Not much. The core Trinity ruleset is three softcover books — Genesis, Book of Life, and Book of the Dead — available individually or as a complete set. Beyond that, you need standard polyhedral gaming dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20), a printed or downloaded character sheet, pencils, and at least one other person willing to go on an adventure with you.
The Rac — Holy Lands RPG’s term for the game master, the narrator, the architect of your campaign — needs all three books. Players can get by with just Genesis to start. That’s genuinely it. No miniatures required. No game board. No app. Just imagination, dice, and a table.
Easier than you might expect, and deeper than it first appears. If you’ve played tabletop RPGs before, you’ll find familiar bones — character creation, dice rolls, combat rounds — with a system that’s been refined over 25 years to feel natural at the table. If you’re brand new to TTRPGs, Holy Lands is an excellent starting point precisely because the world makes intuitive sense: the forces of good, the forces of evil, and a group of adventurers caught in the middle.
Most groups are rolling comfortably within an hour of their first session. The deeper rules — Miracles, advanced combat, dungeon building — reveal themselves naturally as you play. You don’t need to read all three books before you start. Start with Genesis, build a character, and begin.
At minimum, one Rac and one adventurer — though two to four adventurers is the sweet spot for most campaigns. Larger groups work well too; the Rac simply has more personalities to weave into the story. There’s no hard ceiling. We’ve heard of campaigns running with eight players around the table. Chaos and glory in equal measure.
A session is whatever your table makes it. Most groups run two to four hours. A full campaign — a connected series of sessions with an overarching story — can run for months or years depending on how deep the Rac wants to go. One-shot adventures (self-contained, single-session stories) are a great way to introduce new players to the game without a long commitment.
The short answer: God is in this one.
In most popular fantasy RPGs, divine power is just one school of magic among many. There is no true God — only a pantheon of gods, each with their own portfolio, no more or less real than the next. Your character might worship one, but faith is mechanical window dressing, not the fabric of the world.
In Holy Lands RPG, God is not optional flavor. He is the reason the light side of the table exists at all. Your adventurer’s power doesn’t come from a spell slot or an arcane class feature — it comes from Miracles, divine acts that flow through genuine faith. Sorcery exists too, but it is always demonic, always corrupting, and always the enemy. The line between holy and evil isn’t a gameplay alignment — it’s the fundamental architecture of the world.
Beyond theology, Holy Lands runs on a d12/d20 system with twelve character Attributes — including Virtue and Wisdom, which reflect your character’s moral character and spiritual depth. It’s grounded in actual medieval history, actual Christian theology, and actual biblical folklore. The monsters are drawn from scripture and legend. The dungeons are sacred sites gone dark. Every adventure is, at its heart, a story about faith tested and courage rewarded.
Miracles are divine acts — the game’s faith-powered equivalent of what other RPGs call spells. Clergy classes (Clerics, Saints, Paladins, and others) can call on Miracles ranging from healing and protection to feats that shake the ground and scatter demons. At the highest levels, they are genuinely awe-inspiring. A High Cleric with full Proficiency doesn’t just heal — they speak and the battlefield changes.
Magic — sorcery — also exists in the game, but it belongs to the enemy. Sorcerers, witches, warlocks, and cultists draw their power from demonic sources, and it corrupts everything it touches. Player characters do not use sorcery. They may study it to understand and defeat it. They do not wield it.
If you’re a longtime TTRPG player used to playing a wizard, this is the adjustment: your character’s power flows from faith, not arcane knowledge. For many players, that single shift changes how they think about their character and their story entirely.
The Rac — short for Raconteur — is the narrator, architect, and final authority at your table. What other games call the Dungeon Master or Game Master, Holy Lands calls the Rac, because this role is as much about storytelling as it is about rules.
The Rac builds the world, populates it with NPCs, enemies, and wonders, and responds to whatever the adventurers choose to do. A great Rac doesn’t run a railroad — they build a world and let the adventurers loose in it. The best sessions are the ones nobody planned for.
Roll for it, and let the Rac decide. The Trinity ruleset is comprehensive, but no rulebook covers every creative choice an adventurer might make. That’s by design. The Rac has full authority to call for an Attribute roll, set a Difficulty Factor, and adjudicate any action that doesn’t have a specific rule. The goal is a living, responsive story — not a courtroom.
Holy Lands rewards creativity. If you want to try something unexpected, try it. The worst that happens is you fail dramatically. That makes for a better story anyway.
Because that’s the game.
Holy Lands RPG was built to do something specific: put the Christian adventurer at the center of the story. Not as a side character. Not as one option among many. As the hero God intends.
Most mainstream fantasy RPGs eliminate God entirely. In their worlds, there is no Almighty — only a pantheon of fictional gods, all equally real, none of them the God of the Bible. Your character’s power comes from sorcery, arcane study, or generic “divine” favor from a made-up deity. For a Christian who loves this kind of game, that’s a recurring friction. You’re playing a world where God simply doesn’t exist.
Holy Lands reforges the Christian hero. In this world, God is real, Christ is King, and your adventurer fights in His name with Holy Lands RPG’s full mechanical weight behind that faith. The demi-races — Elves, Goblins, Giants, and more — exist in the world as NPCs, creatures, enemies, and occasional uneasy allies. But you are the chosen hero. Human, faithful, and called.
If that premise doesn’t excite you, this game probably isn’t for you — and that’s okay. But if you’ve ever wanted to pick up dice and fight evil as exactly the kind of hero the Bible actually describes, Holy Lands was built for you.
No. The game’s characters are Christian. The players can be whoever they are.
Many groups include people from different backgrounds who simply enjoy the setting, the historical world, and the good-versus-evil stakes. The game is set in the Christian medieval world, and that shapes everything — but you don’t need to be a believer to find a Cave Crawler terrifying or to feel the tension of a dungeon crawl under a cursed monastery.
That said, players who share the faith tend to find a particular richness in the storytelling. The Miracles mean more. The moral choices land differently. But the table is open.
No. It is a game about faith, which is different.
Your adventurer will wrestle with sin, doubt, and temptation — because that’s where real growth happens, and because those things make for a better story than a saint who never struggles. The Miracles system rewards genuine faith and Virtue, not perfect performance. The Rac isn’t your priest. The game isn’t church.
It is, however, unapologetically set in a world where God is real, where evil is real, and where the choices your character makes about both actually matter. If “good vs. evil” sounds like a sermon to you, fair enough. If it sounds like the best adventure premise you’ve ever heard, welcome home.
To start playing: just Book 1: Genesis. It contains character creation, core combat, and all the rules an adventurer needs to begin.
To run a full campaign as the Rac: you’ll want all three. Book 2: Book of Life gives you the world, the Miracles system, and your enemy roster. Book 3: Book of the Dead gives you dungeons, monsters, dragons, undead, and sorcery — everything that makes the Holy Lands dangerous. The complete 3-Book Set is the best value.
Absolutely. The PDF editions are identical in content to the print books, fully illustrated, and work well on a tablet at the table. Many players keep the print edition in hand and the PDF open for quick searching.
Start with the Holy Lands RPG community on Facebook — we have an active group where players and Racs share campaigns, ask questions, and connect for online sessions. Discord is also a great option for finding players outside your local area.
And don’t underestimate your own table. Some of the best Holy Lands groups started with one person handing a rulebook to a friend and saying “trust me on this one.”
