Meow Wolf, the arts company known for surreal immersive installations, is developing a tabletop role-playing game where players will explore the multiverse represented in its interactive locations. Tavers: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game will hit Kickstarter early next year and be produced by Exalted Funeral, the Ennie-winning publisher of Land of Eem and Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme.
“RPGs have always been a platform for self-expression and a portal for people to inhabit and explore imaginative worlds, so it’s a perfect arena for us to bridge the gap between our exhibits and everyday life,” Meow Wolf senior creative director of visual development Luke Dorman said in a statement. “Until now, we’ve only been able to reach the people who come to us and physically step into our worlds. Now with the RPG, not only can our worlds come to you, but you also get to inhabit and shape our worlds like never before.”
As the 2018 documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story explores, the collective formed as a way for outsider artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico to work outside the limits of curated art galleries and marketing labels. The group got a financial boost and wider recognition when Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin agreed to back an ambitious Santa Fe installation that became Meow Wolf’s first permanent installation. The company now has five permanent installations and is working on new ones in New York and Los Angeles.
Meow Wolf’s interactive art museums allow visitors to enter portals and explore strange realms, solving puzzles and uncovering bits of story at their own pace while gawking at the psychedelic art. Tavers players will be able to create portals to take them to different worlds, realities, and states of existence to uncover five mysteries. The setting will be based on Meow Wolf’s installations, expanded collaboratively using the “exquisite corpse” method.
Player characters, called tavers for their ability to travel through holes they rip in reality, will encounter immortal cybernetic hamsters, underground rat-punks, and sentient pizza. The mechanics are meant to blur the lines between game and reality, as memories players share out-of-game can be used as in-game currency.
“Meow Wolf specifically requested a publisher brazen and batshit crazy enough to break the mold, and apply their same genre-defying approach to subvert and shake up everything we know about RPGs,” Exalted Funeral owner Matt Kelley said in a statement. “I’m not sure what it says about us that we were the first people they called, but we can’t argue that we’re the right kind of crazy for the job.”
The Kickstarter page for Tavers: The Meow Wolf Roleplaying Game will go live in November ahead of the crowdfunding launch in February.