Funeral Rites

Daily Commute: An Examination of Arkos and The Forest Primordia

John Kordosh wants his players to focus on the events unfolding around them, rather than counting metrics for meta-game functionality.

Funeral Rites

They Feed on Fear

“The inspiration behind playing as monsters is very personal. As a youth with an obvious disability, I found that I did not fit in, and I felt akin to the monsters in pop culture and media.”

Funeral Rites
Three characters stand in three separate panels each surrounded by various weapons.

Getting Lost in the Melodious World of the Ballads of Oræd

On the table next to the candle is a book that you don’t remember seeing before. The book itself feels at once familiar and strange, as though you have read it before, perhaps in a dream. The title is Ballads of Oræd.

Funeral Rites
A brightly colored pen-and-ink drawing of a sharp-toothed warrior swinging a two-handed sword hilted in bones.

INTERMEDIARY MUND is Equal Parts Absurd Dream and Fantasy Nightmare

Unlike his previous work, cartoonist Ben Marra doesn’t see INTERMEDIARY MUND as a form of pulp, or only as adjacent to it.

Funeral Rites
A drawing of a river cutting through a valley, rendered in striking black and red ink.

Smelting RPGs Down to Simple Bliss with Outcast Silver Raiders

“Perhaps out of a sense of satire or perhaps just because I really like horror movies, metal and the occult, I wanted to create something that would have been absolutely forbidden in my house.”

Funeral Rites

The Capricious Gifts Found in Portents of a Dying God

Soul-crushing realities are something that MÖRK BORG tends to revel in, so it’s nice to see that Matt Johnson’s newest deck offers the same type of disastrous opportunities.

Funeral Rites
Three shadowy figures are propped up by trios of long poles, though whether they've been impaled or are using them as spindly methods of travel is unclear.

Sailing the Ashen Sea with Tephrotic Nightmares

The strongest character in the setting – the most vivid, the most realized, and the most overwhelming – is the Ashen Sea itself.

Funeral Rites
A black-and-white ink drawing of a badass-looking angel holding a wicked cool sword.

The Tower, The Fool, The Meatgrinder

His Majesty the Worm is very focused on megadungeon-crawling, and I wanted players to have this sense that surviving the dangers means something.”

Funeral Rites

Between the Skies and Beyond the Horizon

Designer Huffa Frobes-Cross refers to Between the Skies as “rules minimalist, fiction maximalist.”

Funeral Rites
A black and white drawing of several ducks in mystical robes and armor traversing the stairs of a castle.

Embarking on a DuckQuest

“What if ducks weren’t the comical sidekick? What if ducks were the heroes of the adventure?”