#113: Walking up Spire!
I. Dear Reader,
We continue our series, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities”, where we look at cities in TTRPGs. To learn more, read the introduction post. Previously, we looked at Doskvol (from Blades in the Dark).
Today, we look at Spire from Spire: The City Must Fall, written by Grant Howitt and Christoper Taylor, published by Rowan Rook & Decard in 2018. The setting-related writing is about 100-120 pages (8 by 11, or full size, I believe) if you include the appendices.
Reminder: This isn't a critique or a review. My intention is to primarily just understand what this game thinks is important when it comes to building a city that is fun to play in. Also, a disclaimer, I worked with RRD on their supplement for Spire (called SIN).
Key Features
Spire is a book to be read. This isn’t a book of bullet points, mini-maps, random tables, and so on. This is prose and your best map is the table of contents. And as maps go, it’s not a sophisticated topographical one, it’s more like a star chart for mid-century sailors. It orients you and gives you headings (ha!) but you must make your own way through the sea of text.
Luckily for me, the table of contents is clear on what the book thinks is important - what Spire is about - through the section titles: Academia (8 pages), Commerce (12), Crime (6), High Society (16), Low Society (12), Occult (18), Order (8), Religion (18).
High Society, Occult, and Religion are clearly the key pillars of the playground of Spire. But don’t let the low page count on crime fool you, the whole city is full of crime. Those six pages are just the ones for tourists.
Each of these sections (Academia, Religion, and so on) consists of locations, institutions, and people sketched out in a couple paragraphs. The paragraphs, on the whole, are fun to read. Actually, that’s an understatement. They’re full of weird ideas that grab you by the collar and shake you till you put them into your game. It’s a master-class in sprinkling plot hooks like fairy dust. Every page has a terrible person doing an awful thing that you might want to get involved in (and even, stop).
This kind of writing isn’t mysterious. Yes, writing is an art. But these paragraphs employ learnable techniques (like providing details in threes, focusing on change, suggestive phrasing, etc) that generate that feeling of “kinetic potential” that makes us excited to use them in play.
Also, don’t get me wrong: 90 odd pages of text is a lot to read, internalize, and communicate to players. But, hey, at least the text isn’t bad.
There are example stat-blocks peppered between the sections. These are extremely spare: names, descriptors, stats, and loot.
As in many city books, in Spire, there’s no bestiary. Just a list of people. It’s like the game knows that players will want to kill anything that moves and that to be a real game, this killing must be designed for. I don’t mean to single out RRD, of course: they didn’t invent gamer culture, it was always burning.
The end result is a truly maximalist setting. Spire goes on in every direction and exists in many dimensions, literally and metaphorically. And there’s no sense that the designers expect you to know all of it (or even half of it). From their campaign starters, the sense I get is that most games are meant to be focused on one district, on one bizarre crisis. GMs are expected to prep by taking the game’s ideas and then building out the district that the game will play in.
Conclusions
While writing about Doskvol, I said that the first part of this series is like one hand clapping. You can’t do much till you have something to compare it with.
Like Doskvol, Spire is covered in darkness except for the very top. It too wears its class politics easily. In Spire, direction is everything. The closer to the top you are, the better your life is. The lower you go, the worse that life gets - and trust me, you can go very, very low.
Like Doskvol, Spire looks you in the eye and says, “Cities are fucked up, aren’t they?” Which is funny. Because in the next breath, both games say, “So would you like to go on adventures in them?” It’s got be a black humour that drives us to these worlds surely.
Both cities cast you as morally-complicated protagonists, as if it’s almost a function of cities themselves. In Tolkien’s countryside, you might be a shining hero on a silver steed. But here, in the city, Gandalf won’t save you, he was voted out in favour of Grima Wormtongue. Or at least that’s what Wormtongue says and there’s rent to pay so nobody asks too many questions.
Doskvol was a city for heists. Spire is a city for revolutionaries, rebels and terrorists - no wonder everywhere you look there’s a horrible little person doing some giant heinous thing.
Yours darkly,
Thomas
PS. Up next, talk about contrasts, it’s the first OSR sourcebook that we’ll do, Magical Industrial Revolution by Skerples!
II. Listen of the Week
Electronic musician State Azure gives us 40 minutes of ambient graveyard music for those who want just the lightest touch of spookiness in the background of their games, courtesy of MCDM.
Read The Fucking Manual has a new episode about transhumanist RPG, Eclipse Phase. Lot of interesting discussion about what a transhumanist game should be about.
III. Links of the Week
What makes a game scary? Emma Kostapulos writes in Unwinnable that, “My working theory, my grand idea that I’d like to convince you all of as you continue to read this column, is that the horror of videogames, and a lot of horror more generally, rests on the fear of time. You don’t do something at the correct time, you miss an opportunity, and bad things happen.”
A review of Himbos of Myth and Mettle by Maxwell Lander, an OSR-ish game of hot, nice, but not very clever adventurers.
The second part of Lowell Francis’ review of cyberpunk games since 2017.
Kickstarter has a new CEO and he doesn’t have much to say about anything.
Ben L of Mazirian’s Garden writes about his process when writing up settings and adventures such as Through Ultan’s Door.
Ben Riggs talks about how TSR bought the Forgotten Realms as a setting for just 4000$ from Ed Greenwood.
On reddit, u/dannyb2525 basically writes a new GM’s guide for Cyberpunk Red and people like it!
Luke of Gray Castle Press breaks down his numbers from setting up his game as Deal of the Day on drivethruRPG.
Chris Bisette also does a financial breakdown of their new Mork Borg adventure , Vermillion Throne.
IV. Small Ads
All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.
As the Sun Forever Sets is a horror game about trying to survive the collapse of the British Empire during the Martian Invasion. Alien war machines, unearthly sights & dread await.
MÖRKTOBER is here! Each day in October, make something for MÖRK BORG inspired by the prompts and share it. An item, scroll, weapon or anything else. Tag it #MÖRKTOBER2022.
This newsletter is currently sponsored by the Bundle of Holding.
A quick deal of Monsters and Other Childish Things from Arc Dream Publishing and a regular bundle of solo journaling games that help you write with indie hits like Artefact, Bucket of Bolts, Apothecaria, and The Magus.
Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. I’m half-man, half-beast, half-journalist, half-game designer.
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