Swyvers: A TTRPG where the PCs aren’t heroes, and it’s always bloody raining

Luke Gearing, David Hoskins, and the Melsonian Arts Council, designers behind games like Wolves Upon the Coast, Troika!, Acid Death Fantasy and Mothership: Gradient Descent, are crowdfunding together on Swyvers.

Swyvers is a lightweight RPG where the characters are not heroes; they’re stealing from the rich in The Smoke, and it’s always raining. The Kickstarter community likes the pitch, and the £2,000 goal has been met many times over, with the latest tally visible on the pitch page.

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The game, which has now surely been safely funded, will have rules for generating your own version of the corrupt city of ‘The Smoke’ and the underbelly of ‘The Midden’.

There’s a free to download early access on Itch.

Swyvers will have rules for hired goons, death, diseases and how to have a proper funeral for your mates. Additionally, there are rules for bribes, fences, apprentices and how to spend spoils carousing for XP.

There’s magic in ‘The Smoke’ too, so there are rules for that too, which the team says are unique and innovative.

Swyvers is a game about bastards. You and your gang of criminals scarper through heists and sewers, stalk through the filth of The Smoke and, if you’re lucky, you’ll make it out with a few extra shillings. The whole of this city is your filthy, sickly oyster.

Backers at £12 will get a thank you of a Swyvers PDF.

Stepping up, and with worldwide shipping from within Brexit Britain, there’s the standard edition of the RPGs in print and the PDF at the £28 tier.

Over a hundred backers, at the time of writing, have increased their pledge to £38 to also add ‘The Crown’s Shilling’, a coin prop/merch/token to their rewards.

Nearly a hundred have gone as high as £58 to swap out the standard edition with the limited edition of Swyvers. Then, at £72, there’s the shilling, the limited edition and a Swyvers t-shirt.

Swyvers is expected to ship in August, except the PDF, which is due as soon as April, and the campaign runs up to March 7th.