[Free RPG Day 2025] Wires in the Wood

Now in its eighteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2025 took place on Saturday, June 21st. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Thanks to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham, Reviews from R’lyeh was able to get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day.

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The world has changed, but whomever changed it, is long gone. The world has been abandoned. This leaves room for the world to be explored and foraged and artefacts found and artefacts upcycled. This is the very simple set-up for Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG. Based on the artwork of Simon J. Curd, this is published by Critical Kit, Ltd, a publisher best known for Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG, which can be played as a solo journalling roleplaying game or as a two-player game storytelling game. The Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is the version released for Free RPG Day and as the title suggests is designed to be played solo. It requires a standard deck of playing cards, two six-sided dice, a token to represent the forager’s location, and a means of recording the story.

In Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart, the player controls the story of a Forager, an animal who will explore the abandoned world and undertake ‘Upcycling Tasks’. This involves the discovery of artefacts left behind and combining two or more of them to solve a problem. Perhaps a bridge over a ravine creaks and is missing several planks, leaving dangerous gaps or a set of wild hedgerows form a giant puzzle that is easy to get lost in and some creatures need help finding their way out. The cycle of the game is to explore different locations, find artefacts, discover problems, and transport the upcycled artefacts to the problem to solve it. The locations, artefacts, problems, and the upcycled artefacts are used as prompts by the player record the story of his Forager.

A Forager has only the one attribute, Zeal. It costs Zeal to explore and move from location to location, but is earned by completing Upcycling Tasks. The full game allows a player to choose a different Forager, each with a different skill, but the quick-start only includes the one. This is the ‘Scamper’, a raccoon-like creature with horns or antlers, and the skill, ‘Fleet of Foot’. This enables him to move to a location with the red suite without expending any Zeal.

The exploration area has a maximum area of a six-by-four grid. The standard deck of playing cards requires a little preparation. The game is played without jokers, three cards are drawn as trigger cards and three as Upcycling Task cards. Twenty-one cards are drawn to form the locations deck. The details of the trigger cards are shuffled into the locations deck, whilst the Upcycling Task cards are kept to one side. On a turn, the player draws a card from the locations deck, adds it to the grid and notes down the location description determined by the card’s colour and value. If the card drawn is a trigger card, the player can reveal one of the three Upcycling Tasks. This is determined by the value of the trigger card. At the end of a turn, the player rolls for an event or an encounter.

Game play ends when the Forager has either un out of Zeal or completed all three of his Upcycling Tasks. Although Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a quick-start designed to introduce the game and therefore does not include all of the roleplaying game’s prompts, it does include enough to enable it to be replayed. There are twenty-six location descriptions, thirteen Upcycling Tasks, and twelve Artefacts awaiting recycling. A player could easily play through it a second time and have a different experience dealing with different Upcycling Tasks, and perhaps even a third time!

Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a post-apocalyptic setting, one in which strange, not quite recognisable (mutated?) creatures explore a world left by mankind? The location and artefact descriptions are recognisably that of our own world, although the descriptions of the artefacts leave out their actual name. Thus, “There’s something trapped inside this that looks at you. Lots of pressy things and two skinny little arms that break easily. It also has a tail. It won’t talk to you.” is actually a television! This is classic post-apocalyptic roleplaying, a player completely aware of what an object from the past is, but having to roleplay his character not knowing what it is and what it does.

Physically, Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is charming little book. Simon J. Curd’s artwork is strange, perhaps a little creepy, and delightful.

Wires in the Woods: A trash-foraging TTRPG Solo Quickstart is a charming and surprising fulsome introduction to the full roleplaying game, one that provides an equally surprising amount of game play. It serves as a decent introduction to journalling roleplaying games and the artwork of Simon J. Curd.