DIE RPG, One-Page RPGs, Heart, & Much More! — Rowan, Rook & Decard

DIE RPG, One-Page RPGs, Heart, & Much More! — Rowan, Rook & Decard

Rowan, Rook & Decard is the publisher of Eat the Reich, DIE, Heart, Spire, Honey Heist, Unbound, Goblin Quest, and many other tabletop games, and we’re excited to announce they’ll be available soon through PHD! Their mission is to create awesome moments through exciting, beautiful, clever games. Their vision is to innovate and explore new ground with enduring, excellent experiences. Learn about some of their most popular RPG lines, and then make sure to check out the full list of RPGs, supplements, adventures, and more below.

DIE RPG

You’re trapped in a fantasy world stitched together from your obsessions, dreams and nightmares. What will you do to get home safe? What will you do to stay here forever? DIE RPG is a roleplaying game based on the comic of the same name by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans—and it too has been made by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans! In DIE, you play a group of authentically flawed and desperate real-world people (Personas) who are sucked into a cursed roleplaying game and take on the form of heroes, villains and power players (Paragons). Some of you might want to get back to the real world for whatever’s waiting for you there. Some of you might want to stay in a reality where you can finally get what you want out of life. You all have to agree whether you stay or go, and dead people can’t vote. It can get pretty bloody.

DIE RPG: Standard Edition
Publisher: Rowan, Rook & Decard
Item Code: RRD030001
MSRP: $55
Releases January 8, 2024

More than 400 pages of clever words and beautiful art are yours for the taking in this gorgeous PDF published by Rowan, Rook and Decard. Gillen’s original beta manuscript has been refined, polished, trimmed, tweaked and edited into one of the best games you’ll ever read.

What’s in the book? DIE RPG features:

  • Six unique classes adapted from the pages of the comic
  • More than 60 new full-color illustrations from Stephanie Hans, Guest appearances from a range of illustrious comic artists including Tula Lotay, Abz Harding, Marguerite Sauvage, Elsa Charretier and Gene Ha, and writers including Adrian Tchaikovsky, Becky Annison, Cat Evans, Emily Allen, Tini Howard, and Sasha Sienna.
  • Rules and advice for running DIE as a one-shot, a short campaign, or a grand epic
  • A bestiary penned by RPG and comics luminaries that talks at length about not only the combat abilities of different monsters, but also their place games, literature, and folklore

DIE RPG: Deluxe Edition
Publisher: Rowan, Rook & Decard
Item Code: RRD030002
MSRP: $95
Releases January 8, 2024

This deluxe edition of the book has an alternate cover and case designed by comics legend Rian Hughes. It has a silver foil and debossing design reminiscent of DIE comic covers, and it is nestled in a classy foiled and printed slipcase covered with deep matt black book cloth, designed to sit alongside the DIE trade hardback. This print run is strictly limited and created to appeal to collectors of beautiful books.

Spire: The City Must Fall

You are a dark elf. Your home, the towering city of Spire, was occupied by the high elves two hundred years ago. Now, you have joined a secret organization known as the Ministry, a paramilitary cult with a single aim: to overthrow the cruel high elves and restore the drow as the rightful rulers of the city. What—or who—will you sacrifice to achieve your aims? Will you evade the attention of the authorities, or end up shot in the street like so many before you?

Spire: The City Must Fall RPG Core Rulebook
Publisher: Rowan, Rook & Decard
Item Code: RRD010005
MSRP: $55
Releases January 8, 2024

The revised, 5th-anniversary edition of Spire is a 252-page book which contains:

  • A quick and easy d10 system that lets you tell stories of brutal rebellion
  • Details on the districts, factions and personalities that make up Spire—the frozen high elf kingdom of Amaranth, the lawless undercity of Red Row, the mysterious Mortician sect and the bleeding hole in reality known as the Heart
  • Eleven character classes, including the vagabond Knight, the sorcerer-artist Idol, and the arachnid nurse Midwife
  • Multiple extra advances to sculpt your character, allowing them to learn the hidden magicks of the Ministry, fall back on their military training, or devote their existence to a mad cannibal king who lives under an abandoned warehouse
  • A gamesmastery chapter, written with an eye to help you craft conspiracies and power structures that your players can topple, subvert or be consumed by
  • Over fifty illustrations by the tremendously talented Adrian Stone
  • The full contents of the previously-separate Black Magic sourcebook, including full and inadvisable rules for demonology
  • The adventure Blood & Dust, also available separately
  • Beautifully redesigned by ENnie award-winning layout artist Mina McJanda

One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 1

Grant Howitt has written one tabletop or live roleplaying game a month. Each is no bigger than one side of A4 paper, and he’s done all the art, layout, and design himself in pen.

One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 1
Publisher: Rowan, Rook & Decard
Item Code: RRD040301
MSRP: $33
Releases January 8, 2024

Volume 1 includes 13 main games and 13 back pages, which are:

  • The Witch Is Dead, where you play murderous woodland animals attempting to gain revenge for the death of their mistress. Back page: Little Helpers, in which you play demons accidentally summoned by a good witch and now must help her go on a date to the county fair using only your nightmare hell-magicks.
  • The Golden Sea, a D20 game of traders and mystics setting sail across a trackless ocean of sand. Back page: Additional material for The Golden Sea, including equipment, portents, encounter tables, and Upsearchings, crystalline miracles from the Goddesses that grow up from beneath the dunes. 
  • We Three Kings, in which you play the three dudes from the Bible and stop King Herod’s plot to kill the baby Jesus with swordplay, necromancy, and two-fisted sorcery. Back page: Three Kings’ Hill, an unrelated fantasy dungeon that nevertheless contains an eye the size of a small house.
  • Adventure Dice, a simple numberless storytelling game for kids, which includes special dice to cut out and color in. Back page: An adventurer generator for Adventure Dice, or really any fantasy game.
  • We That Remain, a survival horror game played with a single deck of cards, in which you will all probably die. Back page: A map of the Space Station Elysium, designed for use with We That Remain, that details an abandoned space colony that accidentally opened a portal into Hades.
  • Honey Heist, a game in which you are a criminal bear with two stats: Criminal and Bear; it also contains an optional d8 hat table. Back page: 36 spells for Honey Heist, including Summon Chandelier, Summon Mexican Standoff, and Jesus Take The Wheel (or: Summon Jesus).
  • Big Gay Orcs, a game in which you play a load of orcs trapped in a doomed fortress, and generally make out a bunch. Back page: Sad Gay Space Rocks, a hack of Big Gay Orcs, which emulates the Steven Universe cartoon.
  • Justified Anxiety, a game set in a suspiciously familiar paranoid dystopia where you shoot trouble for Companion Machine. Back page: True Paranoia, a game which involves dumping all your dice in a pile in the middle of the table and punishing your players whenever they dare to touch them.
  • The Rapid and the Righteous, a fast and furious game about living your life a quarter-mile at a time. Back page: Spin the Bottle, a game played by spinning a bottle, about a tumultuous teenage party.
  • Hack the Planet, in which you are a console cowboy or cowgirl, and the man is trying to keep you down so you jack in, hack in, and get revenge; contains a grid of inaccurate techno-jargon to use at random to give you benefits to computer use. Back page: Run the Shadows, in which you and a bunch of other street samurai put the metal in the meat and do corporate espionage for Mr. Johnson.
  • Genius Loci, in which you play a post office in a 1960s Suffolk village, and you eat the spirits of other buildings to survive invasion from the city. Back page: Genius Loci: Mall Edition, which is largely similar to the regular game except it takes place in a late-2000s midwestern mall and you can eat inquisitive teens for power.
  • Dead Channel, a game of straight-to-VHS horror, where each character has an individual set of misfortunes and injuries that shape the plot as they play out. Back page: Dead Channel: Dead Channel Hoppers, which includes rules for getting bored and changing the channel only to have the characters and monsters from the horror film invade other TV shows.
  • Trashkin, a fantasy game in which you play the races who get left out of the stories: raccoon-kin, ratboys, half-possums, goat girls, etc., and then embark on a stupid quest for very little gain that will probably get you all killed. Back page: Trashkin: The Zine, which includes rules for Ibis-kin, Trash Bardic Music, alternative dice rules, and a fun word search with rude words in it.

Orc Borg, Goblin Quest, & Much More

CodeDescriptionMSRP
RRD070100Orc Borg RPG$23.00
RRD070900Royal Blood RPG$22.00
RRD090101Unbound RPG$35.00
RRD030821DIE RPG: GM Screen$17.50
RRD030811DIE RPG: Fair Gold Coins$15.00
RRD060100Goblin Quest RPG$20.00
RRD040302One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 2$33.00
RRD040303One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 3$33.00
RRD040304One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 4$35.00
RRD040305One-Page RPG Bundle Volume 5$38.00
RRD040400One-Page RPG Bundle: All-Ages Compilation$25.00
RRD020001Heart: The City Beneath RPG Core Rulebook$50.00
RRD020100Heart: The City Beneath RPG Quickstart Rules$10.00
RRD020802Heart: The City Beneath RPG Map and Sticker Set$27.50
RRD020501Heart: The City Beneath RPG — Sanctum$12.00
RRD020511Heart: The City Beneath RPG — Burned and Broken$12.00
RRD020502Heart: The City Beneath RPG — Doors to Elsewhere$12.00
RRD020503Heart: The City Beneath RPG — Vermissian Black Ops$12.00
RRD010803Spire: The City Must Fall RPG GM Screen$25.00
RRD010812Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Conspiracy Handbook$17.50
RRD010502Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Magister’s Guide$15.00
RRD010100Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Spire Quickstart$10.00
RRD010402Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Eidolon Sky$6.00
RRD010403Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Kings of Silver$6.00
RRD010404Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Shadow Operations$16.00
RRD010601Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Book of Masks$10.00
RRD010606Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Revolutionary’s Guide$13.00
RRD010206Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Sin$50.00
RRD010605Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Spiral Muse$13.00
RRD010201Spire: The City Must Fall RPG — Strata$40.00

Pre-order with your PHD Account Manager today!