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tabletopgaming.co.uk 19“I
t’s very much this convergence between
‘Obviously!’ and ‘Whoa!’ ese feelings of
surprise and inevitability.”
Mark Truman is talking about Root: e
Roleplaying Game, the upcoming RPG
based on last year’s phenomenal board game of warring
woodland creatures. Designed by Cole Wehrle and
brought to life by the gorgeous pastel artwork of illustrator
Kyle Ferrin, Root handed control of industrialist cats,
aristocratic birds, scrappy rodent rebels and a lone raccoon
adventurer to players and set them against each other
in a battle for supremacy truly red in tooth and claw.
Each side operated their animal army in a completely
unique way, from the Marquis de Cat’s resource-driven
expansion across the map to the Eyrie’s stringent
commitment to an ever-growing list of commands that, if
broken, would plunge its hierarchy into turmoil.
Truman rst discovered the game almost a year after
it was crowdfunded to the tune of more than $600,
in October 2017. Playing in a hotel bar during the
US gaming fair Gen Con with Brendan Conway, who
would later join him as a co-designer on Root: e RPG,
Truman was left stunned.
“I remember Brendan and I kinda looking at each
other and being like, ‘Wow, this is really something
special,’” he recalls. “ e combination of the intricacy
and asymmetry and the depth of it echoing wargames
and counterinsurgency games – COIN games, they’re
often called – but matched with this really evocative
ctional world thanks to Kyle’s art and Cole’s sort of
ction. We were just blown away from minute one.”
As co-founder and CEO of roleplaying studio Magpie
Games, responsible for RPGs including the superhero-
inspired Masks and gritty political fantasy game Urban
Shadows, Truman saw the potential for Root’s setting to
become the backdrop to an even wider stage.
“On the eighth or tenth playthrough we were like,
‘Y’know, what would be pretty cool here is if we could see
more of this world, if we could do more with it,” he says.
He reached out to Patrick Leder, head of Root
publisher Leder Games, who Truman says was
immediately interested and excited about the
opportunity to explore the game’s universe in an RPG.
“Leder Games has always been super supportive of
trying to make this a broader world that people can engage
with beyond the board game,” Truman says. “ ey have
plans for what that looks like beyond Root, t o o .”DIFFERENT SIDES
As Magpie Games began working on Root: e Roleplaying
Game, Truman and his team pondered how to best bring
the board game’s distinctive factions of creatures alive.
“We thought of Root right o the bat as a game that
could speak to the complexities of asymmetric con ict,
of having lots of di erent perspectives, but also it’s an
adventure game,” the designer says.
“When we think about Root, one of the things
we were most excited about was this is a game inwhich there’s a big war, or a cold war, going on in the
background, and you all are playing the adventurers
who come to make your fortunes. at immediately
leapt out to us as an idea that would give a whole bunch
of gamers an opportunity to do what they wanted with
Root in an exciting way.”
To provide players the chance to freely interact with
the woodland’s varied inhabitants and forge their
own path through the trees, the team settled on the
Vagabond as the focus of the RPG. In the board game,
the Vagabond’s solo adventurer – one of several di erent
class-like characters picked by the player – could ally with
or antagonise any of the other factions, moving freely
between areas of con ict as they gathered items and
ful lled quests. e experience was already that of an
RPG-lite, albeit driven by victory points rather than story.
“We’re big fans of COIN games and other things that
capture that feeling of being the insurgents, being the
powers that be. One of the reasons we love thrusting
players into that as the Vagabonds is that you end up
in the middle of everything. You are the creatures, the
ghters, the warriors that are wanted by all sides because
you could tilt this battle, this quagmire, one way or
another,” Truman says of the RPG.
“Part of what we wanted was to give people the option
of choosing their faction kind of in the game. You can
play any animal as a Vagabond; there’s a cat that’s a
Vagabond in the original game, the Scoundrel. So you
can be a cat or a bird or a badger or whatever. ere’s
not a one-to-one correlation in Root between the faction
and the animals. Even though all the cat meeples are
cats, the cats have recruited all kinds of other animals to
their army. When they’re out there doing recruiting in
the woodland, they’re not recruiting more cats – the cats
come from somewhere else – they’re recruiting ordinary
mice, bunnies, foxes to their cause. So every faction in
Root is already kind of a heterodox faction.”
Taking control of Root’s remaining factions is the
RPG’s game master, who under the guise of the Marquis
de Cat, Eyrie and Woodland Alliance will give players’
Vagabonds the chance to co-operate – or clash – with
the opposed groups.
“One of the things that we wanted was for people to
be able to think through the ideologies of each faction in
the game,” Truman explains. “So rather than say, ‘Okay,
you’re all cats let’s go and do some cat stu ,’ and have to
really de ne what ‘cat stu ’ is, we’re going to let the GM
represent the cats as a faction – the Marquis de Cat.
“ ose factions want things from you; they want you to
ght their enemies, they want you to do errands for them,
they want you to go seek treasures for them. And as you do
so you might become more closely allied with that faction,
and at some point even nd yourself directly working for
them. If you want to protect the woodland, become rebels
and join the Woodland Alliance and be the Han Solo of the
Woodland Alliance – where you came here to make money
but these damn mice just won your heart and now you must
ght for them – that’s a thing you can do as a Vagabond.”