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The Wanderer's Bookshop

Created by Johnson Ofair

Find your "white whale" in the caretaking of a magical bookshop, use tarot cards to guide solo journalling and book curation. Learn to build collections for the future. If you missed the Campaign pre-order a copy, along with some of the limited extras.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Stretch Goals and Playing Together
about 1 month ago – Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 07:37:12 AM

Happy Wednesday and much appreciation to you all!

We're at the point of having accomplished most of our pre-planned Stretch Goals and having over 10,000 pledged, i'm hoping that we'll unlock the Book List Note Pad soon!

So let's talk about Extra Stretch Goals!



The First ~ At 16,000 I'll allocate specific funds to improve the current tech situation and secure the likehood of me being able to make games and art for another 10 years. To celebrate Every Backer will recieve a digital "sticker" sheet for printing and cutting at home (different from the Bookshop curios sticker) as a thank you. Don't worry The Wanderer's Bookshop is all backed up and first draft is on it's way to Brent our editor this week!

The Second ~ At £18,500 we add a new bookshop task supplement. Surpassing this goal early on means we can also make sure to allocate funds to add it to the physical print and digital zine along with the already unlock Events supplement, including fancy layout from Nala J Wu.

What do you imagine you'll want to do as the curator of your own magical bookshop?  You get to choose our new task, Comment Below! I'll make a poll of all the non duplicate suggestions (including what doesn't already overlap with the current tasks).


The Third ~ At 21,000 we commision more art from our artists including Nala J. Wu.



Don't forget our Community Goals!

For example only 10 more Digital Community Copies to unlock expanded parallel play mechanics. What does that mean? Currently there is a short section on how you could parallel play if you wanted to. Expanded parallel play mechanics would include "relationship" building and how to establish some "rules/roles" in how you play together, aside from safety which is something that is discussed at the start. Also time and multiversal shenanigans.... it's fiction!

Join in the discussions to shout out Bookshops and i'll be drawing more cards today for more book recommendation prompts!


Zine Month Shout Out


If you're looking for to support a two player game, then check out 

Bring Down the Stars is a portal invasion hack of Godkiller: First Blood. In this duet TTRPG, take on the roles of a sadistic, otherworldly Game Master and player fighting to survive their death game. Bring Down the Stars is an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist love letter to overpowered protagonists, class solidarity, and the power of stories.

👉 Pledge Here

and 


Our wonderful Cross-Collab partner Threads We Share!

Don't forget if you back both our games you get a printable meanings sheet for the Major Arcana, to support you whilst you play our games and save you flicking back and forth for support if you're generating your own prompts.




👉 Pledge Here

Zinetopia: Friday Feature
about 1 month ago – Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 05:26:08 AM

Happy Friday Folks, 

I firmly believe that Zine Month is all about celebrating the zines and games that creators put out for your delectation. So I'm giving a bit of shout out this week and next to games that need you and games you may need ;P

Three Projects to Help Fund


Three Punk Games - 3 small, angry, fast games, which stick to their own rules. I mean who doesn't love a GMless game of angry witches fighting against a personification of capitalism & patriarchy? Or an Epistolary game reconstructing the history of a punk band and the zine that talked about them. If that's not enough Rebel against the GM using a system based on rock/paper/scissors.

👉Pledge Here


The Deepest Dark - Taking inspiration from The Quiet Year and Ten Candles this turn-based GM-less oneshot makes you a group of scientists trapped by a cave-in, forced to explore underground mapping as you go... 

👉Pledge Here

H.O.M.E. - in Haven of Misplaced Existence become a group of misfit adventurers battling through the claustrophobic corridors of a dystopian science fiction metropolis. Cyberpunk Horror at its finest in this a tactical TTRPG. 

👉Pledge Here 



Doomed Villagers and Giant Robots

Blightfall - Doomed to darkness your group will sacrifice shreds of your humanity to defend against the blight(GM) and protect your home. Collaboratively world build and play through this narrative and combat engine to tell stories of hope and tragedy. 

👉Pledge Here 


Tales from the Cockpit Print Run - Two Solo games using Lost & Found and  Wretched & Alone systems to tell the stories of a Giant Robot  and a mecha mechanic. I can never resist a game involving giant robots, i'm just a massive pacific rim fan.
👉Pledge Here 

 


Supplements and resources for your campaigns

Fang Dungeon Bestiary - Use with Fangelsehala - A Monster Manual featuring monsters in a classic childrens book illustrated style, whimsical monsters for dungeon delving is where this supplement is at!  

👉Pledge Here



Great Hexpectations - System Agnostic - Ponder the Hexflower, roll on it for encounters and tables for your campaign. There's a hex for nearly everything (mostly), point crawls and hexy encounters of the hex kind.

👉Pledge Here 

 

Wildest Shape - 5E subclass - I'm a sucker for playing a Druid, so getting to Wild Shape into yourself, but from another universe? Absolutely! This is a fun, powerful, and playable 5E subclass plus new spells, items, and creatures!

👉Pledge Here

 

Worms Worms Worms - Mothership RPG - Worm-soaked disasters, parasites in pamphlets from these Five distinct sci-fi horror scenarios. Run them to not get infected as parasite fuelled one-shots or drop them into an ongoing campaign!

👉Pledge Here

Striding along with Panache!
about 1 month ago – Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 12:41:51 PM

Helllooo Everyone,

We had a fantastic first week and we're happily swimming through our second. As I keep saying, I'm so chuffed you all want The Wanderer's Bookshop in your lives.

We've unlocked our guest writers for the BackerKit Exclusive Ephemera and are well on our way to unlocking a beautiful layout by Nala J Wu. So let's talk more about Nala's work which you can peek at here .

I've worked with Nala on two of my previous games, The Tower and Universe At Your Door: The Traveller. Two completely different styles and both turned out amazingly. With The Tower we were working with 2 colour Risograph printing for the puzzle dungeon and each spread was designed to highlight the puzzle with art and layout. 




One of my favourite things about Nala's work is that every spread is different, designed to best highlight what's going on at that point with the text. 

They also brought their incredible style to Universe at Your Door: The Traveller. Creating new heads up display styles for every spread to best feature and provide good flow for the game text, which aids the understanding of heirachy and how to move through as you play.

Even though Nala knocked these out of the park with their amazing flexibility of style, they actually specialise in digital collage and I'm finally with The Wanderer's Bookshop giving them a project that yearns for that style.

The Brief: An old weathered journal, interwoven with watercolour, pen and ink wash illustrations, literary quotes, fragments of book pages, maps and more.

Of course we'll only get this kind of levelled up, varied and beautiful layout if we surpass our stretch goal at £9500.

So If you're still thinking about it get backing!

Another Zine Month Project to check out! 

I would be completely remiss if I didn't spotlight a Zinetopia game I've already backed, one featuring Nala's work as well. Nala has worked in their signature linocut style to make a cover design that feels rustic and folky at its core. The cover art is so good that they're offering a tier where Nala is doing a linocut print by hand for the covers with additional unique ink drawings.

How I Heard It is campfire storytelling game, GM- less and designed to be playable against the crackle of campfire, as 3 - 6 of you gather round and weave a tale of a folk hero; from their humble origins, to their great deeds and finally their somber end.  

Ephemera In Sight!
about 2 months ago – Fri, Feb 06, 2026 at 07:27:57 AM

Hello Wanderers! 

I’m ecstatic that we’re doing so well! Thank you so much for getting us to this point in the first week of being live!

We’ve added The Curators Notebook to our Add Ons, so you can pick it up to add to your pledge. It will have gorgeous cover art by Ramona of Alderdoodle, artist behind the Stygian Library and Gardens on Ynn, who is going to bring that same beautiful work to The Curator’s Notebook.
 
Coming up soon is our next Stretch Goal with only a few pledges left to get there!

At £7000 we get specially created ephemera from our fabulous guest writers, their bios are featured on the main campaign page under meet the team. Here’s a quick intro to them all.

Austin Taylor, Valiant Dorian, Michelle Kelly, Nala J. Wu, Yanahn, Vee Hendro, Noordin Ali Kadir, Nada / Amir Alami, Jessie Lo, Joe Kim, Dusty and Darby Pak.


They will be writing and making pieces of ephemera designed to give you hooks and sources for your mystery solving. Some of their work will be digitised for all backers, whilst a few physical pieces will make their way into A Bookshop Patron boxes, to be incorporated into journals and stories. 
 
We’re so close to this goal, can we get there by next week?

Speaking of goals, we’ve sped through two more! The additional illustrations goal from our lovely artists, Joshua Clarke & Alex Coggon and we’ve surpassed a community goal. 200 backers has helped us unlock a supplemental task for the Bookshop “Events”. Now you’ll also be able to build and tell stories around the events your bookshop runs. Do you play host to authors, clandestine book gatherings, auctions or sunny book clubs, the skys the limit! Didn’t I mention that the bookshop was bigger on the inside? 
 


Funded in 7hrs!
about 2 months ago – Tue, Feb 03, 2026 at 06:06:36 AM

Y'all are amazing! 


I went to sleep and woke up to us not only being funded but also having smashed through the first Stretch Goal!

Thank you for your support, I'm so excited to bring this game to you and even more hyped for how far we can go!



The Wanderer's Tome Pin Badge has been unlocked and can now be added to your pledges via add ons. It is also automatically included in the Keys to The Bookshop and A Bookshop Patron Tier.






Which would be the same with The Curator's Notebook, which is so close to being unlocked!
I'll share more about The Curator's Notebook after we unlock that goal.

In the meantime lets talk about our Community Goals!

We've got 5 community goals under our community bookshelves section which all contribute to increasing the community and adding more interactive digital content for every backer.  

They include adding digital community copies and library copies but also joining in the discussions and sharing recommendations for books currently in your collection and your favourite indie bookstore. 

With these recommendations we can create:

  • Digital printable map fragments featuring the bookshops to include in your journals. 

  • A starter list of books you might like to explore based on the cards you've drawn when playing.

The trackable achievements are included below so if you'd like to contribute to the discussion click through.

For each week of the Campaign I will draw cards from my decks and offer prompts for book recommendations based on their imagery and meaning similar to how the book prompts will appear in the game (these are new prompts).



Prompts and information about the decks are available in the discussion.

Thanks again for your support, talk to you again soon!