ENnie Award Winner 2022 for Best Art (Cover), Best Art (Interior), Best Family Friendly Game

Nebula Awards Finalist 2022 for Best Game Writing

Gayming Awards Finalist 2022 for Best Tabletop Game

“I grew up reading Redwall. The opening pages were full of lavish descriptions of playful merriment. I loved those pages. But they always gave way to chapters about war, pillaging, and slaughter. Wanderhome asks: what if the meadow gets to stay safe and happy this time? What if those opening pages last forever?”

— Avery Alder, designer of Monsterhearts and The Quiet Year

Wanderhome is a pastoral fantasy role-playing game about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit, and the way the seasons change. It is a game filled with grassy fields, mossy shrines, herds of chubby bumblebees, opossums in sundresses, salamanders with suspenders, starry night skies, and the most beautiful sunsets you can imagine.

You might be a tamarin who dances with small and forgotten gods, a leporine mail carrier who relies on moths to get packages where they belong, a little lizard with a big heart and a mysterious past, or a near-endless number of other thrilling possibilities. No matter what, we’re always travelers—animal-folk who go from village to village and get to see the length and breadth of all the world of Hæth. The seasons will change as we play, and we will change with them.

The TTRPG

Wanderhome makes use of a unique game system inspired by the No Dice, No Masters engine, developed by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum for Dream Askew and Dream Apart. Each player will make a character with the help of one of fifteen possible playbooks, making choices about their personality, animal-form, look, and passions. Each of these playbooks give you a radically different approach both to navigating the setting and growing over time. From the carefree Ragamuffin to the introverted Poet, from the Guardian and their young ward to the lonely Exile, from the cheerful Dancer to the moody Veteran, there is plenty of space in Wanderhome to imagine every possible world that lives in your heart.

Once you’ve created your character, you and your fellow travelers guide them through the dreamlike pastoral world of Hæth. There are no dice in Wanderhome. Instead, you can inconvenience yourself or step outside your comfort zone in order to get tokens, and then turn around and spend those tokens to tackle larger problems and help make the world a better, kinder space.

Wanderhome is structured with an emphasis on safety and care, built on my own work designing safety mechanics and constructing alternate safety approaches beyond the industry standards. It features a bespoke set of safety mechanics built around empowering players to guide the story however they want, which are used consistently throughout the game. It is also designed to collaboratively set the tone and articulate a version of Hæth that's perfect for your group. 

Wanderhome is a GM-agnostic game–while you can play with a Guide facilitating the world, you can also approach it without anyone in charge, where everyone takes equal part in the collaborative conversation. And while you can play Wanderhome in as little as 3-4 hours, the longer you stay with Wanderhome the more the world will grow with you. The months will pass over time and as each season concludes you’ll get to make new choices about your character, advancing them in new directions and helping them grow in ways you didn’t think was possible. If you play long enough, eventually your characters will retire or grow apart, and the journey will continue with brand-new travelers and a vast world ahead of you.

The World of Hæth

Wanderhome is set in the wholly original fantasy world of Hæth, inspired by the works of Brian Jacques, Tove Jansson, and Hayao Miyazaki. The game hints at and builds a mythological language around forces like the bitter King of the Floating Mountain, the Lily Rebellion, the Slobbering God and the blade that killed her, and the fall of the great dragons of old, but refuses to elaborate or define them—leaving that exercise to the players through the journey itself. Instead, Wanderhome is focused on the lives of ordinary people, and the world that exists for farmers, merchants, and crafts-folk.

Wanderhome is a world filled with animal-folk and their buggy livestock. Unlike many worlds with animal-folk, there is no morality or judgement ascribed to the various animals of Hæth—a snake is just as capable of being a kindly farmer as a rabbit, and you can’t assume much about someone based on what animal they are. You might find a fluffy shepherd with a herd of bumblebees, a shrewish merchant riding a stag beetle the size of a house, a lonely fox riding a grasshopper from place to place, or a praying mantis that hangs out in a gecko’s pocket.

Testimonials & Accolades

Best TTRPG of 2021 from Polygon, Game Informer, and Dicebreaker.

ENnie Award Nominee 2022 for Best Art (Cover), Best Art (Interior), Best Family Friendly Game

Nebula Awards Finalist 2022 for Best Game Writing

Gayming Awards Finalist 2022 for Best Tabletop Game

“I grew up reading Redwall. The opening pages were full of lavish descriptions of playful merriment. I loved those pages. But they always gave way to chapters about war, pillaging, and slaughter. Wanderhome asks: what if the meadow gets to stay safe and happy this time? What if those opening pages last forever?”

— Avery Alder, Buried Without Ceremony

"After reading Sleepaway, I was excited to see what Jay could do with Wanderhome - and I was right to be excited. What's contained within this book is a keenly-observed world of miniature interlocking details and a thousand invitations to go and explore inside it; it is a patchwork clockwork machine that paints a universe in strokes both broad and minute, and gives authority to the player to establish their own foothold within. The world of Wanderhome is hard, but not grim; kind, but not saccharine; unreal, but not plastic."

— Grant Howitt, Rowan, Rook and Decard

Playing Wanderhome feels like taking a beautiful trip with friends — through different kinds of game mechanics, different kinds of playstyles, different emotional experiences. I find myself coming back to the stories we told and the characters we met in Wanderhome again and again."

 — Jeff Stormer, Party Of One

“Playing Wanderhome is an experience of explorative worldbuilding where the players can delight as much as their characters do at stunning vistas, changing seasons, lost gods, or a good cheese scone all found in the company of good friends. No game has made me want to give up oneshots and settle down into a campaign again as much as Wanderhome.” 

 — Tony Vasinda, Plus One Exp

“Truly remarkable.”

— Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dimension 20

3rd Party Links

Wanderhome 3rd Party License

Wanderhome Sheets for Role by @peri_dotted

Wanderhome 3rd Party Content on Itch.io

Contained Within

There are a fair few files contained within this page.

• The full PDF version of Wanderhome, at almost 300 pages and with illustrations by more than a dozen artists. This PDF was checked for accessibility by a hired consultant, and features alt-text for images, a fully-threaded text, and more.
• A printer-friendly / colorblind-friendly version of Wanderhome, in black and white and with full page illustrations removed.
• An insectophobe-friendly version of Wanderhome, with all depictions of bugs in the art either censored or removed.
• A set of blank form-fillable sheets for playbooks, traits, natures, and seasons, under the DEMO section