Plant Girl Game is a roleplaying game for 3-5 players and a gamemaster (GM) about a family of adventurous plant children working together to prevent an ecological disaster in their community.
Plant Girl Game can be played as a one-shot or a campaign. In a one shot, you and your fellow players pick a specific environmental issue to address in your town. In a campaign, you build relationships and resolve problems in your town over time, while continuing to follow your characters through their daily lives.
The game includes rules and worldbuilding questions, nine character types for easy character creation, and three starter modules for quick play. This edition of the game is the complete full color, illustrated PDF.
TESTIMONIALS
“Bold, plucky, and full of heart — Plant Girl Game is the Saturday morning cartoon you didn't know you needed, and the exciting adventure you've always deserved.”– Jay Dragon, creator of Wanderhome and Sleepaway
“Plant Girl Game is a charming game that focuses on family, identity, expression, and our most important relationships. What does it mean to grow? In this magical world of plant children facing an ecological disaster, the answers you create for yourself are both sincere and insightful.” – Rae Nedjadi, creator of Our Haunt and BALIKBAYAN: Returning Home
“Plant Girl Game is full of heart and will help you tell stories of a family facing disaster together with love and care and all the complications that family brings. Prepare to feel seen and called out in the best ways by the plant-personality archetypes, and to grow strong from your shared, tangled roots.”– April Kit Walsh, creator of Thirsty Sword Lesbians
“At its surface, Plant Girl Game is a joyous, delightful romp about being a plant child with your plant family. But it’s the roots of this game—the connected weave of community, purpose, and self-becoming—that make it truly blossom. This game is an extraordinary delight.”– Shanna Germain, creator of No Thank You, Evil!
ABOUT PLANT GIRL GAME
You don’t have to be a girl, but you do have to be a plant. Your character’s gender is not essential to the game. In fact, the real plant girl is your mom—the kind-hearted witch who grows children in her garden.
Your mother’s garden is crowded with succulents and sometimes—when the timing is just right, when your whole family is ready—one of those succulents emerges from the garden as a human child. This is how you came to be: you climbed out of the soil, between the ages of ten and thirteen, and found your family ready to love you.
You’re tied to the land, to the soil and the water that fed you. Any threat to your town’s ecosystem is a threat to your family’s way of life—and your town is on the brink of ecological disaster. Your family must work together to protect yourselves and your community.
GAME MECHANICS
Plant Girl Game uses a mixture of moves and skill checks, guided by a play-to-find-out modality. Each player makes a character by choosing from one of nine playbooks, each representative of a different genus of succulent, then answering questions to describe their relationships to NPCs and other player characters. You might play as an agave, sweet and fearless, learning to balance your outward expression with your core personality. Or you might play as a kalanchoe, a natural leader who needs to learn when to let others make big decisions.
COLLABORATIVE WORLDBUILDING
Gameplay begins by working together to create your mom (who is, fundamentally, a good mom), your home (which is, fundamentally, a cozy and safe home), and your town (which is, fundamentally, a collapsing town). Players take turns answering questions in order to build a world that feels real and ready for play.
Not interested in the worldbuilding process? Don’t worry, there’s something for everything. You can pick one of the starter scenarios and skip straight to character creation!
CHARACTER CREATION
After the worldbuilding phase, players create their characters by choosing and customizing one of the nine genera:
- Aeonium
- Agave
- Aloe
- Crassula
- Echeveria
- Haworthia
- Kalanchoe
- Sedum
- Sempervivum
Each genus includes:
- An array of three stats (heart, mind, and body)
- Two moves that can be used once per gameplay session, and one move that can be used at will
- Three precursors to advancement
- Background questions to help you determine more about your character and their relationships to their siblings
Plant Girl Game features:
- Game design by Dominique Dickey
- Graphic and layout design by Vee Hendro
- Cover art and illustrations by Sarah Aziz
- Starter scenarios by Sarah Gailey and Samson J. L. Soulsby
- Developmental editing by C. J. Linton
- Copy editing by Samson J. L. Soulsby
