THE ONEIROMANCER

THE ONEIROMANCER

Review: Spire - The City Must Fall

Recently, I've been trying to retrain myself to read voraciously. The coronavirus lockdown in the UK forced me into six weeks off work on furlough, so I used the time to try and get away from the day-to-day distractions of life (my iPhone for one, as well as all of the social media I subscribe to) and read some books. It worked to an extent, with me demolishing several novels and a few choice RPG books. One of the latter was Spire: The City Must Fall by Rowan, Rook and Decard, which I'd picked up a year or two ago from Gameslore, where I am want to peruse the damaged RPG books in search of a bargain (mainly because as yet I've never received a book with more than a minor ding on a corner from them—Amazon serves up more badly damaged fare and does so at full price!).

So, what do you get in this roleplaying game in which you play Dark Elves who have sworn to overcome their oppressors and take back the city that was once their home and is now their prison? Let's find out.

Spire cover

Summary

You are a dark elf. Your home, the towering city of Spire, was occupied by the high elves two hundred years ago. Now, you have joined a secret organisation known as the Ministry, a paramilitary cult with a single aim – to overthrow the cruel high elves and restore the drow as the rightful rulers of the city.

What – or who – will you sacrifice to achieve your aims? Will you evade the attention of the authorities, or end up shot in the street like so many before you?

Spire is a game of rebellion, rather than all-out war. The players, as members of the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress—to give it the full title—are tasked with being part of the effort to reclaim Spire for the dark elves. However, the game makes very clear that this is a momentous effort and it is more than likely that it will not be achieved. At least not in your game. No, your story is on a smaller scale—taking back a neighbourhood, a district, a defined area of the city. It's about the small wins, the little victories and, more than anything, the risks, tragedies and sacrifices that must happen to get there.

What you get

Spire (which is how I'll refer to the game from now on) is a 219-page hardcover book. It is full colour with some excellent and evocative artwork throughout. The book retails for a recommended price of £35, and a PDF is available from DrivethruRPG for $25.

System Overview

The game runs on a D10 system that is elegant in its simplicity. Roll a pool of D10s and take the highest roll. On a 10, it's a critical success; an 8–9 is a success; 6–7 is a success at cost; 2–5 is a failure; and a 1 is a critical failure. There is perhaps the influence of Powered by the Apocalypse in the different success levels, and they work well for deciding the outcomes of player actions.

You always get at least one D10 to roll but may get others if you have a relevant Skill or Domain for the action you are taking, and another additional die if you have mastery over any one of the action, Skill or Domain. Thus, a player by themselves may roll a pool of up to four dice, though receiving aid from an ally may increase this. This pool may be reduced by difficulty level, which ranges from 0–2, with each removing a corresponding number of dice. If this should reduce a player's dice pool below 1, instead it reduces the effect level of their roll—so a 10 becomes an 8–9 and so on.

The list of Skills and Domains provided to influence actions is relatively short—just nine of each—but they are sufficiently broad in focus to allow their applicability to the vast majority of cases. Should you acquire a Skill or Domain again, then you receive a Knack. This is proficiency with a particular area within that Skill or Domain, which thus grants mastery when used.

For the most part, rolls are always made by the players, with the GM making few rolls aside from for Stress, which I come on to below. Again, this parallels other indie games, especially those powered by the Apocalypse Engine. This has its biggest effect in combat, where the GM will describe actions that NPCs take, but the player will roll to determine the outcome while defending themselves. Combat doesn't use initiative either, which may appear strange to those used to more traditional RPG systems. Instead, actions are taken in accordance with the natural flow of the fiction. Things like armour, reloading, range etc. are also simplified, being somewhat reminiscent of FATE and similar games.

Failure (and sometimes success) results in characters receiving stress across five areas of resistance—Blood, Mind, Silver, Shadow and Reputation. Characters will have a certain number of resistance slots in each of these, and stress marked against these slots doesn't count when working our Fallout (see below). The amount of stress gained can range from D3 to D8 depending on the action being taken and who/where it is being taken against.

Each time you take stress, the GM checks for Fallout by rolling a D10—if the number rolled is lower then the character suffers something bad, ranging from Minor to Severe. This depends on the amount of stress they have (e.g. 2–4 stress would mean Minor Fallout) and what results is dependent on the area of resistance being checked against. For instance, Minor Fallout in Blood may result in the character being Stunned, Tired or Bleeding, while Severe Fallout may result in them dying. I'll note here that Stress is always tracked by the GM. Therefore, players never know exactly how badly their characters are doing, though the GM should convey their state through the narrative to provide a rough indication.

If a character suffers Fallout, they are able to clear some stress based on the type of Fallout they receive—3 for minor, 5 for moderate and 7 for severe. They can also remove stress by laying low (which clears all stress), actively doing something to remove stress from a particular resistance (e.g. seeking medical help for Blood or borrowing money for Silver), and acting in accordance with the refresh action for their character class.

Equipment and weapons are also dealt with in a simplified way. Simple everyday equipment generally has no mechanical influence on the game and is thus generally glossed over. However, any items with significance to the PCs are provided with two things that they have to define, one of which is positive and one negative. An example provided is a fabulous cloak that provides little to no protection from the elements. These descriptions provide meaningful items with little elements of flavour that, while not influencing the game mechanically, can be used narratively, which is what the game focuses on most.

Weapons have the most mechanical influence on the game and are thus dealt with in a little more depth. They have an amount of Stress that they deal, ranging from 1 through to D8, a range if they can be used outside melee, ammunition (if necessary) and tags. This latter aspect can include things such as Piercing (whereby it bypasses armour), Brutal (roll two dice for Stress inflicted and pick the highest), or Dangerous (if you roll a 1 or 2 on your highest D10 then the weapon explodes!). There is a good range of these tags, allowing creative GMs to produce all manner of interesting weaponry. And this is something the game actually encourages—while it supplies a list of examples, GMs are told to create weapons suited for their own stories.

Character creation

Creating characters for Spire is very simple. You pick a Durance (a term of service your dark elf has endured for several years under a high elf master), then a class and two abilities (or Advances as they come to be termed) from it.

Durances may be things such as acting as a duelist on behalf of your master, hunting for them, spying for them, or acting as an assassin. These can influence your starting resistances, provide skills or domains, and additionally provide some background to the type of person your character is.

There are ten classes to chose from, ranging from the hustling trader Azurites through to the arachnid bloodline blessed Midwives. Each class influences your starting Resistance scores, provides a refresh action to allow your character to remove stress. These are generally broad (e.g. the Midwife's is "defend the defenceless"), allowing you to find a good range of opportunities to activate them. You also get starting skills and domains, as well as some starting abilities, and a list of Advances that you can take.

Advances range from Low to High—you'll start out with two Low ones picked from the choices available from your chosen class. You can also open up additional Advance options dependant on whether you join specific factions in the game too. Plus, there are rules for multiclassing, allowing you to obtain Advances from classes outside your main one.

You will also pick some Bonds, which represent allies, friends and relationships that you can call on, but which can also suffer stress (and hence Fallout). Bonds may represent individual NPCs, but can also be organisations ranging from small gangs through to district-wide in size.

To give an example of a character, here's one I prepared in about 10 minutes:

That's pretty much all you need and you're ready to go.

Playing Spire

Spire is a dark fantasy game, set in a weird city that is constantly evolving, both organically and under the influence of its denizens. It is, overall, a story game and one that will be mostly improvisational, guided by the players' actions and responses to situations the GM puts them in and flavoured by the wonderfully evocative material supplied by the writers that forms the strange background to this unique place. Everything is available to be moulded as your group sees fit and, while the game supplies several core tenets for the setting at the outset of the book (magic is hard, there is no morality, there aren't any monsters), the GMing advice chapter toward the end of the book does provide advice on remodelling these to suit your own vision of the game.

The GMing advice is also well presented. It goes into the material a GM most likely needs to run this style of game, rather than the usual ground that most cover (e.g. problem players, designing adventures etc.) that are most useful to new GMs. This highlights the fact that Spire is likely to be a game that is easier to parse and run for the experienced GM as opposed to someone new to that role. That said, there is some invaluable advice for GMs of all levels, including text covering the X-Card, Lines and Veils, producing good quality villains and the differences between using missions and hooks to motivate PCs.

Where the game shines strongest is in its setting material. It is well written and laid out, placing each area of society and the city into well-defined chapters. While there is some cross over between chapters that might throw the reader (for example, discussing something that isn't fully developed until a later chapter, which can be confusing, but is also something that happens in many books), the overall effect is that information is easily accessible whether you're looking for something about Low Society in Spire or more juicy morsels about the various religious factions. And it is this that makes preparation and running a game easier, as you will rarely be running a game that encompasses the whole of Spire. Instead, stories will focus in on specific areas. Therefore, you don't necessarily need to read and understand in depth the whole of the fluff to run your game if it only focuses on one district, though it is recommended to read through the book at least once understand how society in Spire operates. Even if you didn't like the system that Spire runs on, there is plenty of meat here to carve off and use in the game of your choice.

The game will often lead characters to do horrible things. Spire is a place where dark elves suffer their durance—a form of indentured servitude if not outright slavery—and you friends and family will likely sell you out to the high elves if they discover you're working for the Ministry. The book therefore offers plenty of advice in myriad sidebars on how to deal with this. The tip on bringing in Lines and Veils to the game also mitigates situations coming up that puts players in uncomfortable situations. It's a game that won't be to everybody's tastes but it does give ways to balance stories to get round some of the more unwholesome facets. However, it doesn't ask you to simply ignore these factors, which wouldn't feel in the spirit of the setting. Spire boldy states that bad things happen to good and evil people, and situations in a guerilla war of subterfuge and brutal violence will force you to make hard decisions, perhaps with no right answers. It's guidance provides help in how deeply one wishes to delve into this subject matter and gives tools to ensure that everyone at the table is comfortable with the game without necessarily giving up too much of the factors that make this dark fantasy come alive.

The final few pages of the book contain a number of appendices containing mostly additional content resulting from the books Kickstarter campaign. These aren't necessary to running the game, but do provide some additional flavour (and also Advances) which can help flesh out Spire. These range from The New Gods, a host of new religions that stream into Spire with travellers and settlers, to the Rumoured Goats of Spire, injecting a little humour into what could be considered a bleak setting. That said, dashes of humour abound throughout the book, cutting through the darkness and providing a little levity. It is things like this that makes Spire such a wonderful read. The appendices also contain several random tables, allow GMs to quickly produce the usual suspects, such as antagonists, loot, drinks establishments, but also answers to more esoteric questions, such as "what does this experimental retroengineered tech do?"

The Verdict

The Good: Overall, Spire presents a beautifully illustrated, deeply evocative setting in which to run a game. The system attached to it is simple and elegantly complements the stories that it is trying to tell, especially through the stress system, which is its shining light. The book is an exhilarating read, instantaneously getting the brain's juices flowing and I was inspired by the quality of the writing and the setting development. Spire is a game I can see myself running and a game that I actively want to play.

The Bad: In my honest opinion, there is little bad with Spire as a whole. That said, its dark themes aren't going to be for everyone and you should bear this in mind when deciding whether it is an appropriate game for your group. Even if, as a whole, you think you'd struggle to get it to the table, there is still a plethora of material that you could cannibalise for other games and settings. One (very minor) complaint is that the GM tracks all the player's stress. This seems like an onerous burden at first, but then the GM isn't making any roles, there is no real initiative order to track and most other things are asked of the players. Still, I can imagine that initial plays may lead to the results of some stress checks being forgotten in the heat of play, and in particular scenes (e.g. combat) may slow things while the GM notes stress down in between narrating what is happening. Add to that the burden of improvising what is going on and it may be a tad overwhelming for an inexperienced GM.

The only other very small quibble is that, while excellently written, the writing can get a little dense and flowery in sections, and I did find I had to reread the odd paragraph to fully digest it. Still, this issue pales in the face of the wonderful setting that the writing conveys.

Should I buy it?: In sum, then, Spire is highly recommended. It isn't going to be for every group and I would suggest that experienced GMs will find it an easier game to run. There is little help for those new to RPGs here and, though the book provides the usual rote descriptions of what an RPG is etc., the game perhaps takes this for granted and reads as if directed to those more experienced in this type of gaming. The system works for what the game and setting are trying to portray, but some will take it or leave it. Even if you fall into the latter camp, the setting itself is more than enough reason to pick this book up. It is full of gold and heaped with inspiring paragraphs. Buy it.

Style: 5 Substance: 5 Overall: 5

#Jun20