Mythic Bastionland is a standalone tabletop RPG designed by Chris McDowall, published by Bastionland Press in collaboration with Plus One EXP. Launched via Kickstarter, it’s now available in both PDF and hardcover formats.
The game builds on the same lean-ruleset style as Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland, emphasizing fast, evocative play. Players take up the roles of knights errant, young champions seeking glory through myth-hunting, domain holding, and questing for a legendary “City” seen only in dreams.
🗺 What’s Inside
- 72 Knight Archetypes: You choose from one of 72 knights, each with unique ability, personal equipment, and a passion (a driving motivation) that shapes your character.
- Myths & Realms: There are 72 Myths in the world—powers, legends or mysteries you hunt or contend with—as well as a realm-hexmap structure with holdings, landmarks, and omens.
- Fast-paced Hex-Crawling & Domain Play: Exploration, ageing, domain management, and threat resolution happen over hex-maps and across seasons and ages. Players grow, their holdings and influence change, and mythic threats escalate.
- Decisive Combat & Gambits: Combat omits “to hit” rolls—attacks that are made hit; what matters is damage, positioning, and tactics. Gambits allow you to perform maneuvers like pushing foes, splitting shields, or dragging someone from their steed. Feats let you Smite, Deny, Focus, etc.
- Art & Presentation: Illustrated by Alec Sorensen. The aesthetic is rich, medieval/Arthurian with a twist of folk horror and weird myth.
🎭 How It Plays at the Table
- Groups & Scales: Designed for 1-5 players + a Referee, Mythic Bastionland can be run as a long campaign spanning years (in-game time), or as shorter arcs focusing on individual myths or quests.
- Narrative + Mechanics: Because rules are light but punchy, many sessions focus on setting tone, mythic encounters, and heroic choices rather than granular tactical optimization. The domain management adds strategy without overburdening.
- Mortality & Consequence: Age, time, and glory matter. Knights grow older, succeed or fail with real consequences. Myths often carry heavy burdens. The City quest is legendary, aspirational—rarely easy to reach.
- Randomness & Omen Tables: The Myths reveal omens as you travel the realm; these can change the world, introducing risks and mysteries. The random spark tables, myth tables, etc., give strong improvisational hooks.
✨ Highlights
- Beautiful, distinct identity: Draws from Arthurian & British folk legends but isn’t derivative. The myths feel strange and singular.
- Rule streamlining + depth balance: Combat is swift, domain play and mythic progression give real depth without clutter.
- Strong legacy potential: Seasons, ages, domain influence, and the City quest give long-term narrative stakes.
- Art & flavour: Alec Sorensen’s illustrations, world description, myth hooks, and evocative writing make the book compelling just to read.
⚠ Things to Watch
- Not ultra tactical: If your group wants highly detailed combat tactics or precise simulations, this may feel light. Gambits help, but the style leans more mythic and story-driven.
- Mortality & player turnover: Ageing is real, and characters can die (and be replaced). This makes for heroic stories, but some players may find frequent turnover challenging.
- Rules density in some parts: While many rules are lean, things like domain management, myth resolutions, and aging present complexity that require attentiveness. Some tables report needing to clarify or house-rule ambiguous bits.
🏰 Where It Fits & Who It’s For
If you like games that emphasize myth, exploration, heroic failure and legacy (games like Pendragon, King of Dragon Pass, Electric Bastionland with domes), Mythic Bastionland will feel right at home. It blends OSR-adjacent minimalism with folk horror, Arthurian myth, and domain play in a way many modern RPGs don’t try.
It’s also ideal for referees who enjoy improvisation, building weird myths, taking player motivations seriously, and weaving sagas over time. Not as much ideal for purely competitive or tactical-battle oriented groups.
𝕍 Verdict
Mythic Bastionland is a triumphant addition to the Bastionland Press catalog—ambitious, articulate, and with enough mystical weirdness to make each myth feel earned. It succeeds in offering both fast, cinematic myth-hunting (for those who want short arcs) and a scaffolding for long campaigns of glory, decay, and legend.
If your group wants to ride out in medieval landscapes haunted by legend, aging under weight of glory, driven to find someplace that might not even exist—the City—this game will reward your faith. It’s not perfect for every table, especially those craving fine-grained tactical detail, but its flavor, its pacing, and its sense of mythic purpose make it a masterpiece.