Mythic Bastionland
Tabletop role-playing game
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Mythic Bastionland is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game designed by Chris McDowall, published in 2025. Subtitled "Before Into the Odd", it is a prequel to McDowall's previous role-playing games Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, where players take on the roles of knights traveling across a realm and encountering strange myths in the style of Arthurian legends and British folklore.
Gameplay
In Mythic Bastionland, character creation is randomized; Players roll for their three stats (Vigour, Clarity, and Spirit) and their Guard (GD, the ability to avoid wounds), and either manually or randomly choose one of the 72 possible types of knights to play as (such as the Amber Knight, or the Moat Knight) - each one comes with specific equipment and abilities, and is associated with a particular seer who knighted them. The seers have various powers of divination and their own strange agendas, and are limited in how they can interact with the world. In combat, the knights can perform Feats to do more damage or cancel enemy damage dice, and can also perform special tricks called Gambits.[1]
Play takes place in a region called the Realm, which is created by the gamemaster at the start of the game using a set of procedures to populate a hexagonal grid map with different geographic areas, settlements, and other landmarks. The most significant of these are the Myths, which act as the main catalysts for the knights' quests and adventures; the rulebook contains 72 such myths (such as that of The Bat, or The Hole), with six that are chosen by the GM to be featured in their particular Realm. As the players explore the Realm, they will encounter various omens that point towards specific Myths, escalating in severity until the Myths are resolved.[2]
Reception
In 2025, Mythic Bastionland won the Gold ENNIE Award in the Best Interior Art and Best Layout and Design categories, and the Silver Award in the Product of the Year category.[3]
In his 2025 review of the game, Quintin Smith described Mythic Bastionland as "a game that does three things I need: it is truly fantastical, it is a fantastic design, and - most importantly - it stands utterly apart from the crowd. A game that captures the nostalgic magic of RPGs from the 80s with hexes and cruelty and mystery, but also is so forward-looking, it maybe feels like it was sent back in time from the future," praising the worldbuilding, art, layout, and rules (though being critical of the game's lack of advice on designing combat encounters).[4]
