In a world saturated with combat-oriented board game and RPG Kickstarter campaigns, Grant Howitt aims to bring something different to the table. Based on Kieron Gillen's award-winning comic by the same name, DIE: The Roleplaying Game offers a metafictional experience oriented around exploring, confronting, and conquering psychological trauma. Players adopt the roles of people who are swept into a harrowing fantasy world, akin to Jumanji, Narnia, and Isekai anime. As of this writing, the game's Kickstarter has already met its funding goal, and is open until June 10.

Game Rant spoke with Howitt to discuss the RPG's core systems, themes, and approach to combat. Even those tired of Kickstarter campaigns should be interested to know that this rules-lite, flavor-heavy RPG system promises creative, original, and challenging experiences that will appeal to tabletop newcomers and role-playing veterans alike.

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A Freeform Approach to Tabletop Fun

There is a common tabletop gaming misconception that a title's depth is equivalent to its mechanical complexity. By Howitt's own admission, DIE's core book is light on hard rules. There are no massive tables or charts to navigate, and no complex formulas to calculate skill success or damage outcomes. Instead, DIE demands improvisation and imagination in exchange for narrative flexibility and a focus on pathos.

"It's all very freeform, and it has to be, because a lot of the play focuses around the GM mashing up elements from your real-world lives and your fantasy obsessions. So we don't have a rule that says, 'If the dragon has the face of your abusive boss, you must pass a Will save or become Distressed for D6 rounds,' and instead rely on the GM to apply penalties and bonuses as needed."

The core of the game sees players rolling two-to-four dice, with rolls of four and above qualifying as a success, and rolls of six functioning as phenomenal critical outcomes. Like Dungeons & Dragons, DIE revolves around discrete character classes, each having their own thematic style of play with certain classes having "ownership" of certain dice. Neos, DIE's cyberpunkish rogue class, hold sole dominion over D10s, whereas D12s are used by the game's cleric-esque Godbinders.

How DIE Plays With Trauma

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With so much flexibility, fledgling players may feel overwhelmed by the amount of creative freedom (and responsibility) required to enjoy the game. However, Howitt has advice for first-time GMs dipping their toes into DIE's world.

"It's not that hard to appear imaginative. All you have to do is put together two things, and suddenly you look like a creative genius. Write down six things your player characters are interested in (or conflicted by) and then mash those together with six fantasy tropes and Boom. That's a campaign right there if you're canny about it."

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Collaboration between players and DIE's GMs, a character class called "Masters," is essential. Much of the game's appeal comes from players leading a double (or perhaps triple) life that plays off the distinctions between their characters' normal, reality-based selves and their fantasy world proxies. As per Gillen's comic, a player character's fantasy self may be a different gender or race in DIE's world, and like any good Isekai anime, actions in the fantasy world have lasting consequences in reality. This makes DIE an ideal vehicle for metaphorical, larger-than-life explorations of real issues such as stress, grief, body dysmorphia, and other topics seldom tackled by tabletop gaming.

Fast and Loose Fighting in DIE

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Like the rest of DIE's mechanics, combat is flavor-heavy and light on rules. One of the most important mechanical distinctions between DIE and Dungeons & Dragons, according to Howitt, is that D&D is built around combat. By contrast, while combat constitutes a good deal of the action in DIE, the system's focus is broader than a monster slaying, looting, and leveling-loop. Emotional beats do not only steer the course of a campaign's plot, but also affect what characters are capable of in battle.

Character development relies on personality growth and responses to external stimuli as opposed to stat blocks. The net result is a situational game that demands a GM who can think on their feet without falling back on mechanical artifice, players with healthy imaginations, and a different focus than power fantasies measured in body counts. That is not to say DIE will lack the guilty pleasures of vanquishing enemies; in fact, putting a face to trauma and conquering it with friends may be the most empowering form of escapism that fantasy has to offer.

The Kickstarter campaign for DIE: The Roleplaying Game is live until Friday, June 10, 2022.

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Source: Kickstarter