My Studio Ghibli-inspired RPG

For the past few months, I’ve been working on one of my dream games: a tabletop role-playing game that simulates the otherworldly adventure stories of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. I wanted a rule set that emulated the motivations and values of Miyazaki, that rewards co-operation and community. I’ve been playtesting it and tweaking it for months now.

Today, I sent a limited release of the game, The Whispering Road, to my patrons on Patreon.

The Wandering Road is ideal for introducing casual gamers to tabletop games, and also designed to be accessible for kids. There’s no adult language and all games can be completely non-violent. It’s a GM-less story game, which includes rules for creating characters and resolving conflicts. Characters are built from three pieces: an Archetype, a Need, and list of 5 Traits (the rules come with 4 Archetypes and 30 Traits to choose from; players define Needs collaboratively). There’s a 5-act story structure for simulating movie-like stories. This structure can even be abbreviated to 3 acts if you only have a couple of hours to play.

I haven’t released it to the public yet, because this game deserves beautiful art. I’ve contacted a few artists, and once I have some sample art from them, I plan to launch a Kickstarter for the art, and once I have that, I’ll release the game publicly.

If you’d like to try out The Whispering Road, let me know, and I’ll try to set up a time when we can play online. There are so many opportunities for video and audio gaming online (Skype, Google+ Hangouts, etc.).