Past meets present, magic meets reality, and the system meets its match

​Step into a world both hauntingly familiar and electrifyingly new with Gifts, a tabletop RPG where magic saturates the modern metropolis. In a city thrumming with mystical energy, you'll forge bonds with powerful Patrons and wield their Gifts to resist the oppressive forces that exploit magic for profit and control. Gather your crew and get ready to fight for your community in this revolutionary urban fantasy experience.

Magic is Everywhere

In the world of Gifts, magic is a fact of life - as ubiquitous as smartphones and as essential as your morning latte. From corporate sigil-bearing skyscrapers to corner bodegas hawking discount charms, the arcane weaves through every echelon of society. But in a world where magic equals power, who benefits and who gets left behind?

Not Just Classes, Patrons

Gifts boasts an expansive pantheon of Patrons inspired by mythology, folklore, mystic and martial traditions, and radical history. Research-driven and rooted in their cultural contexts, these multifaceted entities are as complex as the concepts they embody. Bond with ancient gods, folk heroes, modern movements, even the living spirit of your city itself. Patrons grant their devotees Gifts, abilities shaped out of historical context that let you affect the narrative in cinematic, genre-defying ways.

Narrative & Cinematic

Gifts' narrative-driven engine empowers you to tell revolutionary stories in a world where magic is a foil for systemic injustice. Wield the Gifts of your Patrons to liberate your community from an oppressive System. Explore the personal costs of resistance as you endure while navigating Backlash Events. Get ready to scalp some Nazis, tear down the System, and fight for a better world.

What Makes Gifts Unique: nARRATIVE sTORYTELLING bUILT ON tRUST

The shape of gameplay in Gifts is simple and runs through a specific phrase: Declare, Don’t Ask​

Gifts uses a variety of narrative tools built on player empowerment and creative trust. These tools are intentionally open-ended so you can apply them to situations in ways we could never predict. When you want to use your power, don't ask the GM for permission: "Can I use my Domain of Shadows to do this?" Instead, confidently declare your action and integrate your power into the description: "I'm drawing on my Domain of Shadows to fade into the corner of the room so I can reach the security panel unseen."

Trust your creativity, describe your actions with flair, and let the mechanics follow your lead.

Patrons: Deities and Beyond

When a player creates a character, they devote themselves to a number of Patrons between one and five. Each Patron grants 6 Domains, which represent their spheres of influence, concepts like "Fire," "Secrets," "Technology," or "Justice." Domains don't grant mechanical bonuses; instead, they give you narrative permission to describe your action through the lens of that Domain. It’s the justification for how a person with a connection to the Biohacking Patron can interface with a security system, or how a worshipper of Ra can call down the fire of the sun.

Patrons also grant Gifts a player can choose from. At character creation, each player gains three total Invocations (passive abilities) and three total Manifestations (active abilities) in total from amongst those granted by their Patrons.

Below are examples of Patrons and some Domains and Gifts they grant. Each Patron offers 5 unique Invocations and 10 unique Manifestations; the examples below offer a small glimpse into the types of Gifts you'll encounter. With over 200 Patrons, that's over 3,000 unique Gifts carefully crafted from the unique stories, records, and cultural context of each Patron.

Patron Example: Nut

Nut is the ancient Egyptian sky goddess who stands as the physical boundary between ordered creation and the primordial chaos that surrounds it, a structural role that made her one of the most theologically essential deities in the Egyptian pantheon.

In Gifts: Nut often draws worship from the carers of the community who know the truth of the darkness around them. Mothers who have lost children to malnourishment and now work in food banks, scholars and philosophers who study the system and shield the weak without their knowing, frontline medics who shield protestors who don't quite understand the brutality they've elected to endure

Domains: Sky, Stars, Womb, Rebirth, Boundary, Shelter

Sample Invocations
​Nw Jar: You gain the Water Domain and can access it without spending Favor. You can conjure a Nw Jar that remains for as long as you Concentrate. Water from the Nw Jar heals the lowest Severity Wound on those who drink it, up to one Wound per character per Operation. When you or an ally Pay Tribute, you can include water from a Nw Jar if you’re able to Concentrate to conjure one; the petitioner gains 2 additional Favor Points and becomes Guided.
Swallow the Stars: You can Concentrate to swallow objects and willing allies, keeping them safe in a timeless cosmic vault within your body until you Concentrate to disgorge them. When you swallow a magical object or ally, you gain a related Domain while they remain within you; you can utilize the magic of Gear held within you without disgorging them. Additionally, you gain the Star Domain during the day and the Sun Domain during the night; you can access the Domains granted by this Gift without spending Favor.

Sample Manifestations
Maqet Amulet [Requires Swallow the Stars] ( ⇝ | 6 FP Cost) You create an amulet in the shape of a Maqet, the sacred ladder Osiris used to ascend from the terrestrial plane into Nut's heavenly embrace after his resurrection. When the amulet’s wearer would be Taken Out, they are instead teleported safely into your cosmic vault, and the amulet is destroyed.
Shu’s Intervention ( ⇝ | 6 FP Cost) When you are wrongly accused of an action, or an action you’ve taken is unjustly reframed as negative, you can activate this Gift to bring about divine verification. A great proclamation of your innocence or the positive framing of your action is heard and believed by those nearby. The news travels through the air, spreading until your innocence or the positive framing of your action becomes common knowledge and the dominant public opinion.

Patron Example: ​Onmyōdō

Onmyōdō is a traditional Japanese system of cosmology, divination, and esoteric magic that developed between the seventh and tenth centuries. Rooted in imported Chinese philosophies, it relied heavily on the dynamic balance of In-Yō (Yin and Yang) and the natural interactions of the Five Elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.
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In Gifts: The world of Gifts is interconnected, and traditions cross the boundaries of race and origin. Practitioners of Onmyōdō are often drawn to the craft as a means of grasping power through discipline. The study and use of talismans and the elements allow even those without a deep connection to multiple Patrons access to a vast arsenal of powers.

Some Patrons, like Onmyōdō, provide an Additional Mechanic that influences the use of their Gifts. The Onmyōdō practitioner relies on reading and utilizing In and Yō, opposing, interdependent, and cyclic energies. Each Operation is governed by one of these energies (GM decides). In Operations are associated with darkness, passivity, reaction, or downward or inward movement. Yō Operations are associated with light, activity, proactivity, and upward or outward movement. Some Onmyōdō Gifts affect or are affected by your Governing Energy.

Domains: Balance, Divination, Time, Purification, Spirits, Elements

Sample Invocations
​Cleanse Kegare: You can Concentrate while accessing a Focus to perceive Kegare, the transmissible spiritual pollution that comes from death, violence, disease, and other misfortune. You can Interface with Kegare as a Network of pollution, following the physical path of its spread and learning about the misfortune that caused it. Additionally, you can Concentrate on a touched ally to transfer a Condition or negative effect to a Katashiro, a paper talisman, and destroy it, removing the effect. This transfer automatically fails if a source continuously sustains the effect.
Talismans of the Twelve Generals: At the beginning of each Operation, you may craft a number of paper talismans called Reifu up to your Craft Die Weight. When each Reifu is crafted, you must designate its connection to one of the Twelve Heavenly Generals. You can expend a Reifu to access the associated Domains of its named General and do so without spending Favor. Any unspent Reifu lose their potency at the start of your next Operation. Seiryū (Wood, Nobility, Growth), Chokō (Water, Clarity, Secrets), Suzaku (Fire, Radiance, Purification), Byakko (Metal, Warfare, Rupture), Genbu (Water, Concealment, Barriers), Rikugō (Wood, Harmony, Binding), Kōjin (Earth, Boundaries, Imprisonment), Tenkū (Earth, Illusion, Messaging), Taiin (Metal, Intuition, Sanctuary), Taishō (Earth, Governance, Tradition), Tenko (Water, Travel, Soothing), Tōda (Fire, Terror, Dread)

Sample Manifestations
Nanase no Harae: Seven-River Purification [Requires Cleanse Kegare] ( ⇝ | 4 FP Cost) You execute a multi-point geographic cleansing, casting Katashiro into running waterways to systematically pull negative energy out of the grid. This decisively ends all ongoing curses, tracking spells, and other adverse effects rooted in the environment or on your allies. In the In State, all affected allies heal their highest Severity Wound and become Attuned. In the Yō State, all affected allies become Lucky and Honed.
Consecrate Shinjō-Ken ( ⇝ | 6 FP Cost) You inscribe a sword with directional measures and star-registers to make it a Shinjō-Ken. You treat the sword as an additional Focus and gain the Severing Domain while you hold it; you can access this Domain with this Focus without spending Favor. Additionally, in an In State, it gains the Conceptual Weapon Enchantment; In a Yō State, it gains the Worship-Severing Enchantment. This benefit lasts for a duration based on your Craft.