Sword Saints - BETA [$5.00]

Sword Saints - BETA [$5.00]:

Sword Saints is a TRPG about Saints, demi-immortal warriors awakening to their true selves after a lifetime of doubt and toil in The Cage, a massive ur-arcology slowly consuming the world. The Cage is never finished, constantly building higher and deeper, heedlessly destroying the world that supports it. The Cage is ruled by the villainous autarchs- the "self-ruling class"- and built by the ess classes, whose blood and agony serve (sometimes quite literally) to fuel The Cage’s expansion.

What Mask Do You Wear?

Players take on the role of Saints, esses who've come to philosophical and personal crossroads, realized the poisonous nature of The Cage, and faced a choice: Ignore their revelations about who they could become and how life could work, or do the heartbreaking work of becoming their True Selves.

Saints are transformed by their personal struggles and realizations into an eternal being. Your form is incomprehensible to The Cage, whose oppressive logic dictates certain “immutable” physical laws. To prevent contaminating your perfect self with this world’s smallness, you don a Mask: a physical form of your design and choosing, not one assigned to you by the vagaries of birth, physics, and life's many terrible surprises.

Become Your True Self

Build your Saint by claiming a Mask and a Sword, create your Saint's Signifiers and Sorrows. Wield potent and esoteric Dream powers and combat arts in your battle against The Cage and its autarch rulers. Collect memories of your adventures and extract mementos from them- the Dreaming essence of your experiences- to become more powerful. While your Saint is theoretically eternal, their Masks are mortal. When one is shattered, you must let some of your memories fade in order to return to the world. In this fashion, your character is forever growing and changing, but not stuck in an endless arms race of arbitrarily higher and higher stats.

Particulars

• 
  D10 Resolution - Roll more d10s the more mundane and supernatural assets you possess which improve your facility with an action. Get more successes than required in order to score critical successes.
• 
  Dreamtwisting - A resource that can be spent to exert narrative control over your situation, to add dice to your pools, or to heal your wounds.
• 
  Defiance - Your character can automatically succeed at certain tasks, as long as you’re comfortable handling those issues in some pretty decidedly one-note fashions. If you’re okay relying on violence, speed, or suffering in silence, you can Defy certain tests you’d otherwise have to roll for. Just remember that these three methods aren’t always exactly the healthiest ways to deal with your problems. :P
• 
  Brutal Fantasy Swordsmanship - Bring the full fury of the Saintly arts of death against The Cage. Wield chainswords, gunswords, blade whips, energy blades, rapiers, greatswords, and many others. Combat is a trade of phases, the action bandying back and forth between the involved parties, rather than each fighter taking their turn in full before passing the “Turn Conch”.
• 
  Memories and Mementos - Your character’s advancement is tied to their experiences at table. When something happens that changes or challenges your worldview, that affects your mood and thinking moving forward, or that will stick with you as a new and salient memory, you gain a memory. Extract potent psychic mementos from those memories to expand your abilities and options. Continue changing and growing your character over time with new memories and mementos, even after reaching the maximum number they can have.
• 
  Death Changes You - Your memories fade, your Masks shatter, time wears on, but your fight against The Cage continues. Death doesn’t end your story, it changes it.

Current Status

At time of writing, all of the key elements of the game are present, but their forms are not finalized. The file is 205 pages long, with a working hyperlinked table of contents. This is an unfinished product in the process of being re-edited, playtested, and added onto.

EDIT: I've completed and added the example scenario ... And Friends, Their Helpful Swords! This most recent version of the file has some tweaked and edited text here and there, and a whole new section about Scenario Play in the "Structuring a Game of Sword Saints" chapter! The Scenario Play format is based on the outline used by incursions in the game Trophy Gold (used with permission from the creators of that game- https://trophyrpg.com/), but customized to fit the needs of this game.

Future Plans

A nicely formatted version (with an index) will be completed in the coming weeks and linked here when available. Once I figure out how to do it, I'll be making purchases of this version count towards the price of the reformatted .pdfs.

Hit me up on twitter if you have any questions or just wanna chat about it (@gahostan)!

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.

Every copy of Sword Saints purchased at or above the normal price will add a free community copy that someone else can take if their financial situation would prevent them from affording the game at its listed price.

If you can't afford a copy of Sword Saints right now and there are community copies available, feel free to take one. No questions asked. If you can afford it, know that buying it will get both you and someone else a copy of the game.

Thanks for supporting my work and the community. I hope you enjoy Sword Saints!