About

Barrows & Borderlands started life as my binder of OD&D/1E house‑rules and grew, over two years, into a four‑volume, over 200+ pages On the table it plays like its the 1970s with a cracked‑reactor glow: flintlocks bark alongside longswords, spell scrolls fizz with fallout, and wyrms coil around dead reactors.

System wise it sits halfway between 0E and 1E. What I bolted on are the bits I always wanted at my own table: radiation, mutation tables, a psionics duel system, black‑powder rules, and a swingy roll‑to‑cast sorcery based on chainmail that can blow up in your face. Six classes—Fighting‑Man, Cleric, Magic‑User, Thief, Gamma (mutant scavenger), and Psychic—plus a handful of weird races like the Greenskull (irradiated skeletons immune to radiation).

Setting wise it’s a dying frontier where medieval keeps butt up against rusting star‑metal and 17th‑century pike lines. Thought these booklets teach you how to craft your own borderlands.

As for myself. My name is Matthew Tapp. A Game Designer, Videographer, and Self-Publisher with over a decade of experience in TTRPGs. I am originally from Cheraw SC where we had the only ttrpg group in town growing up. Now living Charleston SC I run one of the largest gaming groups in the city at the Green Dragon, which is one of the oldest surviving game stores in the world. This is a passion project that has been growing and growing for years. I hope you enjoy my game!