The Journey, Not the Destination - Experiencing Wanderhome for the First Time
Experiencing A Different Kind of ttRPG for the First Time
The Joy of Discovery
There's a joy in finally experiencing a game I've long looked forward to. It's a special thing, this, and a special game, too: Wanderhome, an Ennie-award winning cult classic that goes out of its way to shift the paradigm of ttRPGs. It's the journey that matters here, not the story. The book is clear about this from the get-go and I, the eternal GM, was excited to let go of the reins. The game promotes three styles of play: one with a referee, one where players switch back and forth to take up the mantle of referee, and finally what I kind of think of as the default of Wanderhome: no referee, with all the players taking joint custodianship over the world and its kith and kin (NPCs).
Our session was altogether too short: just over three hours in length, more than half of it was taken up by joint character creation and a combined effort to come up with a starting location trifecta for us to explore. I was alone in having read the book from cover to cover, so I did do a bit of my regular schtick, onboarding the players, familiarising them with the concept of the game, jumpstarting the character creation process. My effort throughout the session was chiefly aimed at helping my players realise how much freedom they had to define not only their characters but their world, and in reminding them to make use of this freedom. They are used to making decisions for their characters but not for the world. It's almost as if they're afraid of stepping onto my toes, of applying their imagination in such a way that might change something in the world I'm constructing before their eyes. They shouldn’t - worldbuilding at the table is one part brick and cement, four parts sleight of hand. Too often, the players are weary of taking big swings for the possibility of missing. They shouldn't be, if that's the case: part of the joy of play is in seeing players define whole swaths of the world, make them their own. Bold player choices should be rewarded. Even if they step on the GM's toes and are out of joint with existing lore in ttRPGs such as D&D, I say we should be accommodating where we can and open to dialogue where player and GM ideas come in conflict.
That's another discussion though, for another day.
Boldly Creating Together
Wanderhome is great at encouraging all the players to make these bold choices in a game that's as far from the tone of epic fantasy as anything you'll find. No adventuring here; merely an exploration of the human condition, such as it is. The character creator recalls the kind of choices made in Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games; indeed, we pick among playbooks just like in PbtA. Those playbooks kept us busy while inviting us to engage with one another - we went through the choices together, everyone sharing what they picked for their characters. Four Wanderhome PCs came to life before our eyes, one choice at a time; the final part of putting them together, asking questions of each other and drawing connections made for a satisfying cap to a creative adventure all its own.
Then followed our coming up with a starting location, a place where the PCs arrive to, a watering hole in-between stretches of the long, winding road they've travelled. We rolled a dice and got three aspects to work with: a tavern, a lagoon, a tower. The result was neat. My notes from the session highlight the choices we made:
Wet-Thorn
Features:
- Small and forgotten gods: Butterflies and moths
- **Tower of Thorns**
- Winding Staircase All The Way To The Top
- Roosting Moths In The Rafters
- Folklore about this place: The First Of The Moth-Towers
- **Lagoon**:
- A Watchful Creature Who Hides From The Outside
- A Hidden Grotto
- The Folklore about this place: The Waterfall’s Broken Heart
- A thin waterfall - used to fall strongly -- you can see the grotto through the waterfall.
- Tiny puppyfish - jumping up and down the waterfall.
- Tavern:
- Barrels And Barrels Of Mead
- A Cheerful Innkeep Who One of Us Once Called Family
- Folklore about this place: The Cat With The Magic Ale
If you, like me, are a long-time referee introducing your players to *Wanderhome*, I invite you to encourage the players to define these spaces for themselves. Only when no one puts forward an idea (or everyone else has added a feature to a location or otherwise made a choice) should you come in with your own. This is an early gesture towards sharing the narrative control over the world, and if your players are anything like mine (a bit shy to add world detail), they'll appreciate it. Playing Wanderhome requires something of a brain rewiring if you come from a background of more traditional ttRPGs.
Lessons from Play
Cue the Frieren: Beyond Journey's End soundtrack, and we were off to the races! A slow start, but an immensely pleasant one as we took turns describing the look of Wet-Thorn from a distance, trying to encapsulate the sublime qualities of the place. Our PCs got a chance to shine, then--in the subtle, everyday ways of kindness that *Wanderhome* is all about. And you know, we couldn't entirely break away from the seductive pull of a story in order to just enjoy the journey. Still the quest structure snuck in on us. The central feature of Wet-Thorn was a wizard's tower, and atop the wizard's tower lived a wizard. Our messenger fellow, Moss (the Moth-Tender) had in his possessions "A royal summons from the King of the Floating Mountain... for a wandering and miraculous wizard-in-exile" who just so happened to make a home away from home atop Wet-Thorn. We delivered this, but when I invited my fellow players to come up with the text of this letter of summons, they undercut the quest narrative a good bit themselves, and so it was only natural that the wizard would refuse taking it up.
The lack of dice also threw the players off; the tokens, while incredibly straightforward, were something I should've highlighted more as an important element with which to draw inspiration for play and affect the world alike. I made certain to give it a place of prominence in the Milanote document I set up as a hub for the various rules the others would benefit from the most, but I don't think I highlighted it quite enough. A mistake on my part, but not of any great significance.
Lessons Learned
Lots of learning opportunities all around, in truth. More than one player wrote to me after the session that playing *Wanderhome* had more in common with their childhood memories of playing make-believe than the ttRPG experiences they've had prior to this game. The ability to embody a place was another highlight that players enjoyed: "playing" the tavern or tower or lagoon was different enough from what they had experienced to constitute an engaging novelty.
At the end of it all, our journey was a merry success. We came up with great characters and places together, we laughed, we shared co-ownership of more than one kith and kin. I, as the Teacher, got to lead at least one entirely unbearable soliloquy (the one I'm thinking of was on the local specialty brew, a beer that my character, Heathcliff, spoke about for at least fifteen minutes. I, of course, did not.) The other PCs likewise had fantastic moments: the Moth-Tender Moss in performing their duties as fantasy postman; the Vagabond, Zelda the fox, in being an opinionated contrarian with a bone to pick with the wizard; and the Peddler Sandalio Correa-Ortiz being a general lark with dicey family relations.
My verdict from this brief, joyous experience? Playing Wanderhome was a wonderful exercise in making use of creative freedom; I think that a lot of players who might otherwise be a little daunted to make bold choices can learn important lessons about co-ownership of role-playing worlds.