Spire: the City Must Fall by Rowan, Rook and Decard, is a tabletop roleplaying game about being a dark elf (or 'drow') in a huge city run by high elves (or 'aelfir'). The city is called 'Spire', and so as well as being the name of the game is also the name of the place the game is set. The drow are poorly treated by their aelfir masters, and so the theme of the game is about leading a revolution again injustice.
How is it different to D&D
Spire is in the genre of fantasy, but it is very unlike its progenitor, Dungeons and Dragons. It shares may tropes and mechanics with D&D, such as dice-rolling, character classes, and the basic idea of dark elves (called drow) with dark skin, and high elves with fair skin. However, many of these tropes are subverted. For example, the drow in D&D are generally evil, dwelling underground, worshipping a spider-goddess, enslaving other races and fighting among themselves for dominance. In Spire, the drow are victims of history, the underdogs caught up in a system that works against them. They must stay away from the sun due to sensitivity to daylight. They are connected with spiders, but also the moon.
The high elves are different also. In D&D they are a good-aligned race, immortal, but posing great wisdom and magic, often able to help or accompany the heroes. In this game, the fair skinned elves are egocentric and unfeeling, caring little for their drow cousins (if they are a related race) except what they can get from them.
There are also humans and gnolls (another race from D&D). Humans are skilled machinists, who invented firearms and are normally working in Spire as mercenaries. The hyena-faced gnolls are the geopolitical enemies of the aelfir from the south, described as demon-summoning, but also having an affinity for agriculture, with a cosmopolitan capital city.
So Spire is a city that is dominated economically, politically and socially by a white-skinned people with a dark-skinned underclass. Spire is therefore an analogy of unjust situations that are occurring in the real world. But Spire doesn't directly flip the D&D standards. The aelfir are not completely evil, and the drow aren't all good. There is no morality system in this game, and none of the characters that are encountered are truly evil. Everyone is, or was, a person. To quote the book: "A bad person, perhaps, but still a person."
Themes
Because the morality isn't binary, but rather shades of grey, this is not a simple heroic fantasy. It is rather more of a noir in genre. The drow definitely deserve to live a life with more agency, have more control over how they live, and be able to make decisions for themselves. But the game shows how difficult that is going to be, not least because the drow live in an authoritarian society that fosters suspicion and distrust as a method of control. The revolutionary organisation, the Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress, may well decide that the players are causing too many problems for them to remain secret, and so betray them to aelfir secret police.
This means that the players are not going to win. The eventual fate of their characters will either be death, betrayal, imprisonment, or something far worse than any of those. But, they can tell an interesting story about the fight against injustice, and the moral compromises that sometimes need to be made while doing so.
System
The gaming system is somewhat similar to the Forged in the Dark system, used by Blades in the Dark (among others), and the Powered by the Apocalypse system used by Root (among others). In Spire the players roll ten-sided dice (D10), instead of six-sided (D6s), but a full success is an 8, 9 or 10 (with a ten as a critical success). Probabilistically this makes success slightly easier in Spire than in Blades in the Dark, which requires at least one six. However, I feel that in Spire the characters are probably going to be rolling less dice than in BitD, so it probably balances out.
Character Creation
I am going to show how character creation works by making a character.
Character creation starts by choosing a durance. The durance is the four years of indentured servitude to a high elf that most drow go through. This is a requirement from the aelfir in exchange for allowing the drow to live in Spire.
I decide that my character was a Human Emissary, chosen by a trading house to work dealing with humans. As such my character has the domains or technology and commerce, but no bonus skills
Next we choose a class, which is like a profession or identity. The character classes in this game are wonderfully creative.
Azurite, Bound, Midwife and Vermissian Sage all appeal. I decided to choose Azurite, and a concept begins to develop. My character is a dealer or fixer, providing weapons and supplies to the Ministry. I start with +2 silver and reputation, and the compel and deceive skills. I get the commerce domain again, so I choose the knack of weapons and ammunition, and a new domain of Low Society. Finally I choose two low advances, Gold-blooded (I can buy my way out of gunshot wounds), and Hidden Stashes (access to extra money and extra single piece of equipment, once per round).
Finally, the player chooses a name for their character, and some bonds.
I decide that my character is female, and named Silace (SIL-ar-chey). She is bonded to Parcefal, a human trader who is most interested in buying potions and ointments. She also has a bond with a PC who incurred a large gampling debt that she was able to buy him out from.
Summary
Spire is one of the most creative TTRPGs I have seen in a while. But it deals with some tough topics. The drow are not technically chattel slaves of the aelfir, but the durance is still bonded labour, albeit with a fixed duration. You would definitely need the right kind of gaming group in order to get the most out of it. For example some of the scenarios written up in the Strata sourcebook deal with some fairly heavy themes, though these are thoughtfully given content warnings at the beginning.
Having said all of that, I am definitely looking forward to running a game at some point soon.
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