Thistle and Hearth is a GMless, diceless tabletop roleplaying game of dark, fairy-tale inspired stories set in a wintry village. To play you will need: three to five players; versions of the playbooks you can edit or write on; and a small set of small objects to use as tokens.
You live in a village beset by violence; scarcity; powerful and inscrutable entities; and spirits from beyond death. Together you cling to the small space that you have carved into a home, and do your best to find solace with one another.
Thistle and Hearth is a Belonging Outside Belonging game, which, for our purposes, means that control of the setting elements is shared between players, and that player characters are defined by playbooks that embody archetypes within the game's setting.
Thistle and Hearth draws on imagery of true fae, stark winter, spirits of the dead, and the designers’ experiences growing up in Lutheran communities in Minnesota. It is wondrously illustrated by Mahar Mangahas (any pronouns).
Thistle and Hearth was designed by Aven McConnaughey (ey/em) and Natalie the Knife (she/her).
