I picked up The Revenant Society from Kickstarter from March 2023, just about a year ago (it is late April 2024 at the time of this writing): see link here. This game seemed to be the unholy fusion of both a board game and a Role Playing Game (RPG). It has a core rules book, but also many supporting cards and tokens: see below.

What you see above is the pledge level The Revenant Society: Deluxe Box  Set (for $75). There was also the option to just get just the core book in physical form ($40) or electronic PDF ($20).  Anyone who has been following my blog for a while knows I prefer the physical copies, so I got the Deluxe Box Set (the exact one in the picture above).

What is The Revenant Society?  The basic premise is that you have been murdered, but you are given a chance to come back as an undead creature to solve your murder!   It many ways, it’s like Groundhog Day (the movie), as you repeat the same day over and over, hoping to find clues to lead you to your murderer!  If you fail to solve your mystery after four days, you are stuck in the loop of your last day forever!

What a great premise!  I was immediately drawn in and backed this. 

The PDF delivered in late March 2024 (I have the PDF labelled as March 29th) from Drive Thru RPG.  It has my name and my order number smeared on a number of pages, so don’t ask me to share this with you!

The physical copy of the box delivered in mid April 2024 (about April 16th).

This review is going to take a weird arc: we ended up playing the PDF version of the game in our first session, and then the physical version of the game in our second session!  So, we’ll discuss how each sessions went: electronic PDF version vs physical version!

RPG or Board Game?

Is this more of an RPG or more of a board game?  The little minis (above) and the cards (below) that come with the game offer some suggestion this has more than a little board game DNA.

After reading the rules and playing a few times, I can tell you this is 95% an RPG and 5% a board game!  The boards that you use are “nice” for helping you keep track of events in the game, and the cards and tokens are useful like a board game, but at the end of the day, this is really an RPG!

The biggest clue that this is an RPG is that one player has to be the Dungeon Master  (or DM) or Game Master (or GM): they are called the Fate Weaver! The Fate Weaver has to run the game for the other players, just like a GM would.  A further clue is that this system is based on an RPG system called the Apocalypse: a lot of modern RPGs are “Powered by the Apocalypse“!  So, this is really an RPG with just a touch of board game elements to keep track of a few things.

If you find yourself interested in this, be aware!  This is really an RPG where one player (The Fate Weaver) will have to invest a lot of time learning and setting-up an adventure for this friends: this is not really a board game.

Session 0: Getting Ready

So, I ended up being the Fate Weaver and picking an adventure to run: this means I had to do a lot of reading and set-up to get ready!  The core Revenant Society rulebook comes with six scenarios, and another expansion PDF (that comes with the deluxe version) another four scenarios.  The game is set in either Paris France 1910s or New York City USA 1920s: about half the scenarios are in Paris (see map below), and the other half in New York.

Since the deluxe version hadn’t arrived yet, I made due with using the PDF version.  This means I had to print out a lot of stuff to hand out to my players! See below all the stuff I have to print out!

Probably half the stuff I printed you didn’t need: some of it I wasn’t sure, so I printed it, and the other half you can just show the players some pages from the rulebook on your PDF.  But you still need to print a awful lot of stuff!  Luckily, this is ALL IN THE PDF RULEBOOK!!  You just have to print the appropriate pages (near the end of the book).

Over the course of about four days, I read the rulebook a couple of times (it’s like 284 pages, but most of that page count is scenarios at the back of the book/print-outs); I tried to figure out what I needed to print. 

I ended up using a paper cutter (see above) to help with some of that. 

After reading the rules, re-reading the rules, choosing a scenario, and printing everything I needed, I felt ready to run the game.

Session 1: Paris Scenario: The Petals of Belladona

Like most RPGS, each player needs to create a character to run through the scenario.  There are six  basic archetypes in the game (one is “The Glamorous”: see above): each player chooses one and expounds on that basic framework to create a more personalized character.

So, my friends and I met for the first session.  I had planned to “just” create the characters and explain the game!  I “expected” that to last 2 hours, but it went very quickly!  We got the characters created and got the the gist of the game in 45 minutes.  So, GULP! We just jumped right in!

I think the reason it went so well was because I had spent a lot of time preparing, so I didn’t have to lookup too much stuff as we played!  Don’t get me wrong: I still had to make up a lot of stuff as we played … which is typical:  most Dungeon Master/Game Master have to be creative and make up stuff to respond to their players.

 

In the end, we made it through Loop 1 (where we uncovered a lot of the story) and ended with a dramatic reveal!  This was all by the seat of my pants, but I think it went well.

Even though we had cheesy cut-out components, it actually worked pretty well.  Again, it was probably because I over-prepared so I think I knew everything we would need.

We liked the game enough to want to play again! So, we looked at our schedules and decided to try again in two weeks!

Meanwhile …

While we were waiting to meet again, the physical copy came in the mail!

Instead of cheesy cut-outs, we now have real tokens! Real cards! Real boards! Real dice! And dry-erase boards to boot! 

Probably the most exciting piece was the physical copy of the core book!  See above and below!

I took a picture with a can of Coke to show how thick the book actually was! It’s a big boy!

In fact, I was worried about stripping the binding, so I made sure to open it and slowly open parts of the book so the binding would get some equal wear and tear as I opened it.  We used to do this to all our AD&D books growing up … it keeps the binding fit!

So rather than a sheet of memories (used to generate content) like above from the PDF …

We get a full deck of cards from the physical edition! See above.

Instead of cheesy cut-outs (like above) …

We get plastic minis!

On the left, you see all the things I printed from the PDF … and on the right, you see the physical components.

A bit of a surprise was the character sheets in the deluxe version are dry-erase!

The deluxe version even comes with dry-erase pens!

The map is much nicer too.  See the map of Paris above.

Besides the book, probably the nicest component was the Fate Weaver screen!

So, basically, everything now has “deluxe” pieces: the next time we play, we’ll move to the new pieces!

Session 2: Playing Loop 2 With The Deluxe Components

So, in our second Loop of the game, we embraced all the deluxe components.  We decided quickly that the dry-erase boards are terrible for writing lots of text (upper left uses pencil-and-paper), but good for writing simple adjustments and damage (upper right uses dry-erase board).

We also put some ultra-fine dry erase pens on standby, but we didn’t need them (because we didn’t write any text on the dry-erase boards, just simple marks).  See above as I have the Fate Weaver Screen and the  big old Revenant Society core book in front of me.

I ended up putting some markers in the book to remind myself where certain sections were: I found out very quickly that this beautiful book DOES NOT have an index!

Sara ended up using a notebook to take notes through the adventure: she was never tempted to use the dry-erase boards.   I will say that the map looks a lot better (see above) and the Fate Loop board is much easier to use with the dry-erase boards.

In the end, we had fun playing.  I think we took the game a little less seriously in the second game …

We ended up bringing a very saucy NPC named “Skully” into the mystery … see Teresa cradle Skully in her arm.  (They had to wrap Skully in something to shut him up … Skully liked to talk a little too much!)

We went ahead and finished our story that night, completing the second Loop and solving the mystery of the deaths!

We had fun.

Probably the place where the Deluxe Component shone most brightly was the One-Shot Loop dry-erase board with the little Watchers: that seemed to work the best of all the deluxe components. See above.

Well-Crafted Murder Mystery?

After getting through the game, I realized this was not what I expected: the game labels itself with the byline ‘Solve the mystery of your own death in this role playing game‘ (see the cover above).  What I thought this meant was that The Revenant Society would provide several well-crafted mysteries for the players to solve. No no no no no no.  That’s not at ALL what this game was!   This a game where the players make-up-what-they-want about their character and most of the story and the Fate Weaver simply “responds” and tries to push the game in certain directions.

For example, take a look at the clue above: this is something the Fate Weaver is required to physically pass to the player at some point during the game.  But this is not a clue about this mystery, this is the player making-up whatever-the-heck-they-want to answer the question!

Another example: at the beginning of every Loop, there are “questions” the Fate Weaver asks the players!  (See above) And the players answer whatever-the-heck-they-want!

If you were expecting something like Detective: City of Angels, or Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (or many games on our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games) with well-crafted mysteries, thoughtful clues, and meaningful timelines, that IS NOT what The Revenant Society is! This is a game about the Fate Weaver and the players collaboratively making up whatever-the-heck-they-want. (Well, the timelines are actually fairly well-defined, so I take that part back).

I’ll be honest, I am very disappointed in what The Revenant Society is: I admit that I prefer my mysteries to be well-crafted and thoughtful!  I was hoping to be a GM that slowly guided the players to the final solution, by dropping clues and hints as they played.  What I got was a game where players do whatever-the-heck-they-want, and I, as the Fate Weaver have to somehow rectify that with the world and mystery they inhabit.

You might say “Well, play the way you want to then! Make up a well-crafted mystery and present that to the players!”  I thought about that, but the mechanisms already in the game keep prodding the players to make-up whatever-the-heck-they-want: unless you alter the game drastically, this is a terrible framework RPG for well-crafted mysteries.  

This isn’t what I wanted: I usually hate these kind of games, because they remind me of the TV Show: LOST.  Things just happen with no cohesion or thought, and frequently things just don’t make sense or get resolved.  I really hate shows like that: I want my shows (and my games) to be thoughtful.

Despite

Despite this NOT being a well-crafted mystery, I still had fun running it. Once I set my expectations for what this game is, I did the best I could to stay in the moment.

My friends loved the setting and the idea of a Groundhog Day meets Murder game!

I also did get some enjoyment trying to take my friends’ crazy ideas and turn them into a well-crafted mystery as much as I could!  I have seen so many murder mystery shows, read so many books, played so many murder games, that I feel like I do have a chance to turn my player’s crazy actions into a well-crafted mystery.    So I did enjoy it, once I got into it.

And Skully ended up being an unexpected fun NPC, even though he hit on Sara the entire night … but that’s just what Skully does.

A Comparison To Spirit of 77

My major compliant with the Revenant Society is that it really doesn’t have well-crafted mysteries: players just make up stuff as they go, and the DM/GM has to rectify what they do.

Another RPG I played that has this same “make-up-stuff-as-you-go” style is Spirit of ’77 … and I loved that style there!! See out review of Spirit of ’77 here! What’s the difference? Why do I love this in Spirit of ’77 and hate this is The Revenant Society? At the end of the day, the purpose of Spirit of ’77 is to make each other laugh! So, anything that takes the game in a weird direction is welcome! To me, the purpose of The Revenant Society is to solve a mystery (and it even says that on the cover of the book), so the “make-up-stuff-as-you-go” style doesn’t lend itself to any kind of well-crafted mystery.

Maybe if you love this setting in 1910’s Paris or 1920’s New York, you don’t care as much about the well-crafted mystery as I do.

The Book

We have to stay something great about the book: it’s very beautiful production.  It’s very readable! It has a lot of (it looks like) well-researched history around the two eras of interest (Paris 1910s and New York 1920s)!  The font is good sized!  In general, it looks fantastic and is almost a piece of art. 

Physical vs. Electronic

If you are interested in this game, should you get a Physical version (the Deluxe Components or just the book) or the Electronic version (PDF)?

Those of you know who know me would expect me to say “Get the Physical Product!” And you’d be wrong.

First, let’s talk about the Deluxe version.

Using dry-erase markers is a terrible idea for any meaningful amount of text!!!  We saw this waaaay back in our review of The Forests of Admiron (see link here).   First of all, the deluxe game comes with fat dry-erase markers … and they are hard to read! See below.

If you really want dry-erase markers, you need ultra-fine to have any chance of them working well.

In the end, Sara’s pen and paper system worked SO MUCH better: See above.  We tried it both ways (pen-and paper in Session 1 and dry-erase boards in Session 2):  pen-and-paper worked so much better.  You really don’t want the dry-erase boards: they are clumsy, messy, and harder to read/write.

I do admit the map looks better (see above), but everything still works fine in PDF printed version (see below).

I am really not convinced the Deluxe version is worth all the extra money, and in fact, makes the game worse with the dry-erase markers!

Should you just get the physical book then?  I mean, it it gorgeous and a beautiful production.  That’s up to you: left to my own devices, I would just get the PDF.  Why? For one, the PDF is electronically searchable, and the physical book DOES NOT HAVE AN INDEX!!  For a book with 280+ pages, I am very surprised there is no index: how do you look up stuff in the physical version???  Answer, you can’t without a lot of searching.  The only way to really look stuff up quickly is electronically to search the PDF.

Another reason: A lot of the stuff I want to print out comes from the PDF only!  I had trouble finding the PDF pages I wanted online … I could only print them from the PDF I owned (to be fair: if you get the Physical version, I think you also get the PDF as well).

The most important thing to print for the players in the Basic Moves!  See above!! Players consult this sheet ALL THE TIME: why was it not one of the things printed in the deluxe version?  I went out of my way to make sure each one of my players had a copy of the Basic Moves (they could have maybe gotten away with this by putting the Basic Moves on the outside of the Fate Weaver screen, but the Fate Weaver screen has no useful info on the outside).

In the end, you the Fate Weaver still has to print the clues from the scenario (see the Hopeful clue #1), so what’s printing a few more sheets?

In the end, the pen-and-paper approach worked best, with my searchable PDF being preferable to the physical copy of the book (which has no index???).  And my laptop also served as a Fate Weaver screen as well: see above.  Overall, I strongly preferred the electronic PDF version of this: the dry-erase player boards of the deluxe version just didn’t work that well. I needed to print quite a bit from the PDF anyways, so even though the deluxe version has some nice components, it wasn’t worth the extra money.

Conclusion

Would I get The Revenant Society again?  Even though I did enjoy my plays of this once I set my expectations, it wasn’t really what I wanted … but I would still play again.  I wanted a murder mystery game with well-crafted mysteries: that’s not what this is.  If you like the idea of playing in this thematic world with your friends, I think you can have a great time: we actually had a great time after setting our expectations!!  If the game does sound interesting to you, I strongly suggest you get just the PDF version of the game: you find yourself having to print stuff from the PDF anyways, so you might as well print everything you need at once.  We found the dry-erase boards experience from the Deluxe version lesser than a pen-and-paper experience, so even with all the cool stuff from the Deluxe version, it just didn’t seem worth it.

I did enjoy trying to turn the crazy ideas of my players into a well-crafted mystery as much as I could.  But the game mechanisms in The Revenant Society don’t really lend itself to any thoughtful crafting: said mechanisms are too ingrained as a “make-stuff-up-you-go” style.   This game is  just antithetical to any thoughtful mystery crafting .  I enjoyed my plays of The Revenant Society, I might even GM a few more games,  but I wouldn’t pick it up again. 

Maybe you would enjoy living in this world and having fun collaboratively putting together a mystery: decide for yourself! Just be aware, this is not a game with well-crafted mysteries.