Root: The Roleplaying Game

We recently took the board game Root for a spin, along with the Marauders expansion, and thought it was an excellent world with some really compelling gameplay. As we were reviewing Root, we came to find out that there was a Root RPG that you could get from Magpie Games, and that more Root RPG content was also coming to Kickstarter. The Kickstarter is now live, so go ahead and check that out! But how is the systems at play here? Let’s take a look.

Root RPG has carved out its own system for play, doing away with a lot of things you would expect in a role playing game, and foraging their own path forward. There is a backstory to the forest you are exploring during your adventures, and while the game does seem to push you in this direction to begin your adventure, the world is always yours to create and expand.

Players will play as vagabonds who, oddly, have come together to form a small band. Each has their own backstory, village/clearing they are from, goals they want to achieve, and more. Players establish relationships with other characters from the get-go that can become valuable later in the game. Root RPG at its roots – pun intended there – is built as a limited experience if that’s how you want to play. The goal is to deal with what’s happening in your larger forested world, but how that happens and where things go is largely up to the game master and those trekking the paths created.

The RPG takes everything Leder Games has done within the world of Root – including the factions and how Leder Games set them, with their own unique concerns, desires, etc. – and allows the game master and players to freely explore the world. And they do so with a few limitations. What I love about the campaign books we looked at was that that the designers provide concrete reason for why you should do certain things. Instead of saying, “You have to do this” they say “You should because.” For example, the animals you choose to play as matter – ideally anything smaller than a wolf. Why? Because it fits the narrative of what you are trying to do. If someone decides they want to be a massive bear, why would they be afraid of a bunch of cats?

The books are beautifully laid out with tons of help bits of information. Most of this will be reference fairly frequently as you learn the games mechanics, but will come to the players over time. I love that nothing is off limits in Root like it is in other games. For example, just because you don’t have the stated abilities to pick locks doesn’t mean you cannot attempt to pick locks. The game differentiates these two things by specific key words. You are either Performing a Roguish Feat (you have the keyword/ability) or Testing Fate (you don’t have the keyword). Testing Fate is always an option for players, but there is also ALWAYS a consequence decided by the game master.

This is the unique feature I love, and the one I want to focus on for this review. Unlike other RPG experiences that rely on a 20 sided die, Root instead uses two six sided dice. Anything between 1-6 is a miss, 7-10 is a hit, but with a cost, and 11+ you succeed your task with minimal, if any, consequences. Thats all if you are using your stated abilities. If you are just Testing Fate, even on a role of 12 something bad is going to happen.\

For example,

Performing a Roguish Feat, Roll a 12 – you pick the lock and the contents are yours.

Testing Fate and Roll a 12 – you pick the lock, but make a lot of noise while doing so. You can only grab one of the 2 items inside (players choice).

There is flexibility in how you want to use the Root RPG system, but the book does suggest you follow their instructions as closely as possible for the best possible experience. This was an RPG world and experience that my younger kids absolutely loved. It can be, in many situation, easier to understand and follow than larger RPG campaigns, and therefore in my opinion, make good sense to a younger audience. That doesn’t mean older players won’t enjoy this, however, because I think they really will.

That all comes down to how much variety there is. There are reputation tracks to see how you fair with each of the games major factions – cats, foxes, and mice and anyone else your game master creates – as well as connections between the games playbooks. With the two books we received for review, there were over a dozen different playbooks our gaming group could choose from, all with unique abilities, characteristics, and more. The variety was immense, and the entire experience begs to be played again and again, ideally with someone else taking on the roll of game master and shaping the region in their own way.

For me, it’s about a change of pace. And this was a very pleasant, timely change of pace.