The Dark Fantasy X game and setting is a rules-lite, Game-master mediated roleplaying game. While I'd like to think that the consistency of rules structure common to more recent games like d20 and its derivatives have helped make the game easier, simpler and more elegant than older versions of the game, the feel and approach in terms of how the game is run and adjudicated is much more heavily inspired by the original, older paradigm of D&D from the 70s and early 80s. The rules are simple and short; comparable in size to the "Little Brown Books" original version of D&D, but because of the more elegant design, they are actually even a little bit shorter.
In order to play in these campaigns, you do not need to have a copy of the rules and know them well, although you are certainly welcome to do so. I've included a link below to the rulebook in its pdf format for those who wish to delve into them, but for those who do not, you can show up cold, and I can help you create a character and play the game. Think less about what the rules are, and more about, "What would this guy do if he were a real person and this experience were actually happening to him?"
The Dark Fantasy X setting has three main constituent areas. The eastern half of the area is meant to be a frontier-era Old West of America in terms of environment, maybe with some more exotic animal life like mammoths, mastodons, and sabertooths still surviving, for instance. This region is called The Hill Country. However, from a cultural standpoint, you should think of it as more like Robin Hood era merry olde England. The people who live are mostly human, and should be seen as very fantasy analogs to the Medieval Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Danes, and Scottish.
The northwestern area has a different character; former empires, including the most recent, which was ruled by cursed, daemon-tainted population who enslaved and oppressed the other peoples in the area. This empire has now fallen apart. The descendants of its former rulers are often somewhat embarrassed by the works of their ancestors, and struggle to live them down. Now a wilderness of hunter-gatherer and pastoralist tribes dotted with a few lingering city-states, this is a dark and desolate land. Relicts of the past evil still linger in dark corners. This region is called Baal Hamazi after the name of the empire that used to be here a few generations ago.
The southwestern area, on the other hand, is more settled and developed, but also languishes under the shadow of rumor that the ruling caste is thoroughly infiltrated by vampires. Haunts and dark rumors lurk throughout the land. Rapacious werewolves are rumored to darken the woods, and ghosts and ghoul stories—and those who claim to know them from first-hand experience—are much more common here then elsewhere. This region is called Timischburg.
The following are the races that are available to use to create player characters. While they certainly belong most prevalently to a specific region, any member of any race can be found throughout the region, and few places are so disconnected from the rest of the world that they've never seen an orc or a kemling, for instance, or never heard of a nephilim.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i6SlE8bF1mmGmgMKtkj2OHoP_-FrtKAo/view?usp=sharing
There are three campaigns in development and each will have their own page and brief, one-page precis. Of them, only Chaos in Waychester is currently ready to play. These are:
If you don't even need to know the rules, what do you need in order to play? In theory, nothing. A character sheet (I'll provide), pencils (I can probably provide), and a set of the funny-shaped roleplaying dice (I have more than enough for any group that I'd ever have, if necessary.) But I'll paraphrase a few elements strewn throughout my rulebooks here and there:
This is a game of imagination, but it's also a social game, and it works best if everyone is invested in making it fun. Nobody's going to complain if you don't have the improvisational acting skill of a professional or the brilliant ideas of a novelist, but it helps to pay attention to what's going on, to piggy-back off of and support the ideas of the others at the table, and not blow off or be dismissive of what's going on because it's "just a game."
That said, it is just a game. Bad things may happen to your character. The other players might even be the cause of these bad things sometimes, although mostly it will be me representing the world at large that will cause the majority of them. Don't get so heavily invested in your character that you take this personally. The point is to have fun. Like any good novel, movie, TV show or other drama, it's all pretty boring if bad things don't happen to the characters. Look at that as an opportunity to have the game become much more interesting and fun rather than seek to avoid them unduly. If worse comes to worst and your character is actually killed off and becomes an ex-character, don't worry. We'll figure out a fun way to get you back into the game in short order. Make the most of it and at least try to create an entertaining blaze of glory to go out in or something in the meantime!
Along those lines, keep a degree of separation between players and characters; the players being the real people sitting around talking and rolling dice and having fun, and the characters being their fictional alter egos going through all kinds of mayhem in the game and probably not having nearly as much fun. I don't mind open conflict between characters in the least, but open conflict between players usually isn't very fun. There's a line somewhere where the "it's just a game" idea becomes too much, and you don't take anything seriously enough for the game to reach its potential in terms of fun, but then again, a bit of the "it's just a game" attitude is essential.
In other words, try to be a reasonable, mature adult, and everything will work out fine.