Open by Design
ORC License
20 Below is released under the ORC License on purpose: we want everyone to be able to create content for 20 Below, not just play it. Write your own adventures. Design your own setting. Publish a supplement and sell it - without asking permission, and without paying a fee for the mechanics underneath. The system is the foundation; what you build on it is yours.
What's Open vs. Reserved
Powered by 20 Below
If you publish something for this system, we would love you to put one of these on it.
This is a request, not a requirement. The ORC License is irrevocable and we cannot add conditions to it, so nothing obliges you to carry the mark - your product is just as legitimate without it, and we will never come after anyone for leaving it off.
We ask because it helps all of us. A reader who has played 20 Below can spot at a glance that your book will work with the character they already have, the dice they already own, and the rules they already know. That recognition is worth more to a small publisher than any amount of explaining on a back cover - and every product carrying it makes the next one easier to find. The system gets bigger, and everyone building on it gets found more easily.
Use whichever version reads better against your cover. Please keep it legible and unaltered - don't recolour it, stretch it, or rebuild it - and don't use it in a way that suggests we published your work or endorsed its contents. Beyond that, put it wherever it looks right: back cover, title page, storefront listing, itch page.
The name, logo and trade dress are Reserved Material, and no trademark rights pass under the ORC License - so permission to use the mark comes from us directly rather than from the license. Consider this that permission, on the terms above. If you want to do something with it that those terms don't cover, ask.
Making it look the part
Carrying the mark says your book works with the system. We would rather it looked like it too, so we built the tool we use ourselves and left it open for everyone: the Brewery.
Write in plain markdown and it lays the page out in the system's own typefaces, colours and spacing, then prints to PDF - two columns, page breaks, sidebars, callout boxes, roll stamps, captioned figures, full-width spreads, and a print mode with the gutters and bleed a print-on-demand service expects. Nobody should have to reverse-engineer our house style out of a PDF, or rebuild a layout from scratch, just to put out a supplement. Use it, ignore it, or lift the CSS - it is all in the repository.
The Brewery is a convenience, not a condition. Nothing about publishing under the ORC License requires you to use it, and a book laid out in InDesign, Affinity, Scribus or a word processor is every bit as welcome to carry the mark.
If you are laying it out yourself, take the recipe with you: the style guide lists every colour the books use with its hex code, and names the typefaces, so you can set your own pages up to match. Paste the values into InDesign or Affinity, or lift the CSS if you are building for the web. Match it exactly, borrow the bits you like, or go your own way entirely - it is there so that looking official is a choice you get to make rather than a puzzle you have to solve.
The Legal Text
20 Below Core Rules by Feralucce Savage is released under the ORC License, a perpetual, irrevocable open license for tabletop game mechanics.
ORC Notice
This product is licensed under the ORC License located at the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including azoralaw.com/orclicense and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein.
Attribution
This product is based on the following Licensed Material: 20 Below Core Rules, Copyright © 2026 Feralucce Savage.
If you use this Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit it as follows: [Title of Your Work], based on 20 Below Core Rules, Copyright © 2026 Feralucce Savage, available at 20belowrpg.com.
Reserved Material
Reserved Material elements in this product include, but are not limited to: the title "20 Below" and all associated logos and branding; the names, flavor text, and narrative descriptions of individual Gifts, Boons, and Flaws (the Gift, Boon, and Flaw systems themselves - their point costs, structure, and resolution mechanics - are Licensed Material); the 20 Below Character Creator and 20 Below Desktop applications, including their source code, design, and implementation, which are separate copyrighted works not licensed under the ORC License; and any genre, setting, or supplemental content not expressly published under this notice.
Expressly Designated Licensed Material
None at this time.