Ritual
A downloadable game
Ritual is a tabletop roleplaying game for 3-6 players. Inspired heavily by The Wicker Man, Midsommar, Raph D’amico’s The Zone RPG, and Jason Cordova’s Brindlewood Bay.
Buy the print edition at worldchamp.io/store.
Players switch between two roles, the Visitor (an outsider looking for someone or something in the last place they can think of) and the Host (a member of a devout closed society with ancient beliefs that often turn bloody).
Using included Ritual cards in conjunction with 2d6, players set scenes and interact with their fellow Visitors & Hosts in this beautiful remote scenery punctuated by abstract and intense Rituals. Over the course of the game, all but one Visitor will be lost in service to this faith.
Includes full-color rulebook zine and four die-cut pages of 16 custom playing cards including an x-card. Digital version includes print & play sheets of cards to cut out as well as individual png files to upload to your virtual tabletop of choice.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
if you’re unable to pay for this game for any reason, grab a free download here. If you can, please leave a nice comment and 5-stars, it helps a lot!
Comments
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I ran this for a group of friends — we weren't able to finish (we ended after the first Visitor death due to time constraints) but we all loved it. The mechanics are so evocative, especially when it comes to the dice. I think it's incredibly clever to flip successes and failures the way Ritual does; I love it when successes and failures both come with strings attached, and the thematic intent works incredibly well here. Also, the art is fantastic.
I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I'd love to hear about a noteworthy Ritual you performed if you could :)
I have a little question. I'm planning play this in Japanese. While translating the cards, I couldn't find the word “raizing” on English dictionary. Is this a (maybe intentional) typo of “raising” or “razing”? Or any other word not English?
thanks for asking! This is an unintentional conflation of the two things, which I might claim to be intentional to be clever lol, but it was meant to be
razing. : to destroy completely by knocking down or breaking to pieces : demolish. razed the building.
Thank you for your quick response! I finished day one of the gameplay just now. The RAZING card hasn’t appeared yet, so I can fix it without anyone noticing, lol. My friends and I enjoyed this game. Folk horror is also popular in Japan.
That's so freaking cool. I really like folk horror. I'd love to hear what you think of my own folk horror module for Horror Liminal !
Actually because of money conversion I cant afford the game, any chance of community copies?
Just refilled them!
Ritual is a folk horror ttrpg inspired by Midsommar.
The PDF is 24 pages, with clean, readable text, strong vibes, and some nice folksy art.
Gameplay-wise, everyone in Ritual controls two characters. One is an impending victim, the other is a member of the insular community they have entered. This approach divides GMing responsibilities up across the group, but it doesn't separate GMing from roleplaying. It makes for an extremely fluid game, with no pressure on anyone to do anything other than play their characters.
Visitors *can* sort of struggle against their fate, taking actions that give them more information about the community, but this is a game that expects Visitors to die. Every roll advances a Visitor towards death, and the game towards its final state.
Probably the strongest thing in this game that I wasn't expecting is its theme of duality. Visitor and Host, Ritual and Demise, 2d6 assigned to two different things, it makes for a thematic backbone that runs all the way through. The game has little wiggle room, it will always produce stories that mirror Midsommar, but it's very good at producing those stories, and very easy to play.
Overall, if you're at all into folk horror and storytelling rpgs, you should check Ritual out. It looks great, it's easy to run, and it's a fantastic vehicle for collaboration. Someone's always on hand to be the villain in someone else's scene, and someone's always yes-and-ing the gruesome details during a ceremony.
this might be my favorite review that you’ve left on one of my games and it’s really heartening, thank you so much!