SARIL is a tactical RPG worthy of more Kickstarter attention

It’s been another busy week on Kickstarter, and RadiationBurn’s Kickstarter for SARIL has launched into it. As a result, the tactical RPG in which players trade the certainty of success for the magnitude of success is easy to miss.

At Tabletop Gaming Live this month, I had the chance to play a demo of SARIL and get how the game works. The Kickstarter says you can learn the rules from one-page you can, and the pitch says it’s good for new and expert players, and it is that too. You can find out more from the pitch video.

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There’s parallel play in SARIL; DMs describe what’s happening, players share their responses and the dice roll at once. If a player rolls lots of dice, they’re more likely to have a character acting this turn swiftly, but holding dice back gives a bonus to action.

Players roll as many dice as their characters have skill points, and the whole round is a single roll. More details of how the system works are free on the site.

Since I had the chance to talk to designer Graham Stewart about plans for the game, I got to ask about timelines and future hopes.

• The Core Rules and The Beaky Bois Bird Brained Adventure ( 3 – 16 hour fantasy starter adventure) will be available as soon as the Kickstarter finishes.
• The other two Kickstarters adventures (Sci-fi Heist and Wierd West sandbox adventure) should be ready mid-November. So should the Physical print of the book for backers.
• Quests in Chaos is scheduled for April/May 2023
• And then Dead Exit (zombie apocalypse survival adventure) and/or the currently unnamed Horror title will be ready in October 2023 for Halloween.
• That’s all the ones I currently have full notes and some BETA testing on, so confidence can be high.
• 2024 Should see ability completed plus the other horror Game if I wasn’t able to do both within 2023.
• The plan is to have 2 major adventures a year. These usually have a lot of extras to help you create your own adventures in that universe, e.g. the Twisting west adventure has extra demons that aren’t used in that adventure.
• 1-Shots: in addition to the major adventure there will be a number of small 1-Shot adventures which will mostly be free on the website. These will initially be focused around one mechanic as they are currently mostly being converted from special BETA tests I did for thoroughly testing that mechanic in relative isolation. e.g. a group of stone ages travellers have to survive being hunted by a large predator on a dangerous mountain route. This was originally a test of the monster mechanics with some social dynamics and environmental dangers.

It’s great of Graham to share this with us and let me be the voice of caution. This is all planned, all sketches, and all depending on Kickstarters funding despite the current competition, world chaos and a host of challenges. It does, however, indicate plans for a supported RPG and how far ahead RadationBurn are planning.

You can support the indie RPG by sharing it on Kickstarter or pledging a little money. If you can afford £18, that’ll get you the core rules, the Beaky Bois Bird Brained Bonanza scenario, and some beta rules in PDF. You also get a Roll20 character sheet, PNG files, stretch goals and 15+ STLs.

Stepping up to £25 adds the Parallax Scenario PDF, more STL and your name in the book.

The £30 line adds more adventure in the shape of The Twisting West Scenario and more STLs.

Then, at £45, we get the physical hardback of SARIL in a tier that includes earlier offers.

Above that, there are £80, £100 and £200 tiers, which offer exclusive editions, retailer levels and personalised messages.

The last tier, £288, also offers commercial rights to sell and print the STL minis. You could see how gaming shops could use SARIL to demo TTRPGs and then tempt people with 3d-printed minis of the game just played.

The estimated delivery dates are soon, with the PDF being offered in October, then November for the later scenarios and December for the book.

Quick Links

• Find out more about SARIL.