Gather, readers, and I will tell you the story of the time I opened the 22nd door on the RPS Advent Calendar. I went with three friends, and we’ve been adventuring together for years up to this point – the two of us are lovers, and a third have made a strange covenant with the Wolf God . We can do anything together, we four. And then we stumbled across this door…
Those are great adventure stories from Wildermyth!
Sin Vega: Witnessing this success has been the highlight of my year. Not just to inflate my ego, because I was champion Wildermyth for many years, but think about hundreds of thousands of hours, that means people have enjoyed this absolutely phenomenal game.
We honor many games as “story generators”, a term that can be confused with the synonym for “sandbox” due to how often they coincide. There is an innate conflict between corporate, writer-led stories and dynamic, interpretive, user-driven stories. It wasn’t until I played Wildermyth that I really believed that the two could combine so beautifully. Each of its main campaigns has a base story, with events essentially linking chapters while you fill the middle with combat and subplots. Along the way, your people will play side stories to fill in the story of their lives. It’s collaborative storytelling, where each actor is a combination of randomly generated elements, brilliantly written individual events, and your actions and interpretations.
More than any game since 80 Days, it understands that great adventures are filled with smaller moments. Most involve combat, because that’s what classic heroes do. But you’ll also name a village, debate songs, stumble across an ancient creature, flirt with a cultivator, run out of supplies and try to catch a fish. Everything defines your characters as they grow from fragile identities to experienced, scarred, and often heartbreaking heroes who you truly feel have had the stories that people Others will tell about them.
Its excellent writing is sometimes poetic, often humorous or silly, and happens to match something you feel about your favorite person oddly often. There was a side story when two of my group visited an old friend, only to find her mourning a lover who had suffered from a lifelong chronic illness. This is not the dramatic climax or grand mission to my diary. It had nothing to do with anything, except those three old friends. For all its magic and bloodshed, Wildermyth understood that good stories were about people.
But it’s also an innovative strategy game, for sure. Increase the difficulty just once and flanking and stealth become important, and the value of each weapon becomes apparent. Even relationships become tactically relevant; I have a quartet of young adults who seem weaker than their elders, but are so close friends and lovers that they are almost untouchable if stuck together. Semi-random leveling options encourage you to choose skills based on personality and life experience, experiment and adapt to changing circumstances, use your wits, and be wise against strength rough or dull number cracking (and even that is an option if you use the hardest modes. Pro tip: never let Thrixl get out of hand).
Those who use magic are exceptionally excellent. Their powers are essentially limited to what’s present on the map, making something as unremarkable as a tree or a flag an important tactical element. There is no one size fits all. Obviously weak powers and items can combine into great things, and less effective warriors will have their moment of glory. Even if someone dies, you can keep them for later games, removing your reluctance to use your best people in case they get hurt and giving the C players a second chance to win your heart.
Above all its stellar tactics and all of my interest in narrative design, that’s what makes Wildermyth truly special: it makes room in your heart for memorable characters and moments. your own.
