Ex Novo

Solo or group-driven journal RPG for custom city creation

Developers: Martin Nerurkar & Konstantinos Dimopoulos of Sharkbomb Studios
Format: 50-page PDF (print-and-play), available at DriveThru RPG
Genre/Use: Worldbuilding tool / solo- or group‑play city-builder, compatible with tabletop RPG campaigns

🎲 Overview

Ex Novo is a rules-light journaling and map‑building RPG whose players act as guardian spirits or chroniclers of a fictional settlement. Through random tables and guided prompts, it generates a city’s founding, factions, history, geography, and narrative events over a series of turns—from settlement to metropolis. The result is a vivid, playable city setting you can use directly in your tabletop RPG or novel, or treat as a standalone creative storycraft.

Whether you’re playing solo or collaboratively (up to four players), Ex Novo emphasizes emergent storytelling, creative decision‑making, and worldbuilding through repeated “what-if” steps and event resolution.

🧠 Mechanics & Structure

Setup and Founding Stage

You begin by choosing the city size (e.g., village, town) and age, then define geography, founding purpose, initial factions, leadership, and terrain. These decisions are generated or selected from tables, and inform the visual and narrative outline—for example, a lake beside a plateau, ruled by a wealthy caste and a witch’s coven.

Development Turns

Each turn, you roll events (e.g. politics, cataclysm, economy), adjust citizen tokens (representing population clusters), add or remove districts or landmarks, and narrate changes. Event results are accompanied by “what if” prompts to shape the city’s culture, hierarchy, and drama. Those choices give Ex Novo flexibility to reflect player intent or campaign needs.

Factions & Power Flow

Ex Novo tracks power via faction tokens placed in districts. Events might shift faction power or introduce new factions. Over turns, this creates narrative tension, such as laborers forming secret cults or elites exploiting resource discoveries. The system is abstract but emotionally resonant.

🧩 Art and Presentation

Ex Novo is minimalist in design. The rulebook contains simple line‑art, functional layout, and no frills. Most pages are tables, with occasional examples and maps sketched by authors—or by hand. As a tool meant for hand-drawn maps, its simple aesthetic underscores that you don’t need polished graphics to build something meaningful.

Despite the minimal visuals, the rules are clean and functional, although some players initially find the power-token system confusing. With even a single example run-through, understanding is secured.

🔍 What Reviews and Community Say

Community feedback, for example on Discord, Reddit, and review blogs, is overwhelmingly positive:

• One reviewer describes Ex Novo as a fantastic journaling RPG and creator of “maps that have meaning”—not just geographic, but narrative layered.
• Another review applauds its solo‑game structure and unique focus on “guardian spirits” shaping the city’s story; it highlights how quickly one can generate a rich setting.
• The developer often notes success stories: a fictional pirate city built in two hours, or adapting the system for sci-fi settings—even a space-station outpost.

✅ Strengths

• Great for solo and group use. Allows shared creation during campaign Zero or introspective solo crafting.
• Fast and flexible. In two hours, you can produce a city rich in drama, factions, landmarks, and local conflict.
• Rules-light and accessible. A handful of simple mechanics; most play is narrative interpretation.
• Highly reusable. The same system works for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, colonial-era themes, or sci‑fi colonies.
• Inspiring for campaign design. Provides ready-crafted story seeds and power dynamics without a lore dump.

⚠️ Weaknesses

• Minimal art and presentation. It’s not visually flashy—if you want usable maps or visual polish, you’ll likely enhance it yourself.
• Abstract mechanics. Faction power and citizen tokens are intangible, requiring interpretative play. Some find initial rules confusing.
• Not a pre-written setting. The product generates cities; if you want region details, NPCs, and adventures, you’ll need to build beyond it.
• Limited scale. It handles one settlement at a time—not empires or kingdoms—though it can feed into larger design.

🎯 Ideal For…

• GMs and authors who want emergent lore, city history, or campaign settings developed collaboratively or solo.
• Solo RPG fans who enjoy journaling, world‑building, and long‑form creative tools.
• Campaign Zero design, helping players shape their relationship to the setting they will inhabit.
• Paired with other RPGs, like Ironsworn, Mythic, or traditional TTRPGs, to provide location context and flavor.

🧭 Use Case Example

In one review, the creator used Ex Novo to design a haunted settlement called Shadowlake—a nomadic village turned cursed town built on a plateau, with factions including aristocrats, witches, and hunters. Over development turns, they gained history: gambling scandals, floods, a prophet uprising, underground wells, cult movements, plagues, and ethnic tensions. By turn 10, a demonic cult emerged, gold mining began, and a palace was erected—all from tables and narration.

That same map later fed into a 7th Sea campaign as an ancient city ruin plot-arc—showing how Ex Novo can support larger RPG storytelling.

🧾 Final Thoughts

Ex Novo isn’t a tactical game, nor a campaign in a box. It’s a story engine—a creative framework that delivers context, complexity, and narrative richness in a compact, rules-light format. It thrives in solo play, propaedeutic group prep, or hybrid worldbuilding sessions.

For $10 or less, it’s a low-risk investment with high narrative reward. If you love building the lore around your world, township politics, or campaign setting backdrop—and want to co-create or uncover that history in play—Ex Novo is one of the best tools available.