WARDEN

Core Rulebook by Ghost Spark

MORE THAN JUST FANTASY

WARDEN is a Cinematic and Genre-Agnostic d20 RPG, built on the bones of Pathwarden. It takes many features of Pathfinder 2e and blends them with mechanics from various other games, ranging from PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) to OSR (Old School Renaissance), and everything in between.

It’s a fresh take on the d20 and the system surrounding it, taking features from all around the RPG spectrum to create a robust ruleset that can be used for most settings you can imagine.

Anything from Fantasy and Sci-Fi to mundanity of real life, crimes of the 1920s to the high seas of the Age of Sail is doable with this toolkit, using the familiar d20+Mod rules and having robust options for building characters and settings alike.

What does it do?

WARDEN is designed to be a branching game that expands from a simple core, that being the d20 + Modifier rolls. 

• Six Proficiencies: The game focuses on six proficiencies you improve during the game: Three Defenses (Toughness, Perception, Resolve), and Three Paths (Combat, Special, Skill). 
• Free To Build: WARDEN Is a Classless and Attributeless game, allowing you to pick and choose Abilities and Items that fit your image of the character, with no limitation from Levels or from statistics.
• Abilities to Feats: Each Ability you take (which you gain by increasing a Path) has 3 Feats you can take from under them, making it fast and intuitive to build characters with features that support each other.
• Levels 0 to 10: The game features characters going from levels 0 to 10, with optional rules for going above it, or ignoring levels entirely.
• No Bloat: The numbers of the game slant low, with roll bonuses reaching around +15 at their greatest on high levels, and Hit Points scaling from 10 to 20 without specific Abilities.
• All Cinematic: The Abilities you choose are drawn from various different sources, but they often have their core idea from some piece of media, from Movies, Anime, Video Games etc.
• Campaign Map: The game’s overall gameplay resolves on a sandbox-style map called a Campaign Map, where you discover Locations and Secrets, thwart Threats, and race against Clocks.
• Tech Levels and Alterations: Build your perfect setting using Tech Levels (Classical, Industrial, Digital or Futuristic) and Setting Alterations (Magic, Bionics, Vehicles, Warfare, etc.). It’s fast and intuitive to build both settings and characters to fit them.
• Rules for Roleplaying: WARDEN also includes various rules and guidance for roleplaying itself, such as the Threads and Moments mechanics that encourage player characters to speak to each other about themselves and the world around them.
• Metric and Imperial: The game is available in both Metric (1-meter) and Imperial (5-foot) measurements. They are separate files, but both are included when you purchase it.

Why Warden?

WARDEN is an honest, setting-agnostic d20 game that is designed with gameplay in mind first, and is suitable for both new players and older players that just want the damn thing to work like it should.

Setting-building and the subsequent character-building are both relatively simple and easy, but with a lot of options to go for. The Ability-Feat progression is like a massive tree with a lot of branches where you can situate your character. There are no arbitrary barriers for creating a character, since all Abilities are available to characters from the get-go.

The gameplay is designed to be simpler and easier than the biggest d20 games in the market, while still having as much if not more meaningful options at any point during the game, be it during conflicts or while leveling up. The game’s Campaign Map system also fosters an open-ended gameplay experience naturally, without the facilitators (called Game Wardens) needing to come up with a massive sandbox on the fly or prep for hours on end for all possible eventualities.

The game also provides a large amount of guidance for both players and Game Wardens to play the game, even outside of the ramifications of the game itself, including things like scheduling, table etiquette and how to keep things rolling. Additionally, all the material in the game is codified and made with its own rules, meaning if you want to homebrew content, you can make things pretty much identical to the official content without needing to rely on guesswork.

WARDEN is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.

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