Free quickstart out now. Rules, a complete adventure, five ready characters and the map, free on DriveThruRPG. Follow Ashborn here, and your first message holds the code to The Ledger, a free companion in the browser that runs the quickstart at your table.
The war is over. The weapons it made are still around.
During the war, the Dark Lord took the best warriors from every kin and reforged them into weapons. Five years ago the war ended, and nobody told them what to be instead. You were one of them. The world calls you Ashborn now. You still remember the village you came from, and the village remembers what you became.
Ashborn: The Long Road Home is a hopeful dark fantasy tabletop RPG about coming home from a war you should never have fought, to people who have every reason to be afraid of you.
- The game. Killing machines looking for a place in a world at peace.
- The rules. You carry enormous destructive power, and you win by serving the community.
- The reward. Restraint and sacrifice. You grow through connection, and there is no experience for killing.
What you actually do at the table
The core loop runs the same five beats, town after town.
- Arrive as a feared stranger. The shutters close ahead of you.
- Serve by taking the jobs nobody else will touch.
- Challenge, where violence is the easy answer and restraint is what earns Humanity.
- Return to town, and your Standing may shift.
- Sojourn to cool the Rage you built.
Then you do it again somewhere new, until you are ready to ask a community to accept you for who you are. That is when you Ascend.
What makes it different
- Built on Ironsworn, stripped to the core. The same two Challenge Dice and the same three outcomes, with no move list. Everything you need is on the character sheet in front of you.
- Power you don’t control. Push far enough and the weapon takes the roll away from you. The only thing standing between the world and that moment is a memory you got back by being kind.
- Standing is trust. Every town remembers what you did there, and the next town starts you at zero.
- The ending is yours to call. Ask a town to take you in whenever you feel ready, and roll Standing and Humanity against the dice. Win, and you are home. Lose, and that town is closed to you for good.
Will you make it all the way home?
Illustrated in ink by Joe Porkio
Illustrated in ink by Joe Porkio
Every piece in this book is drawn by hand, in ink on paper, by illustrator Joe Porkio (@joeporkio). No AI images, anywhere. Follow along as the art comes in: the Mold portraits, the five cities, the world map and the scenes at the heart of the game.
Follow, and get the Ledger Beta now
Followers get the code to The Ashborn Ledger Beta, a free companion in the browser. Roll with the Berserk check built in, keep the five character sheets, run The Stolen Relic scene by scene and move the Ashborn across the map. It works on phone, tablet and laptop, and the code is in the first message you get after you follow.
Download the free quickstart
The quickstart is free on DriveThruRPG. Quickstart Rules teaches the whole system in one read. The Stolen Relic is a complete adventure for one evening, with five ready characters in print and fillable versions, and the map. About an hour of prep is all it takes, and it works for a table that has never rolled a die as well as one that has played for twenty years.
What the campaign will make
The goal is an exclusive hardcover of more than 150 pages, with the complete rules for players and GMs, a starter adventure, a toolkit with tables for building your own game, and Joe’s art throughout. We also want to grow The Ledger from its beta into a complete digital portal.
From the publisher behind 16,000+ sold games
KR1 Publishing has spent the last two years releasing bestsellers on DriveThruRPG, including West Marches, the Hexcrawl series and the Sandbox Playstyle Toolkit. Ashborn is the next one, and it is the most personal yet. You’ll get to know why closer to launch.
The campaign launches in the first quarter of 2027. Follow this project to get the Ledger Beta now and to hear the moment we go live.
Follow this project to get notified the moment we launch.
