Raven of the Scythe Fantasy Role Playing Game

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Raven of the Scythe

Fantasy Role Playing Game

Written By

James Embry

Art

Some artwork copyright William McAusland, used with permission.

The artwork in this book comes from: “Fantasy Clip Inks:: Spot Art set 1”, “Fantasy Clip Inks:: Spot

Art set 3”, “Fantasy Clip Inks:: Spot Art set 6”, and Fantasy Clip Inks:: Spot Art set 7”

Art by Jeff Preston used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Check out his work in “108 Terrible Character Portraits”

Updated: 21SEP2018

Raven of the Scythe was written by and is the intellectual property of James Embry 2017.

Raven of the Scythe may not be reproduced for sale or distribution without the written permission of the creator.

For questions or concerns contact James Embry at:

Crossroadrpg@gmail.com

Or

Find me on facebook at Crossroadrpg

Sam

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Foreword

Thank you very much for giving my newest game “Raven of the Scythe” a chance. There are lots of

other games out there, so, I am eternally grateful you decided to pick mine up. My name is James.

I don’t know when exactly I started working on this game, but I do know I started working on a game

in the fall of 2015. At some point that game became Raven of the Scythe.

I am just one person who loves pen and paper roleplaying games lucky enough to have small group of

friends who are willing to indulge me in my efforts. I have a day job, or night job at the moment, and

I do what work I can do between my shifts and while balancing obligations to family and friends.

Thus, this has been a long, difficult, and sometimes frustrating task at times, but it has been one that I

have completely enjoyed. Every word of text in this document was put there by me, normally sitting

at my desk with my laptop listening to music. I have really gotten into “In This Moment” for the last

week or so, check them out if you haven’t heard of them. Also the “Deftones”.

Given that I am just one guy and a $300 laptop, I never intended to reinvent the wheel with this game.

Rather I just wanted to make a really good wheel. One that I hope people will play and enjoy. I love

this hobby and the people in it. With Raven of the Scythe I hope I can give back at least a little bit to

the community that I have enjoyed so much over the years. This is my first attempt at a fantasy game

and given that it was fantasy that got me into the hobby in the first place all those years ago I am very

excited to be able to share my work with you.

Thank you again for checking out my work.

I honestly hope you enjoy it.

-James

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Chapter 1: Introduction to Raven of the Scythe -------------------------------------- Page 6

Chapter 2: Character Creation ----------------------------------------------------------- Page 9

Chapter 3: Playing the Game ----------------------------------------------------------- Page 27

Chapter 4: Skill Descriptions ----------------------------------------------------------- Page 40

Chapter 5: Favors ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 48

Chapter 6: Equipment -------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 66

Chapter 7: Character Advancement --------------------------------------------------- Page 75

Chapter 8: Magic-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 77

Appendix i: Crafting ------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 123

Appendix ii: Animal Companions -------------------------------------------------- Page 127

Appendix iii: Traps --------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 132

Appendix iv: Treasure and Alchemical Items ------------------------------------- Page 137

Appendix v: Random Weather ------------------------------------------------------- Page 166

Appendix vi: Rules Summary and Cheat Sheet ----------------------------------- Page 168

Appendix vii: Character Record Sheet ---------------------------------------------- Page 172

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At the end of our days, there is a plain that stretches endlessly into twilight, between

day and night, between summer and winter.

In the middle of the plain there is a black tower.

We are led there by the Raven of the Scythe

“The End of Our Days”

Kander myth.

Sam

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Chapter 1 Introduction to

Raven of the Scythe

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Raven of the Scythe is a pen and paper fantasy role-

playing game where players will take the role of

heroic characters in a fantasy world as a game master

leads them through epic adventurers.

Some friends, at least one set of gaming dice, this

document, some blank character sheets and some

pencils. You might want to have a bit of graph paper

if you like to run tactical style combat encounters.

Raven of the Scythe uses a pretty simply 2d10 based

system. Basically, each character will have a number

of attributes that are further refined by skills or other

abilities. When the character tries to do something,

they will roll two ten-sided dice (2d10) which are

read as 0-9 and add any modifiers they need to, to the

result of the roll and if the sum is equal to or greater

than the difficulty of the action, then they have

succeeded.

That depends a lot on what you want to do with it. I

tried to fit Raven of the Scythe into a sort of sweet

spot between classic fantasy and dark and gritty.

There are plenty of other games out there that do both

of those genres better than I could hope to, but I was

trying to make the game that I have wanted to play

for quite some time, a game with all the elements of

classic fantasy that I love, but also with a sense of

grounded realism that sometimes gets overlooked by

the tropes of the genre. There are monsters and

magic and dragons and warriors and priests and

bards, but I have tried to keep these things grounded

(I refuse to use the word “realistic” when talking

about a game with magic lightning bolts).

All those fantasy elements are there, but there is also

very real danger. Characters don’t “Level up” in this

game. They improve and get better over time. But at

no point should you think to yourself “This thing is

of no threat to someone of my level.”

I used hit points to keep track of character health in

this game because I wanted the iconic feel that comes

from rolling a d8 and seeing how much damage you

did on an attack, but your hit points don’t really

increase all that much. A legendary warrior runs

about the same risk of getting sniped with a single

lucky hit with a longbow as anyone else. It isn’t that

characters are fragile, but they aren’t immortal either.

They can face danger, they can get hurt, and they can

die. It might be when they faced down a charging

monster, or it might be when they got pushed off a

twenty-foot tower and fell to their death.

There are no “Classes” in this game. While there are

certain ability combinations that play off of one

another, each character in this game has control over

how they develop. They can play to an archetype if

they like, or try to find something completely unique.

All the characters in this game are human. Looking

at it now, this may be a symptom of the time in which

the game was written, but I really wanted to

emphasise that this was a game about humans, and

about human mortality. The world is full of monsters

and magic and ageless dragons, and yet the greatest

threats a party is likely to face comes in the form of

other humans. I want this to be a game where

humans were good, noble, kind, and courageous; but

also vile, cruel, cowardly, and greedy. I wanted the

entire spectrum of humanity to be on display in this

game, both the good and the bad. I was concerned

that having beautiful and noble elves and inherently

evil races of spider people living below the ground

might delude that message. Thus while there are

monsters, there are no monster “races” like orcs,

goblin, or trolls. This is a game about humans, for

better or for worse.

Sam

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