Players enjoy a good conspiracy. What they truly love is to be part of one. Games like Delta Green and Vampire The Masquerade bring the players together by surrounding them with secrets and making it hard to know who should be entrusted with forbidden knowledge. Spire: The City Must Fall, from Rowan, Rook and Decard, sets up the players in a conspiratorial role as members of a resistance cell. They’re tasked with taking action against the cruel rulers of the city and they’re the ones that must deal with the consequences of their actions one way or another. Designers Christopher Taylor and Grant Howitt team with illustrator Adrian Stone to bring a stunning fantasy punk universe to life. The company sent along a book for review. Does the city stand on its own? Let’s play to find out.
Spire tells the story of the titular city which has been home to the dark elves for thousands of years. Unfortunately, the high elves conquered it a few hundred years ago and these long lived beings have been living under the heel of oppression for that long. The players are part of the Ministry, a revolutionary group that’s trying to cast off the rule of the high elves. The game makes it clear that this is no good versus evil story like Star Wars. The Gamemaster section has an excellent discussion on how to adjust the shades of grey in the game to taste. Are there high elves sympathetic to your cause? Are there dark elves who cross the lines you won't? Victory seems unlikely for the Ministry. Even when they do strike a blow for freedom, the retaliatory strike will hit the rebels and the people they love even harder in return. The Empire doesn't just strike back, it puts its boot on their necks until they die.
The system running Spire will be familiar to folks who have played Apocalypse World or Blades In The Dark inspired games. You roll a small handful of dice and they determine whether you get a full success, a mixed success or a failure. In this case, it’s between one to four d10s with the highest roll determining how well the player does in their action. In the case of mixed success or failure, the player takes some stress on one of five resistance tracks. There are physical and mental stress tracks but there are also tracks that affect social elements of characters like reputation and available funds. When a player gains stress, they make a fallout check to try and roll over current stress levels. If they roll under their stress, some of it goes away, but the GM gets to inflict a juicy plot twist or lingering condition on the character.
This stress system takes the best elements from earlier mechanics of this time. The cycle of stress and fallout runs much faster than, say, Heat from Blades, though the game offers options to slow things down for longer term play. The game also brims with suggestions of fallout of different types and ones that affect specific character classes. These abundant examples help show GMs how hard they are supposed to hit back when the dice roll their way. Like many other titles in the Rowan, Rook and Decard library, this is a game where characters are supposed to be played like stolen cars and players should celebrate the opportunity to leave behind a spectacular wreck.
Advancement follows a very loose milestone system. Characters get new abilities based on how heavy the changes are to the city made by their cell. These mirror the low, medium and heavy ranking in fallout but feel like they are staggered out a bit more throughout a campaign. Low advancements should come every session, medium ones every story and big advancements feel like they should b e just in time for the character to go out in a blaze of glory in a session or two. Players can choose them based on their class but there are additional ones scattered throughout the books based on narrative choices they can make. I would probably let my players do a little pre-shopping to see what stories they’d want to pull from in a full campaign to allow me to seed the right moments in my stories. I also hope that somewhere there’s a master list of all these effects gathered into one place. This system worked for me but it might frustrate players who are used to more concrete experience systems or people who meticulously plan their characters from the start.
Adrian Stone did all the art in the book and he gives everything a moody, alien feel. There’s a Mike Mignola aspect to his style that makes me think of Hellboy whenever I see an illustration. That sense of strangeness is backed up by the description of a city that’s been steeped in magic for thousands of years. Exploring the city is one of the main reasons to play the game even though it seems unlikely the players will persevere. There are idiosyncratic character classes like vigilante weapon enchanters and part-spider matrons who fight to protect the next generation of dark elves. The city is full of evocative locations from the decadent ice towers of the rich to the weird abandoned magical subways that the rebels use to sneak around the city. Discovering the world of Spire makes the fatal aspect of the rebellion go down smoothly. It’s easy to see why the dark elves would put their lives on the line for such a fantastic, weird place. There’s so much to fight for and nothing will change even if the steps taken now don’t seem to go anywhere.
Spire: The City Must Fall offers a moody game in a dark city full of spies, revolutionaries and strange magic. It stands out thanks to solid mechanics, iconic artwork and a background that’s evocative but still gives plenty of room for gaming groups to explore on their own.
