When George from Three Sails Studios approached me with a beautiful-looking game that focuses on the exploration and research of magnificent creatures instead of battling them, I could not contain my excitement. That premise sounds incredible and we really don’t have enough non-combat-focused RPGs.
I created characters, read through the rules, and asked some questions to the creator, who quickly provided me with answers and gave me everything I needed to fully understand the system. I knew coming in that this would be a project that is still in the making, some things might change or aren’t fully finished, so that is something you should take into consideration from this review. Here I want to highlight the reasons why I believe this game to be cool to talk about and help fund. However, I will also talk about the things that I believe could need some polishing so you (the reader) know what you are getting into if you intend to buy a copy.
Mappa Mundi – An Exploration + Ecology RPG is a zero-combat RPG system focused on exploring and documenting a living world, parallel to our own, filled with monsters, creatures, and cultures that have been isolated for more than a century by cataclysmic environmental shifts. Created and designed by George Francis Bickers, with writing and development by Jeremy Blum and artwork by Joel Kilpatrick, Mappa Mundi is a collaborative storytelling game built on player agency and creativity, using an intuitive rules-lite system that mechanically invites players to shape the world around them at all stages of the game.
What makes Mappa Mundi stand apart?
Mappa Mundi is a game that wears its convictions on its sleeve. The rights of the environments, non-human persons, and cultures to determine their own existence, to exercise their own agency, and to be treated with respect are central to the experience of the game. The appeal to players and those running the game of approaching existential challenges through non-violence and respect has really hit home, and as the designer, I’ve gone to great efforts to ensure that players and tables feel that this world responds to them as they respond to it. The game poses players with a singular challenge: how do you help a world emerging from its near extinction without doing further harm to it? The responses to this challenge we’ve seen in our playtesting and from community feedback have been nothing short of beautiful. Mappa Mundi is a game that trusts its players, and that trust is paid back in dividends around the table. I hope you enjoy the experience yourself!
Mappa Mundi knows very well that most games focus mostly on combat and it goes in with a very different approach. In the same vein as Pokemon, you have the core games about trapping them and using them for battle, you have the Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Ranger games (sadly neither got to be a full long series) that have the player doing exploration and research. This game is exactly that. The fact that you don’t have combat doesn’t mean there won’t be any dangers or fail-state. In fact, you can’t even die in Mappa Mundi (unless the GM and player agree on it). However, the game looks for every encounter with these magnificent monsters to feel like a boss battle. The ground trembles, you must detect as many of the behaviors of the individual before it notices you and escapes, or feels intimidated by you and tries to confront your group in self-defense. The Mappa Mundi Institute doesn’t abide by causing damage to these individuals, so you better manage the situation with utmost care.
In a similar vein to when we are watching those documentaries of people trying to get close to a cheetah to catch the best camera angles and study them, Mappa Mundi has your characters put themselves into danger in a ton of different ways. These monsters are often linked to Fate (the magic of this world) that interacts with the environment as well. This grabs that research gathering and pushes the danger in it up to eleven!
The Three Phases
Most of the game revolves around the three phases. These can either last a few minutes or even be stretched out to entire sessions if you are going for a bigger, more interesting monster to research. The Research Phase has plenty of what we have already seen in other games, so it is the Journey and Encounter Phases that will show us more of what this game is mostly about.
Research Phase
The Research Phase involves the members of the Mappa Mundi Institute (the player characters) having to talk with the people who know about the creature they are tracking and may be causing a problem. Similar to when you are running a mystery, the research in this phase is all about gathering clues. These may have to do with the lands you will have to traverse to encounter the Monster, the flora and fauna you may find on the way, and any details that could be of use about the creature, allowing you to gather more information about it in the last of phases.
Similar to the most popular RPGs, this part of the game involves plenty of talking with NPCs, using skills, and rolling dice. There is not much structure to this phase apart from that, being closer to games like D&D and Pathfinder in the way you interact with the system. I believe this doesn’t take the players’ hands as much and allows for plenty of things and problem-solving to occur during it. However, that also means it will require more prepping to be done. During the research, depending on the bits of knowledge the players get, the GM will grab cards from the Journey Deck (a tarot-sized deck filled with landscape cards) and set them apart. Depending on how the skill goes, a card can achieve a side it will be in, thus affecting the player characters in the Journey Phase. By talking with one of the designers, I was told that the prep needed for your full three phases is choosing which monster they will find and which cards make sense for the player characters to find in this section depending on the encounter monster and the environments it moves in.
With the game leaning so much into a narrative game sort of approach, I was surprised to see it have binary ability checks that mostly rely on you passing a check or not, over things such as Powered by the Apocalypse Moves, for example. I feel the game could benefit from having skill checks that helped the story move forward and mechanize a bit more the roleplay elements. The way skills work (more on them below) does work around this problem a bit.
Journey Phase
Once the players feel they have enough knowledge about their travel, they begin their journey. This is when the cards the GM set aside come into play. If the player characters got an information piece about one of the biomes to travel correctly, you place the card in the deck rightwise. If they found a wrong piece of information or didn’t find anything about one of the biomes prepared to be on their way, you place it inverted.
While journeying, the GM will take out one of the previously chosen top cards from the deck and show it to the players on the side it was placed (rightwise or inverted). Depending on the side, you know how difficult traversing through that biome is going to be. All cards have a section in the book that tells you more about what they usually mean and more specific details about it depending on which region from the book setting you are playing in (the book provides different regions that take inspiration from different locations from Eurasia in general. There are many cultural consultants in the book, so I like to think that these locations were managed with a lot of care). After checking out the adventures being played in Actual Plays and the way they are written, it has me thinking that unless you are really good at coming up with things on the spot, you will also have to think as a GM of possible problems and things that occur if you get a reversed card.
During the Journey Phase, players and GMs will “shape” the world. This is a system that the game relies a lot on, which is pretty much a systemized way of having the players describe the surroundings and the things they encounter in each of the biomes they travel. This collaborative narration mechanic has everyone making each section more interesting, and you can’t step over other people’s shaping. You have to add to it. I believe that this is a style of play that doesn’t work for all TTRPG groups, but for those who do, it will be amazing. I know groups that prefer to have the GM detail everything they find and encounter; this will not work as much for them, especially because shaping doesn’t give you any mechanical benefit. However, as indicated by the creators, while the Narrator may intend a cliff to be very difficult to climb, a clever player can Shape handholds into it, thereby making it easier for everyone to climb. This makes it so there are some possible mechanical benefits to be obtained from it, and you as a GM will have to step up and make it so the players can’t ease their path as a landslide. So… again, with the right kind of players this works in a sublime way.
I do have a nitpick about the cards, which play a pretty important role in the game. Having them be tarot-sized and having a reverse side makes it weird that they are not used in the game mechanics as tarot cards are read. Instead of being used as a deck of tarot cards, they are used more as handouts for inspiration to the players. There is no randomness in them as regards the side they will be drawn on, or the order they come up in the game. That is mostly predetermined by the GM, chosen during the Research Phase.
Encounter Phase
Even though there can be some mini-encounter phases during the Journey Phase, like getting the research details from a bear of this region, the Encounter Phase is when you finally do get to meet the Monster. I felt a bit weird that the designers decided to name these creatures ‘Monsters’ when there is such a negative association with that word. However, after a chat with George, he let me know the following: The etymological root of the term Monster comes from Latin, monstrum, which means ‘divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign’ Given that our Monsters are manifestations of Fate, we consider them to be portents, signs, omens of Fate.
The Research and Journey phases before will shape what the Encounter Phase will be like. Judging from the adventures and streams, I could get that depending on the decisions taken while doing the Journey, you may not be able to find all Behaviors of a creature. This works in a similar manner to how in videogames you can get an S score or a C in a level if you don’t get to do it as optimally. It sort of gives a video-gamey element. But what is a Behaviour? This is what you come to get from a Monster, that is all the ways the Monster behaves, which strange properties they have, the way they mate, etc. You need to collect as many of these pieces of information via seeing them in action, graphing them out, collecting samples or whatever you can get. All Monsters have 8 Behaviors, some of them tiered at times, meaning you need to get a certain Behavior to unlock more. Characters can use their skills or interactions in order to capture these details. Interactions are specific skills you have in your class to gather the benefits.
Depending on the cards’ side you draw in the Journey Phase, you get how you will encounter the Monster in this phase. If most are inverted, the Monster has the Aggressive Posture. If most are rightwise, then it will have a Passive Posture. In addition to that, the Journey Phase can alter Threads, which is a tiered way to classify things in the game, but for this particular case, it is how you will encounter things in this phase. For example, if you take time to rest during the journey, a thread could get severed, meaning that an NPC you could have found to help you during the Encounter Phase is found dead instead of alive. Again, I believe this means you will have to do some extra preparation for the session in order to have these interesting things ready.
Layout
The book itself is quite big, filled with art, and with many quality-of-life choices. I REALLY like the way they handled the layout. However, I do have some notes about it.
The book is divided into colored sections. The rules, setting, character creation, etc., are all assigned different colors, which cover the borders of the book. This is fantastic in a physical product, as you can quickly find the section you are looking for by seeing the color from its side. The margins don’t take up much space, so they don’t affect the amount of content on the pages.
The fonts are really good choices, as well as font size, making it easy to read. However, there was a decision taken in which practicality was put over looks. The skills section for each class displays many skills that are all blocks of text. These were made so that if you have a physical book, you can get a spread view of all the ones from your class at once instead of having to flip through pages. While incredibly practical, it ends up looking like a huge chunk of text all together. Since the first time I saw it I told the creators about it – they know of it and have improved it. It’s a thing that might not be a problem for many, but I know it will scare some people off.
The rest of the book has a really good balance of art and text, making every page catchy and beautiful to flip through. I do think they nailed the layout. It is all about being concise and grouping stuff in a way that is very simple to read and find, such as having the rules all together in just 6 pages that you can get in three spread views.
Art
Just LOOK AT IT! It’s glorious, majestic even! If you told me the book only had the art in it, I would still buy it. Every single art piece displays a colorful, incredibly imaginative image. While I believe a few pieces that I am pretty sure are final could have been done differently to look better, most of them fill me with lots of ideas, and I believe that a book that goes all in to create a mechanic to have both players and GM improvise a world on the spot relies on its art to make it work.
As for the Monsters, even though I don’t have the art for most of them at the moment of writing this early review, they look impressive. I don’t know if they were taken from legends or out of the minds of the designers, but they give incredible Monster Hunter and Shadow of the Colossus vibes and that’s everything I want in a game of this style. Having to enter their habitat and research them already feels like it is going to be a lot of fun!
Character Mechanics
Classes and Skills
Character creation is pretty straightforward and with plenty of depth. The skills mechanic the game provides helps the players have something that the character is immediately so good at you don’t need a roll (most of the time). These are narrative abilities that intentionally have names that make it extremely easy for you as a player to immediately get what the skill is about. If in doubt, you can check the text out to get the details, but it is pretty straightforward. As you level up, you can get new skills from a skill tree section, similar to videogames. This adds plenty of replayability to create cool character builds, without it being so crunchy that one is the better choice, as these all are narrative skills. On top of the skills, the characters have abilities: Traversal, Observation, Deduction, and Exploration. These work just like the Kids on Bikes, Ryuutama, and similar games, having one die associated with an ability, that you roll to surpass a difficulty.
Character Development
The game offers many different ways your character can grow, aside from just having a Level. One very cool thing in fact is that the game rewards you more for failing than succeeding!
When enough successes and failures have been accumulated, the player may upgrade that Ability’s die as long as they’ve done the following:
Succeed on a number of relevant Ability Checks equal to the number of faces on the new die (six times for D6, eight times for D8, etc.). Fail a number of relevant Ability Checks equal to half the number of faces on the new die (three times for D6, four times for D8, etc.)
On top of that, you can get expertise with certain things. These you get when you use your skills, making the skill used get points. This will later allow you to buy more skills within the branch being followed in the skill tree.
Lastly, a character may get specializations and endorsements. As your character grows, they may end up getting more specialized in something, having it increase in level. This way, you can finally end up with an endorsement as well, which is like a capstone specialization, granting you more cool stuff you can unlock.
There’s plenty of stuff to keep track of as you play, allowing you to improve your character in numerous ways. In essence, it feels video-gamey, which might be cool for some people and not that great for others. I personally do enjoy this much variety and would love to try out the different kinds of characters you can create within one same class, or Starting Licences, as the game names them. These are Archivist, Diviner, Fixer, and Guardian.
Injuries
The game of Mappa Mundi can’t kill your character. Nothing in the system can cause it. However, you may still get injuries, minor and severe, as well as fall unconscious. Unless you as a player want to retire your character, you can keep on playing them. Still, these injuries your character may receive, with the GM determining how big they are, have mechanical effects in the game, forcing to make certain decisions, and challenging players. For this very reason, the Journey Phase has a very good chance of hurting a character, which will cause you to think wisely about how to face the Monster during the Encounter Phase.
Not being able to die doesn’t mean you can’t get serious injuries that may complicate your gameplay.
Additional details
These things aren’t big enough to deserve a section of their own in the article, but I still wanted to showcase them because I think they are important:
- The game has ten different regions, which along with the monsters, take most of the pages of the book. These are detailed and filled with inspiration to create very different stories in each of them, taking inspiration from locations from our real-world Europe, Asia, and North Africa.
- Mapping and chronicling are vital in this game. The character sheet has plenty of space for characters to take notes of everything they find. If they do, the game rewards them by unlocking Behaviors from monsters and similar stuff. In addition to that, the game comes with blanked-out maps from all regions, for the players to map out and create their own version of the world.
- The difficulties for the ability checks are set by the GM, who is encouraged to use the die size the player is using when setting it. It is arbitrary, and unless impossible for the player character, the GM will determine a difficulty that the player character should be able to reach with the die they are using.
- The game will launch with 4 pre-written adventures as tutorials, teaching players and the GM how to play before you create your own stories together. Some of these have already been streamed in Actual Plays, in case you want to see how the game is in action (see in KS page below).
- The game comes with a 70-card tarot deck. This is beautifully illustrated, showcasing a plethora of biomes the player characters can encounter, and includes one card for each of the game’s 30 Monsters.
Conclusion
Mappa Mundi is a perfect game for those looking to play something akin to Monster Hunter, Shadow of the Colossus, Pokemon Snap, or Pokemon Ranger, not focusing at all on combat and being very much about research and being awed by everyone’s descriptions at the table. This is not the kind of game for those looking to battle those huge monsters, those who want the GM to be the only one narrating and adding story elements, or those GMs who would rather improvise every session.
In addition to that, the gameplay style is very particular, which makes it in my opinion a weird choice if you are looking for a game that can fit a continuing plot. I know the many locations in the world have many factions, but I can’t say for sure if they can work as a rival BBEG or similar thing. Still, the game while finished may receive some last changes before release. This is what I have got from reading the rules so far.
If I had to give a personal recommendation, I feel this game would be much better appreciated physically over digitally, considering the way the layout works and how beautiful the art is.
GO BACK MAPPA MUNDI IN KICKSTARTER
IT’S ALREADY FUNDED!
