Shepherds is a tabletop RPG about young members of a League of professional do-gooders, who strive to protect the peace and safety of ordinary people.  These young Shepherds will forge bonds of trust with each other, grow and mature as people, and possibly foil some evil plots along the way.

As an adaptation of the popular “Powered by the Apocalypse” design framework,  Shepherds will feel familiar to those who have played other PbtA games, but also introduces a few things that won’t be so familiar.  It takes its inspiration from “hopeful fantasy” JRPGs -- most particularly the Trails/Kiseki games by Falcom, and the Tales Of series by Bandai Namco.

The game is 79 pages (counting cover and title pages) fully laid out (by me), with hyperlinks, table of contents, PDF bookmarks, and a scattering of art.  It is complete and fully playable, though it may receive small updates in the future.  Also included in the book is one starting community (Adventure), with another available for purchase here: Fregena on the River (It's also available in a discounted bundle with the game here.)

There's a Google Sheets character keeper template for online play HERE, which contains all the same information as the Play Materials download, so it should be the only reference players need for online play.

The good folks over at Firebreathing Kittens were kind enough to record an Actual Play. You can find it here or here.

Purchases at or above list price will unlock more community copies. All proceeds so far have been donated to Direct Relief (See the dev log for more info) and once there's more to send over, it will happen again. Thank you everyone!

And finally, Shepherds is officially licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareaLike license. That means you can share, adapt, and sell anything you want to do with it, as long you credit me and release anything you make under the same license. It seems like the most fair and open option available.

That said, the ART is still all copyright the original artists -- none of my products will ever use AI art, and all art in Shepherds and its supplements is created by either kanachroma or radifacp.

For more Shepherds content, check out:

The Abandoned Soul A free additional Story

Dungeons for Shepherds Procedures for exploring dungeons

Fregena on the River An introductory scenario

And now, there are some additional Stories courtesy of Sam Robson!