Wanderhome (Part 2)

This is the second part and conclusion to our Wanderhome critical analysis. You can find part one here

Ludo

This is easy, right? It is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, so obvious it comes with an engine! The engine is the token economy.

Against all expectations: no! In fact, the token economy plays a very minor role in driving the game and narrative. Two things contribute to the subordination of the token economy. First, everyone has the same role in the economy and everyone interacts with it on same terms, with the same incentives and outcomes; there are no character specific actions, no mechanics that reward you for playing to your role and driving the narrative the way a character of your archetype is expected to perform. Second, the economy itself is less of a driver of action and more of a signifier you attach to an action; it is not about permission or ability to do something, but about using the movement of a token to communicate its weight.

Let’s go further in depth.

Everyone has the same token-economy actions.

You get a token when:

You spend a token to:

Each character has a unique way to generate tokens, and they also can interact with character advancement.

As you can see, none of these really create situations (that is saved for the character advancement options); what they do is a great job at establishing tone of action and your role in a particular situation - or, interestingly, to open possibilities for what may happen once the journey continues and thus by definition outside of the scope of the game. Tokens are meaningless hoarded; it is the social currency of them going back and forth that matter for the token economy.

So, despite its importance for the game, the token economy is not its primary driver. So, what about the location and season change?

Not really either.

Changing locations is an option tied to breaks within games. Changing seasons is an option available when changing locations. These decisions are some of the most important you can make for a journey, but they are a procedure rather than an engine: it is to choose when to add new natures, change the rules, and advance characters.

The thing that works more like an engine, pushing the game, changes and the driving the token economy are the many, many special actions that don’t really interact with the token economy (except the one that does all the time). At any moment you have:

It is easy to see how those overshadow the token economy. A simple solo scene with one non-player character in a simple season has 17-19+ actions that create/dictate/guide scenes! With three players, with so many playbooks bringing non-players characters, it is not unusual to have three to six non-player characters in a scene. Tracking 40-45 different actions beyond the basic sixteen (16) is not an unlikely situation.

This is it, this is the mechanic heart of the game; this is what you going to be checking when you look up mechanics. But still, it is a veritable buffet of options. How all this power is steered? It needs something to help it, and the design choices about it are remarkable.

The game, for the most part, seems to have no engine: it makes use of negative design space to have the meta-framework of the game-as-journey and journey-as-game to be the driver of art created with Wanderhome.

However, in each given instant, there are some powerful secondary engines and boosters to the negative space no-engine: festivals, natural, season and character actions.

Brad

So, Ludo hit most of my complaints right on the head, I am gonna mention very specifically the Vagabond and The Veteran. These are playbooks that make me legitimately angry because I went into them with high expectations, I was told that they were the cleverest piece of design.

We all fairly criticized games for making trap options, for building inherently options that were sub-par, and not worthwhile to play because they couldn’t interact meaningfully. The Veteran is a trap playbook.

If Wanderhome was a game of self-reflection, and if it was a game of personal growth, the Veteran would be fascinating, a person defined by war who wants to grow past it, who goes on a journey to become something more than a person defined by violence. It would be a fascinating arc to play through, that could speak beautifully. But Wanderhome isn’t about stories, and it isn’t about destinations, The Veteran remains defined by violence, they are only allowed to either Fully Embrace Violence and immediately kill someone, at which point they become unplayable, or, they can Totally Reject Violence and become unplayable.

The Vagabond exists as the Good Veteran in the land of Wanderhome. The Vagabond has committed a crime, not simply the crime of carrying out state-sanctioned violence, but any one of a variety of crimes including that. They, however, have traits that allow them to interact with the world and narrative non-violently. They do not have the binary choice of Exist until you decide to do violence, which means that if you chose to play The Veteran, you will always be less able to interact than the Vagabond.

Beyond how this looks if someone you know or love is a veteran of war, I am left disgusted that in a story game that didn’t need the additional bloat, you would spend several pages describing a playbook that is essentially a gotcha.

Ludo

Play the Kickstarter kit.

Jokes aside, that is the best idea. When I sit down to write this step, I come with two priorities: accessibility to the rules and reducing cognitive overload.

There is nothing from the core principles of the Wanderhome missing from the experience of the playtest kit. The rules are just as straightforward there, with the slightly more direct writing easing game and pre-game consultation. So it is one of the best way to read rules - which are, individually, as simple as they can get.

Reducing cognitive load is trickier; there, the playtest kit is still your friend. Wanderhome is great due to its many options and possible combinations, but for getting a nice, easy, table-ready tasting of the game those hundred of options are a source of decision paralysis. However, everything being layout’d together and a curated list help a lot. Still, there is enough similarities between both versions that if one of you really wants a specific nature or playbook, you can easily copy it from the main book and apply it to the playtest kit.

You should try to keep it simple for the first session. Stick to a single location, your character and the non-player characters created for the location’s natures. Same logic; keep it limited as you test the dynamics and everyone gets a better grip on the game flow and how to make the journey work for your group.

Guided and solo play should be avoided for your first session, specially when using the playtest kit. Even with the different focus of the token economy, there is enough overlap with Belonging Outside Belonging that you will benefit from being familiar with these games. In fact, it may highlight differences, making you know if this is something you may want to revisit or not.

Brad

I played according to the final version of the rules for good or ill. My final verdict on what you need in order to start with it is someone who has a good memory to act as a facilitator, and (like every other RPG) everyone will need to buy in on the concepts of the game.

You will need a facilitator of some sort, even if the whole group is theoretically familiar with the book. That facilitator will be playing book-keeper for the game, which is a hard and often disappointing role, but my group found itself desperately needing one if only to look up traits. I would recommend everyone being intimately familiar with the book, and a frank discussion of what playbooks are going to be used, and which ones should be off the table.

Ludo

The game is going to be played wrong. It is kind of a requirement to play it, as it is presented and designed. It is also how all games end up being played, but that’s kinda the point. However, there is really nothing serious once one gets into the biggest hurdle, as there is not space for game-running mistakes: to actually get to play and getting the journey working for you. I can see many groups trying to bring a game up and hitting a roadblock that keeps them from enjoying Wanderhome.

To put it simple, Guided and Solo play is just not supported. Solo only tells you to invite randomness, which is pretty much required; but alas, it clashes strongly with the communal, cooperative expectations of the gameplay — and the curated, purposeful design of playbook choices. My attempts at Solo play end up with the same amount of cognitive load and book-keeping unloaded on a single brain; it always ended with me putting aside my journal to flip through the book, then close the book and forget to pick the journey. It is an extreme amount of work, unloaded on a single brain with diminished returns; one should be careful to see if they are getting from Solo play what they want for what it expects from your investment.

If Solo plays will suffer from much for one person, Guided play is more likely to fail because a single person does not get to really play the game. You manage the big ledger of all the things in play and explored. However, you are denied the chance to get a playbook like other players; you give up actions and token economy and get no guide tools. In other words, the Guide is there to support their friends in the negative-design space, with only negative-design at their disposal; in practical terms, they are the ledge-keeper. Unfortunately, Guided play seems like something that may be required for many due to Wanderhome’s cognitive dissonance, it replaced a type of fun for nothing and the people that need this help the most are the ones that are going to have a harder time as guides themselves.

Wanderhome may be the first of its own class, of the “crunchy storygames”, superheavy-hitter. Those expecting a chill, more relaxed, rules light experience may be quickly overwhelming. While every single rule is carefully designed to be as simple and accessible as possible, it is designed to increase in complexity as a journey goes on; the incentives across the book to bring locations, characters and histories from across other Wanderhome games and just drop in hints at some major metaverse of Haeth. The result is a game with no real learning curve (there is not much to get, and what you need to learn is front-loaded) but an ever-expanding reach and complexity (there is always more things and nothing is even retired when a journey is over). This means there are no chances to improve at the game or learn new tricks: the cognitive load is only gonna expand, and if you already have problems early on, this will only take more of your capacity. Anecdotal experience with the game is being surprisingly exhausting for what people expected to be a relaxing, low-energy input game. When you play Wanderhome, you are stepping in the ring with its over three hundred pages of muscle.

While amazing as an art piece, as an artifact, Wanderhome is perfect. But when interacting with the three instances of the game, it becomes apparent that it is overdesigned. There is a lot to be saying why, which tie to the way how games are even allowed to exist and reach across the globe; that goes way beyond this review framework. However, the stress points that come from that are very relevant.

Traumatized traits were an addition to the final version, and they are both too much and not enough. They are just like other traits and yet separated from them; the distinction it adds creates a strange space about what is trauma and how trauma in Haeth can represent. It makes such traits require special attention and care.

Another addition was of sets of mechanics based around clocks. Unfortunately, they are clocks for clock’s sake that are irrelevant before the second year of the campaign; rather than elements happening because the party wants them to happen, they must fill clock and then wait for the next time and then the party must decide if they think it happens. It adds more book-keeping to an already overwhelming game for diminished returns - and if the game is a short one, no returns at all!

It is very easy to expand upon Wanderhome design, and we have not even seen the tip of iceberg of what is possible to this game. Due to decision paralysis, book-keeping and so on, games of Wanderhome as the line expands may benefit from short-listing options for specific experiences. A thought to entertain as we move towards this promising future.

Brad

It is now that I reveal the existential question that is haunting me. Ludo hit every nail on the head as she often does. When I completed running my test session, Ludo asked me the hard question “Did you run Wanderhome, or A Belonging Outside Belonging Game with Wanderhome dressing” I ran the game as a facilitator and I cannot answer that question.

Wanderhome run wrong could be just that, I don’t know what it would look like run right, and I think the only way to find out would be to play a game with its designer.

Ludo

The best part of Wanderhome is yet to come.

This is where I talk about the third Wanderhome, the one that exists in the perception of Wanderhome. It exists a space that clearly needs filling and is being filled with Wanderhome; and it is amazing to see the things people come up with to make it fit their wants and dreams.

Wanderhome has a 3rd Party content license. It is pretty permissive in terms of generating new content and commercializing, but there are two things to take into consideration when designing from this game as its starting point: content of the game cannot be replicated and some terms are written in a manner that assumes ownership of mechanics (which you use at the license’s permission). It does not seem to be written to make implicit claims; it seems to be a question of clarity. However, it helps to be careful in these affairs — better check with the license holders before any major project.

We have already seen the most delightful things come from the Wanderhome community and expanded universe, such as a wonderful in-universe cookbook or a star-themed pack. Haeth is going be expanded over the next years; there will be no shortage of new journeys. User trouser_mouse maintains the best collection of fan-material at the time of this writing; keep an eye on his cataloguing efforts.

Completely changing what Haeth is about is another matter. The dispersed and decentralized systems that replace the usual Belonging Outside Belonging dynamics are tied to natures, festivals, playbooks and seasons - which in turn reinforce what Wanderhome is like; without some radical changes that come down to making an entire new arrangement, Wanderhome content is gonna be Wanderhome. Perhaps one can take the setting and its melancholic, defeated acceptance of suffering and status quo and maybe design new ways to interact with them; that could be an interesting spin.

Speaking on interesting, that is the main thing to steal. Wanderhome is the most interesting design of this year; the choices in it, the choices that condition it, and what focus and disregards, they made it an amazing test for designers to study, break-down and think about. So many tendencies of the last decade led to Wanderhome - and an equal number seems to be starting there, - that one disregards this experience in roleplaying art at their own peril.

Brad

I came from Wanderhome with a very sour taste in my mouth, and I will own that here and now. But I think that it should be read, and studied and honestly, you should play it. There is a lot to learn from its design principles, and I think that from Wanderhome many beautiful projects will spring. Ludo is again correct in seeing that there may be some beautiful projects that are yet to emerge from the ether.

But in an honest way, I think where we say Wanderhome fails is a space to grow, a space to play, and a space for the next revolution in gaming to come. I dream of the day I can have a life-defining journey across a beautiful land, regardless of if I am guilty of violence in the past, and where I could be motivated by this journey to grow into a more beautiful and whole person, and maybe at the end of it, find a community that loves me, regardless of my past.