How one of the finest RPGs ever made thinks about money and magic

Roadwarden's creator, the Polish writer and designer Aureus of Moral Anxiety Studio, is an enthusiastic and inventive player of table-top games. Many of his ideas for 2022's finest historical fantasy RPG have their twitching, eldritch roots in pen-and-paper sessions with friends. Take questions of money and wealth. Speaking to me over Zoom one rainy October afternoon, Aureus recalls one particular table-top campaign he ran in which, after 10 or so sessions, the player party had sunk into abject poverty. "They reached a collapsed village, [and] they said, 'is there a cart around here?' So I rolled the dice and decided that all right, there is a wagon, that's completely functional with all its wheels and so on. So they just started to walk around and shove on the top of their wagon, whatever of value they could find.

"They had no shame!" Aureus goes on. "Just gathering all the scraps of iron, all the tools, knives, musical instruments, pieces of fabric - anything they could find, they were just taking it all with them on the assumption that whenever they reached a civilised spot, they're just going to sell it all." This was foolhardy behaviour, because all the objects in question were trash with little resale value. "So they at the same time they had more than they could ever need, and they had pretty much nothing. They mainly had a hindrance that was slowing them down - this wagon full of stuff was just difficult to move through the paths."

Read more