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Skycrawl

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In a weird, whimsical, endless sky, villages cling to small rocky spheres lit by sentient suns, brave souls voyage far beyond the reach of gravity toward rootless mountains in far-flung orbits, and strange skybeasts swim wild through vast and distant twilights.

Welcome to the Azure Etern.

This supplement for any fantasy roleplaying system gives you the rules and inspiration to run your own hexcrawl-style adventure in an infinite sky. Handle dangerous voyages through the clouds with a strategic Journey System, learn the secrets of Orcery to distill alchemical secrets from the winds, generate new flying peoples and ships of all descriptions, and peruse so many adventure seeds and encounter ideas, you won’t remember which way is up. Not that you’ll need to. 

"fantastically creative"--Cannibal Halfling Gaming

"a delightful toolkit for creating your own adventures"--Grognardia

"I really, really love this book!"--Dice Monkey

Detail from the Skycrawl cover, showing a skyship silhouetted against a bank of dark clouds.

Skycrawl Features:

  • The same core system as best-seller Downcrawl, improved and extended with new rules and an entirely original setting

  • Gives GMs tools to create a player-driven hexcrawl in an infinite sky that maintains a sense of wonder and narrative momentum.

  • Build a paper orrery at the table, charting the positions of floating Lands as they whirl through the sky in eccentric orbits. If you sail too far from home, it might not be there by the time you get back! 

  • Chock-full of useful tables for GMs, including 100 unique atmospheres to sail through:
Excerpt from the Table of Atmospheres
  • Roll dice to generate weird, story-rich Lands for players to explore, or grab some pre-generated ones:
    • Sky-pirate pleasure barge Siren's Respite, filled with secrets and decadent excesses
    • Wintertide Wood, a frozen hollow world where black trees grow towards a pale central sun
    • ...and more

  • Each Land is home to strange new peoples, and there's a generator (and examples) for those too:
    • Weather Witches seed storms, their moss-green hair swirling in the winds
    • Spindlefolk are zero-g vagabonds who never met a challenge they couldn't solve
    • ...and more
A rhinocerous-headed princeling, generated with the Folk tables in Skycrawl.
  • Several drop-in systems to help add airship adventures to your campaign, with rules that put the focus of rolling on Success or Complications, rather than Success or Failure:
    • full Journey System for epic aerial voyages
    • Lightweight Ship Combat rules for when a good broadside is the only language they'll speak
    • A full Alchemy system: learn to manipulate the Heavy Elements like lustral, lode, and iridine to create valuable admixtures or harness rare magics.

  • Gorgeous woodcut illustrations throughout

  • And even more tools for GMsto help run a good Skycrawl:
    • Random Encounter generator that focuses on intriguing situations rather than yet another monster
    • More tables to generate random Lands, Ships, Sols, and Folk
    • Tips on running a campaign in an infinite world where races, lands, and maps are always changing
    • Player handouts summarizing Skycrawl-specific systems and rules


Woodcut illustration from Skycrawl, showing a tiny planet floating amidst a cloudy sky lit by bright sunbeams.

Skycrawl is by the author of ENnie award winner Archives of the Sky and Downcrawl, a DriveThru Gold bestseller. 

Now also available: Ten Ports in an Infinite Sky is a 30-page companion to Skycrawl featuring ten pre-built Lands to explore, and new tips, tricks, and tables for helping you generate memorable Lands of your own. Get both titles in a bundle and save!

Banner for Ten Ports

Check out the free preview pages linked under the cover art at the top of the page. Thanks for reading, and hope to see you in the Azure Etern!

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Reviews (5)
Discussions (10)
Customer avatar
Markey S February 14, 2023 11:26 am UTC
I found my Skycrawl book gathered in dust after years and I realized it's this book I really need for some of my favorite RPGs. However, I have just a few questions about it. I have a difficult time understanding the definition of Tack as a communal resource. It's supposed to represent knowledge and information? I keep thinking it's ration foodstuff you use to travel with. I suppose I could make it work that way, but I want to know what you mean by Tacks? Also, many of the tables have too many different ways to roll, which is a bit chaotic IMO. There's one I don't understand on page 44, it says "use your middle and bottom d6 to get a box, then choose one option?" What about the top dice? Other than that, this is an excellent book that is much needed for my sky adventures and I just have one last question. Do you have plans on making more Skycrawl supplement books or maybe Skycrawl 2nd Edition? I'm thinking, Orcery is very good and you should also add Crafting sections and tables in a new supplement book...See more
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Customer avatar
Aaron R February 14, 2023 5:56 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Markey, glad you've been enjoying the book! To answer your questions:
- Tack is meant to be a deliberately abstract representation of your ability to navigate the skies: I imagine it as loose amalgamation of orbital data updates scribbled on pieces of paper, conflicting skycharts from various sources, rumors and condition updates overheard at ports, and the latest intel on landmarks to look out for and areas to avoid.
- The Table of Situations on page 44 is meant to be used with the 3D6 Travel Encounter roll on page 40: if the top d6 indicates a Challenge, the middle and bottom d6's tell you what it is. If you're using the Table of Situations on its own, you can just roll 2D6.
- I hope to do another Skycrawl supplement at some point but don't have any estimated dates for that yet.
Customer avatar
Neil S December 30, 2021 10:49 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Are there rules to generate new worlds and peoples
Customer avatar
Jose C October 14, 2021 8:53 pm UTC
I'm a solo gamer newbie, without previous ttrpg experience. I love the worlds you have created (this one and Downcrawl) mainly because I love the exploration and both of them seem very promising. But let me ask you, what system do you recommend for enjoying your work and, at the same time, being enough accessible for someone like me with no rpg experience? Regards
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Customer avatar
Aaron R October 19, 2021 10:54 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Jose, thanks for the interest! Downcrawl and Skycrawl haven't been designed specifically for solo play, but I think they can work very well in that context. The biggest question is whether you want to follow the generation procedures to fully design new areas and peoples beforehand (which suggests a rhythm of alternating between creation sessions and exploration sessions) or discover the answers as you need them, live during play. An example of the latter would be: when you arrive at a new Volume in Downcrawl, for instance, you'd generate its overview as normal, but not worry about, say, its resources until you needed to trade or it otherwise became important. Either approach can work; it's up to the style you like.

As for rulesets, I've personally used the Ironsworn rules (a game you can also find on DriveThru) for solo play and found they work very well. Many of the Ironsworn oracles (to get random/surprising results) work just as well in a Downcrawl/Skycrawl campaign as they do for the game's...See more
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Customer avatar
Jose C October 25, 2021 9:48 am UTC
Very useful for someone with almost no experice like me. As I'm more interested on the pure exploration, I suppose the second option, the generation "on the fly", fits better with my interest. I'll check Black Hack as I didn't know it. Thank you for your time.
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Customer avatar
Markov S July 07, 2022 4:17 am UTC
Hello Aaron, I am primarily an Ironsworn player and I would love to see few of your actual play or example plays of Ironsworn + Skycrawl! I'm a huge fan of floating islands and all things relating to the sky and I'm always trying to improve the way I play. Thanks and keep up the great work!
Customer avatar
Sebastian A April 16, 2021 9:02 am UTC
PURCHASER
I love the book so far, but I am struggling a bit when it comes to the Ten Elements. There is nothing in the book about how much they 'weigh' or how much gravity they create and such. I understand it's a pretty lightweight pdf, but differentiating all of the various elements and how much they affect the gravitational pull is pretty hard to decide. When you created the system did you have any ideas of like; Streets infused with Lode has the gravitational pull of Earth, and so on? It would help alot in order to know how much each elements actually affects the world!
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Customer avatar
Aaron R April 16, 2021 5:54 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Sebastian, glad you're enjoying the book! The weights for the Elements are deliberately kept vague so GMs have a lot of flexibility in how they want gravity to work in their games. A Land will have a particular general gravitational strength (section 4 of the Land generator) that isn't really tied to specific Elements, though the GM can do so for flavor if they like. Also relevant to your question is the box on the same page of the rulebook, where it says:

"While the gravitational strength of Heavy Elements gets somewhat larger the heavier they are, more noticeable
is the increasing fall-off of their force of attraction: the gravity of heavier Elements has greater reach. Most Elements are capable of providing standard gravity in large enough quantities; the question is just at what distance they can maintain it. For sylve, it’s microscopic; but a large mass of citrile might provide steady gravity out to a hundred feet before fading. The curve of the fall-off can be shaped by trained...See more
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Customer avatar
Sebastian A April 17, 2021 11:39 am UTC
PURCHASER
I must have missed the box in the Lands section, thank you for pointing it out! I appreciate the great answer and it definitely helped me understand and gain a new viewpoint of it all. Keep up the awesome work!
Customer avatar
Daniel C January 06, 2021 8:15 am UTC
So I am unclear, does this book offer rules or at least ways to create the skyships or is that expected to come from the RPG system we are using along with this book?
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Customer avatar
David E January 10, 2021 3:12 am UTC
PURCHASER
There's a skyship generation system. It's quite minimalist but gives you everything you need for the purposes of the game systems.
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Customer avatar
Daniel C January 10, 2021 9:00 am UTC
Thank You David E.
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Customer avatar
David E January 10, 2021 7:01 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Note that the system doesn't give rules for some stuff you might expect like exact ship sizes, deck layouts or prices.
Customer avatar
Go M January 05, 2021 5:21 am UTC
PURCHASER
I hope the next line of these wonderful books are either "the city at the center of time and planes" city setting or time patrol thing.
Customer avatar
Derek H December 16, 2020 11:29 am UTC
So, what's next? Deep sea, forest canopy*, space, something else?

* I have high hopes for this one.
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Customer avatar
Aaron R December 16, 2020 7:38 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
I will note your vote down. ;) Haven't decided yet, but one of those definitely seems plausible!
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Customer avatar
Martin R December 19, 2020 10:32 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I second the space choice myself!
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Customer avatar
David E January 10, 2021 7:12 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Seacrawl, Treecrawl, or Starcrawl? I'd probably vote for Treecrawl.
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Customer avatar
Daniel M January 11, 2021 5:59 pm UTC
I'll up vote the Treecrawl :-)
Reply
Customer avatar
Steve N January 15, 2021 10:38 am UTC
Check out "The Integral Trees", by Larry Niven.
Reply
Customer avatar
Derek H January 19, 2021 11:44 am UTC
I have been thinking about this and I know there are other games that are forest centric (Chaosium's The Green and Mechanical Dream for example), but none that I know of are planar in scope. In other words I want Treecrawl not for some large trees but rather a way to use the Elemental Plane of Wood from the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. An infinite three dimensional space of living plants to explore.
Customer avatar
Mohammed A December 11, 2020 9:50 am UTC
The Woodcut art in your books is gorgeous, who does them?
Reply
Customer avatar
Aaron R December 11, 2020 3:46 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Thank you! It's all collage art done by me, assembled from illustrations in out-of-copyright books. Some of the Skycrawl images are from three or even four sources, painstakingly airbrushed together.
Reply
Customer avatar
Mohammed A December 12, 2020 10:00 am UTC
That's amazing, I absolutely could not tell you were stitching these together from existing art. I love that woodcut style so I'm always on the lookout for it. Will buy your books when I'm not so broke from Black Friday spending XD
Customer avatar
Oleg D December 11, 2020 8:13 am UTC
PURCHASER
It looks like one or two pages of the table of contents are missing.
Reply
Customer avatar
Aaron R December 11, 2020 3:44 pm UTC
PUBLISHER
Hi Oleg-- there should be only a single Table of Contents page, and it should appear after a full-page illustration of a floating castle and just before the page marked "Introduction" with the page number of 4. Let me know if this is not what you're seeing in your download and I can investigate further. Note that the right column of the TOC page lists Moves and Tables in alphabetical order, so the page numbers are not sequential, which might have caused some confusion.
Customer avatar
Damian K December 09, 2020 8:03 pm UTC
PURCHASER
After reading Downcrawl it is my insta-buy. Thank you for your hard work. Please keep it up! :)
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Platinum seller
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Pages
75
ISBN
2370010877380
File Size:
5.59 MB
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File Last Updated:
December 06, 2020
This title was added to our catalog on December 08, 2020.
Publisher
Aaron A. Reed
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