Runecairn Wardensaga Remastered

Books | 2024 | Links: Print | Itch.io

Strap on your bearded axe and delve into the forsaken barrow!

Runecairn Wardensaga is an 84-page full-colour rulebook delivering hard-hitting action and adventure in a post-Ragnarok Norse fantasy world. Designed by Colin Le Sueur and inspired by Dark Souls and Elden Ring, Runecairn is a lightweight combat-focused TTRPG built for two players, one Warden and one Adventurer.

This book contains everything you need to run the game, from a brutal one-shot, tense dungeon delve, or epic campaign, including:

Dynamic reactions to speed up combat: block, parry, backstab!
A tutorial dungeon adventure, perfect for teaching new players.
6 powerful backgrounds from Warrior to Skald to Pyre; change your playstyle with a new weapon.
Drop-in additional players for jolly cooperation or player-vs-player invasions.
Options for solo play with a rune-based oracle, freeing you from the curse of scheduling.
A delve generator to create random Viking adventures, getting you into the action immediately.

Download includes fillable character sheets and a delve generator tracker.

Death is Not the End

Writer/Designer: Colin Le Sueur
Standard Cover Illustration: CROM
Variant Cover Illustration: Annemieke van Barlingen

Remastered is an updated and refreshed version of the original Runecairn: Wardensaga, published in 2022.

What’s different in Wardensaga Remastered?

Sleek new layout, making it clearer to read and play.
Tightened up and clarified mechanics, to better convey to new players and GMs.
Brought in new mechanics introduced in the Runecairn Bestiary like toxic and dismembered status effects.
Provided answers to common questions like “how do I increase mead flask sips?”, “what do rare items mean?”, and “where should I place bonfires when playing solo?”.
Brilliant new colour and texture for the illustrations, alongside all new illustrations like the dwarf and lindworm.
Typo and corrections pass to squash those bugs once and for all.

Download the full changelog here.

From Colin

First and foremost, Runecairn is a love letter to Dark Souls. Starting life as my version of a Dark Souls TTRPG, I took inspiration from Norse myths and legends in Icelandic Sagas like the Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Voluspá, along with the more contemporary representations of Norse gods in American Gods, which shows how belief changes gods over time and how all myths are malleable.

Mechanically, Runecairn is closest to Cairn, with me bringing my love of crunch to make combat more tactical and dynamic, and closer to an actual Soulslike. Working on Runecairn gave me enough experience to write for the official Dark Souls RPG, which was a dream come true!

What People Are Saying

Chris McDowall (@Bastionland), designer and creator of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland:

I absolutely love Runecairn! As soon as I read it I wanted to steal its ideas. It changed the way I think about the type of games that the Into the Odd system can run.

Rich August (@RpgAugust), designer and writer at Steamforged Games (Dark Souls: The Roleplaying Game):