You discover characters and areas and hidden bits because you're living and dealing in that world, not because the plot requires it. This is unexpected given the atmosphere and detail written into the world, but it works in its favour. There's no main plot as such, just several smaller stories you might pursue.

As a roving trader you're unremarkable, neither downtrodden nor particularly influential, and will mostly travel between settlements in an open world, doing the old low/high biz. The stock fantasy races are here but rarely remarked upon, with even the dragon people treated more like a neighbouring kingdom than fundamentally Other. Most people I've met have been pretty sound, a welcome change from interpreting 'difficult' as 'everyone is a hostile prick for no reason'. By the time you show up, things are somewhat rebuilt. They then left altogether, unaware that there were survivors. That world isn't a nice place, which isn't surprising given that the very cool backstory had the Big Empire become so utterly appalling that the gods themselves decided to drop the big Monty Python stompy foot on everything in a fit of rage. You're a vagrus, leader of a merchant caravan that plods about a post-apocalyptic fantasy world in search of fortune, fame, or bumming around as you like. It's a game about running a caravan in a world that just happens to have a cool history. This is not a game about some Epic Quest or grand campaign. After hours of feeling like a brave rebel by doing this in Vagrus - The Riven Realms, I realised it's how you're supposed to play it. If you're anything like me, when you start a game you will almost invariably try to run off into the woods or swamp and aggressively ignore anything even passably resembling a main story. Check the Best Game You Missed tag to see a new game each day over the break. While it's being taught the error of its ways, we've got a few games we let slip under the radar this year. 2021 is about due to be visited by three thematic ghosts.

Free download Vagrus - The Riven Realms