... the archive includes a Word for Windows 2.x format master document plus a multi-level dungeon map in CorelDraw 4.x format.
Hex Maps: This is a CorelDraw 3.x format hex map, meant to be used as a playing aid with Shakhàn and other games produced by Telostic Corporation. The map is designed for printing on a standard 8.5" x 11" piece of paper (portrait mode); it is 40 hexes wide by 50 hexes long; certain hexes are numbered so that you never have to count more than 5 hexes from a numbered hex to figure out the number of any other hex. Most of the new Shakhàn terrain maps use this hexmap as a reference background. Permission is granted to freely reproduce, photocopy and use this map as needed.
Rulers of Roctien: This is a .ZIP format archive containing a WinWord 2.x format document which gives an overview of the names of the rulers of the Rocto-Ardae Imperium, which is the political/social entity in which new Shakhàn characters, by default, begin play. Brief histories of events and social trends during the reign of each Emperor/Empress, going back over 2000 Telostician years to the earliest days of the current Imperium, are also included. This document will be of particular interest to new Referees of a Shakhàn campaign, as it gives historical background that you can use for designing adventures, Underworld complexes and the like.
City of Ṛlon: This is an overhead map of the city of Ṛlon in the central Rocto-Ardae Imperium, in CorelDraw 3.x format. This .ZIP will eventually have much more extensive information on Ṛlon and Fief Ṛloni, but for now it just has the map. (Do not be deceived by the small size of the .ZIP; in fact the map is over 700K when you uncompress it... I guess there's quite a bit of "slack" in CorelDraw files, eh?) This map is also included in the basic set of Shakhàn rules (see above), so you needn't download rolon.zip if you are going to download the rules themselves..
Hex
Maps of Ushù'l: This archive contains detailed
maps of the lands of northern Ushù'l from,
approximately, the eastern border between Roctien and the
Shadowed Empire, to the lands just west of Ascorcan. These maps
were originally created to enable the playing of an
as-yet-unpublished game system called Strategic Telostician
Campaign, which was, essentially, a strategic- level
wargame equivalent of Shakhàn. (The idea is, once your Shakhàn
characters become so powerful that they can laugh at dinosaurs,
they "graduate" to STC and then must face the challenge
of other kings, dukes, etc..)
Because Strategic Telostician Campaign was created in
1990-93, computer technology having been what it was in those
days, the maps in this archive are in Lotus Freelance for
DOS 3.01 format. From my experiences, these haven't
translated terribly well to other formats-- the text labels, in
particular, seem to go haywire-- but you're welcome to download
them and have a look yourself, regardless.
New for 2024! Shakhàn to D&D
Conversion rules!
Notwithstanding our commentary about Dungeons and
Dragons above, to address the requests that we have
received over the years to the effect of, "I like Shakhàn
as a game setting, but I just want to use it
with D&D game mechanics", we have finally provided a
tentative set of conversion rules to enable Dungeon Masters to
do exactly that.
You can download the preliminary rules, using the URL
provided directly below.
Shakhàn to D&D Conversion Rules
As always, we would be interested in hearing your point of
view on this topic, especially if you have tried to use Shakhàn's
game setting with a real D&D campaign. Did it work, or did
it fall flat on its face? Either way... let us know!
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