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Indemand

Ryne

A pbta roleplaying game about life in the footsteps of gods

1 Campaign |

YORK, United Kingdom

$33,405 USD $33,405 USD by 674 backers

$29,533 USD by 577 backers on Aug 24, 2022

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Ryne is a wild fantasy roleplaying game of community and connection, in a world shaped by broken titans. Using a tailored Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) system built around emotion and change, Ryne invites you to weave stories of people living a world in its Autumn. You'll journey through vibrant landscapes, inhabit communities reliant on the indifferent titans, and learn the secrets of the faltering Remnants.

Inspired by imaginative fantasy stories including Earthsea, Shadow of the Colossus, Princess Mononoke and Mushi-shi, Ryne focuses on the connections that people find in a world bigger and stranger than themselves: a caravan fleeing a Remnant’s destruction to seek a new home; a guardian and their ward finding companionship as they flee a usurper’s clutches; priests and scholars setting aside old grudges to heal a failing titan.

Ryne reshapes PbtA genre-focused play to conjure the kind of thematic, slow fantasy you’d find in a book—never afraid to linger on the details of your characters, your story and the world. Your characters are defined by their emotions—you roll with them, they shape your bonds—and as you play those emotions will shift and alter. Step into a world of magical landscapes, shambling gods, and wonderful humanity.

Party of One: Adam joined Jeff Stormer to play through a two-player session of Ryne

These Flimsy Rituals: Our actual play podcast that Ryne was originally developed for

Ryne: An actual play stream by lupa42 using the free playkit

Yes Indie’d Pod: Marx interviewed Thryn and Adam about our games, including Ryne

Scheduled For Launch: A dive into the design and development of Ryne

Review Blitz: Brambleberrygames reviews the design of Ryne's free playkit

Playing Ryne is a highly collaborative, flexible experience. The Fates, Ryne's GM, work with the players to build the world, create titans and their landscapes, and decide the direction that play follows.

The patchwork of emotions that make up a person, a world and a community are at the core of how Ryne works. Players use their character’s emotional responses, rather than their skills, to roll.

The emotions that you name are unique to your character, defining who they are. Your character has told this story a hundred nights before, but never with the Emissary of the Cairns sat the other side of the fire—how will it go as nervousness takes over? Your character’s mood influences how things go for them; and as they change and grow, so do the emotions on their sheet.

In fact, mood is at the heart of everything the game has to offer. Your bonds are shaped by how you feel about the other person. NPCs have a defining emotion to guide how the Fates play them. Geographical features, places and landscapes have moods of their own, and each Remnant grants characters an emotion to roll with, often with strange consequences if you ever push it too far.

Players take the roles of the varied people of Ryne, choosing one of 10 different rolebooks. When you choose your rolebook, you’re not only choosing what moves, abilities and gear you have access to, you’re choosing a story for your character. These stories are written to be flexible, light frameworks guiding who you are, how you look at the world, and where the game will take you.

The Binder is a craftsperson, and spirit is their medium. Play the Binder if you want to negotiate with ghosts, solve supernatural problems and trade in spirit-bound artefacts.
The Fledgling is a teenager experiencing the wider world for the first time. Play the Fledgling if you want to see Ryne from fresh eyes, learning who you are as you do.
The Guardian doesn’t just fight for themselves anymore, they have a charge in their care. Play to help your ward find their path, while dealing with your own violent past.
The Guide knows a part of Ryne better than anyone. Whether a steward or forager, itinerant monk or trader, play to know a landscape and devote yourself to its care.
The Heart is sworn to a faith, community or cause. Play if you want to explore someone’s connection to an ideal and whether they can hold onto it.
The Weaver uses patterns to shape threads of spirit into useful magic. Play to be the person who gets things done, no matter the burden that places on you.
The Tethered is a ghost at home in their form. Play to push the boundaries of what it means to be a spirit in Ryne, while using your connections to others to anchor you.
The Drifting has a body without much spirit to speak of. Play to explore a unique connection to the physical world, getting things done in your own way.
The Unravelling uses powerful fistfuls of spirit to reshape the world. Play to loose yourself to magic as you and concept intertwine.
The Voek know more than anyone about the Remnants and Ryne's history. Play to explore knowledge and secrets in the world, studying and recording for those who come after.

The game is geared toward long-term advancement using in-fiction milestones. Your characters will not just gain new abilities, they'll also change the ones they have. If you're playing in person, the cut-and-stick sheets will have you alter, erase and paste new things over old ones.

Characters in Ryne are human, but not as we’re familiar with the term. Every player will establish their own humanity, the way they’re adapted to fit this land. The world is full of horns and claws, glowing skin and spreading wings, crystal ridges and inbuilt gardens.

A body, however, isn’t everything. Ghosts wander the world freely, and in most places being a spirit is simply another way of living. If you're excited to explore the world of spirit, you can choose to play any rolebook as a ghost. You can also play as the ghost's counterpart, with just body and no spirit to speak of.

Remnants, the titans that roam these lands, are the broken husks of gods. Once they had spirit and body both: now they are split between the ghostly Echoes and the physical Vacant. Each is unique—a stone bird carved with ancient language, a rolling thicket of smouldering moss as wide as a valley, a colossal humanoid whose body is traced by constellations.

Each titan is tied to a domain, a concept that they anchor into the world. The environment around them is shaped in their image. We call the landscape that a Remnant influences a territory. They might create mist-sheathed swamps of longing, singing jungles of jubilance, or infinite mazes of uncertainty. These territories are places where your characters live and travel, shaping your lives, communities and emotions.

Ryne contains a range of tools for imagining Remnants and the landscapes that they create. Players imagine their own version of this patchwork world, filling it with fantastical wildlife, improbable geography and the indifferent titans that carve its horizons.

When you sit down for your first session of Ryne, you’ll choose a story seed. They guide you through setting up your game and creating your characters. Each contains a worldbuilding game, to help you imagine your own version of the world.

The Path brings a long journey through vibrant landscapes. You’ll travel a patchwork of landscapes each with a new titan on the horizon.
The Change brings an environment under threat. As your titan’s influence wanes, replaced by something different, you’ll guide the future of your community.
The Work brings us grand goals and supernatural secrets. You’ll be the scholars and priests trying to resurrect a titan, heal the cleave, or some other impossible project.
The Eager brings us Ryne, right here and now. It shows you how to play the game as a one shot, making characters as you play

Regardless of your story seed, there are rules for travelling across territories, inhabiting a community, and altering the world through long-term projects.

The full book for Ryne will be an A4 hardback of 240+ pages, featuring a matt printed cover with beautiful art from formyths. Inside, the book blends details and examples from the world, with tools for creating territories, Remnants, communities, journeys, projects, threats, seasons and more. Crowdfunding to print the book allows us to pay for more illustrations and art, and any additional funds will be put towards upgrading the quality of the book with endpapers, ribbon bookmarks and more!

The books will be offset for higher quality printing and paper, with natural or uncoated pages and full colour illustrations throughout. We’ll be working with UK based printer CPI to produce the book here within the UK, as sustainably and low-waste as possible.

DIGITAL EDITION

For those who prefer using digital rules, we’ll be releasing the book as a fully hyperlinked and bookmarked pdf. We’ll also create character and territory sheets compatible with an online VTT. The cut and stick character sheets, territory sheets, journey sheets and other play aids will also be available as pdfs, to use online or print at home.

£1: THE ENVOY

See all of our updates and get access to our post-campaign pledge manager in Backerkit.

£10: THE HEART - Community copy

A reduced price digital bundle, for anyone in financial difficulty, no questions asked. The digital bundle contains everything in the Fledgling tier.

£15: THE FLEDGLING - Digital bundle

A digital bundle containing everything you need to play Ryne online. It will include the final pdf of Ryne, hyperlinked and bookmarked. It comes with digital files for the map and sticker sets, as well as sheets for characters, territories and story seeds.

£40: THE TETHERED - Physical book

A hardback book of Ryne, containing all of the rules and rolebooks you need to play. Its filled with full-colour illustrations, and details about the Remnants, landmarks and communities of Ryne. It also comes with the full digital bundle.

£50: THE GUIDE - Postcard & sticker set

A hardback book of Ryne and the full digital bundle, plus the world map bundle.

The world map bundle contains a set of postcards featuring Ryne’s map and stickers of Remnants, landmarks, people and symbols. They’re made to be used together to track journeys and map your landscapes.

£75: THE BINDER - Fabric world map