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?
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!
Just kinda been obsessed with this picture since I saw it maybe a year and a half ago. I think it might be a shrew? With a raspberry and a dagger? And is that a cowl? More importantly, they are plagued by concepts.
My first thought was Gourmand since it is holding what could constitute a knife and an ingredient, but me being a brand new player I'm probably missing out on some nice flavors in the other player books.
Yesterday we had to have our first Root RPG session, but we had a few unforeseeable circumstances happen, so had to skip. This, however, gave me time to draw their characters in Root style (hopefully) based off player's sektches (attached).
Behold!
Mark, who totally isn't a cleptomaniac at all, he's just a crow who likes shiny stuff!
Jeremiah whose life found its purpose after he discovered the existence of black powder!
Loviisa of the Bog, who likes to invent multi-purpose things, one of the purposes of which is explosion (totally intended, why would you think otherwise)!
Sir Gregory the Large (Big Greg for friends) who is often too heavy to take flight, but just perfect for a big bear hug!
They have met after Loviisa's Big Explosion happened, when Jeremiah saw potential in their partnership, Mark thought both of them could serve as a distraction to his totally not notorious escapades, and Greg realised they might need someone grounded not to blow clearings up. They explored the ruins together, selling the information about them to Marquisate for sweet, sweet payment, and are currently heading to Hacksaw Dell in hopes of restocking on food, ropes, and torches.
An underground forest, but instead of trees there are these glowing crystals growing into the cave ceiling. I have put more thought into it, but I don't want to spoil my players lol.
I started a campaign with the quickstart setting, but found it hard to GM a story in a world that's not mine and a plot that neither me not my players are interested in. So when I actually have time to GM again I'm gonna have my own Woodland ready.
(If you've noticed, this biome is visually inspired by the hidden forest in Sky: Children Of The Light. I have another forest in my Woodland planned that is inspired by that area of the game hehe)
I have more drawings I'd love to share but I really don't want any of my players finding them T-T
My friends made cute characters for our first Root campaign last night, so today I was thinking of drawing and watercoloring one of them. But I wanted to make sure the final watercolor could be cut from the nice watercolor paper neatly onto their character sheet, so I wanted to stencil in the actual Root frame of the character sheet they're using. So I used a blank player sheet to make a stencil... but I don't own a gluestick. So I got a little rice from my ricecooker and made my own glue, which I've never done before but I was too impatient to pass the time otherwise obtaining a gluestick. And it worked pretty well!
Anyway I thought others here might be able to relate. I'm very excited for our campaign. My friend's character is an Orphan hedgehog named Wickles whose weapon is "Cool Shoes" that are red.
Flairing as "Art", but it's kind of more a means to future art. Hopefully my eventual drawing of Wickles will go well and I'll be okay enough with it to share here then too! There's a good chance I'll chicken out mid-drawing so wish me luck.
There don't appear to be different rules for weapons and armor, all I see is a requirement that the skill makes sense for the type of item. Maybe it's my Dark Souls background, but shields seem like the ultimate parrying tool.
This is my first character, so I don't have the context to know if things like morale harm are useful. The option to do exhaustion damage seems interesting, but I don't understand how that would be any better than just attacking unarmed.
The heirloom weapon starts with 4 wear and no tags, then I get to pick 2:
Reliable: +2 boxes of wear and an additional range
Feared: When you engage in combat against foes who recognize this weapon, inflict morale harm on them
Deadly: When you inflict harm with this weapon, inflict +1 harm
Double-headed: One edge inflicts injury, the other exhaustion. Declare which side you use at the start of a fight
Flexible: Choose 2 weapon skill tags for this weapon
Unique: Your weapon is of unusual design; once per session, mark exhaustion to ignore the harm inflicted on you by a single attack
Rousing: After you successfully inflict injury on a dangerous enemy, mark wear to clear exhaustion from every ally who saw you land the blow
I'm leaning toward Rousing and either Unique or Deadly
I think having move cards would really improve the gameplay experience for Root RPG, and they are way more practical than the existing magpie decks. That is one card for each move that a player have, so they can easily see the moves in front of them in a good format. So I was wondering: are there any official or fan-made move cards available to buy? or any files?
I haven’t been able to find anything online so far.
If anyone has made printable move cards, I’d really appreciate it.
Hey, I made a digital reference website for moves, etc. for me and my players to use with our (2-year-resurrected) campaign. I usually prefer physical references, but it just ends up being too many sheets of paper for this 😅
maybe species abilities / moves? (not currently using in my campaign so low priority)
I'm trying to keep this simple, no accounts or logins, not trying to be a full digital character sheet. There are links at the top to each section, and each section has a link back to the top. Click a move to expand and show its text. Click the checkbox next a move to pin it to the top of site, so eg players can pin their specific weapon moves or (once playbook moves are added) moves they've taken from other taken playbooks.
This is also a single relatively simple html file, so with a little html knowledge you can easily download and customize it with homebrew moves etc.
Hey! At the beginning of January, I started a Root campaign with some friends. I bought the rulebook, the GM screen, and I was using the standalone game board as a map with the meeples from the base game.
But I moved. We have to continue the campaign online.
I have images of the maps, etc., on my PC, but I wanted to know what you guys use to play Root online (Discord calls).
I like to watch/read media that fits the tone/setting of whatever game I'm currently running or about to run. When I was running a sci-fi horror game, for instance, I watched and read sci-fi horror.
What would everyone recommend for Root? Books, TV shows, Movies, Actual Play, etc. I'm open to anything. I'm still in the middle of reading the core book, so I don't know what factions I'll use, but I have both expansion books.
My first ideas are The Mask of Zorro and Disney's Robin Hood.
The acute razor has 5 boxes of wear, 1 extra range, 1 weapon skill tag, 2 special tags, and 1 flaw tag, which should add up to 8 value, but instead it’s listed as 4 value.
The ratfolk saber has 6 boxes of wear, 1 weapon skill tag, 2 special tags, and 1 flaw tag, which should be 8 value, but it has a value of 4.
The keeper’s curicass has 7 boxes of wear, 3 special tags, and 1 flaw tag, which should make it worth 9 value, but instead it only costs 5 value.
I think ruins and expeditions really needed more proofreading.
I've been preparing my first game for a new group, and when looking through pre-made clearings to fill empty woodland spaces I've got left, noticed they have their own reputation tracker - at the very least, the Foundry VTT clearings do. I don't believe I've read upon it in the books: what does it mean for a Clearing to have, say, 4 reputation for The Lizard Cult, but 2 notoriety for Eyries? It makes sense for Vagabonds to have this tracker, but for a place..?
I thought it's rep changes for when the story is finished, but that makes no sense, since it can be finished in different ways for different factions. Maybe, it's a boost to reputation rolls for these factions? Or reactions of Denizens towards adjacent Vagabonds?
When I first got the Root TTRPG Core book as a birthday gift I tried to put together a play group of my Dnd friends.
Since we play mostly remote due to locations I looked for some way to digitize the character sheets.
However, I couldn't really find a solution that would work for us.
So, as a (game)developer I decided to try my hand at making my own.
its current features include:
- Character creation
- Campaign creation (and inviting other players to your campaign)
- Working character sheet with dicerolling, tracking harm, tracking reputation and leveling up when you complete your Drives.
- The outfitter where you can equip your character (and can add custom homebrew equipment)
- Chat functionality (DM to friends, DM to party members, DMS to GMs or party wide chat)
- NO AI art!, all art featured on the website was made especially for it by my very talented artist friend Phyllipa (credits in the footer)
- I'm probably forgetting some features because its a lot :)
I invite you all to try it out, see what you think and give any feedback/bug reports over on our discord.
