Several months ago, I watched Art, Agency, Alienation, a lengthy video essay with a lofty goal to tackle some persistent questions about games. Without ballooning into my own 3 hour long video, I thought to myself "you know, I like reading ttrpgs! I like writing about them! I think I have something interesting to say about game design!" Thus this blog. I got several drafts deep, exploring a handful of directions, but ultimately I'd seen a lot of the thoughts I'd had about Art, Agency, Alienation enunciated very clearly and also much more succinctly than I'm capable of. The thing that I haven't seen yet is people talking about Root (: The RPG). This started as a review - "semi-motivated" by the comments Huntsman makes in their video essay, but mostly just because I'm genuinely interested in what makes a PbtA game tick.
According to Huntsman in AAA, Root has made very little impression on the tabletop world; a smattering of reviews, a sparse handful of actual plays, and that's about it - people aren't out here homebrewing new playbooks, or dishing out adventures by the dozens. I myself read Root (: The RPG - for ease, let's just call the ttrpg Root, and if I'm ever talking about the boardgame instead, I'll call that out) close to when it released, and I reviewed it for some friends on discord (I didn't like it). I have never played it. I've played Root the board game (like that) once though! I think it's a neat little gem of design but it didn't hook me, and although the art is really cute, it doesn't really sell me on the ttrpg.
Per Huntsman, it seems like maybe I'm not alone. But my first reading wasn't in any great depth, and while I found AAA an interesting provocation, I wanted to make my own judgments about the game. Besides, I'm totally bought in to the Powered by the Apocalypse approach, and I love some of Magpie's other work (I think the world of Masks, for instance). Was Root just failing to find its core audience? Does it make any serious game design missteps? What would Root need to do to be a Good Game?
What is Root trying to do?
I asked some friends what they were hoping to get out of Root, including one who had been really excited for it. The pull quote: "I just wanted to play the mouse guard game without all the burning wheel shit".
I also tried to look at as many reviews as I could find. So as not to frontload a huge amount of reading, I'll put all of those at the bottom, if you're looking for more thoughts on Root. But, from the reviews I could find, the general consensus is positive! The trends I noticed are: “the mechanics are good, and push players to think like mercenaries, and help GMs make an evocative world!” even while the rules are often described as “light and easy for story-focused play” although maybe sometimes they’re “surprisingly crunchy”. A little uncharitably, I’d say some of the recommendations come across as “if you like looking at the art for Root, here is another excuse to do that!” And, you know, there are worse reasons to get a book.
Armed with those Reviews and my memory of my first readthrough, here's my attempt to put together what Root is promising:
In Root, you'll be playing as cute little animal folk, who are also kind of rough and tough scoundrels - you know, renegades, rogues, and vagabonds. Your band of outlaws will tip the delicate balance between three factions vying for control of the woodland! Root promises that its rules will lead to dramatic dilemmas and cinematic action, while also promoting something like the hardscrabble realities of life on the fringes, a concern for the materiality of resources and tactically managing them.
Having now combed through the text at great length (the first draft of this post was 36 pages on Google Docs), I think Root delivers on these promises, but mostly on technicality. Yes, there is text within the book that is aimed towards simulating a balance between factions; yes, there is text about playing an animal person; yes, there is text that could be understood as centering the materiality of resources. The question is; is that stuff fun?
Saying "No" - The Setting
One of the first things that stood out to me (and Huntsman draws attention to this too) is how often and readily the text takes on a strangely didactic and restrictive tone. There are lots of things the text instructs you are impossible, or that cannot exist in your game. Now, it is common to call the text of a ttrpg its "rules", and so perhaps it's my fault for being surprised at the way the text is making restrictions - but it really is something about the tone that I find particularly grating. For example, player characters can't be fish because, the text asserts, your friends will ask "every five seconds, 'But how do your gills work above water? How can you breathe?'"
What's notable to me about this particular text I've cited is how, as advice, it cuts directly against other advice/text/"rules" - directly before this section on species restrictions is a list of expectations about the world, including that "the balance tips towards fable". That playful, bitter tone surfaces here, too, and implores you not to bother each other with questions like how birds hold swords or what wolves eat. Even ignoring the specific, strange declaration about what kinds of questions we should ask, the text also states that the game operates as a conversation where we build consensus together, which offers one solution as to how to answer all these "annoying" questions.
I'd like to back up for a moment and skip the "rules lawyering" - I firmly believe that there is no text that will perfectly protect you from bad (unkind, disrespectful, frustrating) behavior at the table. Even our closest friends can say things that are frustrating - pointing out that being annoying is against the rules is probably not the first thing you would say to your friend. Sure, with strangers it can be easier to instead make the conversation about the "rules", but at best you're just kicking the can down the road. I think it's a great idea for the game's text to try and get everyone on the same page. I think it's a miserable idea to try and adjudicate disputes between human beings via rules text. Strangely, Root takes this tactic multiple times, including how to think about literal conflicts between player characters.
As for the preponderance of restrictions imposed by the text, Huntsman attributes a desire to preserve the integrity of the licensed intellectual property, meaning the original board game. I think they're essentially correct here - chapter 2, which establishes the "essential" setting information declares that the factions themselves are not essential, but setting the game within an enormous forest and 12 clearings is non-negotiable. The boardgame always has 12 clearings, but any individual game might be a contest between any permutation of the three factions, so there you have it.
As someone who lacks respect for the integrity of intellectual property, I do want to take this moment to say that the text cannot stop you. You could play a game of Root with 13 clearings, or 100. Your setting could be a major island chain, and the conflicts could be between different schools of fish. It's for this reason that I especially object to the tone, if not the project, of this swathe of text. If the text can't stop me, what is it doing here?
Theoretically, the goal of these restrictions is to increase "fun" (when the goal isn't fulfilling licensing agreements). I can imagine it being unfun to stop play and argue about how a bird holds a sword. The problem is that these restrictions are also not fun. This is especially apparent in chapter 2, talking about the setting. It is so obviously a source of joy to people to come up with their own worlds and settings and characters - so why spend so much energy (and page space) futilely attempting to convince people to quash their own fun? Over and over again my note on these pages is that they're full of nothing - negative information, declarations about what can't be true, or what can't be known. What if this section were full of hooks, interesting options and inspirations to draw on when making the woodland your own? I found these early sections to be some of the most disappointing of the book.
Ticking Boxes - The Mechanics & Moves
Enough about all that - perhaps the setting and assorted fiction and dreaded "lore" text is not fun. So what? Those kinds of things aren't what make the game, right? There's an interesting conversation to be had there, but I do think I'd fall somewhere close to that position. I love adventures and setting supplements too, but when I buy a game "system" I think what I'm usually hoping for are new rules or processes (or sufficiently interesting twists on those things). For a Powered by the Apocalypse game, I think most people think of the "Moves" (if you need a refresher on Moves, Vincent's blog has many, many useful thoughts, and I hope to tackle some of my own on here some day).
Suffice to say for now that pbta moves are quite broad, broader than I think they're usually talked about (or ported into new pbta games), and they're not the only thing that's interesting to me about the rules of a pbta game. Masks, for example, has a system for "Influence" that intersects with the moves but also runs under them - it's brilliant and elegant and evocative, and it's fun to play with! Root does not have anything quite so far reaching or mold-breaking.
Where I do see Root as trying to chase new design space is in three general areas; first, Reputation, the mechanic aimed at the promise for factions mattering; second, different kinds of Harm, which ties most strongly into the promises around "materiality" and the difficulties of life as a vagabond; and third, Granular Player Choices, which is me lumping weapon moves and "roguish feats" together. I'll talk about each of these pretty quickly.
The Reputation mechanic is essentially one enormously long "tracker", which here means a bunch of boxes. If you're familiar with "clocks," this is a huge, boring clock - actually, three of them, since you have Reputation with each faction. As you impress the people of one faction, you mark boxes in the positive direction; as you draw their ire, you mark boxes in the negative direction. Mark too many in any direction, and your Reputation value changes. This value can be used like a stat for certain moves.
Without putting too fine a point on it, I consider this a huge whiff. A huge whiff implies a big swing, actually, and this is the most tepid kind of swing I can imagine. Reading this makes increasing your reputation sound like the most boring kind of slog. Decreasing your reputation is marginally easier (fewer boxes to tick), but is similarly joyless. I cannot imagine ever being excited about tracking these numbers long enough for them to matter.
What could it even matter for? Well, that's the purpose of the reputation moves. Unfortunately, these are mostly uninspiring as well; one of the reputation moves is nearly identical to one of the basic moves (the text justifies this by saying that it will be tough to persuade someone with whom you have a strongly negative reputation, which is funny at least); one reputation move is essentially an empowered version of another reputation move. Exactly one reputation move elicited a positive reaction from me - it's structured so that the 10+ result is probably more dangerous than the 7-9 result, and keys off of having a bad reputation, so having a worse reputation is probably more dangerous! That's fun design. If only all of these moves were so fun.
Next up are the different kinds of Harm. There are 5 (!) total, although one of those is specific to GM characters (morale). This seems alright! Players track their injury, exhaustion, and depletion, and the wear on their various items. At first it reminded me a little of the resistances as in HEART: The City Beneath, but I think the more appropriate comparison (and likely inspiration) is stress from Blades in the Dark. Moves and circumstances will inflict one kind of harm or another, or you might choose to mark "harm" in order to use a move or option. Or you could mark wear on your armor instead of injury, that kind of thing. Ultimately it comes across as a little fiddly, but it seems like it's serving a semi-useful purpose (predominantly the category of moves we're about to get to). It sounds like there's a lot of little bookkeeping moments, but they can all probably live on your character sheet, and none of them are going to be overly long (unlike the reputation track).
Third are what I've dubbed "granular player choices," two categories of thing that the game treats fairly similarly, and are both seemingly aimed at helping distinguish characters and chasing that D&D feel of character creation via option overload. There are "Roguish Feats," a list of skills that borrows heavily from D&D's skill list, and there are "Weapon Moves," powerful combat maneuvers that require the appropriate equipment (and often cost exhaustion or wear).
These are basically fine! If anything, I'd say that tying the weapon moves into the harm "economy" seems to have been the major mechanical focus of the game. It comes across as the most polished section of the book, and feels the most like an interlocking mechanism. I thought they looked fun, although I'm worried that they fall a little bit into the cursed middle ground between the open-ended ease of leaving things to the fiction of other pbta and the cool power fantasy of activating your unique tactical wargame power.
The roguish feats are less inspiring to me - I can understand the appeal of picking various specialties to help distinguish characters and make players feel competent and heroic. In practice, it comes across as another bit of homework - much is made of the distinction between "sneaking" and "hiding" or "pickpocket" vs "sleight of hand".
The special idea with roguish feats is that they all use the same move - kind of. They share a move structure; on a 10+, you do it, on a 7-9, choose to pay exhaustion or suffer danger. The "neat" little trick is that each roguish feat has its own list of dangers to choose from.
What happens if I try to do something but don't have the appropriate roguish feat? Say I wanted to hide, but I'm only skilled in sneak. Well, in these kinds of cases, the text informs us, we are instead trusting fate - we cannot attempt a roguish feat that we don't have! I am hugely not in favor of this framing. In the first place, I really need to be sold on a "catch-all" move. Secondly, I think the idea of "trusting fate" undercuts the picture of the PCs as talented, capable individuals. This is exacerbated by the move keying off of the "Luck" stat (which I don't care for either), instead of a stat that's supposed to stand in for the vagabond's skill. Structurally, the move is interesting - you never emerge unscathed, but rolling high can give you a bonus opportunity. I think that's good! But everything getting there makes me roll my eyes.
Since we've organically segued to the basic moves, I do want to note - just about all of these moves are either identical or nearly identical to moves from other games (including Masks, so there at least they're quoting themselves). The upside is that some of those moves are great! Some moves that have classically presented difficulties in their resolution are here without any kind of iteration towards mitigating those difficulties, which is less great - I'm looking specifically at persuade someone, which is nearly verbatim to Apocalypse World's manipulate or seduce (and Dungeon World's parley), and those moves have often made me stop playing while I pause to figure out just what a 7-9 should mean. Overall, though, the basic moves are good - they've certainly stood the test of time.
The standout of the combat moves is target someone, the move for shooting someone with a bow and arrow, and is maybe the worst named move I've ever come across. It makes referencing the move very difficult, to the point where the ranged weapons in the equipment section simply don't use the move name (they instead have to say "target a vulnerable foe with this weapon at far range," every time). The move grapple presents an interesting little game of chicken, where you and your opponent make choices simultaneously until someone bows out. The sword swinging move is modeled after Apocalypse World's.
The general trend continues into the GMing section - the actual "rules text," the agendas, principles, and moves for the GM are either transplants from Apocalypse World or are lackluster rewordings. Lest I be accused of Apocalypse World favoritism, I'll put upfront that I think some of how Apocalypse World handles these ideas is not interesting to me - one standout here is the "Make your move, but misdirect" principle. I think that putting "misdirect" in the principle is a misstep. Unfortunately, AW's explanation of what misdirection is doing for you is more interesting and useful than Root's.
The other GM facing systems are for generating the initial faction distribution in the woodland, a single move for developing the war beyond what the players influence, and some final assorted GM tools. Those tools include a number of genuinely helpful tables, that look like a fun way to generate some quests! The other faction pieces are less interesting - in particular, the single faction move doesn't make it much beyond functional. The very last section of the book is an adventure, which I might review at length later, but I think it's in a similar boat of being usable without being exciting.
The Root Of The Issue
The final word is that I simply do not think Root is pushing any boundaries when it comes to pbta design. From a purely "mechanical" viewpoint, Root looks to me like it's functional, but not exciting. The kicker though is that the other mode of the text is constantly fighting you, spending more time cajoling you to stay within the boundaries of the IP than trying to inspire you to do interesting things with the idea of animal folk caught between imperial and colonial powers.
I actually think there's a great deal more to say about the text-as-text, rather than systems and incitements to bring to your game; I think there are some interesting things to dig into the way the text represents the factions, and what historical analogues the text draws (or doesn't). I didn't touch on either of Huntsman's two major criticisms, that the text is constantly advertising the upcoming next product, and that just about every page is stuffed full of largely repetitive filler. Both criticisms are warranted, although it's the latter that I found truly aggravating. I couldn't recommend starting with Root to understand what's going on in a Powered by the Apocalypse game - the text is just too bloated, and it can really obscure some of the best practices. There is usually a useful nugget of wisdom, but compared to how quickly and easily Apocalypse World explains itself, there's no contest.
There are many more mechanical pieces to talk about - I didn't talk about the playbooks at all! I think the playbooks are one of the things that suffered most from the constraints of the IP. They have very little identity, since they have to fit within the named vagabonds from an expansion to the boardgame (including the Ronin, which means the game gets to engage in some casual orientalism, too). Also not mentioned today are the rules for advancement, or travel, or player-to-player connections, all of which are at least moderately interesting and a little different from, say, Dungeon World.
But the note I want to end on is by returning to what is, personally, my least favorite thing about the book. Constantly, all throughout the book, as mentioned above, the text takes a strangely antagonistic tone, and implies a similarly antagonistic relationship between the GM and the player characters. Only the introduction to the GM chapter seemed to contradict this position, and even that is quickly dropped, as the text returns to suggesting using the plead move to give PCs xp as a way of resolving arguments, or to make a GM move so that the action doesn't slow down when the players are spending time considering their options. I've already said my piece about it, so I'll just note that I think this is awfully disappointing to see from one of the largest indie publishers.
If you're down here, that must mean you want to look at the reviews I found! Here they are;
- "Root and Mork Borg are the two best RPGs I didn’t back at Kickstarter and regret not doing so. I’m impressed at the strong steer GMs are given. It creates a “Mercenary Mood” in which characters are forced to be relentlessly pragmatic." Andrew Girdwood
- "How good is Magpie Games’ interpretation of the PbtA system? Good enough that they offer design classes on the system. They’re first rate designers and, in my opinion, their work rates alongside the original PbtA creators, Meguey and Vincent Baker." Egg Embry
- "PLAY IT? YES... if you enjoyed the politics and backstabbing of the board game, you’ll dig the RPG too" tabletopgaming.co.uk
- "I think Root really nails its setting and uses a reliable system of mechanics. This combo makes Root feel unique enough in its execution that it legitimately feels unlike most other TTRPGs I’ve played. The dice rolling stays out of the way enough to let the entangling, immersive forest shine through. Most often, the onus is entirely on the GM to make a gameworld feel alive. The Woodland Adventure system bakes a vibrant dynamic setting right into the game itself." senatorlazor
- "The game has light mechanics, it’s true, but details abound and help create a lively and interesting world... I recommend this game to anyone who wants to experience nice (but certainly not trivial) adventures in the woods, playing the role of animals with very human conflicts!" Andy Lingua
- “It’s crunchy but also very supportive of free storytelling and it supports a range of story options from wartime stories (including leading armies with Travelers & Outsiders) and wandering adventurers to community-building and cute animal stories. If you like totally freeform gaming then this might feel a little overwhelming but every one of the mechanics feels well-crafted and fully supportive of the story…. Bottom line, I’d heartily recommend this game for anyone interested in good stories and excellent game design.” Mephit James
- “As my group continued their journey as vagabonds through the world of Root: The Tabletop RPG… things started to change. Not just my players, but the very Woodland itself, their small decisions wrought large on the larger map. It was in moments like these that this roleplaying extension of the board game really came alive….If you enjoyed the world-shaping asymmetric design of Root the board game, but wanted a more personal touch to the setting of the Woodland, than I highly recommend Root: The Tabletop RPG. If you are new to tabletop RPGs or enjoy more roleplay-focused systems, this is very accessible and easy to just pick up and play.” Tyler Chancey
- “The depletion mechanic is my new favorite ever RPG mechanic… running games of Root: tRPG is quite different from games of old. The GM has to be comfortable with a narrative, collaborative style. Reading this in rules format can feel a little abstract and for a long in the tooth GM like myself, a little bewildering.” Robin Brooks
- “Root is something far more exciting and action-packed. It’s a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) full of swashbuckling adventure, but one specially made for folks more interested in the journey than the destination. It’s also remarkably true to its source material… I found the playbooks to be inspirational….It could be easy to take the lack of lore in Root: The Roleplaying Game as a failure, but instead it’s a very conscious decision by the designers at Magpie. What they’ve created is a game only slightly less opaque than its source material, something that is, in its own way, the perfect match for the sandbox structure of the PbtA framework….If your role-playing group is looking for a change of pace, and hoping to come together in a world without any baggage or preconceptions of what it should become, I highly recommend Root: The Roleplaying Game.” Charlie Hall
Aaron Marks's review at Cannibal Halfling gets its own section because it’s so thorough (and because there are just so many quotable parts, and so help me but I'm biased and it most matches my opinion):
- “With that in mind, I look at Root. Root is a solid game at the baseline, incorporating both themes and mechanical elements from the board game into a ruleset that does everything I’d want a woodland fantasy RPG to do…
- On the mechanics side, the surprising headliner is significant mechanical complexity…I have my questions about the design philosophy of the Root mechanics, but there isn’t anything about them that’s poorly done. Except the Reputation tracker.
- With one exception, the Root license doesn’t really show itself as necessary here; this is the Magpie team designing a fantasy RPG, the characters happen to be woodland creatures. The choice to cast the characters as the Vagabond is an interesting and cool linkage but I can’t help but notice that it’s the easiest way to not have to engage with the setting mechanically….
- perhaps the RPG is more closely tied with the board game as a vehicle for selling expansions rather than anything particular with the setting... there's very little in how this game was designed that makes me think of woodland creatures or an area control board game….
- There’s a lot going on in Root, and while I don’t think any of the mechanics are badly done I don’t really understand what sort of game this is supposed to feel like. From what I’ve read all the interesting ideas in Root’s worldbuilding are locked up in the factions, which the PCs are deliberately not a part of. Meanwhile, the classic woodland creatures fantasy subgenre is barely touched ruleswise; beyond the list of animals your character could be there is nothing making the game about the species of its characters. You do have the factions and a few animals mentioned in the introductory chapters, but there are 9 pages of setting, versus 21 pages on the Weapon Moves alone.
- Root is an interesting game but I don’t know who it’s for. PbtA boosters are generally going to want games with more interesting narrative decision points, and Moves and mechanics which enable those.
- There’s a lot going on in Root, but it’s more internally consistent than, say, Dungeon World and it offers some cool mechanics around elements like travel and faction relationships; while these mechanics aren’t brand new I’d say the versions in Root offer refinement and improvement over what existed before.
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