A card-based ttrpg by Matthijs Holter and a homage to South American magical realism. Play a whole campaign with zero prep and watch the characters' lives entangle between the mundane and the fantastic, like in A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Perhaps you have never heard of Soledad, that village forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat can become so strong that it is difficult to breathe. But you would only need an instant to recognize the aroma of the coffee plantations, or the echo of the prayers for Sunday mass, when the rich and the poor sing as a single voice.
Follow the strange dreams of the fishermen at sea, seek beyond the exasperated silence of the rebels in the jungle, and you will find the black kapok tree in its fearful solitude. Not even the most ancient dead remember the secret that slumbers in patient wait under its roots.
Will it be your fate to see it bloom again?
The Roots of Soledad is a tabletop roleplaying game and a homage to South American magical realism designed by Matthijs Holter, the author of Archipelago and Society of Dreamers, in collaboration with award-winning Italian game design studio NessunDove.
Improvise a story by drawing from a deck of unique cards, just as Pilar Ternera predicted the fate of the Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Time is just as important here: unlike other roleplaying titles with board game elements, this system is designed specifically to sustain campaign play.
Watch as every card helps the characters' tales get more intricate and tangled, like vines on the great tree watching over the village of Soledad.
Will it be wiped out by the wind or stay forever in the memory of men?
"The Roots of Soledad is a weird, beautiful game that maintains a singular vision while brilliantly building on some of my favorite games ever, like Archipelago and Itras By. It solves design problems I didn't even know I had. Soledad makes me genuinely angry that Matthijs Holter wrote it and I didn't. If you like surprising, gentle, and often elegiac play, The Roots of Soledad delivers."
Jason Morningstar, author of Fiasco
"Soledad has given me the most profound roleplaying moments over the past two years. The shifting of roles, the cards and the board-game like instructions scaffold the narrative. But they also give plenty of room for real, bleeding-heart immersion."
The Roots of Soledad is a role-playing game for 3–5 players, without a game master. First everyone creates a Protagonist, starting from a combination of cards. Each card lists multiple options to pick from— you customize them with special stickers, making up unique Goals and Relationships.
The same cards you use to build your Protagonist will form a prompt deck for the game's Scenes. Everyone takes turns playing as Director, setting up a scene for another player's Protagonist. Each Protagonist has their own story arc and might never meet the others, but as players you all work together to make every scene memorable by taking on Supporting and Minor Characters, or playing Drama Cards to shake things up.
Card designs not final
Why all the cards?
Every Scene card represents a Protagonist's human connections, the goals they're working towards, or the magical realism heightening their struggles. The deck is the tapestry weaving together every plot thread, making it easy to reincorporate everything into your game. It's a simple solution to the complex problems that make improv-heavy games challenging and fascinating at the same time.
This ensures the game remains as immediate and accessible as possible, and different formats will help you tell apart at a glance what prompts are available and who is doing what in the scene.
The decks also let the rules come into play organically, without needing to memorize everything at once or continually going back to the book.
Cards make the game flexible and able to accommodate your table's needs, managing missing players or extra guests without losing track of the story. They're approachable to friends who've never played before. They also feel great to handle.
The goal of this project is to help you play with no preparation and no need to have read One Hundred Years of Solitude or experienced one hundred games before. For a quick taste of roleplay, or a long-lasting campaign.
“The duende....Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child's saliva, crushed grass, and medusa's veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.”
Federico García Lorca,Spanish poet, Play and theory of the duende
The world you play in is like our own. But there is something magical about Soledad. We call it Duende.
In Hispanic cultures, Duende is both spirit and feeling, both fairy and demon, both dream and nightmare. In The Roots of Soledad, it is the word that encompasses the strangeness that touches the Protagonists' lives. This is not a game about great supernatural events; in magical realism, the wondrous always mingles with the mundane. And the rules of Soledad will help you keep that balance.
You may only introduce magical elements—whether they be nature gods, mysterious creatures, or supernatural phenomena—in the following ways:
By playing a Duende Scene card. This introduces a magical Supporting Character to the game. Duende scenes are also about a relationship—that between the Protagonist and the things that haunt them.
By setting a scene in a Location tile marked by the Duende. These introduce special instructions to choose from that give a weird twist to your story.
By playing a Drama card marked by Duende during any scene. This lets the fantastical bleed seamlessly into the everyday lives of the Protagonists, without taking over the narration entirely.
Card designs not final
The tone of Soledad is grounded, but Duende always lurks in the margins. It may look you in the eye when you least expect it. You may even meet it in the dead of night.
If you want a taste of it, look no further than our Pocketopia incentive: Matthijs' mini game El Duende. You will receive it as a digital freebie by backing at least three games in the Tabletop Tavern banner.
Matthijs Holter is a pillar of the Norwegian roleplaying community and has been fine-tuning the game system at the heart of Soledad for years, but a game this refined requires a worthy project to do it justice. This is where award-winning game design studio NessunDove comes in.
After whetting our appetite for cards with the new edition of momatoes' The Magus & The Oracle, we jumped at the chance to work with Matthijs and find the right solutions for the project that became Soledad. Enthusiasm got the better of us and together we've been pouring all our creative energies into the production of this boxed card game. It started with recruiting our spectacular cover artist, Soma Difusa; then we designed the box, typeset dozens of cards in multiple formats, tested out the stickers that will make them both customizable and reusable. The text of the rules is being proof-read and polished every day.
Basically, the game is almost ready. The goal of this campaign is to see whether there are kindred spirits out there who are as impatient as us to travel to Soledad and fund the production that will turn this vision into reality. With the river of your enthusiasm pouring into our own, we might even end up beating our projected delivery estimate (November 2026). To keep the production schedule as reliable as possible, we've decided to print the game in Europe, where it can be delivered to us swiftly.
Box design not final.
The box will contain:
8 Setup cards to start playing step by step and learn the game as you go.
16 Protagonist cards to combine into unique characters, using stickers to pick options.
48 Scene cards to explore your goals and relationships, as well as set the pace of your game.
5 Directioncards to steer the story together and imbue it with meaning with every scene.
3 After Act cards to help the prompts and rules evolve in a constant crescendo.
Up to 72 Drama cards(depending on Achievements!) to let anyone at the table bring new energy to a scene.
Up to 30 hexagonal Location cards(depending on Achievements!) to build the map of Soledad, with two sides to every place.
Colored sticker sheets to make the story truly yours.
A 44-page booklet to explain every nook and cranny of the rules.
Celebrating Soledad: extra goodies
The Roots of Soledad is an ambitious project, but we still found the time to design a couple of extra goodies as a thank-you for those who support it in the first hour. First, our customary token of appreciation designed by Maria: the Kapok Bloom enamel pin. It's available by itself, as part of the top pledge level and as a campaign add-on.
In addition, Early Bird backers will get a free sticker in the same design with every physical pledge!
The other item included in the top pledge level is as pretty as it is functional. As a campaign game, Soledad benefits from some record-keeping. For this reason, we want to print a custom spiral-bound Game log to help you keep track of your shared world.
Pin design not final
Game log design not final
And as a gift for the most enthusiastic backers, Matthijs has put his decades-long experience in making short-form experimental games at your disposal. His two-volume game poem anthology, B-Sides, will be included in digital form with all-rewards pledges: that's 35 weird, wonderful experiences at your fingertips. If you can't get enough, Matthijs will get down to business and write a game poem for you.
Estimates are weight-based and cover all pledges. Add-ons may increase shipping fees. Shipping fees will be collected post-campaign in Pledge Manager.
Italy: 7€
Europe: 10€
United States: 16€
Rest of world: 20€
Local pickup will be available at Dragonmeet UK (November 2026) for those who want to save on shipping .
Our plan is to begin fulfillment of all orders by November 2026. We're almost ready to print the game, with only additional material unlocked by campaign stretch goals still needing to be finished.
For worldwide deliveries, with the exception of the USA, NessunDove will handle shipping through the Italian postal service. We use untracked international mail to keep costs affordable, which means the delivery estimate will range from 8 to 25 business days depending on where you are in the world. For the United States, we have previously collaborated with the good folks of Indie Press Revolution and would like to do so again: whether this is feasible will depend on the number of US pledges and on the evolving trade landscape. We are in the position to handle all orders ourselves, should the need arise.
If you're a retailer or distributor, no matter where you are in the world, we're happy to get in touch: we've created a 1€ pledge for the campaign as a reminder to discuss order quantities once production is underway.
Matthijs Holter is the Norwegian writer and game designer behind Hyperfictive. Over the past two decades he has created a series of innovative, story-driven, and GM-less RPGs that have influenced designers worldwide. His most notable works include Archipelago, Society of Dreamers, Draug and Love in the Time of Seið (with Jason Morningstar). His designs have inspired countless adaptations, hacks, and translations, cementing his reputation as one of the leading voices in the Nordic role-playing scene. They have been celebrated for their emphasis on collaborative storytelling, improvisation, and emotional depth, often blurring the line between theater, literature, and play.
NessunDove
Oscar Biffi (editor), Maria Guarneri (art director) and Chiara Locatelli (translator) are the people behind NessunDove, an Italian game design and localization lab(yrinth). We're the authors of the chamber larp anthologies Crescendo Giocoso and Crescendo Giocoso Ritornello,winner of the 2021 Indie Groundbreaker Award for Game of the Year. Aside from producing our own games, we like to put our skills in service of authors from all over the world. In 2025 we worked with momatoes on a new edition of The Magus & The Oracle, to renew its mechanics with a bespoke card deck and additional game modes.
Laura "Soma" Ortiz
Laura Ortiz, also known as Soma, is an artist and illustrator from Bogotá. Her artistic journey has led her to explore the territories and landscapes of Colombia and the world through murals and sketches. Her method is based on careful observation, representing people's work, their daily habits, and their impact on the territories she observes. She is also interested in creating work that generates different interpretations in different viewers through symbolism and artistic parallels. Starting in 2016, she has taken part in several mural projects around Colombia and internationally. She has shown her work in individual and collaborative exhibitions. As an independent artist she focuses on supporting social projects and other causes.
Ivàn Andres Saavedra Rosas
Ivàn Saavedra Rosas is a Chilean Italian communications manager and guest editor for Soledad. To appease his unquenchable curiosity he has taken an interest in geopolitics, new technologies, and... Roleplaying games, particularly chamber larp, as a member of the Italian Chamber Orchestra, the community behind Crescendo Giocoso and laiv.it. He's also a passionate cyclist and promoter of Bologna Bike Pride.
Tabletop Tavern
Welcome to Tabletop Tavern at Pocketopia 2026 A gathering place for tabletop roleplaying games, where a wide range of TTRPG projects come together under one banner. From original settings and adventures to new systems, tools, and supplements, Tabletop Tavern showcases games with different styles, mechanics, and ways to play.
Back 3+ Tabletop Tavern Campaigns, Unlock Free Digital or Physical Content! Back 3 or more Tabletop Tavern campaigns to receive FREE digital or physical content from each participating creator you support.
The more Tabletop Tavern creators you back, the more bonus content you unlock.
Some creators may also be offering extra cross-collabs, exclusive rewards, or additional campaign-specific bonuses, so be sure to explore the full banner and see what each project has to offer.
FREEBIE: El Duende is a game you play by yourself to meet an imaginary creature. Fairy and demon, dream and nightmare, the thrill that leads to art and death. El Duende is all this. What will you do when it comes to visit you in the dark of night?
FREEBIE: A Chaotic DND 5e One Shot. A quick job turns into a chain of events no one is fully in control of. Somewhere along the way, the party meets something that doesn’t follow the rules.
FREEBIE: a free Tabletop Tavern STL. All backers of any physical pledge of the Legendary Dice Bags season 3 will additionally get a free dice set with their pledge too!
FREEBIE: A bestiary packed with eerie, folklore-inspired creatures that haunt the slopes of Wytch Mountain. Perfect for dropping straight into play, these strange horrors bring new threats, omens, and dark possibilities to every coven’s tale.
FREEBIE: A sticker drawn lovingly by Rook for all physical backers, and a digital version of the sticker if you want to print it at home for the digital backers.
