Everyone is a nerd for something. Even though the worlds of sports and role-playing games seem to never cross over, it takes just a little digging to see that people can be fans of both. Even the nerd bars here in Wisconsin have Green Bay Packers games on during the football season. Storybrewers Roleplay looks to bring these two divergent worlds together with their recently released Fight With Spirit. Designers Vee Hendro and Hayley Gordon sent a digital copy for review, though I have had my eye on the game since it Kickstarted a few years ago. Does this game take home the gold? Let’s play to find out.
Fight With Spirit mixes the drama of sport with the personal drama of the people who play the game. It cites sports anime as a major influence, which matches the bold layout and art style in the game. However, this genre has plenty of live-action inspirations too, such as Friday Night Lights and Ted Lasso. Each episode is structured in a similar way: players play through conflicts and challenges off the field to gain Fight and Spirit tokens to give them an advantage during the climactic match at the heart of each episode. It’s not just about winning the game, it’s about proving to yourself that you could go pro if you wanted, or showing your mother that the team is much more than just an after school activity. There’s the drama of the last second shot or pivotal penalty kick but the real focus is on the story of each of the players and what the sport means to them.
The first part of session zero locks into choosing that sport. The bass assumption is the players are teenagers or college students playing mostly for pride and fun. The rules are slightly different for group sports or individual sports but beyond that the choice of the sport is mostly narrative. One of the discussions to be had is how deep and technical everyone should get with the sport which is a good choice to make sure folks who are into the sport don;t overshadow ones who are there for the roleplaying. Players also choose one of four teams, each one telling a classic sports story. Do you want to be the top dogs trying to stay dominant? The plucky losers looking to change their fortune? The former kings looking to rebuild? The team overstuffed with talent that never quite brings home the championship? Each of these selections adds specific match cards to the deck that can come up during a game and shapes the overall narrative of the season. Players then build out not just their characters but the relationships and rivals from the other teams. This is where the setups are encouraged to get as soapy as possible full of ex-teammates, old flames, unrequited crushes and more.
The first half of each session involves scenes featuring the non-sport life of each character. Everyone starts with trouble tokens that they can give to another player to suggest trouble that can arise in a session. Each character also has their own issues based on their traits and connections. Resolving these problems give the character Fight and Spirit tokens that they can use in the match to give themselves better odds by drawing more cards. During the match each player draws a card to reflect a pivotal moment in the game that they must overcome. Most often, it’s usually drawing a hand of numbered cards to beat a difficulty number but many of the match game cards are minigames of their own to win the points needed to be victorious. This element took a little bit to figure out but once I saw it in play I loved the variations and how they seemed to fit each situation well.
Fight With Spirit is built to be an episode storytelling game that culminates with the championship match. This is not a game with linear progression. If you want to play another story, characters reshuffle traits, draw new connections and talk about next year's tournament. There’s even a special challenge card that acts like a montage for groups that want to skip ahead to the Big Game. This is a shared narrative game like Fiasco which makes it a good choice for people that might be into the idea of RPGs but are scared off by attack modifiers and spell slots.
The game focuses on normal drama and situations but there are also setups for folks who can’t quite leave that stuff behind. One of these setpieces, as they are called, focuses on the kind of Magic Sport that were much more popular a few years ago before a certain wizards franchise lost a lot of fans. There’s also a historical setpiece focused on the struggle of women’s sports to gain a good reputation.
Should Storybrewers Roleplay consider an expansion, there are two things I would love to see. The first is a science fiction setpiece as I could see this rulesset as an excellent choice for the struggles of a lightcycle racing team or groups of discus throwing computer programs battling each other. The second would be what happens when the players go pro and have to deal with the bigger forces in pro sports. It could serve as a sequel to this game or it could work well on its own.
Fight With Spirit offers an excellent narrative experience for fans of sport who want to roleplay or fans of roleplay who want see what the fuss is about on game day.
