The decree of the Child-King proclaims “To each their place.” But not everyone found a place within the familiar society of the Patchwork.
The unwanted, driven out and rejected, are forced to constantly search for and fight for their place in this world.
Street thieves, disgraced aristocrats, wandering musicians, swindlers ready for any job, and the destitute, those who could not fit into ordinary life in the Patchwork, seek it on the world’s underside.
To find one’s place in this world is the true dream of every drifter.

Multiplayer Tabletop Role-Playing Game

Any game played in Esheria can be submitted as a report and added to the shared canon. The system synchronizes storylines, facts, and circumstances, and identifies contradictions if they arise. Game Masters can take a lore knowledge test and gain access to tools for running accredited, non-contradictory adventures. In this way, different groups play within a single shared world, shaping it together.

The shared world is inspired by European fairy-tale folklore, yet it is not medieval Europe and exists independently. It is a grounded, low-fantasy setting without clear heroes or villains, featuring moral ambiguity, multiple factions, and competing forces. The direction of the world is determined by the player groups.

OSR-Inspired Mechanics

On one hand, the system is easy to learn for anyone familiar with classic RPGs. You will find a simple class system, the traditional six attributes, and many expected OSR elements. On the other hand, the rules are designed to serve the system’s main goal - delivering a dramatic experience and emphasizing the consequences of character decisions.

No Social Skills

Esheria does not include social skills such as diplomacy or deception. All such interactions are played out directly in-character. As a result, interactions with NPCs feel closer to theater.

Lethality

Characters in Esheria have few hit points, wounds are categorized and carry lasting consequences, healing is slow, and magic rarely provides instant recovery - only support for natural healing. A sword strike here is deadly.

1d6 Skill Checks

Skill checks in Esheria follow a simple rule:
1d6 + skill vs 4.
Each point above the threshold counts as a success.

This means skill use has limited randomness. You can rely on what your character knows, but cannot expect exceptional results in areas they have not mastered. Skill points are limited, encouraging players to create complementary characters.

2d10 Combat and Armor with Absorption Tracking

Combat in Esheria follows the tradition of Chainmail with 2d10 rolls. This creates a bell curve around the average, reducing randomness. Attack bonuses feel more significant, and combat becomes more predictable - while still allowing for dramatic moments.

A successful attack determines how the hit lands: it may miss, strike a shield, hit armor, or bypass protection and strike unarmored flesh. Armor absorbs damage based on thresholds not exceeded.

For example: 12/16 means

• Hits below 12 miss entirely
• Hits between 13–16 strike armor and are partially absorbed
• Hits above 16 strike unprotected areas

Stress Rolls Instead of Saving Throws

Instead of traditional saving throws, Esheria uses stress rolls. The difference is that on a successful roll, the character’s stress resistance decreases by one and only recovers after rest. Over time, characters become more vulnerable as fatigue and pressure accumulate.

Roleplay Mechanics and Drama

Each class has its own roleplaying engine that directly shapes gameplay.

For example, the Knight class has a Path attribute. Virtuous actions increase it, while questionable decisions reduce it. When using abilities, the player rolls against their Path. If a Knight loses their Path three times, they lose themselves.

This means that roleplay directly affects mechanical effectiveness and allows for alternative character arcs. Each class features unique mechanics, resulting in distinct gameplay experiences.

Consequences of Decisions

The game constantly reinforces that decisions have consequences. Combat is deadly. Each class has alternative failure states tied to its nature and the player’s choices. Ultimately, the consequences of decisions may enter the shared lore and influence the world for other groups.

Creative Magic

Magic is embedded in the very physics of the world and functions largely as a form of science. It is based on colors, each representing an archetype and a set of effects guided by internal logic.

The rules present magic through the treatise of the mage Aris Trinioma, who described each color and documented his experiments. In the game, each mage masters several colors and can combine them to achieve desired effects.

Magic in Esheria is not a list of spells, but a system of logic, laws, and limits that guide player creativity while preserving freedom.

Chaos Roll. The World Responds

A small rule that allows the world itself to intervene.

Sometimes situations arise where something could go wrong, but the exact cause is unclear. In such cases, a Chaos Roll is used. It is typically applied at moments of peak tension, giving Esheria itself a chance to act.

The Chaos Roll is a simple d6.
If the result is 1, chaos manifests in a strange way - and something goes wrong.

----------------
The game is currently in active playtesting across multiple groups, alongside ongoing work on the rulebook layout. The project also has a subreddit: r/EsheriaRPG

Knights are the honor and conscience of the Patchwork. Someone has to do it - stand up for the weak, stop internal conflicts, expose hypocrisy and lies.

The knight’s path is a path of strict principles, a path of duty and responsibility to others. A path once shown by the Child King.

Knights carry a heavy responsibility for all people, because they are the ones who keep faith alive in ordinary hearts - faith in justice and simple goodness.

It feels as if stepping away from this path would make the whole world collapse. As if it was standing on you all along.

In Esheria, classes are built around a simple idea:
each one has its own “role engine” — something that pushes you to actually play the character, not just use abilities.

Here’s the Knight.

Knights are the conscience of the Patchwork.

They are expected to stand for the weak, stop internal conflicts, expose lies and hypocrisy.

It’s a path of strict principles — a path of duty.
A path once shown by the Child King.

There’s a sense that if a knight abandons this path, the world itself might not hold — as if it was resting on them all along.

In play, this isn’t just flavor.

Every knight has a Path — a score that reflects how closely they follow their principles.

The higher the Path, the more reliable their powers become.

Break your principles — your Path drops.
Lose it completely — you’re no longer a knight.

And the only way to restore it?

Not routine good deeds.

But a deed you were not supposed to do — something difficult, costly, and meaningful.

The principles themselves create constant pressure in play:

— don’t ignore injustice
— don’t lie
— protect the weak
— don’t use people as tools
— don’t act for personal gain

Sounds simple — until real situations force you to choose between them.

Knight abilities are tied to this directly.

When using a power, you roll against your Path.

If you fail, the power doesn’t just fail —
you can’t use any powers again for the rest of the scene.

Some of their abilities:

— sense corruption (“black breath”)
— recognize those who still carry hope in the legacy of the Child King
— speak words that people have to truly hear
— resist and reflect magic
— break enchantments

At higher levels, a knight can even initiate another person into the path, creating new knights — but only if they are truly worthy.

The idea is simple:

you don’t roleplay a knight because the game asks you to — you roleplay a knight because your power depends on it.

And because every decision can bring you closer to your ideal — or take it away.

What can stand against despair, brutality, and decay?

The people who left their protected temple-cities and stepped into the open winds of Esheria’s breath found themselves in a world where they had no place. The outer world devoured their new kingdoms — the Stront Empire gnawed at them from the mountains of Alkhavien, monsters and internal strife destroyed them in the lands of the Watershed, and the cunning and calculation of the Bassins turned humans into obedient servants by the Warm Sea. Everywhere humans settled, they took someone else’s place, and the world rejected them.

But humans found an answer. And they made the right bet. A bet on purity, faith in miracles, and resolve. Seeing all of this in their children, they chose a child as their king — a boy who came forward at the council. Eight years old, he found the words that ignited hope in the hearts of the leaders of men.

The Child King changed everything. He gave humans a home, uniting vast lands under the banner of hope and belief in miracles. The world he brought became a frozen fairytale — a golden age of humankind. Everyone found their place, and the world accepted humanity. The breath itself grew calm in the King’s lands, meeting unity, faith in the fairytale, and purity — and held this form through many long years of his reign. He ceased to be a child, but carried his belief in miracles and stories with him into old age.

But the age of the Child King and his Purple Kingdom has passed. The King left no heirs ready to rule. The throne of the Purple Kingdom stands empty — and remains so to this day.

Unity turned into unrest and struggle for power, faith became fanaticism, and purity turned into vanity. All of this tore the Purple Kingdom apart into fragments — like a tailor cutting worn cloth into patches. The former lands of the King came to be known as the Patchwork.

And yet, blessing never fully disappears. Faith and memory of the King and the age of fairytale still live in the hearts of his people — those who still believe in the old wondrous order, and in the knights of the Patchwork, who have devoted themselves to continuing his work. They still carry purity of honor, belief in good, and the resolve to preserve the unity of humankind.

But the knights are few, and the faith of common people collides with the harshness of a new reality without a king. A world without a king is no fairytale — it is harsh, brutal, and complex. Evil more and more often wears the mask of good, and counts and barons are nothing like those in stories.

And yet, the Patchwork has managed to reach many compromises, avoiding a return to the despair and decay that came before the King. The unrest ended with the choice of a neutral figure — a majordomo — which defined the fate of the Patchwork for many years: the throne will remain empty until one worthy appears, one whom all will recognize as King. But how is worthiness to be judged?

In this age of compromise, the unknowable miracle of the fairytale has been replaced by the magical theory of Aris Trineoma, who measured and described the celestial breath in terms of practical use for the gifted few. In their hands, the miracle became magic.

What shape will the unstable world of the Patchwork take? Will humanity find a new king, and what kind of king will he be? Will everything fall back into the decay of the Age of Kingdoms, or is a new golden age coming? Will evil act openly, or will human hearts once again beat as one, calling the winds of the breath into harmony?

Where the world turns — and what tomorrow will be — depends entirely on the Whirls: the players who choose to enter Esheria and change it.

--------

If you’re curious, I’ve started sharing more of this world here: r/EsheriaRPG