The Hit Board Game Root Is Getting Its Own RPG
Root was one of the best board games of 2018, delving into its woodland world full of critters and vagabonds. Now it’s becoming an RPG.
If you haven’t played Root before, then you are missing out on one of the best board games of 2018. Root is the story of a Woodland at war, where powerful factions vie for control of the forest. Whether you have the Marquise de Cat and the power of industry, the Eyrie Dynasty’s bureaucratic bulwark, the Woodland Alliance and its revolutionary ways–all these various warring factions that could be thrown into disarray by the appearance of a wandering Vagavond. An adventurer that passed in and out of greater conflicts, sometimes helping one side or another, showing how the fortunes of empires can change at the hands of a humble vagabond.
Now Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is set to bring this world to life as a living backdrop for the adventures of the vagabond. Players take on the role of multiple vagabonds, adventurers who roam the Woodlands as the more powerful factions take clearings, build structures, destroy them… the world changes much as it does in the board game only now you’re the adventurers, and on your actions the balance of the entire world turns. What will you do?
There’s a reason this game is more than 3000% funded only ten days in to its Kickstarter campaign. People love Root. Its vibrant, colorful world is beautiful. And ripe for adventure. The RPG is Powered by the Apocalypse, meaning you’ll be making moves and running characters based on a Playbook–but it’s also heavily influenced by the lore of the board game. Let’s take a look.
via Magpie Games
Root: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is a game of woodland creatures fighting for money, justice, and freedom from powers far greater than them. Based on the Root: A Game of Woodland Might & Right board game and officially licensed by Leder Games, Root: The TTRPG brings the tales of the Woodland to your RPG table!
In Root, you play vagabonds, outcasts from the normal society of the woodlands who have come to live in the spaces between, whether that’s in the forests themselves or on the fringes of society. You are competent and skilled—you have to be to survive as vagabonds—and you aren’t tied down to any particular place or faction. You might be a badger arbiter, serving many sides in resolving conflicts and defending their interests. You might be a cat scoundrel, sliding on your mask before you sneak out into the darkness to cause mischief and mayhem. You might be a wolf ranger, at home in the wilds and the untamed places of the woodland.
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Root is based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system used by tabletop RPGs like Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, and many of Magpie Games’s own games like Masks: A New Generation, Urban Shadows, and Zombie World. It uses the core framework of that system and provides a strong, simple way to tell your own stories of adventure in the woodland. You’ll create a character using one of several vagabond archetypes, and then you’ll take action, rolling two six-sided dice to resolve the outcomes of desperate situations.
Root creates stories like those you’d find in Redwall, Watership Down, Mouse Guard, The Warriors, and The Guardians of Ga’Hoole
And the world of the Woodland is a vibrant one. It’s full of all kinds of places to adventure–in the board game you learn that there are ancient ruins, dangerous creatures, and all sorts of other secrets waiting to be discovered. What’s particularly exciting to me is the backdrop of the war between factions; the game is meant to mirror the shifting balance of the board game. This means you can build up a reputation with different factions, or face conflict with opposing ones. Your decisions have the chance to impact the world.
This campaign is already monstrously successful and it will doubtless grow. Stretch Goals already unlocked include four new “clearings” two new “maps” and six new playbooks, including a Pirate, a Heretic, and Exile, all of which bring their own unique moves and stories to the game.
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