Wanderhome

 I’ve been playing in a few sessions of Jay Dragon’s Wanderhome recently.

Wanderhome ought to be lovely. It’s a gorgeously illustrated game about anthropmorphic animals journeying. Wanderhome is sort-of PbtA-lite—while there are no moves, the characters use playbooks and have a PbtA feel about them.

Locations are built up collaboratively, and it’s easy to develop evocative places. My favourite location was the Forest of Tumeric and Shadow, a mix of graveyard, forest (something the GM had created as that’s not in the book), and farm. We had silent gravestones, an armoured sloth, ants farming giant aphids, and a lost god.

Everything is very collaborative. While Wanderhome can be GM-less, even with a GM the players are encouraged to play NPCs (although we didn’t do this).

But…

I found Wanderhome dull. While it’s all evocative and lovely, it’s also very aimless. There’s lots of wandering around, interacting with NPCs and the scenery—but without any point. And unfortunately, I found myself bored.

I was playing a moth tender, a kind of postman. So I had packages to deliver—and I was the only character with any kind of goal. But it wasn’t a meaningful goal - and as soon as I delivered one letter, I was tasked with another. So that wasn’t particularly satisfying.

Aware that I wasn’t having a great time with Wanderhome, the group discussed how our game was going at the start of the last session. While some players were having a wonderful time with Wanderhome, others were less excited by it. (I was enjoying it least, though. I need plot and meaning in my games, I realise.) We agreed to play a few more sessions, and the GM has introduced a plot regarding a rogue wizard that will hopefully give our game more focus and will let us end on a high.