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Arise & Bear Witness

Arise is a tabletop role-playing game of sublime fantasy, exploring worlds of magic and beauty arising from the most recent Collapse (of civilization, of magic, of the world). The Arisen Worlds are only now clawing their way out of this past age of vast & abiding dark. These worlds exist in a state called the Eternal Return, a cyclical reality from which there may be no true escape, and about which only the long-fallen civilizations known as the Longlost knew aught.

The dark wilderness between civilized points of light is full of the decaying remnants of Longlost civilizations felled by the Collapses brought about by their hubris. Forever do these worlds renew themselves, but they still bear the scars of what came before.

Arise focuses on the adventuring party as the core subject of storytelling. The party is everything to the heroes,  it's the central unit around which the game is spun. Arise is being built with the party in mind, with player agency as its foundation. Where other games might focus their resource management around punitive costs, Arise uses beneficial resource spends-- your supplies help you function better, rather than limiting what you can do.

Easy as A, B, C, D

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: AdventureBattleCamp, and Downtime. These different gameplay modes each have structures to guide play and freeform elements allowing for narrative exploration & storytelling.

A Work in Progress

Arise is a work in progress. Currently still in Alpha. Core gameplay elements are in place, but it's missing a few key features. Current version is v0.3.

Plans for v0.31: New backgrounds, setting information, bestiary expansion, new gear, balance changes, and the first playtest adventure (“The Halcyon Nest”). v0.31 release date TBD.


Character sheets use elements made by Alderdoodle and icons from https://game-icons.net/.

StatusIn development
CategoryPhysical game
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(15 total ratings)
Authormatara
GenreRole Playing
TagsDice, Dungeon Crawler, job-system, Tabletop

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

Arise v0.3 FULL DOCUMENT - Google Docs.pdf 5.3 MB
Arise TRPG v0.3 Sheets.zip 2.1 MB

Development log

Comments

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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.
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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.

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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. :)

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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

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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

(1 edit) (+3)

Notes from an initial readthrough of the system and a practice character creation:

  • It's mentioned on Pg. 39 that Heroes may perform as many of each Opportunity they can afford, but Dash also states that you can't Dash, take an Action and then Dash again. Am I reading this wrong?
  • The Dodge counter mentions Light/Medium/Heavy Loads, which aren't described anywhere. The closest equivalent I could find were the three armour weights, being Clothes, Light and Heavy.
  • There's no example as to how a character might react to another character of an Aspect complementary to theirs. (pg. 75)
  • The Bolt Aspect appears to be the only one with a weakness to itself - this could be intentional, but regardless stands out.
  • Each Discipline comes with an VAWN bonus - does this bonus change when you swap Disciplines, or do you just get the bonus from your starting Discipline?
  • All Disciplines mention the party's Warchest, which I can assume from the Party sheet is a communal gold fund, but it's not mentioned anywhere else in the rules.
  • Black Mages, Mendicants, Swordsages and White Mages gain accessories as part of their starting equipment, which isn't mentioned anywhere within the alpha release nor in the corresponding devlog as a reference to something that doesn't exist.
  • Swordsage has the text 'Pick Blademaster as your free Boost, depending on which weapon type you’d like to focus on', which makes very little sense when there's only one selection.
  • During Downtime, is it possible to change to a different Discipline to buy one of its abilities and then immediately swap back?
    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?
  • Are the free Action/Boost abilities from a given Discipline 'locked in' when you first swap to a Discipline, or are they rechosen each time you swap to that Discipline? (If rechosen, are there limits? e.g. only abilities touching central tile)
  • Boltara (Bolt Mastery 2) deals Flame damage, which is presumably a typo.
  • Three weapons (The Arquebus, the Bowrifle and the Hunting Bow) have the Ammunition property, but this property isn't described anywhere.
  • During camping/downtime, do Heroes have individual numbers of actions or are the actions split between them? It's not clear. This also extends to Lifestyle Costs - does the party pay it as a whole, or does each Hero pay it individually?
  • The Hang Out camping action makes reference to clearing 'strain', which isn't mentioned anywhere else nor is it on the character sheet.
  • Pg. 28 makes reference to a Downtime Action used to remove conditions gained from travelling without supplies, but it doesn't actually exist down in the Downtime section.

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

(+1)

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)

(+1)

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.

(+1)

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