The light is dying. The crown remains. The innocent are consumed. A d20 action RPG where survival matters at every level, victory leaves marks, and choices are never free.
Power has weight in Aldenmere. Choices are not free. What you do leaves residue on the land, on others, and on yourself. The question is not whether you will be marked — but what kind of mark you choose to carry.
Three generations ago, the Sundering tore open the boundary between the mortal world and the Ashen Void. What spilled through was not darkness — it was something worse: a slow, patient grey that seeps into living things and teaches them to want too much.
Communities survive by maintaining Lightwatch towers — ancient beacons fueled by voluntary sacrifice. Someone must always burn. The Crown is the title given to the one who chooses.
Read the Full LoreA walled city built into the side of a collapsed Void shard. The streets glow faintly grey at night — the locals call it moonlight. They know it isn't.
A forest that remembers the people who died inside it. Paths shift to show travelers the final walks of the long dead. Most never find the way out.
Where the sky cracked open. Nothing grows here. Ash drifts upward instead of falling. The Void is still visible as a dark seam across the clouds.
Underground archives kept by the Lightwatch. Every story of redemption ever recorded, preserved in fireproof amber. Some entries are still warm.
Power has weight. Survival matters at every level. Victory leaves marks. Magic lingers. Failure doesn't end play—it reshapes it. Every system makes choices feel like they matter.
Corruption isn't binary — it accumulates in degrees. Each time you draw on Void power, your Ash Strain rises. Let it grow too high and the Ash begins to speak to you. Let it peak and you become something new.
When your character suffers a major defeat, they gain a Scar — a permanent physical or psychological mark. Scars are also keys. Each one unlocks a Trinket: an ability born from what you survived.
The world moves without you. The DM tracks a Pressure Clock for every active threat. Ignore the signs and the clock advances. When it strikes twelve, consequences arrive — whether you're ready or not.
Redemption has a cost. To purge Ash Strain, a character must perform a Lightbinding — a ritual sacrifice of something treasured. Not gold. Something real. A memory. A relationship. A belief.
Bosses don't have hit points — they have Phases. Each phase represents a behavioral state. Defeating a phase doesn't end the fight; it transforms it. You can learn, adapt, or be overwhelmed.
Magic in Aldenmere is drawn from the boundary between light and void. Using it is always a negotiation. Spend too little attention and the spell fails. Spend too much and the Void notices you.
Crown campaigns tend to leave a mark. Here's what players and game masters have said after their first sessions — and their last.
"The Ash Strain system changed how my entire group thinks about decisions. We spent twenty minutes debating whether to use a Void spell because of what it would cost Mira's character. That's the game doing exactly what it's supposed to."
"I've played a lot of TTRPGs. Crown is the only one where I genuinely mourned a character I didn't even play. The Scars system made Davon feel so real that when he hit the sixth scar, the whole table went quiet."
"The Pressure Clock is the single best DM tool I've encountered in a decade of running games. My players stopped feeling like the world waited for them. Now they feel like they're racing something they can't quite see."
"We did a Lightbinding in session seven. My character gave up the memory of her mother's voice to purge the Ash. I did not expect to actually cry at the table. Beautiful, brutal design."
"The boss phase system eliminated every boring combat we'd grown used to. Our party's fight against the Ashen Warden took three sessions and felt like a war. By the end we weren't sure if we'd won or just survived."
"I was the DM and still got surprised. The reactive storytelling tools in the DM Guide gave my players so much agency that I stopped planning two sessions ahead and just responded to them. Best campaign I've ever run."
Crown of Ash and Light began as a house-rule document in a four-person campaign. Five years and hundreds of playtest sessions later, it became a game. We're a small team who believe the best campaigns leave marks. Steel remembers. Ash remembers. So will the table.
Former novelist turned game designer. Responsible for the Ash Strain system, the Valmere setting, and the original campaign that became this book. Has run over 400 hours of Crown playtests.
Mechanical architect behind the Boss Phase system, Pressure Clock, and Dark Magic's Attention mechanic. Former board game designer with a background in applied mathematics and a love of meaningful failure states.
Illustrator and worldbuilder. Developed the visual language of Aldenmere, the Lightwatch aesthetic, and the iconography you'll find throughout the books. Also wrote every flavour text quote in the Player's Handbook.
Three products. One complete experience. From your first character to your most ambitious campaign.
For characters levels 1-10. Ash Strain mechanics, Scars progression, expanded combat, Dark Magic, and the path between corruption and redemption. Power comes at a cost. Strength is earned, not assumed.
Truths, structures, and control notes. Valmere, Lost Woods encounters, Boss Phase Combat, Pressure Clock mechanics, and a complete toolkit for consequence-driven campaigns. Failure doesn't end play—it reshapes it.
Living Character Sheets, Virtual Tabletop, Boss Tracker, cloud saves, real-time updates, and mobile access. The complete digital companion.