Welcome to Rowan, Rook & Decard

We’re Rowan, Rook & Decard, and we make games. Here are some of those games:

DIE the Roleplaying Game

Front cover of the DIE roleplaying game

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans have teamed up to create the DIE roleplaying game based on the comic of the same name (which they also created!) – and we’ve helped them get it into print. In DIE, you play a group of flawed real-world people who are trapped in a fantasy kingdom made out of their own dreams, hopes and nightmares.

What will you do to get home? What will you do to stay?

DIE RPG is 408 pages of beautiful art and clever rules. We’ve worked with some of the best editors and writers in the business (Will Jobst, Zach Cox, Grant Howitt, Kienna Shaw, Lauren Bryant-Monk) to get it polished and beautiful, and brought in Lone Archivist (Orbital Blues) and Minerva McJanda (Heart, Lancer, Hardwired Island) to do the layout.

You can buy the DIE RPG now, and pick up your Fair Gold coins, GM screen and dice too in one handy bundle.

Heart

Heart: The City Beneath is our award-winning game of dungeoncrawl body-horror set in the twisting nightmare undercity beneath Spire. Why are you descending into the depths of the Heart, and how will it change you?

Take on the roles of unique classes such as: the Deadwalker, who died but got better; the Vermissian Knight, who patrols a cursed mass transit network wearing powered armour made from ancient trains; and the Deep Apiarist, who is full of magical bees that stitch their sanity together with wax and wizardry. Visit damned temples to forbidden gods, impossibly old and somehow still functional machines, alien subterranean skies, seas of dust and towns where the walls bleed and breathe. Hunt down Angels and bathe in their crucible blood; adopt a predatory building and teach it tricks; kick in the back doors of heaven and ransack the Goddess’ treasures before she realises you’re inside.

Winner of seven (7) 2021 ENnie awards, including gold for best writing, best setting and best design.

Voidheart Symphony

This city is sick. The CASTLE dwells beneath the surface of reality, corrupting and twisting those who unknowingly siphon its energy into power. It is hungry for dominion, and it is winning; you can see it in the reflection of office block windows, the glint of expensive watches, and the tears of the oppressed. 

But YOU know a secret. You know how to break into the Castle. You know how to hijack the allegorical space for your own benefits. You are packing weapons made of dreamstuff but real enough to blow the brains out of any dead-eyed servitor demon that stands in your way. You’re going to fight the Patriarchy, one Patriarch at a time. And you’re going to look good doing it.

VOIDHEART SYMPHONY is Mina McJanda’s latest Powered by the Apocalypse game, drawing on her previous work with Rhapsody of Blood and using a modified version of Spire’s Resistance system to manage your real-world worries. Sure, you can fly on neon angel wings and carry a revolver that roars louder than thunder when you’re in the Castle, but in the real world, can you afford proper dental care? Time to find out. 

Spire

Dark elf rebellion in a mile-high fantasy city crumbling from within and without. What are you prepared to sacrifice to get what you and your people deserve? Using the Resistance system, Spire’s mechanics focus around what the player characters have to lose: sanity, money, secrecy, loyalty, reputation, and so on. Unique character classes (such as the hyena-wrangling Carrion-Priest, the pubcrawling Knights of the North Docks, and the black magic artist Idol) allow players to fill in their own details on the world around them whilst player-facing abilities give them increased control of the narrative, taking pressure off the GM.

In addition to the Spire corebook, there are three pay-what-you-want scenarios available for download (and you can get the physical versions for a very reasonable rate), shorter supplements such as Black Magic, Codex of the Deep Spire and Book of Masks, and Strata – a full-length sourcebook with extra character classes, more details on the richest and poorest districts of Spire, and 10 scenarios from a wide variety of authors.

Honey Heist

It’s Honeycon, and you’re going to steal a load of honey. Two things: 1) You have a complex plan that requires precise timing, and 2) You are a goddamn bear. This one-page RPG has been played on Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, Friends at the Table, Rusty Quill, and many other less-famous podcasts.

Goblin Quest

A game of fatal incompetence, slapstick comedy, and victory against impossible odds. Play five goblins each – in sequence, not in parallel – and have many if not all of them die preventable deaths whilst trying to achieve basic tasks. Undergo such wild quests as: making a toasted sandwich, putting on a fancy party, celebrating Christmas, and ganging up on one knight so you can steal his horse.

Comes with a bunch of hacks that let you use the simple system to tell different stories – Space Interns (sci fi), My Name Inigo Montoya Jr (derring-do), Kobold Quest (audacious machines) and Sean Bean Quest (Sean Bean trying to survive until the end of a film for once).

Royal Blood

THEY are the Arcane, the movers and shakers in the unseen world of magic that thrums great and terrible above our own. YOU are the Royals, half-blood sorcerers and throwback junk magicians, who are tired of being moved and shaken. Tonight, you’re going to topple their thrones and take their power for yourself. An ENnie-nominated occult heist storygame played using a deck of tarot cards and a handful of coins.

Unbound

Grab your friends – you’re going to make something beautiful together. Unbound will give you the best session zero you’ve ever had. As you gather round the table to make your characters, you’ll also make the world, the factions that oppose you, and the plot of the game by answering a series of prompts – every time you start play, you’ll make your own world and explore it at a break-neck pace. Unbound also utilises a unique playing card-based cinematic-tactical combat system which allows for tactical play and wild descriptions of the action.

One Last Job

You were out of the game for good – but they’ve pulled you back in for one last job. A game about washed-up criminals shouting at each other; characters are made on the fly during play, their characteristics defined by other players through the means of insults.

Havoc Brigade

You’re a bunch of orcs on a mission: sneak into the Imperial City of Frieberg and capture Prince Theodore Holstein! Only problem is that none of you like each other, barely any of you know how to be quiet, and you all have different motivations for forcing your way into what is essentially a violent field trip to a big city. Still, what’s the worst that can happen? An over-the-top one-shot game with lovingly pregenerated characters and maps which always results in raucous fun for all involved.

One-Page Games

Grant writes a single one-page RPG every month and releases them for free – these include Honey Heist (mentioned above) as well as The Witch Is Dead, Jason Statham’s Big Vacation, Pride and Extreme Prejudice, and at least twenty-five others. You can download them for a price of your choosing (or free), support Grant on Patreon, or purchase physical copies which include exclusive back pages as a 13-game bundle (Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3).

Hearty Dice Friends

We also make a podcast called Hearty Dice Friends! You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, and ask us a question or suggest a game idea here.

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You can email us at admin@rowanrookanddecard.com or contact us here.

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Reviews

  • The Witch Is Dead ()
    reviewed by Vince


    I ran it for the first time today and me and my horrible friends had a blast. So much room for all that chaotic potential. As GM, I had very minimal preparation but it was the most fun I had recently.

    I highly recommend it! The limited things woodland creatures can do give so much variety for executing the mission.

    Runtime: 90mins

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  • Spire: The City Must Fall RPG (£17.50£40.00)
    reviewed by Dylan Malenfant


    Spire is a beautifully designed game in that its mechanics feed back into the fiction seemlessly. The classes and their abilities have clear places in fiction, and every ability has a huge amount of flavour so no choice feels boring or wrong. The game does everything it set out to do in a fantastically evocative way.

    The game is not the best part.

    The world of the Spire is written so that any individual game lives in the gaps. A huge amount of world building is done so that everyone should have a clear image of the world upon reading the setting material, but enough is left to fill in that no two people will have an identical city. The details are perfect, and the missing pieces are exactly where they need to be so that plot hooks generate themselves as you read.

    Spire is a joy to play and amazing to write for.

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