One More Multiverse partners with Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Our newest tabletop role-playing game, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, is a sprawling project. The tale of a found family within a magical house, its episodic storytelling, modular rulesets and web of guests means the entire game can change rapidly from one chapter to the next, and our larp-inspired approach to game design meant its a very tactile project — using stickers to mark the changing B&B and its evolving story. But, since pretty much the start of the project, we knew there was going to be a major challenge —accommodating online play.
We explored a ton of different ideas, and cobbled together solutions throughout the pandemic to ensure we could actually playtest the game in something approaching its actual form, but nothing we came up with was good enough to give the public. Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is a tricky game to bring to digital: it’s big, it’s got a lot of bespoke mechanics, and it tracks a lot from session to session. Even the traditional format of online TTRPGS, the PDF, was woefully inadequate for the tactile relationship the book offers its players. We considered investing in a website, making our own software, ditching digital entirely … we were floundering!
And then, like a bolt of lightning, we found the solution. Some phone calls, a bunch of meetings, and an action plan later, we suddenly found ourselves working on one of the most exciting and innovative approaches to digital play I’ve ever seen, with the perfect team. Thanks to One More Multiverse, we’re bringing Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast online, in a way we genuinely think you have never seen before. Let’s take a look at the trailer!
Wow. Okay, so. I’m sure you’ve got some questions! We’re going to spend the rest of the article addressing what this will be like to play, how we’ll be distributing digital copies in general, and do our best addressing any other questions you might have.
What Is Multiverse?
One More Multiverse (or OMM, for short) is a digital TTRPG platform designed to enable people to play tabletop games online over call. It stands out through its pixel art aesthetics, bespoke rules support, and effective merger between video game and tabletop. The first time I played Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast through OMM, I wandered from room to room as my character, picking up and tossing around the objects I found, marveling at the tactile joy of running around a kitchen with a stack of plates.
One thing I really enjoy about One More Multiverse, and a big part of what drew us to them, is that they’re not trying to perfectly recreate a tabletop experience online. Instead of trying to emulate something they’re not, they fully embrace the advantages of being digital and use that to dazzling ends. Playing Yazeba’s on there was the first time I’ve ever felt like online play was more than just a substitute for sitting at a table, the first time I was glad I was playing online instead of in person.
They’re system-neutral (so you can play everything from Dungeons & Dragons to Wanderhome on there, and more besides) but they’re working with specific game studios to bring those games to their platform, integrating rules and create a ton of assets for play.
What Does This Mean For Yazeba’s?
Once the Indiegogo campaign wraps up, everyone who backed at the digital edition will get access to One More Multiverse’s closed beta program. Then, once we’re ready to distribute the online version of the game (around February or March of 2023), everyone will get two keys: one will access the PDF copy of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, and the other will access the Yazeba’s Multiverse Bundle.
Inside that Bundle will be:
- All 48 chapters of the book, each one with custom rules support and level design. Go fishing with your friends, put on a play, or explore a haunted corn maze, or more!
- All 50 guests of the Bed & Breakfast, each with their own journey, character sheet, and sprite.
- All 7 residents of the Bed & Breakfast, each with their own journey, character sheet, mechanics, sprite, and outfits.
- Legacy mechanics, including stickers and shelves, enabling unlocking late-game mechanics, accessing various chapters, and the arrival or passage of various guests.
In short, the Multiverse Key for Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast contains everything you could access in the book, with a few digital extras:
- There will be a ton of easter eggs and object descriptions across the Bed & Breakfast, helping each place in the game feel fully realized and lived in.
- Players will be able to add to the Bed & Breakfast themselves through pixel art and resources—both of their own creation and from OMM’s asset library.
- In situations where the mechanic has simply no clear digital implementation (for example, one of the guests has a journey about drawing tattoos on her arm) we’ll work with the OMM team to come up with a new mechanic to fill that slot.
What Will This Be Like?
Playing on OMM is a lot like most other digital platforms — players join a call together, access the rules through a built-in overlay, and move their characters around on a beautiful pixel-art map. What stands out is its fluidity — the controls for your character more resemble a video game than a simulator. You can interact with objects, move through different areas, and engage with the world as a world.
Additionally, the house itself is a part of the game you get to play with. Object text, easter eggs, and game mechanics built into the map all mean that exploring the house and going on adventures is part of play itself. The house changes as you play chapters and unlock more of the Bed & Breakfast, you even get to add rooms and change the map to suit your group. This works great with some of the mechanics of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, in ways which will become very apparent once you’re playing the game.
Ultimately, this will be a different experience than playing the game in person. Neither OMM or the Possum Creek team is trying to perfectly replicate a real-life gaming environment, which I believe is for the best. Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast as a physical game is about taking advantage of the physical medium, using drawings and objects to approach gameplay from new angles. It’s appropriate that a digital adaptation of the game is focused on taking advantage of the strengths of digital play, and making an experience that is perfect for its medium.
Stretch Goals
Although we’re a month out from the Indiegogo, I figured I would talk about the digital-connected stretch goals here so you can get a sense of what we’re planning should the crowdfunding campaign go well.
Deluxe Digital Edition
The Deluxe Digital Edition will include everything in the base game, plus some digital-only exclusives. This includes more outfits for the residents, some digital-only guests, and some digital-only chapters. We’ll be designing both the guests and chapters around One More Multiverse’s mechanics, ideally doing stuff we literally couldn’t do in paper.
Fill The House With Secrets
Have you heard about the Starving Wind Girl? I heard it’s a chapter so creepy they had to cut it from the game… If the project is successful enough, we’ll be able to fill the house with secrets. This will mean a bunch of digital content about hidden surprises, mysterious passageways, and ghosts. We’ll also add tucked-away alcoves, small shrines, and hidden minigames?!
Teach The House To Dream
I wonder what the Bed & Breakfast dreams about, if we were able to ask it… If the project is wildly successful, we’ll be able to implement procedural generation into how many of the spaces are constructed, creating new environments every time you play the chapter. Of everything we’re doing for Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, this is the design element I feel most excited for. It’s a design space that I genuinely believe no other TTRPG has had the ability to access.
Coming March 22nd
The Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign launches March 22nd 2022, and we would love to have you there! Here’s some links, so you can find the right place to go.
- Follow along through the Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast campaign, where you can get notified the moment we launch the Indiegogo.
- Join the Possum Creek Campsite, our public Discord server where we’ll be running exclusive events connected to Multiverse before and during the campaign.
- Join the One More Multiverse Discord to learn more about OMM and experience what it’s like in its closed beta! (there’s a game of Wanderhome going on over there and it looks really cool)
