I'm Luka Brave of Psychhound Games, raising funds for the development of a mental health game called Spiritkeep.

Spiritkeep is a tabletop roleplaying game (a TTRPG, in the same medium as Dungeons & Dragons) designed from the ground up to help players grapple with and heal from complex trauma over long-term play.

In Spiritkeep, a facilitating Game Master and 3-5 players will create and embody a struggling community and the characters who step up to help that community grow and flourish. The players' characters will go on journeys involving diplomacy, rescue missions, solving ecological problems, gaining new resources, and more.

The characters come from diverse magical Lineages, and gain abilities through their Aspects - storybook tropes such as the Shepherd, the Knight, the Wayfarer, the Beast, or the Trickster. In total, there are over 500 combinations of Lineages and Aspects to choose from. The characters will need to balance the level of effort they expend for challenges while still gaining valuable experience, lest they push themselves too hard and take on maladaptive conditions or suffer emotional breakdowns.

Touchstones include Studio Ghibli, Stardew Valley, Spiritfarer, Wanderhome, Chronicles of Darkness, Apocalypse Keys, Eureka!, and more. The world and philosophy of the game draws heavily on animist principles, the rights of nature movement, and Indigenous scholarship.

An overview of the game can be found on my website at https://psychhound.com/spiritkeep/

Spiritkeep was the subject of my master's thesis, which explored the therapeutic potential of TTRPGs and established a foundation for the game design backed by research, scholarship, and player experiences. Topics covered by the thesis include an original, qualitative study on roleplaying games' capacity to build emotional resilience in players, how tabletop roleplay mirrors the benefits of group therapy, and a bespoke framework for evaluating the healing potential of TTRPGs based on the expertise of therapeutic gaming practitioners.

The thesis examined the work of field leaders such as Sarah Lynne Bowman, Lindsay C. Gibson, the Kilmers and Adams (Kilmer et al., 2023), Megan Connell, Harry Barry, Yalom and Leszcz, as well as scholars in the fields of linguistics, rhetoric, educational psychology, and more.

The thesis can be read online for free at https://www.proquest.com/docview/3251554766

Spiritkeep is currently in draft 0.3 and is being developed in community with other analog game designers, mental health practitioners, transformative game enthusiasts, and friends. My goal is for the game to be uniquely suited to therapeutic work with adults, while also being an enjoyable and meaningful experience for home groups.

In order for the game to be embraced and effectively transformative, I believe that the intrinsic motivation of telling a good story with interesting characters needs to be equally weighted with the research-based and goal-focused design. I want Spiritkeep to be a good game first and foremost, with emotional growth and productive reflection as a likely outcome of the experience of play.

After Spiritkeep is in a more complete state and has been rigorously playtested, it will likely undergo a crowdfunding campaign to fund the finalized book and printing costs. However, it's been difficult to dedicate the time needed to continue drafting and revising the game when it is not generating income, and likely will not for a while longer. The purpose of this GoFundMe is to help ease the financial burden associated with the development stage and ensure the game sees a finished state where it can help people.

My current plan is to release the basic rules for free online, so there is no barrier to accessing the core of the game. Then, interested players and practitioners can purchase PDF or printed copies to see inspiring art, access extra resources such as pregenerated content for Game Masters, and listen to recorded audiobook versions of the game.

I, Luka Brave, am the lead designer on this project. I've been playing a variety of games my whole life, and have been playing and running TTRPGs for nearly a decade. I have a professional and educational background in social work, disability advocacy, educational psychology, writing and rhetoric, teaching, and accessible design.

I have published over 25 TTRPGs thus far, with nearly all of them built on unique and bespoke systems to develop my experience with player motivation, ludonarrative harmony, and equitable mechanical design. I currently do freelance work as a graphic designer, and am open to project-based accessibility and sensitivity consulting.

Donating to this GoFundMe supports marginalized independent creators and a future were mental wellness care is accessible, engaging, and creative. Please consider donating what you are able, or spreading the word in your own networks to help make this future a possibility.