Quick Look: Rosewood Abbey

I got my copy of Rosewood Abbey a couple weeks ago! This is a TTRPG based on Brindlewood Bay, in which you play Medieval European monks and other religious-adjacent figures investigating mysteries. Obviously, it’s heavily inspired, among other things, by The Name Of The Rose and Cadfael (both their literary and cinematic versions)

The book is pretty small, but I was still surprised by the higher-than-expected page count, having followed the beta versions from afar. The reason is that the author, Kalum, does something very interesting, which I’m told is actually common in Japanese TTRPGs: the first half of the book is a “Replay”, i.e. a transcript of an actual play.

This is a very cool and informal way to introduce the game and its mechanics to the reader. And if it’s not your thing, you can of course skip to the second half of the book, which will have the more familiar rulebook approach.

Just like with Brindlewood Bay, there’s a lot to love: the basic concept gets me hooked right away, the whole book drips of loving references to the source material, and the rules are light. One thing I love in Rosewood Abbey is that Brindlewood Bay’s “day/night” structure is replaced by the “routine”, which describes the structure of a friar’s day, from Laudes at sunrise to Vespers and Vigil at sunset and into the night. Gotta love it when mechanics and settings are combined like this.

The rest of the game’s system looks like a classic Powered by the Apocalypse thing, which means I don’t really like it but it doesn’t bother me that much. The Moves are transposed from Brindlewood Bay pretty closely. For instance, the “Gold Crown Mysteries” Move is now the “Every Work of the Lord” Move, with your character remembering some religious text they translated or illuminated at some point in their past.

Of course, the way Brindlewood Bay handles solving mysteries is also preserved: scenarios don’t have a “canonical solution”, and the gamemaster (or “Cantor” here) doesn’t know “who did it”. Instead, the players gather clues and then roll to theorize about the solution. After playing a couple of games of Brindlewood Bay, I decided I don’t like this (sorry Jason Cordova, I tried! 😅), and I have opinions about it, but that will to wait for a proper play report of Brindlewood Bay. It’s easy to ignore anyway if it’s not your thing: just make up your mind about what “actually happened”, and run the game without the “Theorize” Move (“Confabulation” Move in Rosewood Abbey).

Another thing that Rosewood Abbey does that looks interesting and fun is the “Rumor Mill” mechanic. It tracks all the rumours gradually consuming your characters’ community. These rumours can be optionally generated with random tables, and I like random tables.

Anyway, Rosewood Abbey is available on DriveThruRPG (affiliate link) Itch.io in spiritual form, and on the Rolistes Store in mortal form (although at the time of writing, only a few copies remain). More books are being shipped to various TTRPG stores around the world, so keep an eye on Kalum’s social media for more information.