link

The Forest Hymn's Roving Carnival Band

Part One: What Manner of Beast is This?

This site is intended to collect a rag-tag, rambling carnival of people & ideas, finishing lost thoughts & adding fresh inspiration to what was—and may yet be—The Forest Hymn & Picnic.

From the original Forest Hymn & Picnic website:

The Forest Hymn & Picnic is a tabletop adventure game set across the backdrop of a very absurd, unending and often haunted forest. Players take up the lives of oddballs in The Forest Hymn—precocious animal folk, lost people, or costumed ghosts—as they stumble upon trouble in the strange woods, take on work in town and get to know their neighbors, investigate the supernatural, take their spot in the brass band, explore the ruins that litter the woods or even win a dance marathon at the county fair!

A Little History

A Kickstarter was successfully funded in 2018 by Cecil Howe for a lovely hardback book of the game, the time to complete the book then successfully overran, then a smaller, pre-release version of the book was released in 2020, The Cursory Guide to the Forest Hymn & Picnic, then—moments before the finished book was due to be released—a thread was pulled followed by some more threads, and then—a few months down the road, after a concerted effort to reattach the threads—Cecil sadly disappeared from the internet, into the unknown.

Years pass, the comment section stays a commonly supportive & mostly friendly before Someone said we should finish the rest of the book & Someone Else agreed and now here we are. This website is intended to collect rules and whatnot from various interested & interesting vagabonds, wanderers, and—worst of all—muscicians, to see if we can cobble together the lost leaves of the book that could have been.

A Short Disclaimer

None of this is remotely official and if Cecil shows up covered in brambles & dried leaves with a confused frog in his top pocket & asks for the site's removal or to take over ownership we'll duly comply without ill-will & only the most minimal amount of grumbling. Think of it as more like fanfic than a true extension of the game.

Part Two: Sounds Wonderful, How Can I Contribute?

We know from the back cover of The Cursory Guide... certain specific lost items (see Lost Property) were intended to be included in these categories(in alphabetical order), categories we would like to complete:

If you make a whole thing, contribute to an collaborative effort, or just want to throw out an idea for anyone to pick up, head over to Submissions where you'll find a link to a form that you can fill out and send your thing which we'll add to the site to share with the rest of the forest dwellers. Your submission should be formatted in Markdown to make it easier to add to the site but plain text will do if you like.

Ideas will be placed under Lost Property and all other things will be dropped into the Picnic Basket for everyone to enjoy.

Part Three: What Whimsy Can Be Contributed?

To give you an idea of the expected vibe, here's little more from the original Forest Hymn & Picnic website:

Our family tree has roots in the 'babes in the wood' genre of fiction and is a love letter to many influences and inspirations. Fables and folklore, fairy tales and ghost stories have all had their hand in shaping this game through a very thin lens reminiscent of North America in the late 1600s through early 1800s. If you are looking for a list of inspirations to prepare yourself for this game, have a gander at the things that have left kisses on its cheeks:

There's also quite a neat overview in the FAQs section on the Kickstarter

Part Four: Who Are We Exactly?

Well, the Someone Else is me, Luke Earl (sousaphone), and the Someone is Kreg Mosier. You are you but if you contribute you join the band and become a we too (but never stop being you).