EXILE ✴ dark fantasy role-playing
A downloadable ruination
You are an exile. A teenage misfit who barely ekes by at society’s edge. You grew up in a world that cast you aside and deemed you perverse. You learned to hide or fight, never able to live free.
Tough luck. Not only were you handed the short end of the stick, but now you’ve been charged for a fatal crime and sentenced to exile in The Below: A nightmarish underside where tarnished souls like yours are sent to rot.
Those in power think they’ve ridden themselves of you. Yet, unbeknownst to them, you’ve resolved to escape: With a band of fellow exiles by your side, you shall delve The Below, clash with its dwellers, and blaze a path back home.
You shall succeed, die in the attempt, or worse.
A fairy tale RPG of sharp blades, cutthroat kinship, and bloodied tears.
“You take a step, then another. Close your eyes and ready yourself. Will they come for you? So be it.
You will come for them.”
Every time you sit down to play EXILE, you alternate between going on perilous Delves where you journey through a territory, and setting up Camp to focus on scenes of mishap and recovery with your fellow exiles.
- HEARTFELT & DEADLY: Confront The Below's perils with a ruleset that emphasizes hard choices and pushes your character to their breaking point. Cry about it later in tearful scenes of mishap and recovery.
- CARD-BASED: EXILE features cards for anything from Items, Conditions, and important character abilities like Undoings and Prophecies.
- A GRUELING CRAWL: Throughout the game, you get to explore Landmarks: bizarre pockets of land filled with characters to meet, mysteries to unveil, and conflicts to defy. Play either for a single session or over a long, dreadful campaign.
Digital Edition
This digital edition of EXILE contains rules for creating and fighting with your own angst-ridden exile, detailed GM instruction on how to run perilous adventures across the nightmare lands of The Below, plenty of material to get your game going, and 1 starter adventure.
- 1 GM + 2-4 players
- Appropriate for both oneshots and campaigns of up to 12 sessions.
- Requires the free print-at-home kit, polyhedral dice, pencils, and tokens.
Follow along for updates
Sign up to the One of Wands newsletter over on Substack!
This is a sequel to 'Crescent Moon'
The two games share a similar ruleset and setting. Check out Crescent Moon (1st edition) here. A second edition is coming in the winter of 2024 . Find out more here.
Purchase
In order to download this ruination you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $14.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Sheets updated to US Letter!29 days ago
- 1.1 Update!77 days ago
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Hi Ema. I tried to contact you before, because I think I have insights for the game (typos, suggestions etc.). While I see you released 1.1 version, many of the things I found still stand. If you like my feedback, please contact me back.
You can write me at
ishmadrad
@
g
mail
.com
(edit: I can't believe my previous contacts were downvoted... Did I write something wrong?)
Hey Andrea, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the game, but at this time I'm not taking player-submitted suggestions. Thank you!
I'm a backerkit backer so I cannot comment on the Kickstarter - with the announcement of an Exiles 1.1, will the Print version be of the currently released PDF or the 1.1 version?
1.1 of further! The advantage of the game taking a while is that it will print with less typos and the like :)
Hi Ema! Do you think either this or Crescent Moon (or Crescent Moon 2e) are a good fit for running a Series of Unfortunate Events-style campaign? Best wishes!
Hey Bruno! Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the series, so I can't really comment on it. The plot does remind me a bit of Locke and Key. In the case of that show, I could see a campaign inspired by it where the Adventure phases happen in the magical parts of the house. I'd say the challenge in running either game in a real-world setting is that the items and action mechanics assume a fantasy world where the characters can perform magic—That's only half the game, though. The Rest phase is much more grounded and setting-agnostic. Hope that helps!
Hi Ema. If you like to receive my comments (see my previous post here), I finished to put notes on my PDF. I could give you the file so you can read them. Let me know how can I contact you (if you want to write to me, use i s h m a d r a d A T g m a i l D O T c o m). Have a wonderful day!
Hi Ema. I'm trying to collect some feedback and typo/suggestions, if you like them. I hope you'll find them useful, particularly for polishing the future printed version. If real life doesn't hit too hard, I'll find a way to send them to you.
Hm - I was thinking this was an expansion to Crescent Moon, is it just its own system? Either way - still super happy it's out, and happy to have backed it! Can't wait to put a physical copy on my shelf, along with all the other RPGs I've yet to get my friends to play...
Hey! Yeah, it started out as an expansion but over the course of development it turned into it's own game. When the second edition of Crescent releases in some ~2 months, the system will also be very similar :-) I hope you enjoy it!
Congrats on the release, Ema and team!
Thank u!!!