Sacrament
The Sacrament mark: a hex tile holding a coin with a cross cut through it
A tabletop roleplaying game of plague, penance and permitted evil

Sacrament

The Chapel of Leo has forgiven everything you are about to do.

Join the Congregation Read the Basic Rules
Playtests

Take your place in the pews

Playtests will open in small congregations. Leave an address to be called when a seat is free.

The Age

No year is written down.

Bells still ring in towns that have buried half their number. The roads are older than the kings who claim them, and the kings are younger than the hunger. Some villages cut stone in the manner of cathedrals; others have never seen a printed page. Nobody agrees what century it is, and the Chapel has stopped correcting them.

Sacrament is set in an ambiguous passage between the medieval and the Renaissance. Plague returns each season under a new name. Harvests fail in rotation. Learning is rediscovered in cellars and burned in squares, often the same week.

PlagueCarried by rats, coin and the breath of the dying. Quarantine is a sin, since it withholds the sick from prayer.
FamineThe tithe is collected first. What remains is called mercy.
The ChurchOne western papacy, one seat, one answer to every question: whatever keeps the Chapel standing.
A crowned woman in a white and gold dress, her hair streaming, punches a hooded, grey-skinned lich with a skull-topped staff, among ruined gothic towers under a huge moon and swirling purple smoke.
The Lands

The old names, in the wrong places

Troy, Carthage and Rome all stand, but not where the histories put them. Their names survive; their coasts, rivers and walls have been moved by centuries of rumour, flood and redrawn maps. Travellers who carry an old atlas are advised to burn it.

RomeSeat of the Chapel of Leo. A city of reliquaries and ledgers, sworn to nothing but its own survival.
CarthageA harbour city that trades with everyone and trusts no one, and sells what the Chapel prefers unsold.
TroyA fortress town that has been besieged so long the siege has become its economy.

The Eastern Marches

Past the last toll-road, civilisation thins to watchtowers and burned fields. Beyond them live the elves of the east, tall, courteous and patient, who eat the people they catch. Every border parish pays the Chapel for protection, and the Chapel keeps a list of which parishes are cheaper to lose.

A smiling, pointed-eared man with long fair hair and a green cloak sits beside a lantern in a cave, with glowing purple stalagmites and a waterfall behind him.
The Chapel of Leo

Holy Expediency

The Chapel does not claim to be good. It claims to be necessary. Its doctrine, Holy Expediency, holds that any act which preserves the Church preserves the world, and that a preserved world can be forgiven at leisure. Its priests are patient, practical and rarely cruel for pleasure. They are cruel on schedule.

  1. Preservation

    What keeps the Chapel standing is holy. What threatens it is heresy, whatever it was yesterday.

  2. Absolution

    Sin is a debt, and debts can be sold. The Chapel sells indulgences by the village, the family and the act.

  3. Sacrifice

    Someone always pays for the many. The Chapel decides who, and records it as a sacrament.

  4. Silence

    A truth that cannot be used is a rumour. A truth that can be used belongs to the Chapel.

“We do not ask whether it is right. We ask whether it will hold.”Attributed to a confessor of Leo, draft text
Basic rules

Easy to learn, hard on the soul

Roll a d20, add an attribute and beat the difficulty. Spend six tokens a round on actions and spells. Use magic and the Looming Horror rises. Take too much harm and your Wounds fill. That is the whole game, and the rules page walks through it with an example of play.

Checksd20 + attribute against Easy 8, Routine 12, Hard 15, Heroic 18 or Legendary 22.
TokensSix a round. Move, Strike and Guard cost one each, and spells cost more.
Looming HorrorEvery spell or magic item raises it, up to 21 for the whole party. The GM can spend 1 to act out of turn.
WoundsTwelve harm boxes in three Wounds. Heal them, or be dying.
Read the Basic RulesBuild a character
Play online

The VTT

The VTT is a tile map, tokens, dice and the party’s Looming Horror in one page, in your browser. No account and no download.

PlayersOpen the VTT and you are in, signed in automatically. You see the map your GM is showing, a dice roller and the roll log, and your own character sheet. Set your name in the bar at the top right, roll dice and move your token. Your character comes from the character builder.
Game mastersChoose GM sign in in the bar at the top right and sign in with Google. Only you get the map builder: tiles, walls and doors, fog and light, with notes on each tile. Build in private, then share the map when you are ready, and show players only the tiles you reveal. The site owner approves which accounts are GMs.
CharactersBuild one on the character builder first, then download it as a PDF to play from. Characters are saved in your own browser.
Open the VTTBuild a character