Journey to the Bright and Wild is a tabletop roleplaying game I came up with while taking a bath. It’s a super simple game designed to structure story time with my kids in a way that’s more interactive: allowing me to bring their ideas into the story more often and in a way that’s a bit more structured than arbitrary fiat, and that centers them in those stories as the participating characters.
Telling my kids a story about a cat’s first day in a magical forest and asking them what the cat sees next is super fun. But having them BE a couple of cats in that forest is even better.
Since this is a game for my young kids, it’s very simple. The rules fit on one page. There’s only two mechanics for the players and two for the guide. And character creation is free-form make-believe followed by assigning four ability scores. It’s not polished, and it’s not complete, but it is playable.
In the spirit of embracing The Year of the Beta, the rules are written below, and are available as a print-ready pdf right here.
Characters in Journey to the Bright and Wild are Strong, Smart, Brave, and Kind. Whenever they want to overcome an Obstacle using their Strength, Smarts, Bravery, or Kindness they roll the die that matches their current confidence in that ability, and reduce the Obstacle’s points by the number they rolled. There are four ability levels: Nervous, Comfortable, Confident, and Expert.
When you create a character, you set one ability to Nervous, two to Comfortable, and one to Confident.
Level 1 (Nervous, D6): When your character first starts out they’re still new to adventuring and using their skills in dramatic situations. When a character is Nervous using an Ability, they roll a six-sided die.
Level 2 (Comfortable, D8): Once your character gets some experience adventuring they become more Comfortable using their skills. When a character is Comfortable using an Ability, they roll an eight-sided die.
Level 3 (Confident, D10): A character that is Confident in their Ability rolls a ten-sided die. This is a character that has been through many adventures and knows how to handle them.
Level 4 (Expert, D12): A character that is at the top of their game with an Ability is an Expert. They roll a twelve-sided die.
Whenever the characters in Journey to the Bright and Wild encounter an Obstacle that blocks their progress, the Guide assigns a number of points to the Obstacle based on how difficult it is and on how many characters are engaging with it. Easy Obstacles have 2 points per player, standard obstacles have 3, difficult obstacles have 4, and epic obstacles have 5. Obstacles resolve once they reach zero obstacle points or automatically at the end of the round but in a more unfortunate way.
Challenges are obstacles that don’t resolve at the end of a round, but persist until resolved through action. They have two or three times as many points as a similarly difficult Obstacle. Challenges should be used sparingly during an adventure (perhaps 1-3 times).
If an obstacle or challenge still exists at the end of a Round there are consequences. For Obstacles, they resolve in a way that complicates the characters’ situation. This can mean making things more difficult for them in the future or simply that the thing they were hoping to achieve only sort of worked. For Challenges, things are a little more dire. Every round that the Challenge remains, each player reduces the dice for the stat they used that round by one level. If this reduces their level in that skill to 0, they become Hurt (Strong), Confused (Smart), Scared (Brave), or Mean (Kind), and they can no longer use that skill to overcome Obstacles and Challenges.
If a character ever becomes Hurt, Confused, Scared, and Mean all at the same time, that character quits adventuring for good. Each week spent back home between adventures heals one skill by one level.
Written on: March 22, 2025