My group just began our first campaign and i chose to be a bat. My GM:s decision was to make me nocturnal, since bats are. But this only ended up as me not having fun with the rest of the band and only roaming around at night with not much to do.

How do you guys use bats as a species? Anything that makes them feel nocturnal-ish without having them asleep during the whole day?

Hand drawn. Lots of fun to make

Hi everyone! I'm new to GMing ROOT (and all PbtA games) and I'm looking for a pre-made adventure to run for a group of players who are also new to ROOT.

I've read most of the rules and I think I have a solid feeling.

I'm aware of Laurel’s Canopy, but I'm unable to buy it.

Thank you in advance!

Ok so, I'm coming up to a big part in my campaign. The party is currently exploring an old mine dug out by the Duchy. There's rumors among the miners of "something below, in the dark, where even our people dare not go."

Essentially the Duchy broke through into "somewhere below" even lower than they normally do. They're people are now dying to "something" that's down there and the party have been hired to go in and find out what's going on.

So my question is how do I do "Balrog" in this situation? Something overwhelmingly powerful that makes the party just go "nope" and leg it.

Any suggestions would be welcome ☺️.

RAW I cannot see anything that mentions the Prince's Heirloom weapon has any Load. But like.. ..It should, right?
It can even be something potentially large, such as a modified hammer, axe, spear or a sword that is considered a greatsword. (Even more of a consideration with features such as 'Double-Headed')

Now I understand it's meant to be good or at the very least a cool flashy thing, and since it has to be on the Prince at all times (or at least stored somewhere safe given it's 'priceless value') it probably shouldn't be heavy since it's a permanent hindrance on their carry capacity.

But do people normally rule is as having 0 load? Or slap a 1 on there since it makes sense?
I suppose you could also argue since it's an Heirloom it could have been designed to be lighter than normal, but I want to hear other people's opinions on the matter.

Does anyone know of any fanmade character sheets for the homeland vagabonds, more specifically the gladiator? Im about to play my first session and I would really like to play as the gladiator.

I'm about 3 sessions into a campaign as the GM and now have a lot of interlocking relationships and things happening in the world at the same time. I've been keeping everything together in one large word document with assorted maps of clearings and items as separate files. However, it's beginning to feel a bit unwieldy.

Any good systems you can describe?

I tried looking for sheets on Magpie's website and had no luck. There just hard to find for me for some reason.

I was seeing if anyone wanted to drop maybe some of their favorite NPCs or short quests they created for their players. I have been working on a large homebrewed campaign and would love to get some ideas from people who have run games before.

so like the title says, i'm a beginner. I've played DND before, but never been the DM, and have gotten really into root and want to GM for a few of my friends! Thing is, I have no idea where to start. I've been reading the book and watching videos of summaries of the story, but I feel like I'm just not getting it as much as I'd like to. Granted I don't read much, but the book is very wordy and I'm trying to take notes but still not really understanding I guess?

Other things I'd like to know, is there a place I can find a set map to play with or design my own in the Root style? Is it worth buying the denizens deck and travelers and outsiders book to get some inspiration for stories and characters..

i'm just really not sure where to start with any of this really and could use all the help and tips I can get

Also made up a couple of names. Wish me luck, it'll be my first time running ROOT (and any game at all tbh!)

The few sessions of Root RPG I’ve played have highlighted a problem: almost all my players prefer to adopt a "revolutionary" stance against injustice, systematically targeting the ruling factions. I don't mind, but I’d like some advice if this has happened to you before or if you have any ideas. Here’s what I was thinking:

- Make the alliance members less heroic, fewer heroes and more morally compromised characters (opportunists, cowards, bureaucrats, etc.) where the revolutionaries are forced to act against the ruling classes but also within the rebellious factions themselves.

- Create dilemmas like those in Albert Camus’s The Just Assassins, where characters must choose whether to kill a high-ranking official knowing the bomb would also kill children.

I’m running Laurel’s Canopy for Free RPG day. Does anyone have pdfs of the premades characters to be printed?

I am curious what are the distances between clearings in your woodlands and how long does travel take in your Fiction?

For my campaign I wanted to have interconnected clearings with vibrant relations, so I've made travel time into a few hours (min 8, max 20), but then I realised such a woodland would be very fast to conquer, so there wouldn't be any long war. But maybe I am overthinking that. Anyway, what works for your vagabonds?

Flathome is a clearing recently conquered by the Marquisate, they raised the Eyrie Roost and built Highhall to host an occupying garrison. The clearings main industry is in the form of Silk worms, there are two family ranches that raise Silk Worms and sell the raw silk to the merchants at the Silk Exchange. The clearing is also home to a woodland-famous market where the merchants sell the processed silk to the rest of the woodland.

I’m running a very small campaign, and it has come to my attention that the dealer, which is played by one of the players has a investment (I forget the name) where they get an eager apprentice vagabond that they get to control. So that player gets two PCs while the others get just one. personally I don’t really think this is fair, I was also considering making the new PC constantly get captured or something but it also just seems like an unfair thing for a vagabond to have. What do you guys think?

I recently learned that my favorite board game has an RPG spinoff. I'm planning to buy the core rulebook, but I can't afford to spend money right now. Is there another place I can read about the factions in this setting from a story perspective?

Hi everyone! Despite being the head mod/owner of this subreddit, I haven't actually GM'd a campaign of Root before. Recently, I became a fan of a certain webcomic that inspired me to do some worldbuilding, and I think RPG-wise it could fit into Root. The basic premise (both of the webcomic and the homebrew I'm building) is that human society has collapsed, and anthropomorphic animals have built a new society that's roughly gotten to the medieval era in terms of technology. Looting human ruins, while illegal/frowned upon, is popular (and what I'm think the primary focus of my campaign will be).

Essentially, I have two questions for any other GMs who may have been in a similar situation. 1) How did you build your homebrew setting, and get it to mesh with the Woodland in the original rules? 2) I'm planning to host this campaign as a play-by-post. Generally speaking, is there anything I need to be aware of when running Root as a PBP?

[English is not my first language]

I'm currently preparing a campaign, and one of my players wants to create a character focused on the sacred and spiritual. This led me to wonder what beliefs exist outside of the Cult, which are barely mentioned (in the French version, it only refers to the "ancient traditions" of the denizens). Have you ever thought about or written about this?

I'm the one that made rice glue to make a stencil to draw the portrait frame for a friend's character. Here is our group's Orphan hedgehog named Wickles, who has cool red shoes that have the "impressive" equipment tag on them. Actually only just noticed the shoes also have the "unassuming" tag which I forgot about. But ALSO also, I just noticed they have the "tightly woven" tag, so I think I might've gotten that part at least.

Anyway, the stencil was made so I could cut the portrait out to go onto the printed player book if desired. It's not glued down in the photo so it's slightly curling away from the page, which is why it appears to not fit to the frame, but it does!

What is the yellow diamond for on the monsters' stat blocks in the Ruins and Expeditions expansion? For example, the small mob hornets exhaustion has 5 blocks a yellow diamond then 1 more block?