Making climbing fun (in a TTRPG that is)
Welcome to the worlds by watt newsletter. I’m watt, creator of the ecological science fantasy tabletop roleplaying game Cloud Empress.
Coming March 2026, I’m Kickstarting Rust Wings: Dystopian Adventure Roleplaying. play as misfit teens who build and pilot their own planes from the scrap around them. Follow Rust Wings here!
Over the next few months, I’ll be digging into the design process behind Rust Wings, my upcoming dystopian adventure game. Here’s part one of my design diary!
Making climbing fun (in a TTRPG that is)
I try to make anti-violent games. Violence saturates my media and game tables. I also notice that too often the violence in a show or movie resolves existing conflict. Thank god that guy is dead, now we can go about our business. The simplicity of killing or wounding an enemy contrasts with how violence reverberates and creates further cycles of violence. I’m not trying to tell you what to think about all this, but I want to make games that push back against a violent world.
What does this have to do with Rust Wings and climbing?
In Rust Wings, I’m exploring challenging gameplay outside of violent encounters. In Rust Wings, you play as teens trying to find fun and adventure under the oppressive boot of an authoritarian Navy-military government. Violence is still prevalent, but I wanted to cast light on the wonder and excitement of navigating new (sometimes dangerous) physical spaces. So what does climbing, hiking, and exploring feel like to me?
Climbing is risky. Climbing requires decisions. Climbing requires creativity and pathfinding. I imagined myself moving through a ruined landscape, jumping across metal pipes and pulling myself up to unbelievable vistas.
What does it take to make climbing interesting in a tabletop roleplaying game, though? How could I evoke risk, decisions, pathfinding, and creativity in a shared imaginary space?
To be viable, climbing requires:
A Compelling system of consequences.
Shared understanding of three-dimensional spaces.
Reasons to traverse difficult spaces.
For this post, let’s focus on requirement #1, crafting “a compelling system of consequences.” I’m inspired by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s use of the environment as an interactive tool. I’ve also been thinking about the frenetic movement required to stay alive on the flying city of Laputa in Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. In the early design process, I also posted some initial thoughts on r/RPG and received this gem from user andero.
“What happens on a failure?
If I fail to climb the tree, does nothing happen? Can I just try to climb it again?
If I fail to climb the tree, do I get hurt? Can I try to climb it again and get hurt again? Can I do that until I die?
If I fail to climb the tree, does time pass in a way that matters? Can I burn away the afternoon trying to climb this tree (and care that I wasted the afternoon)?
If I fail to climb the tree, will someone notice me?
For climbing to be interesting in Rust Wings, I needed a variety of consequences. Quite a bit of playtesting helped me stumble into my Damage, Delay, and Attention consequence system.
Whenever a player takes a risky action in Rust Wings, they make a Save. The player tries to roll equal to or under one of their three attributes (typical Mausritter rules here). Before the roll is resolved, the Guide (GM) picks the most relevant of the three potential consequences: Damage, Delay, or Attention. If the player fails the Save, they take the consequence.
Damage causes PCs to lose stamina (health) and take wounds. Example: The PC slams into a ledge after a missed jump.
Delay advances the Time Track. As the PCs spend more time on the island each visit, the island becomes more dangerous. Time also advances when moving between locations on the island and resting to recover stamina and wounds. Example: It takes an hour for the PC to decipher and fix an electrical panel.
Attention advances the Alert Track. As the PCs draw more attention to themselves, encounters become more hazardous. PCs also draw attention to themselves when causing explosions, alerting enemies to their location, and other loud behavior. Example: While stealthily shimmying over a ledge, the PC drops their flashlight onto the feet of a Navy patrol.
On particularly dangerous Saves, failure causes PCs to take two consequences.
In my Rust Wing sessions now, the consequence system creates a nice balance of outcomes. Players are forced to weigh their options carefully. Providing a physical Alert and Time Track helps the Guide easily manage the rules overhead. These tracks reset upon every revisit to Tower Island, avoiding situations where failures begin to cascade. The consequence system also creates intuitive opportunities for solo play, which I’m hoping to explore soon.
Anyway, there’s still combat in Rust Wings (more on that later), but I’m happy that climbing to the top of a building can create interesting decisions within the gameplay experience. I can’t wait for you to try the system when I release playtest material in January.
Help Rust Wings get to 1000 followers
If climbing in a TTRPG sounds interesting, follow Rust Wings on Kickstarter.
If you appreciate my work, help Rust Wings reach 1000 followers on the prelaunch page before March!
📖 What I’ve been reading, watching, and playing
Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs
Miyazakiworld by Susan Napier
Heart by Rowan, Rook, and Deckard
Marvel Champions
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For all things Cloud Empress go to CloudEmpress.com.
-watt
This feels almost like trying to replace the ubiquity of combat in something like D&D with an equally ubiquitous system of environment traversal a la something like Assassin's Creed or Mirror's Edge. I've very excited to see how it develops! I'd love to combine this with some of the minimalist dungeon approaches I've found on here...
Early in my present D&D campaign, I thought how nice it would be to have my players explore sites/dungeons that didn't have anything in them to fight. There might be some traps, some environmental hazards, but no one to hurt and no one looking to hurt you. Besides some puzzling spots, they'd just be vista, places to look out over the world, take in the scenery, immerse oneself, maybe learn something new and melancholy about the world, and still find a treasure of some kind for the trouble. A snapshot out of something like Frieren, where there was still something to puzzle through but also a delightful relief that nothing was going to sneak up on you -- combined with the melancholy of something truly empty.
... I never quite pulled it off in a way that grabbed the interest of my players. But this is definitely inspiring me to try again, to consider that maybe this emphasis on traversal-as-adventure was exactly what I was missing.
This feels like parkour more than the 'trad' climbing that I used to be really into (placing non destructive gear to protect yourself on falls). But, have you considered allowing some kind of mechanic for reducing risk with ropes ect., or are you wanting a more fast paced race against time and gravity?
Also, the British climbing grade system might help with a language for providing players with route choices. For example, a high grade route may not be the hardest climb but there may be little protection (free places to anchor a rope) if you take a fall, where a lower grade could be well protected but quite a hard physical climb. It adds a lot of nuance to planning climbs that suit your skill level. Then there's beta, the info climbers share about routes to help each other prepare. Could be a good source of NPC interaction.
Sorry for all the unsolicited suggestions. Reading your plans got my head gears turning! All that is to say, this feel like it's absolutely my jam! Excited to see what you come up with.