Discover What Haunts You Beneath The Roots of Soledad
Matthijs Holter's GM-less, card-based homage to One Hundred Years of Solitude and magical realism has funded on BackerKit
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 Pocketopia 2026 campaign for The Roots of Soledad, the tabletop homage to South American magical realism designed by Matthijs Holter, has just reached its funding goal over on BackerKit. The collaboration between Holter, author of Archipelago and Society of Dreamers, and award-winning Italian game design studio NessunDove, features the work of Colombian street artist Laura "Soma" Ortiz and promises to transport players to a place where the magic mingles with the mundane—where everything is marked by the Duende, the strangeness that haunts the Protagonists' lives.
"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. If you like surprising, gentle, and often elegiac play, The Roots of Soledad delivers."
Jason Morningstar, author of Fiasco
Improvise a story by drawing from a deck of unique cards, just as Pilar Ternera predicted the fate of the Buendía 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.
The same cards you use to build your Protagonists will form a prompt deck for the game's Scenes. 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.
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?
Support The Roots of Soledad live on BackerKit!
Or download the free online demo and build your own Soledad.
