Has a computer game had more innovative influence on the tabletop RPG scene than Dark Souls? Now the award-winning The World Anvil are back on Kickstarter with Bitter Chalice and that’s a TTRPG inspired by Soulslike.
The game is set in a blighted land and is about insatiable hunger. It’s funded already, and we’ve until April 29th to make a pledge.
The Blighted Lands were once lovely, but now, those in the cursed city of Vathan suffer from thirst, hunger, and madness. There are three books, all with human-made art, on Kickstarter.
The game isn’t quite the sandbox; instead, it is a campaign with its own ruleset. As a result, there’s a solo mode.
The core book is 210+ pages, and the companion book, Dirge of the Dust King, uses its 120+ pages to share the backstory, the GM rules, solo mode and some game tools. The last book, Escape the Mud Fields, has a tutorial. There are also class sheets, a GM screen, a map, stickers, tokens and stretch goals.
A limited-edition black-and-white box with gold foil, featuring Harry Conway’s staggeringly haunting reinterpretation of the main cover.
Backers at €15 get the PDF of Escape the Mud Fields as a reward, and since that includes some pre-gens and intro rules you can play Bitter Chalice (for a bit) with it.
However, the core digital rewards unlock at €21 and that gets the PDF of Bitter Chalice, maps and tokens.
The Bitter Chalice core rules and Dirge of the Dust King in digital unlock at €35. As a result, if you want the solo mode then this is the reward tier for you.
The complete digital tier unlocks at €45.
Bitter Chalice‘s standard box-set unlocks as a reward for backers at €79. At today’s exchange rates that’s about £69.
The World Anvil has the €115 as the featured tier which is what you need to back to unlock the never-to-be-reprinted limited edition box. After this, the higher tiers are retailers.
The physical rewards are slated for June 2026, and the digital ones in May.
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