Spotlight on RavenDeath

RavenDeath by Iacopo Frigerio is a role-playing game about revenge. It takes its primary inspiration from The Crow, as evidenced by its title, but also Kill Bill, The Count of Monte Cristo and other classic revenge narratives. The game was originally published in Italian. This article is written based on my reading of the English translation.

The game begins with a discussion, lead by the player chosen to play the Protagonist, who is the character seeking revenge. This discussion lays out the four foundational elements of play: The Prior Events, The Setting, The Genre and The Style. Genre and Style are primarily meta-constraints, establishing expectations about tone, atmosphere and other thematic elements. Setting is the when and where, as RavenDeath has no default setting, and is time and place agnostic.

The Prior Events are really the meat of setup. It’s the details surrounding how, and by whom, the Protagonist was wronged. Most importantly, there must be as many participants in the Protagonist’s undoing as there are additional players. This is because those that wronged the Protagonist become the main characters for each of the remaining players. The game refers to these characters as the Antagonists.

After the thematic foundation as been built, the prior events established, and some additional detail work on the Protagonist and Antagonists have been done, a special opening scene called the Prologue is played. This scene features the Protagonist’s return after some period of time, and demonstrates how they are primed for revenge. After this initial scene the game’s structure opens up a bit.

The game expects the group to dedicate one full session to each Chapter of play. A Chapter involves the Protagonist taking revenge against one of the Antagonists. Part of setup involves rank-ordering the Antagonists from least to most important, so the group knows in which order the Antagonists will be tackled in advanced. Therefore, there will be as many sessions as there are Antagonist characters.

The player whose Antagonist is the focus of the Chapter also functions as the GM for the session. A lot about the Chapter’s pacing is entrusted to this player. In particular, at the start of every scene, this player must declare whether the focus of the scene is going to be the development of one or more of the game’s various characters, or explicitly moving the Protagonist's plan for revenge forward. In other words, this player is responsible for making sure the group is invested in the characters, and not just relentlessly driving the revenge narrative forward.

So, structurally, the game game is a series of Chapters, each GMed by a different player, and ultimately ending in the Protagonist taking revenge upon one of the Antagonists. The game ends when the last, and presumably most significant, Antagonist is dealt with. These Chapters are themselves composed of scenes and, like other games with this kind of of formal structure, there are rules for resolving conflicts within scenes called Confrontations.
Confrontations are where RavenDeath reveals the uniqueness of its design. Many games feature resolution mechanics that decide which side gets their way or, sometimes more loosely, who at the table gets to decide or describe the outcome. RavenDeath is different because it carves up the resolution process into thematic axes and the mechanics determine which player narratively controls that axis.

Each player has a confrontation board which lists a set of paired Dark and Light themes: Secret & Mystery, Revenge & Forgiveness, Death & Life, Despair & Hope, Violence & Honor, Hate & Love, Madness & Delight. Each character also has a Darkness score, which determines a number of black dice rolled to control Dark themes, and a Light score which determines the potential number of white dice they can roll to control Light themes. So players spend black and white dice attempting to win control of these themes.

Additionally, a player may only spend one black die on a Dark theme but may spend as many white dice as they like on its paired Light theme. The total counts towards controlling the pair. However, if the white dice spent total more than the single black die the player must narratively contribute along the Light thematic axis. If the white dice spent total less than the black die, then the player may choose either the Dark or Light axis. The point is, that only one side of each pair is ever controlled in the final outcome of a Confrontation.

For example, assume that the Confrontation is a large bar fight. The player who controls Death would get to say who dies, while the player who controls Violence would get to say how they die. Similarly, the player who controls Despair would get to say who is most deeply affected by the death, and the player who controls Secret would get to say what hidden truth is revealed in the dying character’s last moments.

This process moves the game away from simple binary, or even “partial”, outcomes and toward a focus on thematic texturing. The results of Confrontations are not really decided, so much as painted, with each player holding a brush dipped in a different element from the color palette. More importantly, the game provides the color palette as part of its design and the mechanisms favor the Dark elements more than the Light ones. It’s an interesting creative, and perhaps even artistic, challenge.

There’s some additional nuances in this process. For example, there is a mechanism for automatically scoring high values on dice if some of your character’s defined resources are directly threatened. Protagonists and Antagonists are also keyed to specific themes, which is used to break ties for control. There’s also a mechanism for saving dice, and preserving their value, from one Confrontation to the next. But the biggest nuance is that while you always roll your full Darkness value in black dice, white dice are (mostly) optional, and available only in limited supply.

White dice are pulled from a pool which is, at first, wholly owned by the Protagonist player. Once that player has used some of those dice they get moved into a pool shared by all the Antagonist players. When they spend them, they go back to the Protagonist player’s pool. Thus, unlike black dice, white dice form an economy. They are also used for more than just controlling themes on the confrontation board.

*The Protagonist player may spend two white dice from their pool to become GM for one scene.
*The GM of the Chapter may spend one white die to introduce a significant change to an already in progress scene.
*An Antagonist player must roll white dice in a Confrontation for each point of Light they have above 2.
*A player may spend a white die from their pool to re-roll their black dice during a Confrontation.

Normally, I try to stay focused only on positive things about a game. However, in the case of RavenDeath, there’s one thing that troubles me. I want to point it out because it’s not about the game, it’s about the text. The book is one of the most anxiety ridden texts I’ve read in awhile. Many pages are dedicated to spelling out who exactly has control over what and when. There’s multiple admonishments to remember that you can’t always get what you want, and that it’s important to listen to other players, and to keep the greater story in mind. The text leaves the reader with the impression that RPGs are tense power struggles prone to breaking down into tantrums, and hurt feelings.

The overall effect is to imply that RavenDeath has a much tighter structure than it actually does. In fact, I think taking advantage of where the game gives you room to breathe is vital to really enjoying all the game has to offer. I really love that the game wants you to dedicate one whole session to each Antagonist player, rather than trying to be a one-shot. Scenes don’t have to focus solely on the Protagonist. You could even have whole scenes about Secondary Characters (characters that are shared among players but are significant enough to get their own Darkness and Light scores). Scenes don’t have to feature Confrontations, or could have many Confrontations as needed before they are over. There are even rules for dealing with Confrontations that aren’t between characters, such as the Protagonist trying to drive through a dangerous storm, because Chapters themselves have Darkness and Light scores.

First and foremost RavenDeath is a game built to playout revenge fantasies. However, I think it’s unusual focus on thematic texturing lends itself to a richer game about characters and emotions. Especially, if you take advantage of long, slow Chapter format of the game.

RavenDeath can be found here in English and pdf format:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177579/Ravendeath

It is also available in Italian by request from Coyote Press:
[email protected]

Next Up: In Dark Alleys by Brian St. Claire-King. Another game with traditional design trappings but an interesting focus on a kind of nihilistic mysticism and Freudian psychodynamics.

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