Arise TRPG
A downloadable playtest
Arise & Bear Witness
Arise is a tabletop role-playing game of sublime fantasy, exploring worlds of magick and beauty threatened by the Fall, a manifestation of long-festering wounds and the apocalyptic greed of the powerful. The world has seen collapse before, and is only now clawing its way out of the age of Vast & Abiding Dark.
Arise focuses on the adventuring party as the core subject of storytelling. The party is everything to the Heroes, it's a found family, a mercenary free company, a band of problem solvers, and a mutual support group. Arise is being built with the party in mind, with player agency as its foundation.
Easy as A, B, C
Arise is the first game to use the ABCDEngine, a game system being developed in parallel with Arise which will be receiving its own open-source SRD and development tools. ABCDEngine uses a simple 4-pillar framework around which to organize gameplay and character construction.
The 4 pillars of ABCDEngine games are: Adventure, Battle, Camp, and Downtime. These different gameplay modes each have structures to guide play and freeform elements allowing for narrative exploration & communal storytelling.
An Ongoing Production
Arise is a work in progress. Currently still in Alpha. Core gameplay elements are in place, but it's missing a few key features. There will be an ongoing series of devlogs posted whenever a new draft is available showing what's missing, what's new, and what's on its way in the next draft.
Check the game's devlogs on this product page to see the latest!
Status | In development |
Category | Physical game |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (13 total ratings) |
Author | matara |
Genre | Role Playing |
Tags | Dice, Dungeon Crawler, job-system, Tabletop |
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Arise Alpha v0.2 - New Disciplines, Items, MonstersDec 05, 2023
- Arise Alpha v0.1.d - Slightly Bigger Tiny UpdateNov 27, 2023
- Arise Alpha v0.1c.1 - Teeny Tiny MicroupdateNov 23, 2023
- Day 1 Patch (r-r-reduuux)Nov 21, 2023
- Day 1 Patch (lmfao)Nov 21, 2023
- Arise Alpha Devlog #1Nov 21, 2023
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
FWIW, I did give my own first impressions in video form.
I am curious how you'd handle the dice system in battle through either a VTT or just a Discord/Zoom/etc. call. The remaining systems I could see working, that's the main one i'm curious about. Also, do you have plans on some sort of tracking sheet to use when people "multiclass" (I know its Disciplines, but old habits die hard)?Just a few thoughts.
I wrote the Roll20 sheets for MEGALOS and will be following that template to make Roll20 sheets (including smart dice rolling) for Arise. I’ll be running a playtest group in a couple weeks that will be using that tech for real. Please join the Discord to follow along if you’re interested in hearing more about it.
I may do that.
Hey there. Is there a discord for this system of yours? Would really love to test this out with other folks.
My discord server was originally for one of my other games, but I'm going to shift some stuff around to make the Arise area a little more welcoming. I'll reply to you again with a link when I can. :)
Hello! I've got the link all set up: https://discord.gg/eHuWvduT3Y
When you join, you'll be asked to react to the rules to join the server. As I said previously, this was originally designed as a server for my game MEGALOS, but it's got playtesting channels for Arise as well. In order to reach the playtesting channels, you'll also need to react to a second message after the rules (don't worry, it's right there, can't miss it). o3o
Made a dragon princess as my test character :^)
(excuse the very rough Paint edit lol)
Amazing!!! 😍 Flame dragon princess what adventures will she embark upon
Notes from an initial readthrough of the system and a practice character creation:
For example, a Swordsage wants to get MP Boost from the Black Mage Discipline. Can she, during Downtime, swap to Black Mage and buy the ability before swapping back to Swordsage?
This is a fascinating system, and I'm very interested in seeing where it ends up going!
edit: I only just noticed you had v0.1b up, some of these might be irrelevant now
Thanks for this, lists like this are really helpful as a solo developer.
I've added some stuff to my backlog and I'm working on 0.1c to address some of the more core and/or quick fix issues (particularly typos, clarifications, and fully implementing the weight/load system which somehow got lost in the design process lmao)
For a quick answer to your first question: It's perhaps not worded as well as it should be. Dash can only be resolved once per turn, but you can spend as many battle dice on it as you feel like.
You have 1 base Dash on your turn for free. Each additional point of Dash must be purchased at a rate of [2] per point. So if you wanted to move 5 tiles, you'd need to spend at least [8] (1 free dash + 4 more at a rate of [2] each). Note: Surge dice (6s) spent on a Dash opportunity also add to the total Dash available.
Basically-- you can only resolve Dash once per turn, but you can spend as many dice on it as you want.
YO this is neat.
One question- how many dice do you roll for checks? It looks like some places indicate that you roll two (ex. "
(before adding any modifiers, both dice come up 6)", page 14, and page 12 mentioning that you can only roll two boons/curses), but the text says three dice.
The core roll was changed from 2 to 3d6 later in writing. These mentions were caught and corrected on my end and an updated doc will be uploaded in an hour or so when I get back to my computer. :)
This has been fixed with the v0.1b release. o3o