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The finalists of Roleplaying Game of the Year 2020

· 5 min read Archive of Time

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The finalists for Roleplaying Game of the Year 2020 have been chosen! Who will win?

The organisers of Lucca Comics & Games, together with the Roleplaying Game of the Year Jury, announced the finalists among the 22 competing manuals from 14 publishers on October 8th.

The competing games were: 24 GAME POEMS +2, Blades in the Dark, Burning Opera, Dialect, Evolution Pulse Rinascita, Flotsam, Four Against Darkness - Italian edition, Infinite Minutes, Kaiser 1451, L’ultima bomba, Lex Arcana, Never Tell Me The Odds, Not the End, Pathfinder Second Edition, Ryuutama, Shattered Tower, Sigmata - This Signal Kills Fascists, Spire - The City Must Fall, Star Crossed, Uno sguardo nel buio, Vulcania, Worlds in Peril.

And here are the finalists, in alphabetical order:

  • BLADES IN THE DARK by John Harper - GrumpyBear / Pendragon Game Studio, Evil Hat Productions

  • LEX ARCANA by Leo Colovini, Dario De Toffoli, Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello - Need Games - Asmodee, Quality Games

  • NOT THE END by Claudio Pustorino - MS Edizioni, Fumble srls

  • RYUUTAMA by Atsuhiro Okada - Isola Illyon Edizioni, Kotodama Heavy Industries

  • SPIRE - THE CITY MUST FALL by Grant Howitt, Christopher Taylor - Isola Illyon Edizioni, Rowan, Rook and Decard

Personally, we would have liked to see Evolution Pulse Rinascita, Pathfinder Second Edition and Sigmata - This Signal Kills Fascists among the candidates too. But let’s get to the point.

The Roleplaying Game of the Year award highlights the most promising RPGs on the Italian scene, letting the public discover works that offer alternative, exciting play experiences and learn new game mechanisms suited to settings out of the ordinary.

The winning games are not the best in absolute terms; rather, they are the ones a jury of experts considers best for ease of character creation, the system’s ability to encourage roleplaying, the simplicity for the game master (where present) of preparing and running a session, and how well the system fits the setting. They are therefore ideal for those approaching the world of roleplaying games for the first time as well.

As for the finalists — we own a copy of Blades in the Dark, Lex Arcana, Ryuutama and Spire - The City Must Fall — we admit they reflect our expectations, with a few exceptions.

Blades in the Dark has a grim setting with a flavour halfway between post-apocalyptic and Victorian. The characters belong to criminal gangs moving through flourishing cities that already show signs of decay, protected by electrified barriers kept alive by hunting immense leviathans at sea. The world is scourged by supernatural entities: the cities stand out in a landscape dominated by desolate wastes, haunted by ghosts awakened after an apocalyptic event. Gangs therefore vie for dominion over the cities, in line with each gang’s aspirations, and scramble for the best available resources. We greatly enjoyed both the setting and the gang-management style of gameplay. We think it will appeal to fans of Dishonored and Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within.

Lex Arcana is the remake of a game from the ’90s, presented in a new edition. We are fans of investigative games, so we couldn’t help appreciating the Cohors Auxiliaria Arcana, devoted to uncovering and fighting supernatural threats on behalf of the Emperor in an alternate fifth century AD. The setting strongly reminds us of Cthulhu Invictus, a foreign product which, however, doesn’t linger like Lex Arcana on the details of ancient Roman culture — one of this product’s strong points. The rules system has been rebalanced and streamlined, to better support long campaigns too.

Ryuutama is a game published in Japan in 2007 and brought to Italy by Isola Illyon. The player characters are ordinary people who set out on a long journey that will change their lives forever. Watching over their steps are the Ryuujin, mysterious dragons in human guise controlled by the game master — for example the red one, who collects stories of battle; the azure one, who weaves the threads of social interaction; and the green one, who represents exploration. What struck us most is the possibility for master and players to choose together the type of “journey” to play, creating the world while exploring it, without having to decide it in advance.

Spire - The City Must Fall is for those who want to play an outcast social class in this punk fantasy: the dark elves. The drow sit at the bottom of the social ladder of a tower-city, Spire, which they ruled before its conquest by the Aelfir, the high elves. But now things are changing, and the embers of revolt are beginning to blaze. The system is very simple and light, well suited to leaving room for the story. It reminded us of the atmosphere of Of Orcs and Men, where the enslaved orc and goblin races rebel against the oppression of the human empire.

Not The End deserves a separate mention. Although we haven’t got our hands on the game yet, we can anticipate that it is an Italian production leaving players and master full freedom in choosing the background for their adventure. The chosen system is innovative, using tokens drawn at random from a bag instead of the classic dice.

Given the winners of previous years — think of Household in 2019, Lovecraftesque in 2018 and 7th Sea in 2017 — this year we are rooting for Lex Arcana and Ryuutama: the first for the timeless charm of Roman antiquity, the second for the strong originality of its play style.

Who would you bet on for the win?

Which of the finalists moved you the most?

Is there any candidate game you’d like us to explore further? Write to us!