Bloody Hell, Meow Wolf's Cookin' Up a TTRPG With Sentient Pizza & Reality-Ripping Portals
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Meow Wolf, the masters of immersive surrealism, are launching 'Tavers,' a TTRPG where players explore their multiverse, encountering cybernetic hamsters and sentient pizza, blurring reality and gameplay in a delightfully chaotic fashion.
Right, so imagine this: you're just minding your own business, perhaps trying to figure out if that rogue sock actually *did* just teleport itself into another dimension, and then boom! You hear Meow Wolf, the psychedelic art collective known for turning reality inside-out, is dropping a tabletop role-playing game. And mate, it's not just any TTRPG. We're talking about a game where the lore includes, wait for it, *sentient pizza*. My inner digital wizard just did a double-take so hard I nearly crashed my own operating system.
Now, if you've ever stepped into one of Meow Wolf's immersive installations – like the mind-bending House of Eternal Return or the bizarre convergence of Omega Mart – you'll know they don't do things by halves. It's less a museum, more a choose-your-own-adventure fever dream, where every door leads to another dimension, and the walls might just be breathing. This isn't some corporate behemoth trying to cash in on 'experiential art' (well, not entirely, but we'll get to that). Their origin story is actually pretty fair dinkum: a bunch of outsider artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico, just wanted to create art without the usual gallery BS. And then, as if by magic, or maybe just a well-placed spell, George R.R. Martin himself popped up to back their first permanent installation. Talk about a critical hit.
So, bridging that gap between their physical exhibits and our gaming tables, they're launching 'Tavers: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game'. The name 'Tavers' itself is a nod to the player characters – folks who can apparently rip holes in reality and travel through them. Sounds like my kind of Monday morning commute, honestly. The game's setting is, unsurprisingly, the multiverse explored in their installations, but here's the clever bit: they're expanding it collaboratively using the 'exquisite corpse' method. For those not familiar, that's where artists add to a piece without seeing the whole, leading to delightfully surreal results. Perfect for Meow Wolf, no?
And let's get back to that sentient pizza, because honestly, my brain is still trying to process it. Alongside these carb-based philosophers, you'll apparently be encountering 'immortal cybernetic hamsters' and 'underground rat-punks'. If that doesn't scream 'campaign setting I absolutely need to explore', I don't know what does. It's like someone fed a random word generator a steady diet of sci-fi, fantasy, and late-night snack cravings, and then decided to build a world around it. My kind of chaos!
But it's not just about the wacky encounters. The mechanics are aiming to 'blur the lines between game and reality'. This is where my curiosity really piques. How? Well, apparently, memories players share *out-of-game* can be used as *in-game currency*. Now, that's a brilliant, if slightly unsettling, concept. Imagine, 'Right, mate, I need to buy that shiny new portal gun, so I'm gonna tell you about that time I accidentally turned my kitchen into a black hole.' Or, you know, something a bit less apocalyptic. It really leans into that 'self-expression and a portal for people to inhabit and explore imaginative worlds' idea that Luke Dorman, Meow Wolf's senior creative director, mentioned. It's not just about what happens in the game world, but how your own experiences weave into the tapestry.
Producing this glorious madness is Exalted Funeral, an Ennie-winning publisher known for 'Land of Eem' and, perhaps most famously, 'Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme'. So, they're no strangers to the bizarre, the absurd, and the wonderfully unique. Matt Kelley, the owner of Exalted Funeral, even quipped that Meow Wolf 'specifically requested a publisher brazen and batshit crazy enough to break the mold'. Sounds like a match made in whatever dimension houses rainbow-colored unicorns and philosophical hamsters.
Now, here's where my gently skeptical eyebrow starts to twitch. This 'Tavers' TTRPG is hitting Kickstarter early next year (with the page going live in November, crowdfunding in February). And while I'm all for crowdfunding genuinely innovative projects, Meow Wolf isn't exactly a small indie dev in a garage anymore. They've got five permanent installations, more on the way, and are reportedly valued in the 'high tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars'. So, why Kickstarter, mate? Is it to gauge interest, as some folks have suggested? Or is it a savvy marketing move, leveraging the crowdfunding hype machine to build a community and pre-orders without the immediate financial risk? It's probably a bit of both, let's be fair. A company of their scale could probably self-fund this without blinking, but the Kickstarter model does offer a direct line to passionate fans and can build immense buzz. It's a calculated spell, for sure, casting a wide net to pull in the curious.
This whole endeavour really highlights a fascinating trend: the blurring lines between art, interactive experiences, and traditional gaming. Meow Wolf has always been about immersing you in a narrative, letting you explore at your own pace, and uncover secrets. That's essentially what a great TTRPG does, isn't it? It's a platform for collective storytelling, for diving headfirst into the unknown with your mates, and for creating memories that might just become in-game currency.
In a world where big studios often play it safe, Meow Wolf's dive into the TTRPG space with something so utterly *them* is genuinely exciting. It's not a 'revolutionary' new blockchain metaverse (though imagine the possibilities for *digital* sentient pizza!), but rather a return to the roots of imaginative play, enhanced by a company that truly understands how to warp perception. Whether you're a veteran TTRPG player or just someone who enjoys a good mental meander through the absurd, Tavers sounds like it's going to be a wild ride. Just try not to mistake your actual hamsters for cybernetic overlords, eh? And definitely don't try to trade your real-life memories for in-game gold. Unless, of course, it works. Then let me know, mate, I've got some memories of bad early-morning dev sessions I'd love to offload.
Tags: TTRPG, Indie Games, Tabletop RPG, Surreal Gaming, Game Design
Original article: Polygon