Spire: It’s “high elves” vs. “drow” but not D&D! 🔪🧝‍♀‍ RPG Review & Mechanics

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Spire: The City Must Fall is a tabletop RPG published in 2018 by Rowan Rook and Decard. The game takes place on a dark, mysterious arcology called Spire, where cruel high elves rule over an angry, desperate drow society.
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🐤 Grant Howitt on Twitter: @gshowitt
🐤 Chris Taylor on Twitter: @TheMaddigan
🐤 Adrian Stone on Twitter: @stoneadrianart
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Special thanks to Grant for discussing some issues about the book. All opinions in the video are my own.
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[@DoomOnYou72]

If you’re gonna do Spire you need to do it’s companion Heart

[@zoeyfurie7449]

This video is just what I was looking for!! Great summary that told me everything I wanted to know while still being succinct enough for me to watch in one sitting without getting bored. I just purchased Spire and now only hope I can get together a group serious enough for the proper tone. Hope you do a video on Heart as well :)

[@TheDustPann]

You can use Heart as a group sever fallout. Where either they are being hunted and abandoned by the Ministry. They do have a story that converts your Spire character into a Heart character. I suppose you could even one day rise back to the top and switch between the two systems, if your character is sane enough to remember the old ways.

[@DaveThaumavore]

ERRATA: Heart is a standalone game, not a supplement. Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Newsletter sign-up: bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter

[@Seneca_dengo_dengo]

Dave remains the best RPG reviewer in the Game right now.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Very humbling. Thank you.

[@matthewmcfadden6332]

These are big facts

[@MrAttentionHorse]

Great video. One thing though - Heart isn't an addon or an expansion, it's a separate game, a sequel. Kinda like things from the flood is a sequel to tales from the loop.

[@DaveThaumavore]

Ah, thanks for the correction. I’ll start an errata.

[@MrAttentionHorse]

@@DaveThaumavore they did release an addon for transfering your Spire characters over to Heart though, so the games are very much connected.

[@JoseAngelC]

Dark elven vigilante Blades in the Dark (sounds awesome)

[@godfreemorals]

Well, I'm inSPIREd....... I'll get me coat.

[@richardextall2002]

This is a really interesting setting. I also consider 'replayability' when considering a new system. Sometimes, a game you can bring out every few months is whats needed to give a break from a long campaign using a ruleset you play all the time. You play for a couple of weeks, have fun, then get back to the campaign with a new sense of energy.

[@TheShoo]

Initially, kinda feels like Snowpiercer

[@georgee4810]

May I suggest "They Came from Beneath the Sea" next?

[@tylerh2548]

I own Heart but not Spire. I learned of Spire through Heart. Interesting idea: start with a Heart campaign, then later move it to Spire so players can see the stark difference between the wilderness of Heart vs. the urban distopia of Spire

[@thecarrotclarinet]

From what I understand Gnolls are more interested in demonology and magitech sciences than being "gangsters" or something. Heart goes more in depth in that I believe

[@thecarrotclarinet]

Also, and sorry for the nitpick, fallout according to rules as written occurs when the die result is under the total stress track, not a singular resistance like Blood and Mind

[@phoenixknight8837]

Good review! 👍

[@Daxet78]

Very Nice!

[@kalleendo7577]

Awesome!!

[@EchoByrnes]

I wanna read this, but I'm not sure I would play it, or anyone I know would be interested in playing it

[@xdan-]

Since you reviewed Spire, are you going to review Heart?

[@DaveThaumavore]

Yeah I was thinking about it.

[@xdan-]

@@DaveThaumavore Nice! Looking forward to it if you do it.

[@deusvault5732]

I love heart and spire the only problem i have is there implicit want for you not to make it darker. But it having a dark tone with lords and slaves that aren't slaves

[@Ptaku93]

cool, really cool

[@tompuce84]

[@fariondragon]

Small correction, drow aren’t dark skinned. Atleast not all of them. This is necessary to not make the racial element *too* obvious.

[@tukkerintensity5575]

@1:35

[@lilcthulhu8065]

The Drow are described as a 'monochromatic' race, while the Aelfir are creatures of magic and colour (though I imagine they have an auric glow to their skin like a frickin lightsabre personally).

[@Aizuaka]

*Sigh* ... *Opens Wallet* I have to stop watching your videos for my bank account's sake.

[@natel7151]

I like the concept because Drow, but the Drow are kind of superficial Drow here. There's the spiders and eggs, and a superficial aversion to sunlight (in a sunless setting, is kind of pointless) but it's kind of unsatisfying as Drow. Non-sensual (as opposed to nonsensical), grubby, grimy, proletarian Dark-skinned Elves. Proletarian Elf more than Drow, really. You get the sense that rich/dominant = bad, but that's kind of anti-Drow to me. IMO, Drow aren't minimalistic, dark-skin-as-moral-superior Proletariat class of Elf... but I played AD&D, so perhaps I think things the wrong way. Compared to the tightly controlled society in Free League's MYZ Elysium, the Spire makes no sense. There's little that works in the Spire, and no real purpose for the Spire or the High Elves except as REVOLUTION!!!!!(CAPS LOCK). It's a city without commerce. A working class without work. There's an occupation by the oppressors, but no sense of why they'd even want to occupy such an awful and pointless place. Everything that might work has a heavy, heavy dose of REVOLUTION!!!!!! to it, such that there's little sense that anything actually happens except flinging sabots into the cogs. Add to it the game's primary principle that there can be subversion without destruction in this insurgency movement, it makes the revolution very odd and borderline unplayable to me. It's an ethical, socialistic Proletarian revolution against the lighter-skinned Elf oppressor class... which is a very utopian concept. (Whereas a game like MYZ: Elysium puts you squarely in a collapsing dystopian society as the enforcer-agents of the utopia.) I find "Proletarian Elf utopian revolution" kind of hard to carry as a concept. Yes, the book acknowledges the utopian revolution as impossible due to the way the game grinds on you, but the concept itself is impossible without even starting the game.

[@BanjoSick]

So tired of this silly analogy driven themes. Don't want to get political ideology brainwashing in my Pen&Paper RPG.

[@andytyrrell5153]

Not for you then.

[@Caluardo]

Hopefully in your games you don't focus too much on questing to make gold, to then spend on products you want then. Or accepting jobs from people in high places.