Ehdrigohr is a
Tabletop RPG system and setting designed and published by Allen Turner, who teaches game design at Chicago's DePaul University. The game is based on the
Fate Core ruleset and set in a
Constructed World mainly inspired by the
Native American mythologies. It was
funded
on
Kickstarter in January 2013 and shipped in September.
The game system and setting provide examples of following tropes:
- Arc Number: Four. It seems that everything of significance in this setting comes in fours or factors thereof.
- Banishing Ritual: The Rites of Tranquility: special rituals that have to be carried out by a group of heroes over the resting places of the slumbering Woe just as they begin to awaken to prevent them from waking up completely.
- Beary Friendly: Played With. The bear spirits are not hostile to humans but neither do they jump at the chance to mingle with them (unlike the dog and hare spirits)—except with the northern tribes, for whom they've developed a surprising affection.
- The Corruption: Sorrow, a supernatural depression that infects people who have hit the Despair Event Horizon. A terminal infection has the capacity to make someone Deader than Dead at best; a Sorrow (as descendants of its Song) can use the moment of dissolution to reshape them into a minion, and a Breacher from the Beyond in the area uses the bad vibes released to automatically create a semi-sentient curse.
- Don't Wake the Sleeper: The Woe have been asleep for a couple of hundred years, thanks to humanity discovering the Rites of Tranquility. However, every 5-7 winters, one of them stirs and attempts to awaken, closely followed by others, so a team of heroes has to be dispatched to each of their resting places to perform the Rites again and make sure they remain asleep.
- Eldritch Abomination: Whatever lurks beyond the Hoop is enough to drive even a Physical God insane. The Woe and Breachers are what crosses over.
- For the Evulz: The Fiddler Knights, cultists of the Sorrow of Dissonance, roam around spreading sorrow and suffering basically for the kick of it (though the one who's getting a kick out of it is mainly their Sorrow master).
- Functional Magic: Possessed by literally everyone.
- God of Evil: Ok'o-wi, the mad Song of Sorrow, and her children, also called Sorrows. The Sorrows, sadly, are still in the world.
- Great Offscreen War: The War of Sorrows.
- Grim Up North: The White, a subarctic tundra populated by monsters, bears, and tribes who commune with bears.
- Layered World: The Traveling Lands (The Road, Shadow, Dream, and the River) are alternate dimensions layered on top (or below?) the material plane, and it is possible to enter them in one material location, travel a bit, and exit back to the real world in a different place.
- Magical Native American: Pretty much every notable character— everyone in the setting who stands up for themselves has some magical power, even if they aren't trained in its use.
- One-Steve Limit: Played with: Sorrow refers to both the thing Ok'o-wi brought back from the Beyond and her Semi-Divine children, but the two are fundamentally linked. If people are talking about Sorrow, it involves them in some capacity.
- Physical God: The sixteen Songs, sixteen Graces and fifteen Sorrows. The Spinner and the Weaver, as well as WhatMoves, are more akin to a transcendent God, on the other hand, especially the latter.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Twain is the can for an unbelievable amount of various evils. Them managing to keep getting free as the Wheel (the universe) expands into it is the main problem of the setting.
- Title Drop: "Ehdrigohr" in the setting refers both to the human heartbeat, and to the rhythm of the great Hoop that encompasses the world. It is not a coincidence that they are in unison.
- Unholy Ground: Pretty much everywhere. Since the land is infected by the Shivers, who come out every night, every burial ground that has not been properly consecrated risks sparking a Zombie Apocalypse.
- A World Half Full: There's a legion of monsters out there in the Twain that will inevitably be freed as a basic accident of existence, the whole world has suffered a devastating war, there are monsters everywhere... and it is an accepted fact, in and out of setting, that the world is recovering.
