Wildfire Trilogy is a set of four related TTRPGs about the fall and return of magic.
The PDF is 21 pages, with lovely art and big text. It's a quick read, and every page is visually splashy.
The first game, Conclave, is quite simple. It's a story premise (wizard politics) with a die roll and some group decisions to set up the rest of the book's conflict. I actually quite like this approach---it's breezy while still accommodating player input---and Conclave could be a cool prelude to roll out before starting a big campaign of something.
The second game, Wildfire, is about awakened spells. Kind of crucially, you don't use dice or make checks, you just explain what an awakened spell is, what it does, when it dies. As a whole, the Trilogy is less interested in mechanically addressing conflict than in giving the group a springboard to storytell off of.
The third game, Ember, follows in a similar trend. As a depleted wizard, you cast one final spell. And then magic fades. Which leads into the fourth game.
Susurrus, the fourth game, is a small worldbuilder. You explain how magic comes back, what it does to the world, and how people try to cage it again.
There's a poetic structure to the Trilogy as a whole, but more interesting than that is that it uses its microgames to give a rhythm to your group's storytelling. I don't have synesthesia, but this is an rpg that I could hear the tempo of by the end of it.
I think if you have a group of writers who haven't touched a TTRPG before, I think you could deploy this on them and they'd do great. And conversely, if you have a group that's only played with strict GM roles and hard mechanical resolution, it might take a second for everyone to get the hang of Trilogy.
However, I think Trilogy's a really solid title and worth picking up, and a great party TTRPG (snacks and introspection type party, not alcohol and loud music type party). Grab a copy if you have a chance!
Minor Issues:
-Page 15, "whose", this should technically be "who's" as a contraction for "who has", but the "whose" isn't causing any lack of clarity in the text and I don't think it does any harm to leave it in
In my version, purchased in late March 2025, the paragraph on page 8 seems to start mid-sentence; but doesn't follow along directly from the text on page 7. May be a typo - seems some text may be missing.
I am going to add text there that says "One of you is chosen to be the next..." and then continue from top of page 8 "...the Archmage. The group determines..." etc. It doesn't quite flow, but seems like it could be an interesting question to answer.
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Wildfire Trilogy is a set of four related TTRPGs about the fall and return of magic.
The PDF is 21 pages, with lovely art and big text. It's a quick read, and every page is visually splashy.
The first game, Conclave, is quite simple. It's a story premise (wizard politics) with a die roll and some group decisions to set up the rest of the book's conflict. I actually quite like this approach---it's breezy while still accommodating player input---and Conclave could be a cool prelude to roll out before starting a big campaign of something.
The second game, Wildfire, is about awakened spells. Kind of crucially, you don't use dice or make checks, you just explain what an awakened spell is, what it does, when it dies. As a whole, the Trilogy is less interested in mechanically addressing conflict than in giving the group a springboard to storytell off of.
The third game, Ember, follows in a similar trend. As a depleted wizard, you cast one final spell. And then magic fades. Which leads into the fourth game.
Susurrus, the fourth game, is a small worldbuilder. You explain how magic comes back, what it does to the world, and how people try to cage it again.
There's a poetic structure to the Trilogy as a whole, but more interesting than that is that it uses its microgames to give a rhythm to your group's storytelling. I don't have synesthesia, but this is an rpg that I could hear the tempo of by the end of it.
I think if you have a group of writers who haven't touched a TTRPG before, I think you could deploy this on them and they'd do great. And conversely, if you have a group that's only played with strict GM roles and hard mechanical resolution, it might take a second for everyone to get the hang of Trilogy.
However, I think Trilogy's a really solid title and worth picking up, and a great party TTRPG (snacks and introspection type party, not alcohol and loud music type party). Grab a copy if you have a chance!
Minor Issues:
-Page 15, "whose", this should technically be "who's" as a contraction for "who has", but the "whose" isn't causing any lack of clarity in the text and I don't think it does any harm to leave it in
thank you so much for the review!
Thank you for writing the game!
Hello Thoughtcrime!
In my version, purchased in late March 2025, the paragraph on page 8 seems to start mid-sentence; but doesn't follow along directly from the text on page 7. May be a typo - seems some text may be missing.
I am going to add text there that says "One of you is chosen to be the next..." and then continue from top of page 8 "...the Archmage. The group determines..." etc. It doesn't quite flow, but seems like it could be an interesting question to answer.
Hey there, I thought I uploaded the fix to this a bit ago, but it seems I flaked! I'll get it up this afternoon. Thank you for the heads up!
Hey, we finally fixed this. Sorry for the delay, and thanks again for the heads up!
Awesome, thank you! It actually is quite different, glad it's been updated.