Revenant Society: Core Book

Revenants: The Endless Loop Beneath the City is a tabletop roleplaying game which is inspired by the Powered by the Apocalypse system, which was originally developed by Meguey Baker and Vincent Baker. Like other PbtA games, you roll 2D6 for your Moves – there are group Moves and character specific ones, that have success, partial success or miss. It’s up to the Fate Weaver to determine what that means, but it could be resolved in the form of gained/lost information, damage to your already fragile corpse, or adding Watchers to the board.

A game starts with a character selection. Your Revenant vaguely remembers their life, so character development and backstory are integrated into the experience. Revenants begin with a Playbook that gives an overall feel of who they might have been as a person. It is a co-operative effort for both the Fate Weaver and the Revenants to determine how that ties to the Shattering Event, and how it shapes the characters over the course of the game.

In each game, Revenants are trapped in a time loop of the same night (typically midnight to dawn). The game takes place over four of those time loops. They use their Moves to travel around the city, trying to remain unnoticed as they decompose, investigating as they go. Once there is a fixed event, it cannot change. This is a challenge for the GM a.k.a. the Fate Weaver. If the Revenants get to dawn, they reset to the moment of the first “wake up” with their memories of the previous nights intact, but not any acquired items or allies. You use the Loop Board to track your information and which time loop you are in. If you loop too many times, you are trapped, doomed to repeat the same loop forever.

The Fate Weaver will write out notes of the Events that happen during the game on the Loop Board. That way, all players will be able to see what has happened so far. The Loop Board also keeps track of the Watchers, what Loop number the players are on and what questions they will need to answer. They will also facilitate keeping track of all the relationships and NPCs (non-playable characters) using the Map of Intrigue. You can draw lines on the Map of Intrigue between NPCs and make notes so all players are aware of what is happening.

On rare occasions, a doorway to Limbo opens up and if a curious living being were to step through that door, they would dissolve into shadow, turning into a Watcher. They may go through the doorways between the living world and Limbo but cannot interact directly with either the living or the dead. Seeing a Revenant trapped in the Time Loop fills them with the greatest pleasure, because that’s the only thing that’s worse than being a Watcher. Watchers take on the form of a tracker on the Loop Board. When players succeed at using their Moves, rolling a 10+, place more Watchers on the events, with a maximum of four. While the living do not see Watchers, they are inclined to look at you more carefully, and as you have been decomposing for 10 days by now, that is most undesirable.

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