16th of January 2026
I believe that we are living in a golden age for Table Top Role Playing Games. Following D&D 5th edition's explosion in the late 2010's, the 2020's has seen a slew of new TTRPG's, some trying to recreate the big campaign fantasy vibe (see: Daggerheart, Draw Steel), while other, prehaps more niche and indie RPG's, have set out to carve their own path. A group of friends and I have recently been experimenting with some new RPG's, trying everything from This Discord has Ghosts in it to The Ground Itself. However, this summer we've engaged in a mini-campaign of Mythic Bastionland, and this system has absolutely blown me away.
From the art to the layout, the book is excellent, but its the rules that truly make this system shine. Coming from D20 systems in particular, the combat has felt absolutely incredible. Instead of each player and enemy taking individual turns - with a roll to hit, a roll for damage, and whatever else in between (in some case multiple rolls for both) - the players act simultaneously to declare their actions. All players who are attacking the same target roll together simultaneously and use on dice as a guaranteed hit. Because of this, the question is not so much whether you will deal damage, but how much damage you will deal. In addition, only one of the dice is used for damage while the other dice can be used for gambits, effects that modify the attack in some way; to trip, disarm, deal extra damage, etc... This forms a sort of shared dice pool system, where individual players are contributing dice to the dice pool that they then must decide together how to use and what effects they want to apply to the enemy.
In my eyes this system solves three major problems with the D20 version of combat. Firstly, the length of combat. Automatically hitting means that progress is always made and players don't feel like they have wasted their turn. Rolling together also hugely speeds up the turns taken, making even a combat of several turns still feel faster than a bout in the D20 syustems. Secondly, it solves the action economy problem. In D20 systems, outnumbered players can quickly find the fight turning against them, while single enemies can often feel far easier than they should when getting absolutely wailed on by 6 or more players. Because the players damage is capped, having multiple allies attack a single enemy will definitely deal more damage than it might otherwise, but (assuming your boss fight has enough health/armour) it won't result in your epic boss fight being ended within a single round of combat. Finally, it feels far more co-operative than D20 systems. There's no time for me to get bored or distracted while waiting for an hour just for it to get back to me. We take our turn together and have to make decisions as a team. It is our turn. This, in my eyes, is the greatest boon that comes with the combat of Mythic Bastionland. I have never played a system that has felt this collaborative during a "combat" game state. It's been an absolute blast to declare an attack on an enemy, to have two allies join me, and then to decide between the three of us to attempt to trip and disarm them (we did not in fact succeed on disarming them, but we did knock them over and wound them significantly). I can't wait to play more of this system and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
