Roll Play Studio will be taking their tabletop RPG Hinterdom to the crowdfunding platform Gamefound. You can buy the core rules now, and if the crowdfunding is a success, more advanced rules will emerge.
The new rules add tactics and crunch to the game but push against colonial tropes to offer non-combat and hopeful gameplay.
The art looks fantastic, and the promise is a rules-light story about community, resilience, and exploration rather than conquest.
Tucker FitzGerald, a Seattle-area dad and designer, did the heavy lifting on the game, creating it and providing that vibrant art. Tucker was also kind to answer a few (some cheeky) questions from us.
In a press release, Tucker said,
I grew up reading fantasy like the Redwall series, filled with warmth, community, and hope. With Hinterdom, I wanted to create a game that invites players into a world of wonder and connection, where stories unfold through relationships, creativity, and discovery rather than power and conquest,” says Tucker FitzGerald, the game’s creator. “That said, some players love tactical depth, so the Enhanced Manual builds out strategic combat, while the third manual The Land of Hinterdom offers a fully realized world where non-combat stories thrive. It’s all part of the same vision—an RPG that embraces different styles of play while keeping its heart full of hope.”
The game pitches itself to gamers who like cosy fantasy, as you might find in Studio Ghibli, stories like Legends & Lattes and games like Starfew Valley.
In Gamefound, Roll Play Studio aim for;
- The core rules manual.
- The enhanced rules manual.
- The “Land of Hinterdom” setting guide
- Two decks of cards
Tucker FitzGerald interview
Is Hinterdom a pushback against the conflicts we see plenty of in real life?
Absolutely. As somebody who spends a lot of time in fantasy spaces and a lot of time tending to real-world politics, I can’t help but see the intersections of fictional colonial thinking in real-world suffering. Whether it’s the evil races of orcs or rats (Redwall), or the empty-land-to-conquer of Minecraft and Settlers of Catan, we’re so deeply saturated in flavors of pretend that set us up for real world injustice. The steady decent of the US into more reactionary, totalitarian, cruel politics is so disturbing. Really, the rise of the far right among so many of our countries is disturbing.
Can you give us an example of a community adventure?
As in a campaign that’s focussed on community? Uhm, for example, a village that finds Imperial loggers are encroaching on their local forest and must find ways to sabotage and resist better armed and better equipped colonizers. A town that finds that someone or something is slowly stealing all the turnips in the turnip silo, even though no one can figure out how they’re getting in or out with the turnips. A local academy for young magic users starts to notice that some of the teachers are acting strange, but the more the students learn about what the teachers are sneaking off to do, the more confused they get about who to confide in, or what to be on guard for. A city council that’s trying to figure out what to do with the growing number of refugees coming from a neighboring village being exploited by agents of the empire, both acknowledging the growing amount of theft and violent behavior from some refugees, while not wanting to lose track of the need for solidarity and creative problem solving.
Are their monsters in Hinterdom?
This circles back around to the first question. The short answer is no, not in the traditional sense. There is no species that is inherently evil. I worked to stay away from the demonizing creatures along the lines of either: wolves are bad and should be eliminated or: this race (again orcs, trolls) is inherently evil, and should be eliminated. There may be villains, the most obvious of which is the encroaching Empire that has begun plundering Hinterdom. However, each group playing can focus on stories with the level of conflict, peril, and risk that’s best for them.
If people want to nudge their current TTRPG away from colonial tropes what tips would you recommend? What should GMs avoid doing?
That’s a great question. TTRPGs don’t necessarily deal with the colonizing land imagery that so many tabletop games and video games are saturated with, but they certainly are loaded with evil and inferior races. But even that is shifting. Books like Legends and Lattes exemplify allowing orcs and succubus to be fully-realized, 3D characters, and that’s building on a lot of the shifts in the gaming community along those lines. Heroic trolls, and villainous elves can go a long way towards re-humanizing these tropes.
I think one of the core ways to shift our imaginations away from colonial structures is to shift from stories where the heroes go elsewhere and save the day to stories where the heroes stay home and prevent injustice from coming to life there. I don’t mean that you can’t have stories of travel, etc, it can be done very thoughtfully. But the core imagination of going somewhere else to save other people can set us up for this hierarchy in thinking about others in other places.
Other shifts can just be around how power works. When we structure our games so that whoever has the most strength (or intelligence, or magic) wins, we miss out on a lot of the real-world work of being heroes. A level 1 fighter with a strength of 6 who is willing to stand up to injustice is worth 10 level 17 fighters with strength of 18 who aren’t willing to do the work. How can we set our players up to be brave and to stand up for the right causes? Without making it preachy or overly simplistic.
This is a cheeky question but I think the GameFound is for three books and two decks of cards. In what way is Hinterdom a rules light game?
That’s such a great question too. I worry about my messaging for this a lot. Maybe this will answer it:
You only need the Core Rules Manual to play. And that is absolutely rules-light, and dice light. You only use a single d20 roll to resolve everything, weapons skills and magic skills and tracking skills are treated very paralel. I’d give it a 2/5 stars for crunchiness.
The Enhanced Rules Manual is an expansion. It really does build off the core system, but it can very crunchy if players want. So yes, you’re well outside rules-light at this point. But it is still a very streamlined (and I hope) elegant system that tries to keep a lot of moving pieces running very smoothly and very intuitively. I’d give it a 4/5 stars for crunchiness.
The third book is also an expansion. The Land of Hinterdom is primarily about expanding lore and depth, although it does introduce some new mechanics as well, but mostly for the 4th archetype, Everyday Folk, with roles like baker or traveling performer.
Lastly, both card decks are reference decks, designed to enhance playing or storytelling, adding to lore and texture, but in no way adding any new mechanics, nor needed to play.
The Gamefound for Hinterdom is slated for March.
Quick Links
- Can’t wait! Buy Hinterdom core rules now.
- Gamefound campaign: Hinterdom.
