GrimWild Remixes A Few Heavy Hitters Into Something Unique

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Getting players to try something beyond Dungeons & Dragons can be a challenge. It takes time and effort to master D&D. Some players don’t want to learn more rules to play a different game. Grimwild, from designer J.D. Maxwell with art by Per Janke, seems like it might have been initially created for gaming groups who want to move on from D&D but have a few holdouts reluctant to make the jump. It uses familiar structures like classes, fantasy adventure and recognizable monsters to ease players and GMs into a new system; one that borrows from a lot of indie and narrative sources as well. Does Grimwild slay the dragon? Let’s play to find out.

The biggest influence on GrimWild comes from Blades In The Dark. The game uses the d6 pools to determine whether or not a player gets a perfect, messy or grim result when they take action. It handles difficulty by adding in thorn dice that lower the success level by one if these d8 dice roll a seven or eight. Rather than clocks, narrative problems are represented by pools of d6 which are rolled whenever a clock might tick. Any dice that roll 1-3 exit the pool and when the pool is empty, the thing happens in the story. This could mean the monster is defeated, the wound is healed or the wizard’s magic is used up. I like how pools add a bit of dice goblin chaos back into the relatively methodical progress of the clock mechanic. The swingy nature of the d20 is often one of the most exciting things about the game. The pool mechanic adds a little bit of that feeling back in to give players those moments where a lucky roll can take out a big bad unexpectedly or keep that one darn goblin alive to annoy the party again.

The character paths follow the twelve classes included in Fifth Edition. Each one gives players some leeway in flavoring their class in a specific way. Some classes have options that are there for color while others, such as the magic options have a mechanical impact. Most of the time, the class includes a six by six chart of words where players are supposed to roll or select a few choices, mash them together and come up with functional character options. This method can be used for everything from paladin oaths to spell names.

Magic hits a sweet spot between freeform and lists of spells. Magic characters select a domain and then are given narrative benchmarks for what their powers can do. The power levels range from narrative declarations to rituals that require multiple participants and seem like a good source of climactic scenes. For example, a shadowblood sorcerer might be able to snuff out a candle or torch without a roll, strike someone blind with a spell roll, create a zone of darkness and silence with a spell roll and added thorns and blot out the sun if they can find the right artifacts and cast a ritual with a half dozen other shadowbloods. There’s some negotiation between player and GM here but the text does a good job in setting benchmarks, offering advice and including examples that frame the designer’s intent.

The GM advice is also one of the selling points of the book. Reading it reminded me of the first time I read Dungeon World and how that helped me grasp Powered by the Apocalypse games in a way I hadn’t yet. I’m more familiar with the mechanics used here, but there’s good, strong advice on how to move through a story with just the essentials and figuring things out during play. It’s not exactly the blank page that many indie RPGs suggest either. The back of the book offers several story kits that pack a lot of info for a story into an easy to read one page format. There are multiple hooks, characters, obstacles and even plot twists to choose from. Rather than a linear story the story kits provide prompts to keep things moving if your players go in an expected way. These kits are also not level dependent. If a GM wants to kick off a campaign where the players try to infiltrate a vampire lord’s ball they don’t have to worry about leveling up characters or leveling down villains.

Grimwild adopts the Kevin Crawford method of release with a mostly full free version with a paid version that includes more content. In this case that content is two more classes, more information of magic items, additional GM advice and some rules hacks to adjust the fantasy aspects to fit the players desires. The free version impressed me and I picked up the full version of the game shortly after completing this review.

Bottom line: Grimwild offers a fantasy game that bounces back and forth between player and Game Master. It pays reverence to the games in the past that inspires it but also finds a new way to move forward.
 

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Rob Wieland

Rob Wieland

I'm sorry, but this could not be more wrong. The classes are presented so people who are familiar with 5E are able to come into the game and see something they like.
And I dislike that those classes are presented in terms of pre-existing 5e class archetypes and their respective fantasies. Does the Warlock have a patron? Yes. Is the Sorcerer dealing with raw magic? Yes. Does the Wizard represent the scholarly mage? Yes. And so on. These are conceits of WotC D&D, and I don't like them regardless of whether the game plays more similarly to BitD.

In practice, the game plays nothing like 5E.
This is not my claim.

I know not everyone has time to invest in YouTube videos, but Knights of Last Call did a fantastic overview of the game. Take a look here and pretty much everything about the game will be discussed:

I am a member of KoLC, and I have seen this video already, and I have discussed my stance with Derik and his community on their Discord. My opinion stands, Steve.
 

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I am a member of KoLC, and I have seen this video already, and I have discussed my stance with Derik and his community on their Discord. My opinion stands, Steve.
There's nothing wrong with any of that and you play the games you like. You do you. I'm writing this for all the people who aren't you who might read this and think, "Oh, so this is just a 5E heartbreaker." I've read and played a lot of those. Grimwild is not that. Frankly, I think anyone coming at this just wanting a different 5E adjacent game will be disappointed unless they have some familiarity with other games.

You can take whatever position you like on this or any other game, no worries to me at all. But to say this is just a game that plays anything like 5E ... that's objectively wrong. I don't write that often, in fact this is the only time I can recall it (although I assume younger me probably did, and I apologize for it). Seems like I riled you up on this so let's just let it lie here. I wouldn't like to push people from checking the game out at least. You do you.
 

There's nothing wrong with any of that and you play the games you like. You do you. I'm writing this for all the people who aren't you who might read this and think, "Oh, so this is just a 5E heartbreaker." I've read and played a lot of those. Grimwild is not that. Frankly, I think anyone coming at this just wanting a different 5E adjacent game will be disappointed unless they have some familiarity with other games.

You can take whatever position you like on this or any other game, no worries to me at all. But to say this is just a game that plays anything like 5E ... that's objectively wrong. I don't write that often, in fact this is the only time I can recall it (although I assume younger me probably did, and I apologize for it). Seems like I riled you up on this so let's just let it lie here. I wouldn't like to push people from checking the game out at least. You do you.
It seems like you told me in pretty strong language that I "couldn't be more wrong," and you are surprised if I may seem a little miffed?

I have not said that the game plays like 5e D&D anywhere. So that's objectively a strawman, Steve.

I was very clear that I dislike that so many tabletop fantasy games out there are just giving me the class archetypes from 5e D&D down to the same list of class names. I would be inclined to play Grimwild if it chose to break out more from the 5e class list and presented a more unique fantasy. Like if a new MMO gave me the same class list and archetype flavor from the highly popular World of Warcraft, I would probably pass on that game too, even if those classes played differently from WoW.
 

I do agree that the D&D classes are a turn-off for me too, but the effect is mainly aesthetic - it’s like seeing bad art or bad writing. If I want to, I can push through that and see the game underneath, which is an interesting take on narrative play and isn’t particularly like 5E in any way. But it definitely can put people off.

I have a tendency with games - as the habitual GM - to take apart and summarise new games so that we as the table can discuss them and work out whether we want to play them, often adapted to a certain setting or set of ideas. So if we were to use GrimWild I’d probably take out the classes and retrofit a classless chargen system or maybe our own classes based on the setting (for instance, if we were running a Wheel of Time game I’d probably have to design classes based around Aes Sedai, Warders, ta’veren, and so on).
 

I feel like Grimwild is what I wanted from Shadowdark (and most of OSR anything). I want game mechanics to actually support behavior, not a mother-may-approach to rules-lite.

Also, I like Grimwild a LOT more than Dungeon World which never felt all that satisfying of a game for me - it never gave me all that interesting of outcomes.
 

Also, I like Grimwild a LOT more than Dungeon World which never felt all that satisfying of a game for me - it never gave me all that interesting of outcomes.
Your feedback about why Dungeon World 1e never felt satisfying would probably be appreciated by @Helena Real, who is one of the two designers for Dungeon World 2e.
 

I'm sorry, but this could not be more wrong. The classes are presented so people who are familiar with 5E are able to come into the game and see something they like. In practice, the game plays nothing like 5E. It is "Dungeons in the Dark," essentially being a mashup of classic fantasy gaming with Blades in the Dark. The game shows it's Blades and PbtA roots very strongly, and uses dice pools in the same manner as clocks to manage pretty much everything. Are you fighting a horde of goblins? Well, they get a pool of dice that you try and exhaust. Here's an example of a battle with an ancient dragon:
View attachment 400423

Does that look anything like 5E? You have a similar "stat block" for investigating a conspiracy or negotiating a peace treaty. It's not D&D.
Kind of? I mean, it's all the same abilities that a D&D red dragon has, just with a different system and different layout. Now, I love monsters. I'm one of those people that when I see a game where monsters are a major thing, I immediately go look at those monsters first, before I even bother to learn the system. I have to admit I'm very disappointed that these are the typical D&D monsters here. A demon/devil divide with all the D&D standbys like balors and vrocks, otyughs, chuuls, and apparently dragon-loving kobolds (even if humanoids aren't statted up as monsters), and OGL-dodging "duplication beasts" and "carcass crawlers." For a non-D&D game, I want to see non-D&D monsters and/or either a fresh take or a myth-accurate takes on classic monsters. So, for me, personally, that's a big negative for this book.

(Also, and I hate to do this, under the Dragon entry, in the poison entry, you (Edit: meaning whoever wrote/edited this) misspelled "retching." Wretch means miserable person; retch means vomit. Although I imagine being poisoned by a dragon would make one feel wretched.)

I did a very quick skim of the chargen part. It really does feel D&D-ish even if it is "more flexible." That's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at how popular DungeonWorld is after all. I've never played that, though, specifically because of how D&D it feels to me. Grimwild does seem like it would more interesting to play, though, and I'll definitely read it in its entirety. I haven't played or run any Baldes in the Dark games yet, though, and the ones I've read are all based around specific types of missions, so I look forward to seeing how Grimwild works, because it doesn't seem to have that singular hook.
 
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@Faolyn you said "you misspelled" to @SteveC like he wrote the game. Or am I missing something here?
Oh I have nothing to do with the game other than enjoying it. When I release an RPG I'll make sure to let everyone here know so you can love or hate it as you want. I promise. It very much does feel like Dungeon World (which I sort of think of as a starting point for a lot of people) with Blades in the Dark. I find that aside from descriptive terms, it has very little to do with D&D. I think it does a lot of things that people think D&D should or hints at, but within the rules. For instance, the Warlock is all about the Pact. It's the core of what that character is. You define the desires for your Patron, and then it has a pool of Patience dice. If you don't advance those desires, you roll that pool and when it runs out, your Patron shows up to clear up the issue. That's what I think a lot of people want the 5E Warlock to be but in practice ... it's just another class. I know this because I've played several of them. You play a Warlock because you want to explore those kinds of stories, not because you want Eldritch Blast.

I would say that all of the classes are like that. It's as if someone sat down and thought about what the class was actually about and then put it in play by the rules. And I like that a lot.
 

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