Two years after its funding, Yazeba’s cozy and engaging tabletop RPG Bed & Breakfast has announced that a physical book will be released on May 22. Designed by Possum Creek Games, the everyday-themed title takes its already well-established aesthetic in a more relaxed, chapter-based direction that doesn’t skimp on interesting mechanics.
Possum Creek Games crowdfunded Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast in August 2022 on the IndieGoGo platform, during the boom of the board game industry moving away from Kickstarter due to the development of blockchain technology. It raised over $300,000 to create the studio’s vision of a beautiful, highly detailed book containing 48 chapters of a collaborative story set in the eponymous old house that is home to a found family and their many misadventures.
Each chapter contains a 1-2 hour scenario in which players control one of Yazeba’s seven semi-permanent residents, along with an expanded roster of 50 guests who will drift in and out of their lives and have their own stories to explore and discover. Players don’t have a dedicated character who levels up and gains more abilities along a set power curve. Instead, the group expands the emotional lives and connections of all the characters as a shared group, more akin to a map-making game or (loosely) an open-table West Marches RPG campaign.
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According to the designer, each chapter has a different mechanic that guides that specific part of Yazeba’s overall story and is fairly easy to understand, taking just 15 minutes to go through. Some chapters will be frenetic competitions, dealing with a mountain of tasks or exploring the hidden fears of the old house’s basement. Others will cover nights under the stars or gathering wild berries from nearby bushes. What ties it all together is an emotional core and gradual changes in characters that will eventually solidify into a unique artifact colored by the group’s decisions.
Some characters may form indelible bonds or change their beliefs as they grow closer to their quirky family members. Others may grow in tragic but understandable ways, shedding facets of their younger selves to use tools to help them deal with reality. Since a playgroup can switch characters and the book has been designed to facilitate low-commitment play without sacrificing high reward, the resulting dynamic is like watching a carefully cultivated terrarium bloom with life, even around and among the imperfections.
“M Veselak and I started writing Yazeba in November 2019 (before the pandemic, before Wanderhome, before the vast majority of my career as a TTRPG creator), and it’s been an incredible journey, with an incredible team of writers, designers, artists, and creatives making it all possible,” Dragon wrote on Twitter“I think the process of making this game a reality has been one of the most difficult and exhausting things I’ve ever done. But I played it with Steve Jackson at GAMA and fell in love with it all over again. I’m very proud of this game.”
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast is now available for purchase and you can find more information on the Possum Creek Game website.