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What we found after a busy week playtesting Meow Wolf’s new tabletop RPG at House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe.
The TAVERS Kickstarter page is now live.
A convergence of unusual events took place in Santa Fe in January. Over the course of a single week, the creative teams behind TAVERS: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game came together at the place where it all began (House of Eternal Return) for a stretch of playtesting, filming, and deep-lore ideation that proved the game had already tapped into something chewier and more luminous than anyone realized.
If you’ve been following along (and if you haven’t, go read 7 Secrets Behind the Making of TAVERS first—we’ll wait), you know that TAVERS is Meow Wolf’s first tabletop RPG, developed in partnership with Exalted Funeral. You know that players assume the role of Tavers, interdimensional travelers who open portals between worlds using cosmic energy. You might even know the feeling yourself—that pleasantly disorienting thing that happens when you walk through a Meow Wolf exhibition and cross from one reality into the next.
The week kicked off with playtesting. Game designer Tiger Wizard sat down with two groups of five Meow Wolf team members to put TAVERS to the test. These are the people who help build impossible worlds for a living. Now they were trying to navigate one as players. The table was soon covered in dice, game pieces, and character sheets, which, in turn, were covered in delightful doodles.
TAVERS also plays differently than a lot of RPGs. For instance, there’s no single person deciding what happens next. The Storyteller sets the scene, but the players shape the story together, building on each other’s ideas in an exquisite corpse style that can take the narrative in directions nobody saw coming. It’s also a lot of fun to watch.
“I went into the playtest thinking we were chasing down clues, but after the first round I realized TAVERS is really about co-creating whatever wild story the group dreams up,” said Megan Sada. “Helping others reach their goals while creating chaos in a brand-new pepper-shaker universe was honestly the most fun I’ve had around a table in a while. It’s the kind of game that surprises you into laughing at how weird and wonderful your own imagination can get.”
The Wizard, naturally, was taking notes. “At one point a peppercorn mill realm manifested inside an arcade, leading to an unexpected trajectory shift for one of the Tavers, who ascended to pop music superstardom,” said Tiger Wizard. “It was an absolutely wild and enjoyable journey from beginning to end. Five outta five stars.”
The sessions also gave us plenty to marinate in. Players wanted more opportunities to roll the eight-sided dice and a way to quickly reference everything they could do on a turn. That feedback directly led to a Taver quick reference chart that looks like it fell out of a dream, now included in the Quantum Parabox pledge tier of the Kickstarter. And so the evolution continues as the game mechanics congeal and the rulebook wriggles towards sentience.
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The following day, the team met up at House of Eternal Return for a video shoot. Tiger Wizard, joined by Meow Wolf’s Uncle Gene, Lizzie, and Mama Larva, filmed segments explaining the game and what it means to play as a Taver. The footage will be part of a larger video for the Kickstarter campaign. For the record, no one was supposed to open any actual portals during filming but we can confirm that Uncle Gene fell through one and that he’s probably okay.
Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by the clammy hand of fate, that same week the company held what’s being internally called “Tave Day”: a day-long series of ideation sessions at Meow Wolf headquarters dedicated to going deeper on the mythology of Tavers, Taving, and the Tave itself (check out a refresher on Taving here). Shrimps from across the company—artists, accountants, fabricators, writers—dropped in throughout the day to poke at the big questions, pitch wild ideas, and raise new questions nobody had thought to ask yet.
Like… what does it cost to Tave? The group explored the idea that breaking reality’s rules demands a transformative payment. Your old self might not survive the journey. Gaining power means giving something up. Maybe it’s something you didn’t know you had. Tave Day wasn’t specifically about the RPG, but the RPG was listening. Push your powers too far at the table and you might find out what that costs.
Groups also talked about what the Tave actually is as a space: fluid, chaotic, potentially different depending on who’s observing it and what emotions they carry. We dug into the idea that Tavers need anchors to stay grounded in who they are while navigating the Tave. Anchors could be a familiar object, memory, or concept. Lose your anchor, and you risk losing yourself completely.
Of course, no ideation at Meow Wolf would be complete without dreaming up some weird, beautiful creatures. One session explored what kinds of beings might exist in a space where the rules of reality are constantly shifting. Naturally, imaginal goo was discussed. That’s a chrysalis state where things dissolve and mix and how you end up with a “Squish” (part squirrel, part fish) or a bunny-swan chimera. Also discovered during ideations: a Tave sloth that grows its own harvestable fruit and a snake whose skin is a living map of tattoos from every place it’s been. And then there’s the portal pig.
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This kaleidoscopic critter can locate portals by using its specialized sensory system to sniff out pscyhomagnetic activity that the rest of us just walk right past. The only problem is keeping it from eating the portals before you can hop through them. Will any of these become canon? Seeds have been planted, but you never quite know what’s going to sprout legumes until it shows up in an exhibition, a game, or somewhere you didn’t expect.
“Ideation gives people the opportunity to come up for air, connect with each other, and go back to their work with new inspiration growing in their minds,” said Caity Kennedy, Meow Wolf Co-Founder. “Everyone who participates helps the un-expectable emerge. My favorite surprises are often just finding out we’re all already on a wavelength—like somehow we’re already all thinking about pan-dimensional hermit crabs or the nature of language.”
Like most weeks at Meow Wolf, this was a busy one. Playtesters discovered the game for the first time. A game designer filmed inside an exhibition that inspired his mechanics. Creative teams dug into the same mythology from a completely different angle. Oh, and there’s that whole new exhibition opening in LA later this year and the casserole of energy being poured into that. All of it feeding back into the same living, breathing universe.
And from all of this, TAVERS: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game continues to spore. We’re thrilled to the fishy-delishy-gills to be building it alongside the indie experts at Exalted Funeral. They’ve taken the lead on game design and production, bringing serious indie RPG chops to a universe that’s been begging to be played for a very long time.
“Meow Wolf has a mind of its own,” said Kennedy. “Ideation just reminds us that we all already have access to it.”
The TAVERS Kickstarter is now live through April 3. Back the project and become a Taver yourself.
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