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Made by a design team known as Crowva, Beeba17, and Spyglass Realms, World of Wyldrvir came out midway through last year and has gained a pretty impressive cult following rather quickly. The game is still technically in the playtesting phase, but is absolutely playable in its current form.
First and foremost, Wyldrvir is a tonally bright game. I was able to get on a call with Crowva around a week ago and go through the steps to create a character creation and they underscored that. To paraphrase, with everything going on in real life today, they wanted to do something as far from gritty realism and grimdark as possible. It’s obvious from the start with the bubbly, cartoony art style, which fits the overall feel very well. Think Steven Universe or Adventure Time with a sprinkle of manga. The word that first came to mind for me was whimsical.
The meatiest part of Wyldrvir is the setting. On the titualar plane, magic is a newly emergent quality and not fully understood. As such, every character who casts spells is subject to some called “Wyld Magic.” As the name implies, it’s a list of wacky mishaps that can happen when using the arcane arts, much in the same vein as the underutilised wild magic sorcerers in D&D 5e. The main locales of the world are city-states. Each one has its own distinct culture and lore. My personal favorite was the arid canyons of Oaa- an artistically inclined bunch who spend their days painting cliff sides. Unique from 99% of other TTRPGs, the city states are not warring or even rivals really. The suggested plot hooks for each city tend to revolve around taking part in exploration or expanding knowledge rather than going to slay a bunch of goblins, which leads me to the mechanics.
If you like besting foes in bloody combat, this game is NOT for you. There’s actually not even a combat system as such. This is a collaborative storytelling game full stop. I’d most compare it to a system like Fate, but the rules are lighter still than that. You piece your character together from some pretty niveous talents, skills, or personality traits. Character creation can be done very quickly on your own, but the creators definitely recommend doing so as a group in a session zero. Balancing personalities and party dynamics are more important than making sure you have a tank, high DPS wizard, etc.
Most often, I’d personally want to play a system with more conflict and crunch. However, I have to admit the setting and overall vibe is intriguing enough for me to get past that and just chill with eidolon druid to talk about moon spells or whatever. The core rules only clock in at around 29 pages, so there’s not an overwhelming amount to take in, and countless jumping off points to go in whatever direction you want. I could see myself having a blast just ad libbing little cultural elements here and there between all the city states. If nothing else, it’s a good exercise to consider how to create a cohesive story arc that doesn’t depend on fighting as the main means to interact with the narrative.
If this sounds like something you’d be into, all the materials are currently completely free at the link above, so there’s no barrier to entry. The creators also maintain a pretty vibrant discord community if you want to stay up to date or even get in on the ground floor of the fandom.
