Repeated Injuries and Usurpations

The Intolerable Acts and the Shot Heard Round the World are in the past. Boston is occupied. The Continental Army under Washington just retreated – again! No one knows how this war will turn out.

You hold a power which has gone untapped. Maybe you can talk with spirits. Perhaps you can sicken a man with a glance. You could borrow the form of a wolf if you need. Other people may have whispered “witch” or called you “cursed.” Maybe you are. But if this rag-tag United States is ever going get a chance to be “the land of the free,” it needs your help.

In Our Lives, Our Fortunes, you will play people walking one of the Paths – the Pact-Maker, the Wise-Crafter, the Shape-Changer, to name a few. With your coven of other dismissed and disregarded Walkers you will use your extraordinary skills to help the young American Revolution succeed. Convey intelligence out of British-occupied towns. Waylay a Witch-Finder before he ruins your plans. Placate the restless dead in the aftermath of the latest battle.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes is a roleplaying game exploring the historical theme of the struggle for equality through a lens of supernatural horror. This is the eighth game to use the +One System, building on both Never Going Home and OMG Cats! Players use a D6 dice pool for skills and mundane combat. A deck of playing cards represents the four types of magical connections the characters have. Cards are spent to power supernatural abilities and can easy finish combat. Magic power isn’t unlimited, though, players have to choose how to spend their cards wisely to complete their missions.

Establish Commerce
$1: The Shot Heard Round the World - You get access to the pledge manager once the project is complete.
$1: Untaxed Tea - For retailers only. You get notified when the products are ready to ship and can pledge your full support then.
$15: 250 Years in the Future - You get a PDF copy of the game.
$25: Magic Text - You get softcover copy of the game and a PDF copy.
$50: Witch Circle - You get softcover copy of the game, a PDF copy, a set of ten (10) custom dice, and a deck of Fortune Cards.
$85: Arcane Declaration - You get the hardcover Arcane Declaration edition of the game, a PDF copy, a set of ten (10) custom dice, and a deck of Fortune Cards
$100: Full Coven - You get a softcover copy of the game, a PDF copy, a set of ten (10) custom dice, a deck of Fortune Cards, the Correspondence Pack, the Narrator Screen, the custom dice tray, and the sticker pack.
$150: Founding Elder - You get the hardcover Arcane Declaration edition of the game, a softcover copy, a PDF copy, a set of ten (10) custom dice, a deck of Fortune Cards, the Correspondence Pack, the Narrator Screen, the custom dice tray, and the sticker pack.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes
Our Lives, Our Fortunes is made with the +One System, which uses D6 dice pools for skill rolls and a deck of playing cards to manage supernatural power.

Skill rolls require getting 5 or 6 results on standard D6. The number of successes needed is called the Target Number (TN). Players start with a number of dice equal to their training in the skill. Then their skills are linked to one of their three attributes which determines how many times they can modify their dice before and after rolling. Walkers can “use” one rank of an attribute to manipulate one corresponding skill roll or skill die result. A roll can be manipulated in the following ways:

 

Before a Roll:

•    Temporarily gain an untrained skill. The untrained skill starts at 0 dice, which are bought separately.

•    Add a die to the roll. You can purchase multiple dice by spending multiple attribute ranks.

After a Roll:

•    Add a pip to a die. You can purchase multiple pip increases, on the same or separate dice, by spending multiple attribute ranks.

•    Reroll any number of dice. Keep the result. Only one reroll per skill roll.

Example: Addie wants to locate evidence of the haint she suspects to be in the area. The Narrator tells her player to make an easy Pathwork roll: TN 2. Addie has 3 training in Pathwork and 4 ranks of Guts . Her player feels pretty confident, but buys an extra die with one rank of Guts and rolls 4 total dice: 2, 3, 4, and 5. They keep the 5 then spends another of Addie’s ranks to bump the 4 to a 5. That gives Addie the two successes she needs, without even struggling. The Narrator describes a series of wet hand prints on the wall Addie can follow.

When one of their secret missions calls for their supernatural powers, Path Walkers can spend cards from their hand. There are also blood cards on the table, they create risk when they are spent. Each suit represents connection to a different type of power – divine (swords), material (diamonds), immaterial (hearts), or elemental (clubs). Some of their powers require spending power from their favored suit, sometimes any card will do. A Death-Speaker can spend a divine card to deal damage to another person. An Element-Catcher needs elemental cards to control nature. The coven of Walkers can also bypass combat skill rolls quickly by overwhelming opponents with their powers. An adze blood-sucking threat can be destroyed immediately if the group spends 2 divine and 2 material cards. Each player describes how they use their magic as they play their card. Be careful! It is much easier to spend power than it is to recover it. There are few opportunities to draw cards during missions. Successful missions will require careful use of your group resources.

Our Lives, Our Fotunes comes in two editions. The standard, softcover edition of the book contains all the material you need to tell the stories of your supernatural revolutionaries.

The Arcane Declaration edition is a hardcover version of the game with a black leatherette cover, purple metallic embossing, two ribbon bookmarks, a special first printing book plate, and endpapers with the Declaration of Independence with some added arcane symbology.

All +One System games can be played with any deck of playing cards and any six-sided dice. But cards and dice that look like they came from the Eighteenth Century would be a lot more fitting. Along with your Our Lives, Our Fortunes book, you can get a deck and dice inspired by historical examples. In play, each card suit represents one of the connections to power the Walkers can draw upon; either Divine, Material, Immaterial or Elemental. The jokers are not used in play, but two are included to make the deck compatible with other modern games. The dice set includes ten dice in two different colors featuring a fanged mouth design on the six side.

Provide New Guards
$20,000 - FUNDED! The Revolution can begin in earnest.
$22,500 - Writer and Arcanist Bug Boll places an important mission upon your shoulders.
$25,000 - Designer and Master of the Paths, Grant Howitt (Eat the Reich) reveals the secrets of a new Path Walker.
$27,500 - A true man of enlightenment, Tristan Zimmerman brings his knowledge of the ancient text, ballads and shanties to us in the form of a mission.
$30,000 - What declarations will we make next?

The Good People of These Colonies
Steffie de Vaan (Lead Writer) is an award winning author and game designer (two Gold ENNIEs, BAMFsie, and Indie Groundbreaker Award). She developed books such as 5E: Legendlore, V5: Fall of London, and Scion: Whispers in Darkness. She has written for many other games including Ravenloft: Mist Hunters, Changeling the Lost, Exalted, and Call of Cthulhu. She published two acclaimed indie RPG books: 2 Women | 12 Games, and City of Blood. She lives with two cats who graciously accept her into their house in exchange for scritches and food.

Bug Boll (Writer) is a writer, designer, artist, and an absolute problem. They came into this world screaming and they want to share that with everyone.

Eric Slauson (Writer) is a game designer who specializes in creating highly social experiences (MonsDRAWsity, Tattoo Stories, Kaiju Haiku RPG via StorySynth). When he's not designing, he enjoys contributing to other people's projects as a freelance content writer and editor.

Mike Coker (Writer) He is an editor, historian, and adjunct history professor in Cincinnati. He loves researching, and is working on a dark fantasy WWI novel, that he hopes to defeat in his lifetime. He has written for Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of and Cohors Cthulhu RPG both from Modiphius. He has two daughters, and a wife very supportive of what she calls "Homework, the Game."

Elizabeth Chaipraditkul (Layout Designer) is a Sr. Project Manager and book developer from the Netherlands. She was Project Manager for Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game and has worked on many other games such as: Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game, 7th Sea Second Edition, and Cthulhu Awakens. She also has her own company Angry Hamster Publishing and is currently working on finishing up her latest game Witch: Fated Souls Second Edition. When not designing games Liz is a mom, avid (video) gamer, and honestly can’t believe Cena finally turned heel!

Justin Sirois (Artist) is a three-time Ennie winning (project manager) as well as an artist, writer, and game designer. His newest games are Oldest Child and Sickest Witch. Justin also organizes annual events in the Baltimore area including GameFace Con, The Tabletop Game Holiday Market, and the Art and Collectibles Expo, all at Peabody Heights Brewery.

Jabari Weathers (Artist) cannot confirm or deny their suspected status as an exiled goblin regent seeking refuge beyond the veil. They presently reside in Baltimore, Maryland, making fantasy and sci-fi illustrations and spinning worlds and fictions for roleplaying games and other interactive projects out of words to keep up their glamour. Other things that they enjoy are strange films, stranger music, singing in public places, and the thoroughly uncanny.

James Mendez Hodes (Sensitivity Consultant) is an ENnie Award-winning writer, game designer, and cultural consultant. You might know his design work from Avatar Legends, Thousand Arrows, or Scion; his cultural consulting work from Frosthaven, Magic: the Gathering, or the Jackbox Party Packs; or his writing from some articles complaining about orcs and racism. He graduated Swarthmore College with a major in Religion, and minors in Dance and English Literature. He also received a master’s degree in Eastern classics from St John’s College. His interests include martial arts, hip hop, poetry, and sumō wrestling. His primary party role is tank, secondary support.

Matthew Orr (Creative Director) co-founded Wet Ink Games in 2015. Since then he has helped bring to life such games as Never Going Home, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, Into the Cess and Citadel, Home, and Garbage & Glory. As creative director his primary role is to put the right creative people in place for a project (writers, artists, and graphic designers) and then let them do their work. He is active with Indie Game Developer Network, contributes writing to other publishers, appears on actual plays, and interviews other creatives.

Brandon K. Aten (Business Director) is an ENnie nominated producer, writer and game designer who has been working in the industry since 2004. He co-founded Wet Ink Games in 2015 where he mainly works on the production side to bring beautiful games to the gaming community. He served as the primary system designer of the +One system used in the smash hit, ENnie-nominated Never Going Home, Heckin’ Good Doggos, Precious Things and other Wet Ink Games games. He is an active mentor in Unpub, and occasionally appears in actual plays or the occasional Blood Bowl league.

Our Repeated Petitions

We plan to release the digital version of Our lives, Our Fortunes in early December 2026. We plan to release the physical version to our backers in April 2027, with the game being made available to stores soon after. This will be dependent on the responsiveness of backers in our BackerKit. We will use DriveThruRPG for all of our digital fulfillment.

We will be using BackerKit, a pledge manager, to collect information from backers.

For this project, we will be charging shipping as we fulfill each item. YOUR PLEDGE DOES NOT INCLUDE THE COST OF SHIPPING. We recognize international shipping costs, VAT and fees are high, especially with the current state of the world. We also have to take into account the cost of import and the newly instituted tariffs. We ship from the United States, and we will not offer refunds if you feel shipping is too much.

If you're concerned about the price of shipping, we'd encourage you to back at the PDF level and pick up the print on demand from our partners at DriveThruRPG when the product is out (as they print all over the world and can get you the best rates) or pick up the book at retail once it is in distribution.