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The Whispering Road

“Beautiful, smooth and challenging. It's ambitious and magical, with a sprinkle of moondust in its hair.” – Nathan Bredfeldt (DrNate)

The Whispering Road is a storytelling game of cooperation and exploration, inspired by the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

Basic Rules

The system uses d6's and d8's to tell a Hero's Journey about people who are spirited away to a strange world, find allies and face antagonists, and at the end, may (or may not) return home. The rules explicitly reward cooperation and selflessness.

Your character is made of three things:

An Archetype (Ordinary Hero, Special One, Mentor, or Rascal)
A strong Need that's regularly thwarted by another character (such as “I want to turn back into a young woman, but the wizard keeps giving me other things to do”)
A set of character Traits (such as “Everybody's Friend”, “Amazing Durability”, “Power of Flight”).

Conflicts are always framed in terms of which characters' needs are in jeopardy. You then play your traits to get dice, which you roll to try to satisfy needs. What you roll is added to your good karma if it satisfies another characters' need, or your bad karma if it satisfies your own need.

The story is laid out in a series of acts along the lines of the Hero's Journey: the characters travel to a new world (actual or metaphorical), face antagonists, gain allies, and neutralize the antagonists. During the final acts, a high bad karma relative to good karma gets you more bad karma, and if your bad karma ends up higher than your good karma, you remain exiled in the new world.

Sample Character

Name Kendra
Archetype Mentor
Need Keep my star student Lora safe…but she keeps running off into danger
Traits
- Angry Outburst
- Bag of Wonders
- Calm in the Storm
- Fiercely Protective
- Shapeshifter
Good Karma 0
Bad Karma 0

Releases

I've released The Whispering Road to my patrons on Patreon.

The Kickstarter funded art, editing, and extras for the public release. The game will ship to backers in April of 2014, with a public release after that.

Demos

First Playtest

This was the first playtest of the game, using an early version of the rules in which each hero had 7 traits instead of 5.

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Second Playtest

This is a single, two-hour session where we tested the 3-act rules.

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First Game

This is another single, two-hour session where we used the 3-act rules, using the rules as they were released to my patrons on Patreon.

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Play Sample

<html> Lauren: Okay, we've decided to play in a steampunk world with a clean topside and a dirty lower side. My character is named Lora; she's a Special One. She has a small pendant; I'm not sure what it does yet. Her need is “I want to prove that I can protect myself…but my mentor Kendra doesn't think I'm ready.” She has four Traits; I chose Adventure Magnet, Burst of Courage, Calm in the Storm, and Everyone Likes Me. I'm also the Driver.

Katie: And I'm playing Kendra. Her archetype is Mentor, and her Need is “I want to keep Lora safe…but she keeps running off into danger.” I get five Traits, and I chose Angry Outburst, Bag of Wonders, Calm in the Storm, Fiercely Protective, and Shapeshifter. And I'm the Navigator.

John: I'm playing Jack, Lora's best friend. He's an Ordinary Hero; his Need is “I want to show Lora how much I care for her…but Kendra keeps getting in the way.” I also get five Traits, and I chose Amazing Durability, Gadgeteer, Insatiable Curiosity, Intensity, and Protector.

Lauren: Cool! Now, when we were talking earlier, we agreed that we wanted to include some kind of giant glowing portal. How are we going to do that?

Katie: What if my character's guarding it? I'm a teacher anyway. It could be a Harry Potter in Hogwarts sort of situation: the teachers are keeping something dangerous in storage.

Lauren: Perfect! So, the rules say that we now describe our heroes waking up and going about a normal day. Lora's a noble's daughter, so she wakes up in her huge bed, gets dressed, and goes to class.

John: I do the same, though I'm not quite as high-born as Lora. My room's smaller, and my clothes are a little more beat up, probably because of my Insatiable Curiosity. I meet up with Lora in the hall.

Katie: Kendra will be teaching your first class, which is basically home room. Oooh! And maybe she mentions this portal.

Lauren: Perfect! I get all excited and ask lots of questions.

Katie: Which Kendra deflects.

Lauren: Which gets Lora excited. Should we frame this as a conflict?

John: The rules don't mention conflicts in the prologue, though we certainly could.

Lauren: Let's skip that, then. I'll just sneak into the portal room with Jack later.

John (as Jack): You said there's a portal in this room? Neat-o!

Lauren: So let's say we both find this room, and it's a big stone room with a giant spinning disc in the center. I go up to it, curious, and it sucks me in.

John: Uh-oh! I'll go after her.

Katie: I show up just as you're being sucked in, and I tsk, and go after you.

Lauren: Okay, so we're in the new world. Did we ever decide on what the new world should look like?

Katie: Not really. Any ideas?

John: What if it's a really nature-filled place, all forests and no technology? A real contrast to our steampunk world.

Lauren: Cool! So I fall through a bunch of trees into a clearing. Ouch!

John: And I fall right on top of you.

Lauren: Ow!

Katie: I float down next to both of you, completely composed.

Lauren: You float?

Katie: I have a Bag of Wonders, after all.

Lauren: Oh, right. So, we're in the new world, so it's Act 1. What are we supposed to do?

Katie: Well, the rules say we're going to get into some conflicts. Each conflict should try to answer at least one of these questions: How is the new world different from the normal world? • How does the new world operate? What are its rules?

John: I'm confused. How do we do that?

Katie: I think we have to come up with situations that show off the strangeness of the new world and how it works.

Lauren: So maybe we're attacked by something?

John: Oooh! Since this is a natural world, some jungle creature, like a tiger.

Lauren: Let's make it an intelligent tiger, like Shere Kahn from The Jungle Book. Maybe all the animals are intelligent in this world.

Katie: Cool! So an intelligent tiger prowls out of the underbrush towards us. Let me check the rules for conflicts. Okay, the rules say that every conflict has to involve at least one hero's Need.

John: What does that mean?

Katie: I think it means that the conflict has to be related to one of the Needs we came up with earlier.

Lauren: Okay. Well, my Need is to prove that I can protect myself. That would certainly apply here.

Katie: My Need is protect Lora, so that fits.

John: And my Need is to show Lora how much I care about her. So maybe I leap out in front of the tiger!

Katie: Okay. Now we need to tap our trait cards. You can tap as many as you want. I'm the Navigator, so I get to decide what kind of conflict it is, physical, relational, or intellectual. I think we're reacting physically, so I'll call it a physical conflict.

Lauren: Okay. I'm going to tap my Burst of Courage.

John: I'm going to tap…I guess my Protector to protect Lora, and my Amazing Durability to survive leaping in front of a tiger!

Katie: And I'll use Fiercely Protective. John, that Amazing Durability trait is a physical one, so you get to roll an 8-sided die for that. All the other traits are six-sided.

John: Cool!

Katie: Now, here's one of the unique things about this game. We have to say whose Need we're trying to satisfy with our Traits. So we can use a trait to satisfy our own Need, or to satisfy somebody else's Need.

Lauren: Hmmm. It sounds like we're all trying to satisfy our own Needs.

Katie: True. Well, let's go with that for now. Okay, everyone, roll your dice!

Lauren: I got a 4.

John: Yes! I got a 3 and a 7!

Katie: And I got a 5. Every die that rolls 5 or higher succeeds.

John: So the Protector didn't work, but Amazing Durability did? How does that work?

Katie: Well, maybe the tiger batted you away and was able to attack Lora, but you managed to avoid being hurt. So you didn't protect Lora, but you're still very durable.

John: Oh. Okay.

Lauren: My Burst of Courage wasn't enough. So maybe I leapt at the tiger, but my courage failed at the last minute when it whacked Jack away.

Katie: Fortunately, I'm Fiercely Protective, so I stepped in and got you out of harm's way in the nick of time.

John: So did we defeat the tiger?

Katie: That's not exactly how it works. We passed through the conflict, but the tiger isn't necessarily out of the story. Maybe we impressed him and he's ready to talk. Before that, though, we have to calculate karma.

John: Karma?

Katie: We each have good karma and bad karma. They start at zero. As we finish conflicts, we add what we roll to our totals.

Lauren: How do we know which one goes where?

Katie: If you rolled a die to satisfy your own Need, you add what you roll to your bad karma. If you're satisfying someone else's Need, you add it to your good karma.

John: Huh?

Katie: Think about it this way: if you satisfy your own Need, you're being selfish. If you use up your own Traits to help someone else with their Need, it's a good deed.

John: Oh. Hmmmm. Dang, that's not good.

Katie: Yeah. Since we were all satisfying our own Needs, all of those rolls go to our bad karma. I have 5 bad karma, Lora has 4, and Jack has a whopping 10 bad karma!

John: What does that do to our characters?

Katie: Nothing yet. But at the end of the game, your good karma compared to your bad karma determines whether your hero can go home or has to stay in the new world.

Lauren: Ouch. So we'd better start satisfying each others' Needs!

John: And I'm already down two Traits.

Lauren: Don't worry! Since we've tackled each of our Traits, we can move on to Act 2. By doing that, we can untap up to 2 Traits. So we're all back to normal.

John: Cool!

Lauren: We can get some good karma now, too. If we satisfied our archetype's goal, we get to roll a die and add that to our good karma.

John: Our archetype's goal?

Lauren: Yeah, it's listed under your archetype. My hero's a Special One, so my goal is to protect myself, an object, or a piece of information. Hmmm, I didn't really do that.

John: Lemme see. I'm an Ordinary Hero, and my goal is to protect another.

Katie: You leaped in front of that tiger to protect Lora, so I think that counts.

John: Awesome! So I roll a die…and I roll a 3. So I have 5 good karma and 10 bad karma

Katie: As a Mentor, my goal is to ensure that another hero matures and makes the right choices. Haven't really done that yet.

John: Okay, what's next?

Katie: I think it's time we talk to that tiger…. </html>

Support

If you have questions about The Whispering Road, please post them to the Google+ Community.

Brent P. Newhall's Musaeum of Fantastic Wonders

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