LORDSWORN

You rode to war at the call of your God, swore yourself to Their divinity as the drums of war beat from every corner of the Pantheon. Standing beside your divinity, Their purpose so clear and noble, you felt immortal. Beside your fellow Lordsworns, you felt your victory a certainty, battle but a trivial formality.

Now They lay dead before you, Their Godblood flowing into the dirt. Already the world lurches in distress, twisting at the loss of a God, one of many to die this day. Your Captain, too, lies broken, entrusting the survivors of your Company to the Lieutenant. Of the thousands who rode out, you are the last members of your Company.

Your God is dead. You only have each other now.

LORDSWORN is a GMless TTRPG for 1-4 players of tragic, fragile stories of desperate survival and comradery at the end of the world. In LORDSWORN each player takes on the role of three Lordsworns, soldiers who swore themselves to a (now dead) God during the Cataclysm, an apocalyptical battle that saw all the Gods of the Pantheon go to war. With their God dead and the world churning and reeling from the death of the Pantheon, you and a handful of survivors must make the trek back to the only place that makes sense anymore – Home. 

LORDSWORN sets the space for tragic stories of desperate survival, of a struggling few trying to get by, and found family at the end of the world. In it, you will take on archetypical roles, like a Noble Knight or Scholarly Mage, as well as twists on classics like a Fading Avatar of a dead God or the self-doubting Crestfallen Hero. But most importantly, you will be fragile, shattered creatures clinging to each other for survival in the face of a dying world. 

What stories will you tell? Will you return to fanfare as heroes, turning the tide for your home and helping it rebuild? Or will your death be like so many others – an unmarked grave and a name forgotten?

What's so cool about LORDSWORN?

• Build a World, together: LORDSWORN is a GMless game that uses dozens of different tables to flesh out the world as a group. From the lofty, like what God you served and the temperament of your Captain, to the small, like what keepsake motivates your Lordsworn to get home and the challenges you'll face along your journey, there's plenty of scaffolding for your collective creativity to shine. 
• Each encounter is tense: A unique take on the Caltrop Core system, where players roll 3d4 in secret, assigning one value from the dice to their own Lordsworn and the remaining two to the other Lordsworns in a scene. Resolving the dangerous Events along your journey home will require making difficult choices and sacrifices, weaving roleplay and decision-making through the results of the dice. Death and harm come not only for you but your compatriots too!
• Tragedy, Hope, and Heroism: A tragic backdrop of a world that roils in its death rattle where you play as small, fragile beings trying to find a way to safety. Play through the comradery and loss of the small lives shattered by a war that wasn't supposed to end this way.
• Tropes and Touchstones: From warm-hearted cooks to innocent and naïve greenhorns, from the decaying avatars lost without a god to represent to simple soldiers just trying to survive and get home, the 26 Lordsworns archetypes are filled with all the tropes of a good fantasy novel or game.
• What about the little guys?!: You've ever thought about the "little guys" in high fantasy who get so quickly swept away or killed off to propel the heroes onwards. You want to play out those small, broken lives of the "insignificant" individuals, the soldiers on the walls of Helm's Deep, the knight of House Stark who just wants to see their family again, or the listless, yet loyal, soldiers that serve Godrick and the other demigods in Elden Ring. 

The Journey Home: Version 0.7 and Onwards

This is an Early Access version of LORDSWORN. Think Steam Early Access games where you’re getting a working product that’s still in development! 

• Written Content: Complete.
• Editing: Complete (one last final round of line edits to come).
• Art: Lots of art, including most Lordsworn archetypes having art now, but still missing some areas near the end of the game which will be filled with spot art Later (TM).
• Layout: Much better but not fully complete.. 

What’s to come in Patch 0.8!

• Functional elements to make playing the game far easier: Name Tables for Lordsworns, Character/Lordsworn player sheets, World/Campaign tracker sheet, and Table of Contents. 
• All the artwork for the book. 
• Further polish to the layout.
• Any changes found by you folks! If you see something weird or something seems off, let me know and I’ll owe you my unending gratitude!

Inspiration and Thank Yous

Inspiration and touchstones: Elden Ring (the name Lordsworn taken from the scattered, yet still loyal, undead forces of the Demi Gods), the Banner Saga, and @GeekGabs discussion on "Light Souls" over on TikTok. A particular obsession and sadness I've had since childhood, of constantly asking and worrying about "the little guys" in stories that always seem to be just character/canon fodder for the Main Characters and Villians alike. 

Thank yous: NaGaDeMon for giving me the hard deadline and community support that pushed this game from Idea to Ashcan in just a month! Stoneshore and Kid_Corraler (among others without Itch pages to shout out!) for taking the time to playtest this game and provide amazing feedback. Cool cursor from Here. Help with making this Itch page look Super Cool to Cassi Mothwin and Fadrik's Youtube video Here.