I’ve been playing on Towers for a little while now. I currently have three characters across different spheres (Caleb, Kit, and Tobias, for transparency), and I would rank my overall experience as incredibly positive. There are a lot of places that this game could go if players just give it a chance. A few things worth talking about:

The Pros:

• Active, engaged staff. This is probably one of the game’s biggest strengths. Staff have consistently been approachable, responsive to questions, and really made me feel like they were interested in helping me develop my characters and stories without trying to dictate how I should play them. Staff responded to each of my applications almost immediately, and they didn’t just give me the usual chargen lip-service. Staff really did a deep dive on each of them, taking their time to acknowledge that they saw what I was going for with the characters and making suggestions on where they might fit, who I should seek out, and helpful tweaks to make things more streamlined and clear. There are only three of them, and from what I see two of them doing apps, so there isn’t any of the usual inter-sphere sniping that you might be used to. They act as a cohesive unit, and it makes everything flow nicely. It was honestly one of the most painless application experiences I’ve had. Just make sure to read the chargen materials (they really are helpful), double check your math, and have at least a solid idea of who you want the character to be and what you want them to do, and it’ll be pretty painless.

• The staff have a clear plan for the game. Towers has clearly had considerable thought and effort put into its development. The website, wiki, systems, and setting provide a great foundation for character development and long-term storytelling. The game’s main website (rather than the wiki) contains the majority of the rules and systems that you’ll need to know, so they don’t hide the ball. The website is clear and well-organized, with a no-frills color scheme that minimizes distractions while still looking professional. The wiki is largely player-edited and very optional, so you never have to worry about searching through a dozen pages to find where some former staffer hid something you need to reference. The house rules are pretty minimal, mostly just a few staff-sanity choices that they (mostly) clearly explain.

• Meaningful opportunities for player agency. I really like the way the game allows players to make meaningful waves in the game without having to find a player ST to do it. There’s a formal conflict and influence system using game stats that usually just get ignored on MUSHes, even if I’m still learning where all the knobs and levers on it are. It really feels like staff are trying to give you opportunities to succeed while keeping some level of transparency and not needing to micromanage every little thing. Obviously there may be a complication here I just haven’t found yet, but I like that there’s an actual mechanical framework for characters to use other than ‘have a player ST’ or ‘suck up to a staffer’.

• Good RP when you find it. The scenes I’ve had have all been enjoyable. The characters are interesting, and the players really seem invested in making them shine without clobbering everyone else over the head with how very shiny and awesome they are. (You know the kind. We all do.) There’s a good mix of social interaction and loads of opportunities to get involved in game events. Bonus, the story has enough structure that it feels like it all ties together rather than just being a collection of disjointed parties and whatnot. I’m already making long-term plans for my characters, which is usually a pretty good sign that a game has managed to get its hooks into me.

The “Cons”:

Ok, so calling these cons is probably stretching the definition. They’re more like observations and things to be aware of, but they are what they are, so I feel like we should include them:

• A small player population. This is the big one right now. RP can be really hit-or-miss,. Even when people are on, they may be involved in different spheres or storylines, or not available for RP at the moment. This isn’t necessarily somewhere you can log in at your respective 2am and expect to find something happening. Until it reaches a certain critical mass, you might have to actively plan something with people who look interesting rather than rely on popping into a coffee shop and finding a pickup group. Which brings me to…

• You really have to be a self-starter. Staff make a point of encouraging players to develop their own stories, and I genuinely appreciate that. The downside is that, with the population being what it is, you sometimes have to put a fair amount of effort into finding people to actually have those stories with. You need to be comfortable reaching out, arranging scenes, and making your own opportunities rather than waiting for something to happen around you. That’s not necessarily a criticism of how the game is run, but it’s something prospective players should understand going in. There’s a difference between having the freedom to create your own entertainment and occasionally having to work to find anyone to share it with. The former is great; the latter can get a little frustrating. It’s not (currently) the kind of game where you can log on at 2am and go find a pick-up scene at your local coffee shop through ye old “oh, I see you’re RPing in public, so I’ll slide in too” method. You have to put in the legwork to be interesting and get scenes going.

• No in-game map. This one is the most baffling to me, honestly. The grid is huge. Like, HUGE. Bigger than Haunted Memories or The Reach huge. Thirty-two boroughs with dozens of neighborhoods and probably thousands of rooms. It was clearly a labor of love, and I respect the hell out of it. That said, navigation is sometimes really painful, and if you aren’t familiar with London, trying to figure out how everything fits together can be a real challenge. Auto-mappers are of limited practical advantage here since not everything is clearly listed by a cardinal direction, and there isn’t an easy-to-script-for variation on the exits that would help distinguish “this is a pub” from “this is someone’s bedroom that you just wandered into.” It’s an impressive amount of work, but I’d probably appreciate it a lot more if I didn’t occasionally need the navigational instincts of a migratory bird just to get somewhere.

Overall:

I like Towers. Quite a bit, actually. Enough that I’ve already made three characters and have long-term plans with all of them, which is probably a better endorsement than anything else I could say here. The staff seem genuinely committed to making the game work, the systems have clearly been designed with long-term play in mind, and there’s enough substance to the setting that it feels like somewhere you can actually invest in a character and get a meaningful return on that investment.

The biggest issue is population, and unfortunately that’s one of those problems that tends to feed on itself. People want to play somewhere with regular RP, but getting regular RP requires people to be playing. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation, and I don’t think there’s any good solution beyond getting more people through the door and convincing them to stick around.

Outside of a few very minor pet peeves and like, two things that made me go ‘huh? why?’, I’ve not really had any kind of negative experience so far, which is pretty rare for a MU and even more rare for a WoD MU.

I’d absolutely recommend giving it a look if you enjoy World of Darkness 20th Anniversary, especially if you liked the slower burn HM-style game. XP comes in much faster than HM but much slower than, say, City of Hope or The Reach, when it was a thing. I think it’s worth the investment, though. I miss those slower-burn games where not everyone was an overnight god, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. There are still plenty of places where you can scratch that itch.

Staff have laid a great foundation, and if we can just get people to actually play there, it’s got the potential to be one of those WoD mushes that we still talk about two decades later.