A downloadable game

A solo journalling & worldbuilding game/RPG — the Wanderer helps you invent and record stories, characters, and landmarks encountered by a wanderer traveling through your imagined world.

To play the game, as presented in the freely downloadable one-page guide below, all you need are: a few common, six-sided gaming dice (one at minimum, four are recommended); two or more pages of paper; and a pen.

Translations

🇵🇱 Gra posiada wersjÄ™ polskÄ… - PL. (The game has a version in Polish.)

A sample journal

Theme: Star Wars + Cthulhu + cyberpunk.

While joyously swimming in a sea, the wanderer was unexpectedly swallowed by a huge monster, and after a few hours spewed onto a beach of some mysterious island.
There, he met a woman in masculine office attire, who was certain she works at a corporation, but couldn’t really remember how she got there, or, even what corporation, really, uh oh?
All she could remember about working there, was that when she really wanted to visit her home town during off days – she never managed to reach it. She would wander the megacity containing her corporation’s offices looking for a means of transport, but every time she would find some address, the travel company would be closed for renovation or out of business; the person would suddenly stop answering phones; the bus be unexpectedly delayed indeterminately; the flight she paid canceled due to airline bankruptcy.
After searching her clothes, she found a remote beacon with a button. She pressed it, and a spaceship arrived. She entered it, and the wanderer followed. The spaceship took them to what seemed like the city she talked about, where the corp’s offices were located.
There, he parted ways with the woman. After stumbling upon some sketchy pub, he met a gambler who claimed to have won a planet through his games.
From the gambler, he heard a story about a deep underground gambling league in the gambler’s home megacity. The league is said to be gradually sliding into more scary and insane, demoniac and tenebrously miasmal circumstances with every completed game. He said he didn’t know who, or what he played on his last match; the chamber was dark and foetid, resembling a deep cave, with strange sloshing and gurgling sounds belching from the shadows. The rules were abstruse and the game esoteric, the pieces warping weirdly as if not properly anchored into our reality; but a game is a game, so oh, he played! At the bottom of his consciousness, he seemed vaguely aware that his stake was registered to be his eternal soul, will, body, and relations, and with some extra extending disclaimers and small print he could not even understand the meaning of. But he played. And, as would seem, he actually won. A planet. Go figure.


Download

Download
wanderer-v1.3.pdf 231 kB
Download
wanderer-v1.2.pdf 146 kB
Download
wanderer-v1.2-PL.pdf 186 kB
Download
wanderer-v1.pdf 109 kB
Download
example-journal-01.pdf 90 kB

Development log

Comments

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The rules were a bit hard to parse on a first read, but after going through them again, I had a lot of fun playing out a psychedelic story on a desert planet.

Cool, I’m super happy it managed to give you some fun! :D thanks for sharing and leaving this comment! :D 💖

I’m really honored and curious what made you persevere and give it a second try, and not just ditch it, if you found the first reading to be a tough one 😅 I highly doubt if I myself would be so patient and generous in your place, so thank you 😅

Also, do you maybe have any thoughts what I could try to do to make the rules easier to swallow? 🤔

I noticed the example journal helped a lot, so my first thought would be more examples, but since you're working with limited space in the one-page format, this may already be the best you could've done with the concept.

I'm checking this, it looks cool.

Are you interested in a free translation to spanish?

  • If you accept, how do we do at the end?
  • Shall I send you the translation for you to publish it on this page or would you like me to publish it on my account and give you credit?

Greetings from México :)

(1 edit)

I would be honored!!

Is there a way you would prefer, and/or you think is better? Regardless, I would love to link to your account once it is done (in any case, whether a copy gets published here or only on your account).

(And, just to make sure you don’t miss it, please mark it as licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 as well - as far as I understand that’s how the license terms need to be propagated.)

Thank you for your kind words, and greetings to you from Poland as well! 🥰

I would like to translate this in Italian!

I would be honored!!

Once you do it, would you be so kind and let me know? I’d love to be pinged about it, so that I can either link to your account, or do it and also re-publish a copy of it here - totally depending on which you prefer and/or you think is better!

(And, just to make sure you don’t miss it, please mark your translation as licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 as well - as far as I understand that’s how the license terms need to be propagated.)