Review of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
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Audience for Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is interesting because you can essentially play several very different experiences from the same book with different groups, depending on what they need.
The adventures throughout the book have a wide variety of events and topics and mechanical twists that give options for different ways to play and stories to connect with. For example, we might play The Pancake War with kiddo because it matches 6yo’s energy and is one of the beginner adventures that’s pretty rules-lite, but we’ll save The Crash for when my partner and I just want to play because it is more intense.
And both of those stories, despite having two different player sets, still are all part of the bed & breakfast and will change the characters contained in the same book.
With kiddo, we play more of the fun, colorful, mechanics-lite stories (and anything with Hey Kid), because that’s what kiddo needs right now. With grown-up groups, we can dive into more of the introspective stories and crunchy bits in separate games, because that’s what we want and can handle.
It ends up being great for those looking for cozy vibes, spooky tales, bombastic adventures, an opportunity to ponder life, rules-lite, crunch, and so much more.
With regards to age accessibility for young players, since this is TTRPGkids, I would say many players 10+ should be able to read and play most of the Early Chapters section (16 events) with little to no help. Mechanics in the Intermediate and Late Chapters sections can get a bit more crunchy, but this does come after having learned the basics in the Early Chapters. Some later chapters, like The Rusalka’s Mirror, can be more PG-13, but there is also very fair warning about triggers in this particular chapter so a group of mindful teens can self-moderate or a facilitator could make a judgement call for the group with young players.
Setting in Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is set in… the building and grounds and people that are Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast!
The building itself is a magical twisty maze of rooms that come and go as needed and very much have the feel of a stationary “Howl’s Moving Castle” with its own personality, just like any other character in the game. It’s represented, physically, by your book, which you’ll add stickers to as you play in order to unlock new chapters and characters as the bed & breakfast shapes itself based on your actions.
The house grows because of the people who come to it and the connection they find there; this is very much a story about characters, and they are part of the setting too.
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is a collection of people who are generally learning and discovering themselves, finding their way to the B&B when necessary. There are over 50 characters who all have their own backstories and “forward stories” that fill in the world as you play.
And the adventures slowly fill in your understanding of the bigger picture. They’re presented out of chronological order (likened to reading a book series as a kid when the library didn’t have the full set at a given time), so you get bits and pieces of the B&B’s origins, the prejudices and hardship of the outside world, and much more as you play. It trusts the reader to find the threads between everything, giving the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the setting as a whole because you had to experience and piece it together or form it from playing instead of just being told what the world is.
There is so much more I want to say here, but I am very afraid of spoiling too much! I will end this section with just saying, the way the setting unfolded was a thing of beauty that I think you need to participate in this to see how wonderful it is.
Your character in Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is primarily about the people and how they live and find themselves… and it is up to you, the players, to determine where that goes.
For each chapter, you’ll have a starting cast of characters that need to be part of the story and then additional spots for other players to jump in with whoever they want. For example, Chapter 13, Hey Kid Goes A-Guising, requires Hey Kid, Gertrude, and anyone who wants to go trick-or-treating.
The cast changes with each chapter, and characters are not necessarily assigned to a particular person (though you can… kiddo just wants to play Hey Kid, which is totally fine), so you will likely play a different character or two each chapter.
They have their own pre-made sheets, so you don’t need to do anything with character creation up front. However, you will be creating the character each time you play. Each person has some particular goals or attitudes that will influence their journey, and they’ll likely tick off parts of their path by the end of the event, leading to unlocking new aspects about them, uncovering a developing story element, or moving into a new set of goals. They’ll change over time.
There are also over 50 characters throughout the story! Many are locked in the beginning and will unlock as you earn stickers and fill in your collections/shelves, and they are all amazingly unique and varied. The amount of positive diverse representation in these characters is something to behold.
Mechanics in Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast has mechanics that fall into a few categories. First, there’s the character mechanics of Bingos, Whoopsies, and Journeys. Then, there’s going to be the individual chapter mechanics.
Bingos and Whoopsies
Bingos and Whoopsies are kind of like what happens when you hit or miss on a roll. Each character has a list of personal Bingos and Whoopies that represent things that they do well or are proud of and things that maybe tend to cause some trouble more often than not (but not always). These are framed as story elements, so they’ll help you tell the adventure in terms that connect with the character’s personality. As an example, Amelie is a robotic housekeeper who is maybe helping make breakfast in a particular scenario. They have a Bingo for “anticipate and avert a potential mess” and a Whoopsie for “sweep up something that needed to stay put” – an attempt to help out by keeping the kitchen tidy could go either way, and your roll will determine that flavor and the impact to the other characters.
Journeys
Each character also has a Journey, which is their personal story. These are individual goals or a representation of overarching character progression based on how you play them. For another character, Parish, a once brave knight, now frog and B&B cook, his Journey is tracked by a ticking clock that slowly starts to show how he’s aging. Once the clock completes… a new Journey comes into play, changing some of his character elements and giving him interesting new goals as he hits middle age.
Chapter mechanics
Within each chapter, there are also a set of mechanics that determine how the story will play for you, and it is different with every chapter. While the base mechanics fall into a few different categories (i.e. frantic mode where you have a coin wager mechanic, eerie mode with drawing from a deck of cards, etc), they have their own tables or tweaks specific to the event. But it’s not actually all that complicated.
Each chapter explains the rules, typically on a page or two, and they are pretty easy to get into the flow with. As you unlock the Intermediate and Late Chapters, the mechanics and length do progress and can get a little bit more involved, but that is after having experienced the general format of each of the prior types of mechanics (and you’re now getting a deeper spin on it). Generally, if you trust the process and go with the flow of the story, you’ll be able to learn the mechanics as you play.
Overall thoughts on Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
I had a really hard time writing this review because I don’t think I can really do Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast justice in a <2k word summary… There are so many elements left to cover!! The feeling of being the concierge/keeper of the book and watching it change as my friends and family interact (and getting my own special story from seeing that)… the excitement of coming across one of the hidden chapters wedged between two character sheets… the accomplishment of finding all the bunnies so we could get the last sticker to unlock Moon Prince… the joy of letting kiddo put stickers in the book and watching them enthusiastically work towards unlocking a pet for Hey Kid… there are so many small wonders spread throughout the book itself and the overall experience.
And we have so many favorite characters!! There are characters of different ages and body types, queer characters with stories that hit incredibly close to home, and characters with different life roles and goals. It was not hard for each of us to find a solid dozen or so that we each deeply connected with.
Overall, Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast is a thing of beauty and I am grateful for being able to experience it. This has quickly become one that I want to pull out for family nights, games with friends, or just for me, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Find a copy of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast
You can find a copy of Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast through Possum Creek Games, DriveThruRPG, and other booksellers.
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