Fans of historical roleplaying can now get a substantial preview of an upcoming game set during a period of grim upheaval in England. Three Sails Studios has released a Pay What You Want prerelease guide for Gallows Corner, their tabletop RPG of peasant revolt.
The release of the guide, which functions as a quickstart, follows the initial announcement of the game, which Geek Native reported on during UK Games Expo 2025. The indie publisher, known for the non-violent exploration game Mappa Mundi, is now turning its attention to a much grimmer and more confrontational period of history.
Gallows Corner is an alternate-history TTRPG set in 1376, five years before the historical Peasants’ Revolt. In the wake of a devastating plague that has wiped out half of England’s population, players take on the roles of the working class. The game pits these characters against the established powers of the crown, nobility, and church in a struggle for England’s future.
The system is described as rules-light and narrative-first, designed to empower players to challenge authority and build a new society. Character creation is tied to what people do, with a “Trades and Jobs” system that defines a character’s abilities. The full game is slated to feature eight Trades, such as The Market or The Earth, with a total of 48 different Jobs.
The core mechanic uses a dice pool system. Characters have three Experience dice—Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual—and players roll the relevant dice for a given challenge, needing only a single success. A character’s Trade and Job can add more dice to this pool, increasing the odds of a favourable outcome.
Instead of a traditional levelling-up system, Gallows Corner uses a “Retinue System”. Characters gather followers and recruit them as Retainers. These Retainers provide new approaches to challenges, have their own skills, and can assist in combat. In a grim twist, a player can choose to let a Retainer die in their character’s place, or even take over playing as a Retainer should their main character perish.
The free prerelease guide, available now on DriveThruRPG, includes:
- Core rules and character creation guidelines.
- Six of the planned eight Trades.
- A regional guide to Essex & East Anglia, complete with a mini-adventure and story hooks.
- An extract from The English, the game’s NPC guide.
- A complete introductory adventure, A Spark Takes Hold.
This early look at the game is a step towards a planned Kickstarter campaign set to launch in February 2026. The final version of Gallows Corner is envisioned as a cloth-bound rulebook of around 250 pages. It will detail all eight regions of England in a point-crawl system, allowing players to travel the land and shape the fate of the places they liberate.
Three Sails Studios’ previous project, Mappa Mundi – An Exploration + Ecology RPG, was a successful Kickstarter that offered a starkly different experience focused on peaceful discovery. While Gallows Corner, created by George Francis Bickers, Jeremy Blum, and artist Joel Kilpatrick, shares some mechanical DNA, its themes of resistance and conflict mark a significant departure for the publisher.
Quick Links
- DriveThruRPG: Gallows Corner Prelease.
- Kickstarter: Gallows Corner.
