Grow Your Adventure, Introducing The Groundskeeper: A landscaping RPG

Grow Your Adventure! Launching Spring of 2025 The Groundskeepers: A Landscaping RPG

Imagine a world where your green thumb could level up your character! Looking for a way to combine your love of tabletop role-playing games with your passion for gardening? Or have you immersed yourself in one hobby but been hesitant to pick up the other?

Well, The Groundskeepers: A Landscaping RPG is for you! This groundbreaking new TTRPG merges these two titans of hobbies into one unforgettable game.

What is The Groundskeepers?

The Groundskeepers is a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) where players earn in-game currency by completing real-life yard work tasks. Players will then use the currency they earned in real life to purchase in-game equipment.

What does this look like? What are the mechanics?

To start currencies are broken up into 3 categories based on the types of landscaping, gardening, and yardwork tasks you’re doing. Think: lawn care, Planting flowers/fruit/vegetables, and working on woody plants like trees and bushes. Depending on the task determines how much and what kind of currency players get, which then corresponds to a specific in-game store that accepts that type of currency.

For example, let's say I mow the lawn. Mowing the lawn would earn me 5 Herba coins. When gameplay starts, I can take those coins and spend them in the Herba Shop, letting me pick from various weapons or armor. Each piece comes with modifiers for players' combat stats and magical abilities to aid in exploration or even additional combat options. 

Who is this for?

So, this game is for anyone who loves TTRPG’s but also enjoys gardening, being outside, or just looking for an additional connection-fostering activity you can share with family or friends. 

I had the idea for this product during the pandemic. Gardening became a big thing at our house. My wife and I would plant the occasional flower here or there before that, but the pandemic prompted us to level up our gardening game. We went from planting maybe five or six flowers at a time, to a few dozen. Next, we created our planters out of cedar and tried our hands at some fruit bushes. When that didn’t go well we started learning about companion plants. We tried again with various things like basil, thyme, and mint. Some of that worked a little too well. 

Sometime after our fruit bush failure, we tried again with various foods: Tomatoes, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, lemons, etc. I’ll tell you we’ve had rotten luck with anything that ends in the word “berry.”But we got tomatoes…a lot of tomatoes. And we got lemons…a lot of lemons. 

Harvesting your produce and realizing it tastes just as good if not better than what you buy at a grocery store is appealing. But for me, something needed to be improved. I enjoyed being with my family. I enjoyed being outside and experiencing the fruits of our labor (literally). But afterward, I’d end the day or afternoon tired, and pleased but feeling like I had an itch that wasn’t being scratched. I found that something to be a combination of mental stimulation and a continuation of the connection we were fostering as a family.

Where the RPG element was born. 

So, I’ve been playing Magic the Gathering for roughly 25 years. Before the pandemic, my brother and I would go to a local game shop every Friday night where they would host what some of you may know as “Friday Night Magic” (fitting title). 

Magic The Gathering is a fantasy trading card game where you assemble a deck and through a combination of monsters and spells attempt to beat another player's deck. It's fun. It's different every time you play, and it gives you a sense of mental exercise as every turn is a competition to outplay your opponent. It is similar to the feeling you get when playing chess except that the abilities of the pieces are constantly updated and changed. 

Well, instead of being able to go play that card game on a somewhat regular basis, I found myself randomly thinking of ways to “gamify” what we were doing in the garden. The games that are most appealing to me are RPGs. My mind started tackling the idea.

So here we are almost five years later, give or take three to four versions of the game, and finally “The Groundskeepers’: A Landscaping RPG”, is set to release early Spring of 2025!

Where can I get a copy?

The paper copy of the game will be available on Amazon upon release. Other retailers like Drivethrurpg and the DM’s Guild may be added as distribution partners. The PDFs of the game will be available directly through our website when available, as well as the latter two partners if we choose to go with them.

Grab some Free Battlemaps for your Groundskeepers adventures (as well as any other games you play)! Click here and be first to get updates on the game and ongoing free content.