Wandering Souls - Preview

Wandering Souls is a sword-and-sorcery tabletop RPG of enveloping shadows, dangerous and fast combat, and an impending doom in The Shrouded Realm.

This is a PREVIEW of the final product and is currently in development.

Inside Wandering Souls you will find a game designed for solo or cooperative play, with options to add a GM/guide to the mix. Each player will take on the role of a Wanderer, a traveler of sorts, from all walks of life.  From there, you can start exploring the area known as The Shrouded Realm. This is a large region of a greater world that has slowly been encroached by a thick grey fog, bringing with it beasts, corruption,  and beings of evil servitude. 

Players will use this zine, a deck of standard playing cards, and a couple of 6-sided dice (d6) to explore, quest, and combat the shadows of the world as they are revealed. World status, character progress, and all other important details are tracked on the character sheet and can easily be stored between sessions. 

Wandering Souls' core rules and conception come from my previous title, Wandering Dreams, which focused on eldritch horrors and a dream world, and borrowed heavily from the Soulsborne series, specifically Bloodborne. This time around I am focusing on the fantasy tropes of light-vs-dark, a looming shadow, and travelling heroics in a time of peril. Think of Lord of the Rings, Rangers of Shadowdeep, or Dragon Age: Origins.

Before setting out into the world, you can choose to take on a quest from a local in your starting location. Quest's can be multiple levels of length, offering a reward upon completion and reputation. You will collect Lore/Tracks from each location you visit in wild, all while encountering other beings and dealing with events. Once you reach enough Lore/Tracks for the quest, you can return to the starting location and collect some well earned downtime for your character, and allow for reflection on the story you've just created.

Traveling is handled by drawing and revealing cards from the deck for events and locations. There are no hex grids, maps, or other cartography upkeep required in Wandering Souls.

You can choose how your character will spend their time in the world: working to fight the Shadow, aiding others in the world with their problems, or traveling into the unknown with a fellow companion or two. Wandering Souls isn't a race against time, it is a look at the time you have left to spend in the world and the good you can do with it.

Moving from location to location is how Lore/Tracks are found and each step forward will reveal a new discovery. Exploration will provide events between locations, testing your character's abilities to overcome challenges in the world. These could be: moving through an extreme weather event, surviving a landslide, navigating a toxic miasma, or traversing badly damaged bridges.

Once you make it through the test, a destination will be revealed. These are separated into locations in the wild and locations that are populated. Wild locations have the potential to be dangerous, and leave you open to attack, while populated regions offer respite and time to seek help from companions.

Each companion will provide a bonus to stats, abilities, and opportunities to do more with your time on the road. Some companions are temporary, and must move on after a quest is completed, with others sticking with you until the end, or when you choose to disband the party.

Combat is tense in the world of Wandering Souls. Using 2d6, the player rolls and adds their relevant stats for the attack to the die result. They then compare the result to the enemy DS (difficulty score), trying to beat that number. Going above the number deals damage, below means you take damage. Players will engage in melee, at range, or even wield magic against their foes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Players can choose to avoid combat, try to get in the first attack, or even be ambushed by enemies. If you are unable to topple a combat, the player can choose to attempt a retreat and live to fight another day.

If a player is defeated in combat, they must roll for a new Wound on their character. Wounds serve as reminders of you past and act as you overall ability to keep moving forward. After a set number of wounds the player is considered defeated, permanently, and must be retired.

The Shadow looms over every Wanderer, slowly eating away at their resolve. Eventually you will reveal a wild/Joker from the deck of cards. When that happens, the Shadow level of your character is increased by 1. When the amount of shadow reaches the maximum for your character, they are consumed and lost to the forces of evil.

There are ways to combat the sneaking shadow during gameplay. Quest rewards, events, and beings you meet in the world have opportunities to decrease your level and keep you adventuring for longer. There are even rare items in the world that can be used to soothe your soul and cleanse the shadow.

When a character is consumed by shadow, they are immediately retired and will leave a corrupted legacy on the world. This legacy could be: an item that causes it's wielder to miss on a specific die roll, a location housing more enemies that are stronger, or the character now being a possible encounter in the world and spreading shadow where they travel. The choice will be yours to make from a list of options.

Wandering Souls provides simple rules for character creation with jumping into a game is as easy as having a character ready or creating a new one, which takes only a few minutes!

At it's heart, Wandering Souls is designed as a pen and paper RPG experience for you. You can play on your terms, creating a story unique to your time with it. Play it between diversions of your everyday, or use it as a meditative practice. You can even use Wandering Souls as a writing tool or world building exercise!

Wandering Souls will be easily 'hackable' from the start. Templates for creating new characters, locations, events, encounters, and beings will be ready to go. Players may even find adding more rules to be to their liking, and Wandering Souls welcomes it!