Wound Bound
Every choice has a cost.
Fight with steel, magic, cunning or faith. Push past your limits when the moment demands it. Spend your own wounds to fuel extraordinary things, and know that every time you push, the GM gets a chance to push back.
What can you survive?
What can you endure?
What are you willing to sacrifice?
Instead, every character has three wound tracks. Each can be damaged, each can be emptied, and each can be deliberately spent.
Body
The blade, the fall, the fire. Run out and you're dying. Blood Mages pay for their spells here, and anyone can bleed for power when they need to.
Mind
What strategy and arcane work cost you. Run out and you're stunned. Aether Mages cast from it, and some characters spend it to act before an enemy can.
Soul
What the divine and the terrible take. Run out and you're numbed. Priests cast from it, and some characters spend it to take a blow meant for a friend.
Five things to know about Wound Bound
Push, and the GM pushes back
One pool of Stamina pays for everything extra: another action, a reaction, a boost to your defences, a manoeuvre. Spend it and you're more capable. Spend it and you hand the GM an Opportunity, a banked enemy turn to cash in when it hurts most.
The players choose who acts next
No initiative roll. After every player turn, the table decides who goes next, and the GM takes one enemy turn in between. Combat becomes a conversation: "Wait, knock him down first and I'll finish him."
Your past is a tool
Instead of a skill list, you write down two Experiences, things your character has actually done. If you can argue one applies to the roll in front of you, it adds to it. Years at sea can get you through a locked door.
Magic you build at the table
Casters don't learn a fixed list. Describe the effect, size it, place it, and pay for it with one formula. A full catalogue of starting spells is there for anyone who would rather pick one off the shelf.
One roll for everything
Swinging a sword, picking a lock, casting a spell, clinging to life while you bleed out: roll 2d12, add your modifiers, meet or beat the target. Learn it once and you know the whole game.
Blood and Vintage: The Murder at Thistledown Estate
A Tier 1 murder mystery for three to five players and a GM. A favour for a family friend puts you on the coast road with a wagon of wine, bound for the harvest celebration at Thistledown. You arrive late, soaked and bloodied. By morning, someone is dead.
Five ready-to-play characters, a primer on the rules, and an adventure that teaches the game one scene at a time. Everything you need for your first session.
The world drowned once. What came after was built on the ruins.
Aliador is green, prosperous country, framed by mountains on one side and the tides on the other, and well worth fighting over. Six gods hold the world's domains, and none of them is good or evil.
Their children left bloodlines behind. Some people are still born carrying a god's power in their blood. Nobody earns a Bloodmark and nobody chooses one. What you do with it is the only part that's yours.
The game is written and playtested. Now we're making the book.
A Kickstarter is coming to turn Wound Bound into a full-colour hardcover, with original art commissioned from human artists, professional layout and proper printing. Join the list to hear when it launches, and to get the Quickstart as it's updated.