Kinhaven: A hopeful, welcoming tabletop RPG

A gentle tabletop roleplaying game about story, community, and a world worth protecting.

The short version

Kinhaven is a fantasy roleplaying game you can sit down and play with the people you love. You make a character — a hedgehog herbalist, a tortoise who remembers too much, a young fox who notices everything — and together you tell a story about a world of animal folk, old forests, and small communities holding on to each other.

It's simple to learn. You roll one die. The story comes first. And nobody has to conquer anything to matter.

The rules are finished. The world is finished. This Kickstarter is to finish the art — handmade, warm, and made by two artists whose work I love. More on them below.

Where this came from

I'm a dad in Seattle with creative kids. We wanted to play a roleplaying game together, the kind where you make up a character and see what happens. But most of what we found was either too complicated to teach on a weeknight, or built around a world that didn't feel like ours, usually a world where the goal was mostly to win a fight, and where the map only really seemed to imagine one corner of the human family.

So I started making the thing I wished existed.

I wanted a game my kids could actually learn in an evening. I wanted magic that felt like care and tradition, not just a menu of attacks. I wanted a world that drew from all the places people actually have lived, not just castles and knights, but the stories and textures of every inhabited continent. And I wanted it to be honest about hard things. In Kinhaven, there is an empire that takes what isn't its to take, and part of what your characters do is decide how to live, and resist, in the shadow of that. Not because a game has to teach a lesson, but because the world my kids are growing into is one where those questions are real, and I'd rather they meet them at a table full of people who love them.

That's the whole origin. It started as a way to spend Tuesday nights with my family. It grew into something I think a lot of other tables might want too.

What it feels like to play

You sit down with a few people. One of you is the Storyteller, who sets the scene. Maybe a mountain village, a missing traveler, a strange light in the old grove. Everyone else plays a character they made and care about.

When something's uncertain, climbing, persuading, sneaking, healing, casting, defending, you roll one twenty-sided die, do some math, and see how it goes. That's the whole engine. There isn't a different rulebook for every kind of moment, so once you've done it once, you've done it. Kids pick it up fast. So do grandparents.

But the dice aren't really the point. The point is the choices. A locked door might be opened with a lockpick, a lie, a favor, a spell, or an idea nobody at the table saw coming. Fighting is one option among many, and often not the best one. The questions the game keeps asking are quieter and more interesting: What are you protecting? How do you treat the people you meet? What kind of world do your choices leave behind?

What's inside

A world of animal folk. Play a hummingbird, a bear, an elephant, a crocodile, a chipmunk, a tortoise, or design your own with clear guidance. Your species gives you a starting shape, but your beliefs, your history, your work, and the people you love are what really make you.

Three simple starting paths. Guardians protect. Mystics work with magic, prayer, herbs, or spirits. Cloaks watch, move quietly, and uncover what's hidden. Each is a doorway, not a box. A Mystic might be a village healer or an old witch on the hill, a Cloak could be a royal spy or clandestine shadow warrior.

Magic that bends to you. Spells, miracles, ancestral spirits, herbal work, healing, magic runs on a flexible energy you spend to reach farther, last longer, or hold more. Meaningful choices, without a phone book of rules to memorize.

Adventure without conquest. There's danger here, and real stakes, including an exploitative empire pressing on these communities. But domination isn't the point of the story. Care, courage, stewardship, and standing together are.

Everything a group needs is in the Core Rules Manual: character creation, the world, running the game, and gentle guidance for the Storyteller and players on keeping a table welcoming, generous, and fun.

Who I made this for

I keep two kinds of people in mind when I work on Kinhaven.

The first is a family like mine, a parent and a couple of imaginative kids around ten and twelve, looking for something they can actually play together. Something simple enough to learn on a school night, warm enough to come back to, and deep enough that the kids keep surprising you. A game where the youngest player at the table can shape what happens.

The second is the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old who already loves this stuf, who wants something cozy, thoughtful, and a little different from the usual. Someone looking for a world that takes its heart seriously, that makes room for gentleness and for real questions, and that feels like it was made with people like them in mind. It was.

If you're somewhere in between, or nowhere near either, a teacher, a club, a group of old friends who want a lighter system, I think there's a seat here for you too.

The art, and why this Kickstarter exists

Here's the honest part. The game is done. What isn't done is the art.

Kinhaven is being illustrated by two artists whose work I genuinely fell for. Fiona, in the Philippines, and Aaliah, in Mexico, both young, both with a style that's warm and cozy but full of energy and life. Their art is the difference between a rulebook and a world you want to live inside. It's what will make a kid open the book and not want to put it down.

Handmade art by working artists costs real money, and it should. This campaign is how I pay Fiona and Aaliah properly to finish illustrating the world — the animal folk, the villages, the forests and mountain paths, the character pages your kids will pore over.

That's what your pledge does. Not marketing, not fluff. It invests in the artists bringing Kinhaven to life.

A note on care

I want this world to be worthy of the cultures it draws from. Kinhaven takes inspiration from communities across every inhabited continent, and I don't want to do that carelessly. So the material is being read and guided by sensitivity readers from those different regions, people helping me get it right, and tell me where I've gotten it wrong. That work matters to me, and it's part of what your support makes room for.

Who's behind it

It's mostly me, a dad, a solo designer, working on this in the hours around a family and a life. Fiona and Aaliah are bringing it to life on the page. A handful of thoughtful readers are helping me hold it to a good standard.

That's the whole team. Small, human, and doing this with a lot of care.

The invitation

If any of this sounds like a table you'd want to sit at, with your kids, with your friends, or by yourself dreaming up a hedgehog with a lantern and something to protect, I'd love for you to come along.

Kinhaven is ready to be played. With your help, it'll be ready to be seen, too.

Thank you for reading this far. Truly.

Tucker, Just outside Seattle