Spire: The City Must Fall RPG (RRDSPIREHB) Hardcover – February 3, 2020

I really want to love Spire, it's one of those RPGs that really stands out as unique, without turning into a basket of arbitrary weirdness . One might call it "derivative", but that is not necessarily a problem.The setting focuses primarily on Drow (Dark Elves) which is a controversial decision in itself, because Drow are one of the most overplayed cliche races ever to have come out of Dungeons and Dragons. Spire does a good job of hinting at old stereotypes (ie: nasty, matriarchal, spider worshippers) while managing to create something entirely new.The world the authors have designed is well considered, choosing to focus exclusively on the city of Spire rather than delving too much about the politics of foreign nations, and there are plenty of locations and factions for GMs to use in their adventures. The character classes are all deeply entrenched within the lore of the system. Traditional Wizards, Rogues and Fighters do not exist in the setting. Instead we get classes like the "Knight" who is honour-bound to one of the various pubs and tavern and is master brawler/bouncer who goes on quests for mystical liquor. Instead of Wizard we get the "Azurite" who spends silver from their wallet in order to cast magical spells. There are also a whole bunch of "Extra Advances" for characters who want to multi-class and like the look of some of the more esoteric abilities there too.A lot of abilities can be summed up as "Ask the GM" but from what I can see, they all work in context and the actual applications of them are relatively simple and can be applied straight off of the page.In terms of ruleset, the game reminds me of Monte Cook's Numenera, in that the GM does very little dice rolling; expecting the players to roll d10s for their attack and defense no matter what. Each d10 roll succeeds on a 6+, inflicting varying degrees of stress (ie: hit point damage) depending on the actual result. The more skilled a character is, the more d10s they get to roll, choosing the result, therefore allowing for the greater chance of overall success. It makes things run quickly when you're not working out complicated mathematics, or applying loads of modifiers to dice rolls. Also the fact that players take stress even on successful rolls means that they cannot make invincible characters and annoyingly avoid consequence forever.I have two main problems with the ruleset: both as a GM and as a player. Character progression is not as structured as in other settings; experience and character levels are not measured in any meaningful way and the players are awarded abilities whenever they make "changes" to the city of Spire. So depending on how the GM runs the adventures, the players can quickly run out of options or gain abilities in very unusual orders. Tiers of difficulty go no higher than 2, so it can be quite difficult for the GM to gauge the power level of the party when designing challenges, as well as having players reach their pinnacle of ability quite early and losing interest.My other issue is that despite all of the detail the setting goes into; character creation is not particularly deep. You choose a class which determines the base abilities and what access to higher powers you get, and you choose a background, granting you an extra skill or resistance depending on what your character grew up doing. That's it. No dice rolling, no choosing your race, no figuring out your base statistics. Two characters of the same class start out pretty much exactly the same as each other, so players who enjoy poring over carefully crafted characters, or who like to min-max with abilities may be disappointed.This makes me think that games are not intended to run into long campaigns, and do better as one-shots where characters get replaced every time players sit down. This might be a matter of taste and preference though, so I cannot fault the mechanics of the system when they work as presented and don't require huge tables or complicated character sheets. Games of Spire can get started after only a few minutes of preparation, so for GMs or players looking for something to pick up and play, or who might be intimidated by "complicated" rulesets like D&D, then I'd heartily recommend this as an introduction to pen and paper roleplaying.I hate to suggest this, but I'd also recommend Spire as a sourcebook for campaigns using other rulesets, as the world they created is so unique and interesting that it could provide many avenues for inspiration and adventure.