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Freedom251 › Blog › Evil Hat Productions

How Leon Richardson Built Hope, Community, and Identity Into Rangers of a Broken World

By Freedom251 Team · · 4 min read

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Rangers of a Broken World is a post-apocalyptic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game about protecting people and rebuilding together—not simply surviving alone. Its designer, Leon Richardson, describes a world transformed by catastrophe, rangers empowered by sleeping gods, and magic shaped by both a character’s identity and the environment around them.

What is the premise of Rangers of a Broken World?

Richardson says the world was effectively destroyed about a century before the game begins, when its central mountains melted. The disaster buried inhabited areas and sharply altered the climate. Humanity is now trying to rebuild in a dangerous wilderness.

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Players take the roles of rangers who have already completed a perilous pilgrimage to a monument deity. These stationary gods, called Deiliths, sleep in monument form and empower people to help protect humanity. The official campaign page describes isolated communities threatened by Noble Demons, Horrors, and Automata. The rangers are therefore not just fragile scavengers: they have a divine charge and power to act on it.

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Why does Richardson want the game to feel hopeful?

Richardson’s stated focus is rebuilding, mutual care, and the choice of what kind of future people will make after catastrophe. “The tagline of Rangers of a Broken World is ‘together we can survive’,” they say. They also describe its world as “kind but not always gentle”: danger and hardship are real, but cruelty is not treated as humanity’s inevitable response to social collapse.

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In an Evil Hat design diary, Richardson frames the setting as an alternative to post-apocalyptic fiction that quickly turns toward hopelessness. Communities can choose how to govern themselves, and the Noble Demons give the game a way to explore and challenge oppressive rule. In Richardson’s worldbuilding, these demons cannot form meaningful connections and are bound by obsessions; the Deiliths, by contrast, generally help people by empowering them.

That contrast supports the game’s central premise without promising an easy world. Richardson puts the aim plainly: “I wanted to tell a post-apocalyptic story that was focused on rebuilding, hope, and people coming together to find a way forward because they have to.”

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What do players do as Rangers?

Rangers protect people in a hostile landscape, confront its threats, and use the power gained through their pilgrimages. Richardson describes seven classes. Three examples show how varied those roles can be:

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  • Enduring Legionnaire: a knight-like figure who stands with the dead against lingering memories of war.
  • Tidal Navigator: a blend of ranger, cleric, bard, and pirate-like elements.
  • Volcanic Tracker: a survivalist with some shapeshifting, connected to a chaotic volcanic region.

These examples suggest that “ranger” is a broad heroic role rather than a single conventional wilderness archetype.

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How do facets and action rolls work?

The campaign description presents a resolution sequence: choose a facet, specify a skill, decide whether to mark part of the character’s Key, then roll. Each 5 or 6 counts as a success. The available description does not specify the dice type, so it is not possible to identify the required dice from that passage alone.

The five facets are adaptability, daring, sensitivity, subtlety, and understanding. Richardson says they describe how a person approaches a problem, rather than measuring a fixed capacity. For example, understanding concerns how likely someone is to solve a problem through knowledge; it is not a score for how intelligent they are. This framing makes the character sheet about methods and perspective, not a ranking of personal worth or ability.

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How do Scatter, Blur, and environmental words shape magic?

Scatter connects a character’s spells to the self

Scatter rises when a character casts their own spells. Richardson describes it as part of the self extending into and blending with the world. They connect this idea to their personal experience of dissociation and mental health; that is Richardson’s account of the mechanic’s inspiration, not a clinical claim about players.

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Blur links abilities to a special ally

Blur applies to abilities tied to a character’s special ally. Overuse can entangle the character’s identity with that ally, giving the mechanic a distinct risk from Scatter’s self-and-world connection.

Environmental words make spell creation collaborative

In an early version, players combined words from their own character sheets to create magic. During playtests, Richardson saw players directing one another to supply needed words. The design shifted: a character combines a spell word with a word supplied by the Conductor from the environment. The change connects magic to place while giving the group a reason to pay attention to and contribute to one another’s ideas. Richardson says they moved the mechanic from the game’s “Teamwork” pillar into its “Nature” pillar, reimagining it to serve another of the game’s goals.

When is the campaign expected to launch?

The official BackerKit page is currently a pre-launch page offering project notifications. A September 28, 2026 repost reports an expected launch of October 12, 2026, but that date is reported timing rather than a launch date confirmed on the official page. Check the campaign page for the current status and schedule.

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Evil Hat ProductionsLeon RichardsonRangers of a Broken Worldtabletop RPGTTRPG design

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