
Spire: The City Must Fall is a game of revolution in a towering mile-tall city of a thousand gods, where retro-engineers dig up arcane technology from forgotten dungeons, then hotwire it and sell cheap copies. Underground lakes brim with algae; bloodwitches from the Heart, a rotten hole in reality at the city’s center, carry mystical diseases that rewrite minds; spider-skinned midwives sprout chitinous limbs to defend unborn drow; magic masks are sutured to unwilling faces; mysterious Morticians pluck out hearts and store them in jars, so the owners gain eternal life.

Funded in a July 2017 Kickstarter campaign, Spire was the biggest game to that time from Grant Howitt (Goblin Quest, Paranoia Red Clearance Edition, Honey Heist, Crash Pandas) and his co-designer, Chris Taylor. Using a straightforward skill-based D10-pool system, Spire puts a new and flavorful twist on many fantasy tropes. You don’t just play a Ranger; you play a Carrion-Priest, a hyena-worshipping death cultist. You’re not a Rogue; you’re a Bound, and you pray to the small gods in your ropes to stop you from falling off the side of the city. You don’t play a Fighter, but a Knight of the North Docks, from a long-fallen order of nobles who now swagger in flashy quarter-plate and operate Spire’s bars. Yet in this setting saturated in weirdness, players face dilemmas of compliance versus resistance — conformity or courage — that speak to all of us today. Like a citybound D&D crossed with Unknown Armies — Gormenghast meets Necromunda — Spire is a game of hard choices, painful decisions, and personal loss.


This offer also included a discount code good on all purchases of Spire print products at the Rowan, Rook, & Decard webstore.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Spire offer’s pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief gets protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.