Cozy Adventure

And Why I Love It

I have a confession to make. As a Gen X guy, you’d think my favorite video game was Space Invaders, Super Mario Brothers, or Sonic the Hedgehog. They’re not. The video game I’ve spent the most time playing, by far (not counting Lord of the Rings Online), isn’t one I discovered until I was almost 40. I’ve logged hundreds of hours in it and loved every second. And that game is…

To be honest, I was surprised at how much I love this game. I shouldn’t be, in hindsight, but I was at the time. You see I like, the genre/vibes of what we now called “Cozy.” Really, I had a name for the same vibe before I heard the term: Hobbity.

This all came to mind because yesterday I got my contributor copy of Hobbit Tales for The One Ring, Second Edition. This is a combination of the material first published in the original Starter Box for the game now compiled into a hardcover - a gazetteer and history of The Shire and five short adventures. When I was writing these adventures, I wanted to capture that cozy The Hobbit feel. The original drafts actually had less combat than the final product. It was mischievous adventures around the Shire that would fuel gossip and tarnish reputation, but true danger didn’t become apparent until the late stages of the last few adventures.

When I began freelancing back in 2012, my impossible dream - the thing that was never going to happen - was to be the guy who wrote the official book on The Shire and Hobbit culture for the official Lord of the Rings RPG. It was never going to happen. Until it did. And I am unashamed to say that when I got the job, I wept tears of joy. To this day, I still love that book and as is evidenced by Halfjinks: A Roleplaying Game of Innocent Mischief, I never mind going back to life among the little people.

A few years later, I had my widowmaker heart attack. A 97% fatality rate beaten and a quintuple bypass later, I remember the three things running through my mind right before I went into surgery:

• I had to finalize my family’s financial stability.

• I was worried about a few lingering backers of White Box Cyclopedia who hadn’t gotten their products.

• I was never going to get to publish The Road Home.

The Road Home is my love letter to the “Cozy” genre. It blends that “Cozy” vibe with my love of OSR-style gaming. I often call it “Grimm’s Fairytales meets The Goonies.” The system is a simple three attribute, d20-based system. The PCs are all children no older than 13. The game is designed around the premise of this group of kids sneaking off to explore the dangers just outside their village without the grown-ups in town becoming aware. I spent the better part of two years writing and refining the game. The visuals were and are heavily influenced by the art of David Revoy and Rick Hershey.

One of the key features of The Road Home is that PCs cannot die. I didn’t want a game with literal child murder in it, but as I developed an alternate consequence I came across something far worse. Characters have a Fortitude score that can be reduced by combat, along with other hazards of adventure. If it reaches 0, they risk gaining a point of Despair. When a Young Hero accumulates 5 Despair, they just… stop. They stop exploring, they stop wondering. That spark just dies. After writing that, I realized that is a fate far worse than character death.

On the other side of that, Young Heroes improve by “Goofing Off.” When we’re children, we have this image of who we will become and while our actions and our passions have some influence on that the adult become, but the adult we are is often quite different from what we imagined. To this end, how a Young Hero chooses to Goof Off determines what random table they roll on. That random table has a number of benefits and character improvements that are thematically linked. So, your Young Hero might decide to Wander in the Woods and they might gain an Animal Friend or learn a bit of Herblore. But the player doesn’t determine exactly what that is. They choose the table - not the result. Because the road to adulthood is filled with skills we never quite expected to learn.

Like so many of us in this crazy, 24/7, social media saturated world, I long for a slower pace and a simpler time that probably existed more in my imagination than in my past. Nevertheless, my life is a chaotic mess - as is everyone’s I think. Maybe it’s my own ego, but I think my circumstances make it feel like my life is far more chaotic than most. I’m quite guilty of playing the “if only,” game in my head and it takes a proverbial knock on the head from the two people who love me most (God and my wife) to remind me how good I have it sometimes.

But the idea of a slower pace, the simple pleasures, and a touch of wonder are where my heart really lies. Sometimes, I get that - or at least I notice it. My son sitting in my lap and giggling. A good, simple meal. The warmth of the woman sleeping next to me as I close my eyes at night.

I think that’s part of what The Road Home is about: Finding simple wonder and simple joy. And while narratively that manifests as the supposedly haunted cottage of Old Man Caruthers down the overgrown path just outside of town, I think it can be present in our everyday life. It’s just buried deep down. Under all the likes and clicks and noise. It takes children, with their easy laugh and razor sharp innocence, to help us find the way back. Maybe that’s why I called it The Road Home.