Root: The Roleplaying Game - Starter guide
What is Root?
The forest looks sweet. Mice with lanterns, rabbits in doublets, a fox with a broken sword. Look two seconds longer and you see the Marquisate's cat armies felling the trees, the old Eyrie dynasty of the birds wanting its throne back, and the Woodland Alliance plotting an uprising in the cellar of every clearing. Root: The Roleplaying Game is a fantasy game about that war, seen from the animals who belong to none of it: the vagabonds, drifters without a faction who travel between clearings and take the jobs nobody else will.
Root is the official roleplaying game of Leder Games' 2018 board game, with the same illustrations by Kyle Ferrin. It was designed by Brendan Conway and Mark Diaz Truman of Magpie Games, funded on Kickstarter in 2019 and published in 2021. Netherbook sells the core book, which holds everything you need for a campaign.
How does the system work?
Root runs on Powered by the Apocalypse. When your hero does something that can go wrong, you roll two six-sided dice and add a stat. Ten or more is a clean success, seven to nine succeeds at a price, six or less hands the game master the floor. Every kind of action has its own move that says exactly what happens next: sneaking, negotiating, fighting, following a trail.
What sets Root apart is reputation. For each faction you track how much prestige and how much notoriety your hero has earned. Help the Woodland Alliance free a garrison and your standing with the rabbits rises while it drops with the cats, which opens and closes doors in the next clearing. The forest remembers what you did.
The second pillar is equipment. Weapons carry tags, and tags unlock specific moves: only with a bow can you shoot at range, only with training in roguish feats can you pick a pocket. Harm lands on three separate tracks: injury, exhaustion and wear on your gear. A fight rarely costs you your life, but it often costs your cloak, your sleep or your good name.
You pick your hero from nine playbooks, from the Arbiter (an armed conscience) to the Tinker (an inventor with a bag of scrap). Each playbook has its own nature and drives that earn you experience when you act on them.
What do you need to start?
The core book. It holds the rules, all nine playbooks, the three factions, the travel mechanics, a sample clearing (Gelilah's Grove) and a generator for building your own woodland. Print the playbooks, grab two six-sided dice per player and some pencils, and you can play.
The game is for three to six players plus a game master. You do not need the board game, though its map helps you learn the forest.
Who is this game for?
Groups who enjoy politics. Root is at its best when the players have to choose whom they serve, and when that choice comes back next session. It is also a good way into Powered by the Apocalypse for tables coming from Dungeons & Dragons: there is more gear, more combat and more structure than in most PbtA games, and the animals make it approachable.
It is not for anyone expecting a gentle woodland tale. Root is a war game; heroes get betrayed, villages get occupied, and the game master is encouraged to play the factions hard. Nor is it a dungeon crawler: if you want dungeons and treasure, Old School Essentials or Shadowdark will serve you better.
How does it compare to other systems?
Compared to Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Root is lighter in rules and heavier in consequences. No initiative, no hit points, no levels in the usual sense. Where 5e asks whether you hit, Root asks what it costs you.
Compared to Wanderhome, the other animal game in the shop, Root is the hard sibling. Wanderhome is a game without a game master and without violence, about travelling and resting; Root has weapons, occupiers and a war that does not wait for you.
Compared to Brindlewood Bay, also Powered by the Apocalypse, Root shows how far that engine stretches. Brindlewood Bay solves a mystery with a handful of moves; Root builds an equipment system, travel rules and faction politics on the same base. If you want to know where that engine came from, read our history chapter on Powered by the Apocalypse.
Where do you start?
Start in Gelilah's Grove, the clearing from the book. Let the players choose a playbook by reading the names and first lines aloud, and have them decide during character creation which faction likes them and which one is looking for them. That choice is your first session.
Keep reputation on the table, literally: a sheet with the three factions and a tick up or down per player. And let the first job fail in a way the players caused themselves. After that the forest is theirs.
Recommended products at Netherbook
The Root RPG Core Book holds everything for a full campaign.
If you want a gentler animal story, Wanderhome is the counterpart; if you want the same rules family in a different genre, look at Brindlewood Bay. For a smaller, more dangerous animal world the whole family can play, the Mausritter Boxed Set is the box we hand over most often.