If your group has been quietly waiting for a magical girls TTRPG that owes more to Madoka Magica than Sailor Moon, Last Hope hits BackerKit on Wednesday 7 May at 7pm UTC. Think contracts with cosmic horrors, friends turning into the monsters you fight, and a lot of crying in school uniforms. Wendigo Workshop's pitch is dark fantasy with the homework still attached: teenage and young-adult characters sign a strange pact for The Gift, then have to balance hunting corruption with surviving sixth form. The studio has two crowdfunded titles already fulfilled since 2021, so if you got burned by a Kickstarter horror story last year, this one has a track record.
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Find events near youThe interesting bit at the table is the Corruption system. Every character carries a meter that ticks up when they push their powers or take supernatural damage, and rising Corruption affects both their physical health and how they behave in the fiction. Wendigo Workshop is openly chasing the "tragic scenes of sacrifice and heartbreak" that the genre is known for when it gets serious; in practice that means the rules will sometimes hand you a scene you would rather not roleplay, and let the dice tell you whether your friend is still your friend by the end of it.
Underneath that sits Caltrop Core, the lightweight d4 engine from Titanomachy RPG. You roll a small handful of d4s equal to the relevant stat and keep the highest result, which is the only time anyone has been delighted to dig out their old D&D dice bag for caltrops. The book is pitched at 250-plus full-colour pages with art from a roster of guest illustrators, and the campaign will fund that artwork plus an expanded manuscript and a quickstart story. The included starter scenario is by Lex Kim Bobrow of Titanomachy. A free demo has been live on itch.io for months, with regular updates running through April.
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See how it worksIf your group already pulls Mothership or Mausritter off the shelf when D&D needs a break, Last Hope sits comfortably alongside as another short, self-contained system for a heavier evening. Round up your players and back the launch on Wednesday.
