# Revenant tags: #game/rpg/revenant ![[Revenant (cover).jpg|600]] **Revenant** is Killian Gillespie's love letter to *The Walking Dead*, *28 Days Later*, and *The Last of Us*, rebuilt on the engine of **[[Starforged - Sundered Isles|Ironsworn: Starforged]]**. It's a survival-horror game set roughly a year after the dead started getting back up, where every scrap of food, drop of diesel, and functioning flashlight is worth more than your morals. If you've ever wished the Ironsworn dice would punish you for hoarding batteries, this is the apocalypse for you. The premise is refreshingly uncomplicated: the world ended, the undead own the roads, and the survivors who band together into **enclaves** are the ones who last. You pick a corner of the wreckage, decide how the end came, and point your character at whatever needs doing — scavenging, defending the walls, chasing a rumour of something better. It's fiction-first and largely solo-friendly, so the game hands you the oracles and trusts you not to cheat yourself. ## Setting Revenant's default world walks through a carefully staged four-epoch apocalypse it calls **The Denial, The Uprising, The Fall, and The Ash** — a neat little anatomy of how a society talks itself out of a threat until the world is on fire. The **Revenant pathogen** reanimates the dead, and each stage walks you through denial, quarantine camps, rioting, and finally the world literally burning under a dark, ash-smothered sky. It's the same shape every good zombie apocalypse takes, but spelled out with uncommon patience so you could actually play *through* it rather than just after it. The playable default is **Post-Ash**, about a year past the collapse: skies cleared, temperature still low, supplies grim. Survivors have clustered into **enclaves** — walled settlements pooling resources, guarded against the dead *and* each other. The book spends real page-count on the practical texture of the long winter: petrol goes bad in months, diesel can be filtered back to life, food production ground to a halt during the Ash. It's the most credible "what's actually left in the cupboard" passage you'll read in a zombie game. Your character starts with a **master plan** — a personal vow that gives the campaign its spine — and the world around you is built to grow with you. ## Core Mechanics Revenant is a Starforged hack through and through, so the resolution will feel instantly familiar to any **[[Loner]]** or **[[Ironsworn - Arcanum|Ironsworn]]** refugee: - **Action roll:** roll a d6 **action die** plus the linked stat and any adds, capped at 10; compare it against two d10 **challenge dice** (ties go to the dice). Beat both for a **Strong Hit**, one for a **Weak Hit**, neither for a **Miss**. On a miss you usually **Meet with disaster.** - **Momentum:** a −6 to +10 meter you can **burn** after a roll — reset it to cancel any challenge die *less than* your momentum value. It's the classic Ironsworn burn, not Starforged's replace-the-score, so it rewards planning more than gambling. - **Stats:** **Edge, Heart, Iron, Dark, and Wits** (Revenant swaps Starforged's "Shadow" for "Dark"). You arrange an array — default `3,2,2,1,1`, a flatter `3,2,1,1,0` for 4–6 players, or a heroic `3,3,2,2,1` for a short solo run. - **Meters:** **Endurance, Morale, and Supply**, all starting at **+5**. There's no health bar — Endurance covers physical harm, Morale your mental state, and Supply is an abstract party-shared pool for ammo, fuel, and provisions (no inventory spreadsheet required). - **Impacts:** when meters run dry you mark impacts, which chip away at your maximum momentum — **misfortunes** (battered, wounded, dispirited, unprepared) that an appropriate move clears, and **lasting effects** (permanently harmed, traumatised) that don't. - **Talents:** your skills, chosen two at character creation. They give a real mechanical handle — add **+1 and take +1 momentum on a hit**, or **+2 but count a weak hit as a miss**. Beyond the core you get the full Starforged furniture: **progress tracks** for plans, combat, expeditions, and bonds; **legacy tracks** for plans, discoveries, and bonds that persist if your character dies and you **Continue a legacy** with a successor; a substantial **move** list (session, basic, plan, connection, exploration, combat, suffer, recover, legacy, fate, and scene challenges); and a hefty oracle suite — over a hundred tables, six hundred culturally diverse names, and twenty-plus location oracles with their own features and hazards. There are also optional rules for radiation and fallout if you want your apocalypse a little more *Fallout*. ## Editions **Revenant** is a single, evolving release by **Killian Gillespie** (listed as Killian Ebborn-Gillespie in the library). *In the library.* It launched on DriveThruRPG in April 2024 (368 pages, PDF + premium softcover), has been updated since, and is a CC BY-SA 4.0 derivative of Ironsworn: Starforged. There's no messy edition sprawl yet — just the one book and a free companion character sheet. ## References - [Revenant - Killian Gillespie (DriveThruRPG)](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/457762/revenant) - [Revenant - author's itch.io](https://r3venxnt.itch.io/) - [The Revenant RPG has been officially released - r/Ironsworn](https://www.reddit.com/r/Ironsworn/comments/1care18/the_revenant_rpg_has_been_officially_released/) - [Ironsworn: Starforged - Tomkin Press](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn-starforged)