I’m a big fan Kieron Gillen‘s work, and have been since Phonogram. His subsequent work on Journey Into Mystery and The Wicked + The Divine has just seen him go from strength to strength, a trend he continues with Die. Here’s the blurb:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE writer KIERON GILLEN teams up with artist supernova STEPHANIE HANS (THE WICKED + THE DIVINE 1831, Journey Into Mystery) for her first ongoing comic! DIE is a pitch-black fantasy where a group of forty-something adults have to deal with the returning unearthly horror they barely survived as teenage role-players. If Kieron’s in a rush, he describes it as “Goth Jumanji.” That only captures a sliver of what you’ll find in oversized debut issue—where fantasy gets all too real.

It is an amazingly series, but you know what would make it even more meta, more… Gillen? A roleplaying game where you play the players of the Die roleplaying game.

And so, to coincide with the launch of the first collected edition of Die, Kieron has made public the Die RPG Open Beta for our enjoyment.

Simon Brake, in the Twitter thread above has gone above and beyond with his due diligence and delved deeper into the material than I have. But from what I’ve managed to garner, this is a wonderful concept, from a wonderful writer.

I’m glad this exists as a thing, an artefact of comic/rpg crossover. I look forward to finding some victims to try it out one day.