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Comrades: A Revolutionary RPG
Comrades is a tabletop RPG about life in the revolutionary underground. Based on the Apocalypse World engine, it pits players against a corrupt government, forcing them to fight from the shadows to free the people from their chains.
Playing as characters like the Soldier, the Student, the Propagandist, and the Worker, your comrades will mount rallies, stage coups, evade the secret police, and fight fascist goons. A campaign of Comrades can take place in any setting the players dream up—modern or historical, real or imagined—giving them a chance to create a revolution all their own.
Designed by the author of the bestselling Deadball: Baseball With Dice, Comrades uses simple rules to tell complex stories full of hope, deceit, danger, and betrayal. Taught quickly and run easily, even by novice GMs, Comrades is as fast and dirty as revolution itself.
This 162 page rulebook is available in PDF, softcover, and gorgeous premium hardcover. It includes:
Ten playbooks embodying different revolutionary archetypes, including the Demagogue, the Mystic, the Artist, and the Brute
A guide to the game’s core rules, which keep the action hurtling along at a breakneck pace
Instructions for teaching the game and running the first session
A guide to GMing Comrades and making your revolution come alive with minimal between-session prep
A complete campaign setting, "Khresht: 1915," that will allow you to start playing immediately
Countless examples of play
Playing as characters like the Soldier, the Student, the Propagandist, and the Worker, your comrades will mount rallies, stage coups, evade the secret police, and fight fascist goons. A campaign of Comrades can take place in any setting the players dream up—modern or historical, real or imagined—giving them a chance to create a revolution all their own.
Designed by the author of the bestselling Deadball: Baseball With Dice, Comrades uses simple rules to tell complex stories full of hope, deceit, danger, and betrayal. Taught quickly and run easily, even by novice GMs, Comrades is as fast and dirty as revolution itself.
This 162 page rulebook is available in PDF, softcover, and gorgeous premium hardcover. It includes:
Ten playbooks embodying different revolutionary archetypes, including the Demagogue, the Mystic, the Artist, and the Brute
A guide to the game’s core rules, which keep the action hurtling along at a breakneck pace
Instructions for teaching the game and running the first session
A guide to GMing Comrades and making your revolution come alive with minimal between-session prep
A complete campaign setting, "Khresht: 1915," that will allow you to start playing immediately
Countless examples of play
- GenresRole Playing Games
162 pages, ebook
Published March 29, 2019
About the author
W.M. Akers
9 books234 followersW.M. Akers is a novelist, playwright, and game designer. He is the author of the mystery novels Critical Hit, Westside, and Westside Saints; the creator of the bestselling games Deadball: Baseball With Dice and Comrades: A Revolutionary RPG; and the curator of the history newsletter Strange Times. He lives in Philadelphia, but hasn’t traded in his Mets cap yet. Learn more about his work at wmakers.net.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 20, 2019
Personally, I run hot and cold on ptbA games. I love the simplicity of the system and the clarity of design that a good execution of pbtA enforces. But Apocalypse World 1e had some rough edges and some fuzziness about its version of the wasteland that made it hard for me to see how I'd ever play it. Dungeon World is alright, but if you want to have high fantasy adventures, why not just play D&D, or 13th Age, the best version of D&D? And while Night Witches is absolute masterpiece of design, I'm never going to find another person to play it with. Comrades is the antidote to my all my problems with pbtA.
Comrades distills both pbtA and revolution down to their essences, and what remains is as close to a utopian ideal of an RPG as I can imagine. This is a game about your revolutionary vanguard, about a small band of comrades who are willing to dare everything to bring about a better world. You'll throw down with thugs from across the political spectrum, out-manuever splinter factions in your own movement, suffer under the oppressive tactics of the secret police, hear a dying comrade's last words, raise a mob, and strike a blow for revolution.
The moves and playbooks are wonderfully calibrated to revolutionary action: I especially appreciate the inclusion of a universal Start Something move to incite a mob, and the perceptive list of questions on the What's Going On Here? move to read a situation. The GM advice helps develop the ideology of the comrades, and put them under pressure from adversarial fronts, which work through a series of steps that cause the world to crumble. I particularly like the Pathway Moves, end of session rolls which describe how the comrades are advancing towards revolution on five tracks, ranging from a democratic victory at the ballot box to assassinating the head of state.
Nearly a decade on from the release of Apocalypse World, designers have a good sense of how pbtA works. W. M. Akers has written one of the best examples of the ruleset, perfectly calibrated for telling a thrilling tale of revolution, with plenty of examples on how to make the game the your own. Comrades includes a fully-fleshed out setting for Khresht 1915, a fictional country inspired mostly by the Russian revolution, and thumbnails settings for New York 1776 and Callisto 2219. You also get 10 playbooks for comrades from Artist to Worker, and great advice on running the game, and building your revolution. The visual design is spare and evocative, with well-chosen black-and-white prints standing out against a red and yellow color scheme. Comrades is inspired by the radical leftists of the 19th and 20th century, but there's not a set ideological stance in the game. This game is about anybody who is willing to die for their ideals, to fight bravely for a better world, and bring down the evil SOBs in charge.
Comrades distills both pbtA and revolution down to their essences, and what remains is as close to a utopian ideal of an RPG as I can imagine. This is a game about your revolutionary vanguard, about a small band of comrades who are willing to dare everything to bring about a better world. You'll throw down with thugs from across the political spectrum, out-manuever splinter factions in your own movement, suffer under the oppressive tactics of the secret police, hear a dying comrade's last words, raise a mob, and strike a blow for revolution.
The moves and playbooks are wonderfully calibrated to revolutionary action: I especially appreciate the inclusion of a universal Start Something move to incite a mob, and the perceptive list of questions on the What's Going On Here? move to read a situation. The GM advice helps develop the ideology of the comrades, and put them under pressure from adversarial fronts, which work through a series of steps that cause the world to crumble. I particularly like the Pathway Moves, end of session rolls which describe how the comrades are advancing towards revolution on five tracks, ranging from a democratic victory at the ballot box to assassinating the head of state.
Nearly a decade on from the release of Apocalypse World, designers have a good sense of how pbtA works. W. M. Akers has written one of the best examples of the ruleset, perfectly calibrated for telling a thrilling tale of revolution, with plenty of examples on how to make the game the your own. Comrades includes a fully-fleshed out setting for Khresht 1915, a fictional country inspired mostly by the Russian revolution, and thumbnails settings for New York 1776 and Callisto 2219. You also get 10 playbooks for comrades from Artist to Worker, and great advice on running the game, and building your revolution. The visual design is spare and evocative, with well-chosen black-and-white prints standing out against a red and yellow color scheme. Comrades is inspired by the radical leftists of the 19th and 20th century, but there's not a set ideological stance in the game. This game is about anybody who is willing to die for their ideals, to fight bravely for a better world, and bring down the evil SOBs in charge.
October 3, 2021
This is a well done Powered by the Apocalypse RPG that focuses on playing the members of a revolutionary cell. The moves worked well in the one-shot I ran with it a couple years ago. I didn't find myself struggling to find a move that would apply, or twisting a move to cover something that wasn't covered by another move.
Everyone easily stayed in genre and had a good time doing so.
Everyone easily stayed in genre and had a good time doing so.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews