Walkabout

It was like thunder when they came.

But unlike thunder it did not come from the sky, and it didn‘t stop. It was a low rumble that shook the ground relentlessly.

There were five of them, each astride a low metal horse echoing with the dark and ominous roar.

I remember my parents telling me to hide.

We hadn‘t seen outsiders for years, and those few that I could remember had looted our town and set fire to the town centre as they left.

I remember peeking through the boarded up windows. I don‘t remember much about them except for the fact that they were covered in muddy body paint, and tattoos. And that I wanted to become one of them.

They were the first Wayfarers I had ever seen. They spoke to my parents and to the other surviving adults of the town, and after their passing, things seemed to get better.

The crops started growing again, and the bandit raiders came less frequently.

The Wayfarers came back to our town once a year, riding what they called their ‘Hogs‘. Occasionally other groups of Wayfarers passed through our town as well. In time I joined a Wayfarer circle, to pass on the good deeds that helped our town.

Walkabout began as the Vulpinoid Studios entry for the game design contest Game Chef 2010. The contest is an annual event in which participants are asked to write a game with a certain theme, using three out of four ‘ingredients‘, in 2010 the theme of the contest was Journey, while the ingredients were Edge, Skin, City and Desert. Participants typically have just over a week to construct their games (one work week, bookended by a pair of weekends).

I've enjoyed my experience enough that I'll be continuing to refine my game entry over the next few months. New illustrations will be added to the book, a series of play examples will be added into the text to clarify some of the rules and highlight some of the features of the system. At the time of writing this, the play examples have been written up, and the illustrations exist as a collection of sketches and photomanipulations. I'm just waiting on Game Chef critiques and feedback before I focus my attention on where to really push the design next.

The Game Chef entry will always be available for free on this website. The final product is probably looking at a page count of around 100 to 120 pages, it will be made available as a pdf on the RPGNow web store. If there is enough interest I'll produce some hardcopy versions as well.

Resources

Walkabout Game Chef Final Version
This is the Final Game Chef version of the rules, there were a few things left out of the rules that I would like to have added in,and there are probably heaps of spelling mistakes within it...but that's the contest version in all it's glory.

Walkabout Play Sheets
The pages necessary for playing a game of Walkabout. Included here are a character sheet, a trait sheet and a token chart.

Walkabout Addendum
This is a quick addition with some of the rules and additional text that I would like to have included in the Game Chef Version of the text. It basically expands the role of spirits in the game and provides some additional ideas for how the Dreaming could be used by the Elder/GM.

Play Examples
These are in the process of being finalised, they basically narrate the rules through an example story of Wayfarers on their first mission. Each play example is designed to be no more than a single text box illustrating a single rule. There will be about thirty of these text boxes laid out in the game text, providing a coherent example of play. That's the aim anyway.

Image credits and Fine Print

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