Let us Build a Tower Review — mythic adventure, legendary quality

Representing some of the finest in writing, design, and layout I’ve seen in years, Let Us Build a Tower sets its ambitions high but achieves them with grandeur and class. Set in bronze age Mesopotamia, it tasks adventurers with ascending the Tower of Babel to claim the Throne of Heaven for themselves. After mankind constructed the Tower, a jealous Sky-father punished their ambitions with chaos; despite their languages scattered and a Tower cursed to rebuild itself with every new entry, the ensuing battle left the Sky-father wounded and his throne empty, waiting for one strong enough to claim it. At the same time system book, setting, and megadungeon, Let Us Build a Tower is a self-contained package that integrates seamlessly with your OSR system of choice.

The book claims that it’s intended for 2-12 players, a quaint if unreasonable claim. 2 people could maybe make it through if they each play 3-4 characters with followers, but 12 would be outright unmanageable. It’s not a substantial issue, and should not distract from the fact that this book is a DREAM to read and use at the table. Where the hell has Caleb Wimble been all these years? Why was a random email the only way I heard about this game? This is why you indie creators need to be aggressively self promoting. Listen, I may not respond to all of you or see everything you send. I’m sorry, it’s not malice, that’s just the reality of the situation. But you have to put yourselves out there. The difference between the big games and the small ones isn’t quality, it’s marketing budget. This is far and away superior to Black Powder & Brimstone, my last RPG review, but isn’t pushed by Free League so there are fewer eyes on it. Apologies for that brief diversion…

The book is 148 pages of concise, efficient text. It contains everything you need on the Tower, the surrounding setting, its own system for gameplay, its denizens, and a unique but flexible magic system. Its descriptions are useful, concise, and evocative. For instance, text describing treasure tells you not only the value, but tons of information about the setting, history, and characters. The same is true for encounters, locations, or anything you come across. It contains an index and table of contents. That table has hyperlinks, and the text is searchable.

The black and white art is almost universally exceptional. Its variety in design never strays from a consistent art style which communicates the vibe of an ancient, mysterious land. Caleb clearly did his research or worked with a series magnificent artists. It’s familiar yet distant. The lack of color enhances its feel of a distant, lost epoch. The Babylonian influences are felt in the naming conventions and mythology as well as some consistently vivid, fascinating enemy designs. All of this is integrated seamlessly into the overall layout.

That layout, by the way, is outstanding. It’s so clear what’s going on the way this is organized and presented. In the introduction and throughout the text, important concepts contain page references. You might think these details are basic, but as I’ve talked about time and time again, attention to those details makes navigating this book truly exceptional, whether you’re learning it for the first time or referencing it in the middle of an adventure. Major props are due to editor Sam Sorenson. I know too well how crucial a difference editing makes in the end product. Well done.

This book is exactly what I’m talking about every single time I complain about layout. With settings and rules as dense as RPG texts, you need to not waste time presenting the information. This book is how you do it. Look at the two page spread below. Just two pages and you get a major rundown of the setting, its history and conflicts, the rules and classes, your player’s goals, and major mechanics. All of that information is presented, along with references to where you can get more information, without sacrificing atmosphere. This is how you write and present information in an RPG.

While not every detail is perfect, this is a strong opening that’s borne out by the rest of the text. For instance, the book says it's intended for 6-8 1st level or 4-6 third level characters. In a system this easy, you can play with multiple characters with ease, but those numbers still don’t feel entirely realistic or feasible.

The Tower itself is a megadungeon, with random encounter tables for the many floors, and specific encounters at certain levels. Much of the weight is carried by random generation. The Curse of the Tower sees it rearranging itself every time you leave, something you can limit by sacrificing precious Babel stones to lock floors in place for one week, a short time which preserves them from the Curse. I’m not sure how much I appreciate this randomness. The Tower is vast and dangerous, becoming extremely lethal at even middling levels. Leaving and returning feels almost required as you take wounds, lose followers, and have adventures outside the Tower to prepare for re-entry. That said, the Tower’s treacherous nature is one of its more defining features. As you ascend, it not only gets more dangerous, but weirder, bending reality the closer you get to the Throne of Heaven.

The many monsters feature plenty of lore and clues for non-combat resolution, with simple stat-blocks that amount to a few easily readable numbers and abilities. Again, ignoring the house-made Sojourn system to sub out for your game of choice is so easy it’s a total non-issue. The many floors of the Tower include not only chambers and inhabitants, but Features which will customize them to make for memorable, variable encounters. The same chamber could be totally different with new Features, like an Amphitheatre which is supernaturally silent, constantly changing its size, or made of living, rotting flesh.

Magic items are limited and interesting. For instance, Babel stones let you communicate to people in any language, provided about subjects related to the word on the stone, like Mind or Prayer. Combining two stones (if one is a subject and another a verb) allows Scribes to create magical effects. You must also dedicate Melam, or magic, dice. You will need to roll high enough on those dice to cast a spell, spending them only if successful. However, rolling doubles causes the stones to be destroyed, or triples will cause them to explode. This sounds simple, in fact it is simple, but the many ways you can spin out ideas or adventures with these stones is simply astounding. There’s a constant balancing act between how powerful you want your spell to be versus how much you’re willing to risk your Babel stones. Choosing which to keep and which to sacrifice to stabilize the Tower is no small task.

Actually finishing this adventure would be a monumental achievement. Encounters at the highest levels are monumentally dangerous, and I suspect it would take a full campaign to make your way to the top. The final test at the Throne of Heaven borders on being unachievable, as it requires some steps you could miss without luck and careful investigation of the lore. Along the way, your characters will be transformed, challenged, and die in droves. More than a dungeon, this book is a campaign and setting all on its own. Even completely ignoring the Tower, there’s enough information on the surrounding city-states and setting that you could easily scrap the dungeon entirely and spend your game adventuring within them, using the many resources within to populate them. It even includes adventure seeds which are unrelated to the tower, to help supplement this style of play or help you prepare for your climb.

The system itself starts on 120 out of 148, but that’s hardly a weakness, as this is mostly an adventure/setting. The system is good and usable, though maybe not the strongest element of this book. In classic fashion the classes consist of Warrior, Thief, Priest, and Scribe, each starting with a follower (with encouragement that you hire more to make your way up). The attributes are Force, Finesse, Wit, and Will, the base mechanic attribute +d20 vs. 13. Each class has Feats to start with and more that you choose as you level. These are nice, granting you simple but important choices. The Warrior can sacrifice attack or defense for one another. Priests can make Oaths which everyone believes, but if they break lose access to feats. That could have more oomph, like a bonus for directly related tasks, but it’s clear this is supposed to be a powerful tool in social situations. While powerful and enough to differentiate classes, there aren’t a ton of abilities here. If anything, an expanded system would have more to offer, but what we do have is impactful. The Feats also need a little more description in some cases to make clear how they work, like many of the Thief’s Feats relating to stealth. Load (i.e. encumbrance) is an important aspect to adventuring, and the gold as experience rule emphasizes that not everything you come across needs to be killed, only circumvented.

The Quickstart for players on 136 is a DREAM. A quick summary of classes, character creation, and a few useful tables, you can hand this out to new players and get them running in under 5 minutes. Thank you, honestly. It’s so nice that this exists. Not laying abilities/equipment out makes it not perfect, as you’ll still need to reference other parts of the book but I respect this resource immensely. It shows that Caleb understands what a group really needs at the table.

Some of the references and jumping around you will need to run a game presents an occasional annoyance. This book works great at the table, but at higher levels will take some more work to prep. All told, that’s a meager problem with a book this well laid out, with so many resources to reference what you need. Besides that, the problem is in the process of being resolved via a companion app (currently in early beta) with tools for rolling rooms, Divine Transformations, and encounters. Even if you don’t like this Tower or the setting itself, the wealth of tools for monsters, random generation, NPCs, magic, and items make it phenomenally useful for other games.

It was a treat to read through Let Us Build a Tower, and I hope to be in a position to run this sometime soon. Pulling from all the most powerful imagery in original texts and the usefulness of the OSR, I’m glad to have come across this resource, and can unreservedly recommend it to RPG fans looking for new inspiration. Its few flaws are minor compared to the many obvious, rare strengths, and the stories that you can build using even a few of them.

Review Guidelines85

Let us Build a Tower: A Mythic Bronze Age Adventure in Babel

Great

Let us Build a Tower is a rare gift from the world of indie RPG design. There’s so much potential in this book my review barely scratches the surface of what you could find inside. Mythic encounters, adventures to keep you entertained for years, and an overwhelming feeling of palpable, intense dread. Whether climbing the Tower or exploring the lands around it, you have options for tons of creative, unique adventures, all informed by the lost cities of Mesopotamia.