Farce and sitcom are the heart of Kobold Press’ animal RPG

RiverBank intrigued me from every angle. A manners-and-mammals tabletop RPG from an author steeped in anthropomorphic cozy fiction, and it’s published by the folks best known for Tales of the Valiant and decades of third-party 5E books? The rest of the Rascal crew had previously indulged my curiosity, which you can hear on episodes of our podcast, but I needed to discover why the fairly traditional publisher would travel so far afield on what first seemed like Good Society for monarchy-loving furries.

Kij Johnson, RiverBank’s designer, was all too happy to indulge. Currently working as the associate professor of creative writing at the University of Kansas, the ever-dabbling artist revealed an inquisitive nature regarding tabletop games that likely doesn’t follow the trajectory of most people reading this article. Johnson only recently discovered The Quiet Year and experienced a subsequent paradigm shift (relatable), but that naivety belies some incisive ideas about play. Her approach to designing RiverBank feels both at once fresh to the veteran eye and inviting to those eager to leave the d20 garden.

Based on Johnson’s own sequel novel to Wind in the Willows, RiverBank is chiefly about maneuvering the polite animal society of an imaginary early 20th-century England using a mechanical framework of four key stats deployed to tackle Deeds. At all times, players will run the risk of “summoning Pother”, which gives the facilitator opportunities to inject trouble directly into scenes. A sliding “Animality/Poetry” scale works similarly to Avatar Legends’ Balance track, which players will need to stabilize or else be swept up in a pique of emotions. 

Both sketching and complicating scenes use decks of cards — along with another clever tool discussed in the interview — so the mental labor of running the game never falls too heavily on any one players’ shoulders. Is the whole thing simple? Yes, perhaps enough to turn off players looking for less guardrails on their expression. But I came out of my interview with Johnson convinced that RiverBank’s construction, if not its handkerchief-bearing woodland subjects, will turn more than a few heads in this hobby. 

This interview has been edited slightly for clarity.