Drifters
A downloadable roleplaying game
**Print edition available today!**
The wastes call.
Not to you, but the iron hanging on your hip.
Drifters is a tabletop RPG of cursed gunslingers, wandering the wastes of the frontier in search of problems, and purpose.
Carrying a capital-G Gun, you have been granted near immortality. It only costs everything in return.
Drift now, your voidborn Gun draws you down the road.
Slayers Hack
Drifters is a hack of the Slayers RPG. Taking inspirations from Slayers, Drifters will have asymmetric gun classes, all united by the Rule of 4+. This gives each player at the table a unique experience with the game, while keeping play quick and fun!
One big departure from Slayers is the inclusion of two-part characters. A Drifter is made up of a Background and their Gun. Their Background gives them powerful abilities to use outside of combat, while their Gun provides unique gameplay mechanics to set your Drifter apart from the others.
Drifting
Drifters tells stories of your immortal gunslingers and their journeys across the wastes. As Drifters wander into town, they'll soon discover that things aren't right. It's up to the Drifters to root out the issues of the town, and put them down with the help of their whispering Gun.
Drifters uses a new system for going on missions that evolves the Hunt structure from Slayers. Drifters explore towns and do Patrol work to slowly discover and wear away the corruption at the town's heart. When they are ready, the Drifters can face the presence, hoping they've done enough to prepare themselves!
The Void Calls
Dirfters is a complete standalone game. Inside you'll find:
- Complete rules for playing Drifters, over 80 beautiful pages
- 6 Backgrounds, what you did before you picked up your Gun
- 3 Gun class: Revolver, Shotgun, and Rifle
- Rules for creating and running Rifts
- Over 20 horrible threats of the wastes to face off against
- GM section with advice on running Drifters
- An example Rift to get you started
The Guns
Each Gun in Slayers has entirely unique mechanics. While they are all united in the Rule of 4+ to quickly determine success or failure, how they interact with that rule is quite different! Asymmetry at its best.
The Revolver is carved with magical runes. As you carve runes in each chamber of your Gun, they provide ongoing passive bonuses as long as you have a bullet loaded in it, and then a devastating effect when you fire that bullet. Manage your bullets wisely, deciding when and where to reload is the key to your success.
The Shotgun doesn't fail, how could it? Instead, knowing you will always hit your target, the fun comes in determine what that success looks like. Using two different X-Y axis tables, you will roll and then place your dice on various outcomes to craft the perfect shot every time you pull the trigger.
The Rifle is all about warming up to that perfect shot. The longer you are in combat, the more you begin to hone in on that especially devastating moment. The Rifle thrives on building to a critical hit. Not only that, but your Gun has given you voidsight, allowing you to spot and mark enemies for your fellow Drifters.
Keep your eyes peeled. There just might be a bonus Gun coming on the horizon...
See It Played
We did a quick demo of Drifters on stream, and you can check out the video below!
High Noon vs. Full Moon
You'll see that there are two versions of Drifters that you can download: High Noon and Full Moon. These two versions are the exact same game, just with a different color for the front and back covers. I couldn't decide which to do, so I released both!
Credit goes to Aaron Jolliffe for the idea.
Print Edition
The print version of Drifters is now available on my store in both cover variants! Grab a copy of this beautiful 80 page, full color perfect bound book today!
Patreon Supported
Like all of my games, Drifters was first released to supporters of my Patreon! They saw early drafts of the rules as well as PDF. They will also see the new Gun classes first, as they are being developed. If you want early access to all of my games before they get released, consider becoming a Patron today.
Inspirations
Drifters gets its inspiration from a number of games and pieces of media.
- Destiny, it always comes back to Destiny
- GUN&SLINGER by Nevyn Holmes
- The Liminanas
- Red Dead Redemption
- The Harder They Fall
Spread the Love
If you enjoy Drifters, please consider leaving a 5 star rating here on itch. It helps get the game in front of more folks!
Purchase
In order to download this roleplaying game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $10 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
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Community Copies
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Comments
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Any chance for a review copy?
the Emissary of the Void enemy and the Gunslinger enemy have the same flavor text, is this intentional?
Tonight was session three of Drifters. The characters had two or three advances each. This really highlighted two things. Firstly, background abilities really drive the narrative along in a really positive way. Secondly, advancing characters really allows the emphasis on the Drifters as supernatural beings to mechanically match the strong narrative flavour. Also, The Con re-skined as a Preacher works really well, even with the issue of creating a non real world religion, it's not historical Earth folks. Now they want to try out Slayers 1.5, my work is never done😁
So glad to hear the background abilities bring a lot to the experience! Thanks for the kind words and sharing!
Ran my first game of Drifters tonight. Firstly, as a GM it was super friendly to run. My players loved the setting and the aesthetic. But the outstanding feature really was the asymmetric combat, every player commented on how it made such a difference to their experience of combat. What was really enlightening was how the guns synergised and built cooperative and varied tactical options. This game looks great from a read but surpassed my expectations in play. Thanks for a great gaming experience Spencer
Wow! Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm really glad you all had a good time with it :)
Quick rules question for you. How does Advantage/Disadvantage interact with the Shotgun?
You can roll twice for each die and choose which result you'd prefer, instead of highest/lowest
Brilliant, thanks. Now off to write my next Drift 🙂
Ran my second game. Had two players from the first game and two new ones. Once again a great time was had by all. What stood out most was having two of the same gun, the rifle, actually increased the options and combinations rather than creating overlap. Really great design. Now I've got to create another rift as my players want a game next week. See what you've started Spencer 😁
I finally played my first Drifters game with a bunch of DND players, it was honestly the most fun I've had running a ttrpg in a while! The "unbalanced"/ "overpowered" nature of this game is perfect for the Destiny/ unkillable gunslinger character trope of this game. I reskinned the Sheriff mission in the book for the one shot and had a blast. Highly recommend!
I really want to play a longer campaign with this system someday!
Having never used it before, I found the clock system pretty intuitive and helpful as well!
Picked up the PDFs of this game and Slayers and a print copy of Drifters. Very impressed. Rules are light but with tactical depth, the weird west setting is very much its own thing and very stylish. Narrative driven, which I love, and plenty of room for shared world building. It was pricey to import to UK but worth every penny. Looking forward to getting Slayers in print ( hint hint Spencer)
Keep an eye out for Slayers prints this summer ;)
Bought this game, read through it, and started playing it with my regular group in one day! Super quick and easy to generate characters, INCREDIBLE setting and world building in a minimalist fashion that allows for a ton of interpretation and adaptation, and just good, good awesomely aesthetic art. If you like the Wild West, cursed objects, and having your PCs feeling compelled to do things by forces greater than themselves, you must check out this game.