Babes in the Wood 2e
A downloadable game
Encounter the peculiar folks who reside within and help solve their problems while confronting your own relationships & fears. Catch literal lightning bugs for the North Witch's potions, bare witness to the royal cat wedding of Sir Poppy and the Princess, or simply tell tall tales with your friends as you traverse the strange eternal Wood. But be wary: dark forces and foes lie in the tangled depths of the forest and have their sights set on you...
Designed and published by Adam Vass
illustrated by Kim Nguyen
Edited by Tyler Crumrine
Poetry by Seb Pines
Calligraphy by Rachael Barlock
Accessible Version by Yubi
BitW is for 2-5 players and a gamemaster (with additional rules for gm-less play!). It is designed to be accommodating to both single session play (like a movie) or short term campaigns (like a TV series or serialized comic book). With just two six-sided dice and this book, fill your group with Big Kids, Lil Kids, Critters, Toys, and Woodschildren and be on your way, facing your fears and chasing your dreams through the mysterious Wood.
BitW is inspired by stuff like Over the Garden Wall, Wizard of Oz, Adventure Time, and more kid-friendly media that rings more surreal & eerie when viewed through adult eyes. This game is Powered By The Apocalypse.
The game mechanics encourage creativity, exploration, friendship, jokes, and consolation:
- Sessions are primarily made of visiting varied Hollows, locations in the Wood where curious people live their lives outside of time. In each Hollow, Kids will have opportunities to interact with the strange goings on in the forest, offering their help and creative problem solving skills to those in need. When playing for multiple sessions, you visit many Hollows and help all sorts of people, learning about yourself in the process.
- Between Hollows, the group Wanders the Wood, and based on dice rolls and stats, either come face to face with the FIEND (the embodiment of fear that lurks in forest depths waiting to take advantage of weak willed wanderers) or are offered calm moments of respite during which they tell stories and confide in one another, strengthening their friendships.
- The more afraid the Kids are, the more likely Fear and the Fiend appear in the story, but the more confident and hopeful, the more likely it is they'll have fun instead. The game involves a tug of war between these resources that players interact with to create scares, compassion, drama, and humor in equal parts.
Licensing: Do you want to create your own content for BitW2e? Hollows, Shadows, Playbooks, or anything else? Well, have at it! Babes in the Wood 2nd Edition is published under a (CC BY 4.0) license. Basically, you can make whatever you want, charge whatever you want for it, as long as you credit the original work and state that your work is and independent publication not affiliated with World Champ Game Co.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $18 USD. You will get access to the following files:
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Community Copies
if you're not able to buy this game, please grab a free copy here and enjoy. If you enjoy the game, please consider coming back and leaving a 5 star review.
Download demo
Development log
- All Hollows EP 2022Oct 01, 2022
- BitW2e Licensing InfoJul 06, 2021
Comments
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Does anyone have any tips for printing the character sheets for this game? I've found that printing on letter-size paper produces text boxes too small to accommodate handwriting reasonably, and printing on ledger-size paper leaves one with sheets that are too big to fit in folders. Any thoughts?
I'd recommend download the new half-letter version, the character sheets have been reformatted as two half-letter pages which makes for a letter-sized single sheet!
Are those available via the demo downloads? I own the hardcover book and got my pdf through my flgs.
Also, big fan of your work. I run Babes every October and Necronautilus is on the list to run for my weirdo players.
it is not but I’ll try to make that happen right away, I want people to be able to play on Halloween :) check back in a couple hours!
You’re a legend 😭 🙌
Page 29 "Find a Clue" talks about adding the "rumors" modifier to your role but it isnt mentioned anywhere else
The +Rumors here is how many rumors are being told during the move. The player doing the move can tell up to 3 rumors and then roll + the number of rumors they told. My guess is that the intent is to mechanically reward the player for doing more narrative work, as the outcome of the move is that some of these rumors become true or false.
Help Please:
I’m a beginner/ amateur level player first time ever DMing , how do I roll for starting noodle, mush, and steam? Is it a 1d6 for each stat? Maybe I’m misreading page 10?
I see that there’s some info by the title of each playbook but it doesn’t cover each stat? So does every stat generally start at zero unless mentioned?
correct, everything starts at zero and the playbooks say which stats need amending for each type of character
I ran a one shot for Halloween last year and it was a blast!
The proof of the quality of Adam Vass's creations is everywhere in this 2nd edition of a game released a few years ago, which I had tested in a one-shot just after discovering the great Beyond the Garden Wall series. Babes in the Wood uses the same codes: you play as lost children in mysterious and dark woods, who will meet extraordinary fauna and inhabitants, mingle with an ecosystem full of quests and problems to solve, confront their own fears more or less embodied, and, maybe, go back home. This 2nd edition of the game seems to me to add a lot of little rules that make both the strength and the weakness of the games propelled by the apocalypse, welcome examples, a suggestion to play without a GM, and so on... I write "seems to me" because I did not go as far as to make comparisons, but anyway this 2nd edition seems to me largely superior to the previous one!
Signal boosting the lack of access to playbooks and game aids without paying for the whole game.
They're actually both available for free now! Look under the "Download demo" tab for the playbooks, along with the basic move aid :D
Hello! I purchased a physical copy of your book at my LGS, and it says that downloadable files for the moves lists and other resources could be found here for free. However, they're behind a $15 paywall. Is there any way we can get those resources without having to pay for the game again?
oops, thanks for pointing that out! I’ll get that fixed this week
Awesome, thanks for the reply! I can't wait to play. :)
just fixed it, the playbooks and move lists are setup as "demos" so they can be downloaded freely without access to the rest of the stuff!
that said (since other people may see this in the future) if you buy the book somewhere and they don't have a program to distribute digital files, please email me at axv at worldchampgame.co and I'll give you a download key to access the digital version!
World Champ Game Co is RIGHT. Once again hitting us with an absolutely fantastic game, the second edition of one of my favorite indie RPGs, and a brilliant homage to one of the most charming shows out there. Babes 2e does it all and does it well, so check it out!