Cozy Companion (Issue #3)

When I got my copy of Cozy Companion issue 3 at GenCon, I couldn’t have been more excited. If you’ve been paying attention, you can probably guess what the first thing I did was. If you guess that I immediately flipped through to find the recipe, you’d be correct. The recipe is for Farlow’s Strawberry Shortcake. Yum. Who is Farlow? Read on, gentle reader, read on. But sufficed to say, I like it. I’ll be making a YouTube short of the recipe pretty quick here, and I mayyyyy just be making it live for next week’s Legend of the Traveling TARDIS’s yearly Foodie episode. (This year in advance of Canadian Thanksgiving.)

Recipe aside, life kept me from even reading the rest of the issue until this week. Now, there IS an upside here. Last week was Talk Like A Pirate Day. (Why is that relevant? Once again, read on.) As well, Snowbright Studio is in the middle of a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign for a new edition of Teatime Adventures. I wrote a CrowdFUNding Spotlight on the campaign last week, and that campaign is why you are reading this on our normal day for those, instead of in a few weeks in our Friday TTRPG time slot.

As always the issue begins with a letter from Snowbright CEO, Grace Collins, on location in Davy Jones Locker. They talk about the issue’s theme of “All Things Nautical” which is evidently a skill check for their ink RPG. (I say evidently because I have avoided reviewing ink. I LOVE everything I’ve seen about the game, which means I want to give it the time and attention that it deserves.) Besides being that skill check, it is also the through line of the issue. “There’s pirates, potatoes, poison, plenty more in [these] pages.” There’s also no way I would miss quoting such amazing alliteration, it’s always appreciated, Mx. Collins. Thank You.

I think I’ve mentioned this in the past, but one of the things I most appreciate about Snowbright Studios is their dedication to community. For example, you’ll likely never catch Weasels of the Coast promoting another company’s game. But here we are in the Cozier world of Snowbright and this month Carrie and Quill sat down with Cat and George Drayer about Drayer Ink’s upcoming game Bubble Net. The game is described as a “Meditative Multiplayer Solo Game” and it’s based on the hunting and feeding techniques of the humpback whale. It looks gorgeous, sounds fun, and has a unique theme. I’m definitely going to be on the lookout for it and have already signed up for Kickstarter notifications. The issue is basically bookended with another interview. Lastly with The Crafty Gamer, a game and candle shop in Winter Park, Florida. I may have to stop in there next time I’m in the Orlando area.

In Issue #2 we got a fast and easy new TTRPG ruleset based on their Time Tails video game. This issue builds on the Lore of that game, with the introduction of Boomerang Kittens. These NPCs live their life forwards until encountering some sort of time glitch which somehow causes them to begin to get younger rather than older. Then at some point in their youth, the process reverses again. There is no known limit to how often a cat may boomerang through time, but it certainly exceeds their regular nine lives. Then, later in the issue, we are treated to part one of a Time Tails tale, Seafaring Felines of the Caribbean. At the conclusion of The Mystery of Mothcat, it seems that NPC Farrow Kinley found himself sucked into a time vortex to the 1980s with Ari and Zoe. There is a bit of a hole in the timeline, perfect for players to drop in another adventure before Kinley and Zoe land on the sacks of potatoes making up the special stores in the hold of a pirate ship. Time Tails falls into the category of edutainment, and the bit of fiction is no exception. Interspersed through the story are little sidebars with fun facts. If this were a television show, you could imagine Pop Up Video style facts. (Wait, is Pop Up Videos that a thing the Kids know about, or did I just date myself as an ancient Old?) I love how this is formatted, and I love how easily this story could launch into a full-blown tabletop adventure.

Speaking of adventures, we are treated to not just one, but TWO adventures. The Ravenous Cliffs, for the aforementioned ink RPG, and Sea Change for Teatime Adventures and the Verdant Isles RPG system. Now, this is the point where I remind you that we are talking about COZY Companion and that Teatime Adventures is a COZY RPG. That means, among other things, that if you’re getting into a fight you are actively doing it wrong. You can adapt Verdant Isles to just about any major d20 system, but combat still isn’t the point here. It’s important to make that point here because Sea Change is a pirate adventure!!! 

The short, mostly spoiler-free, version of the plot is that the players are asked to help heal a rift between a pair of siblings. To do that they will partake in a maritime adventure, aboard the pirate vessel freelance mariner vessel, The Petrel. But it’s the Festival of Tides and that means pira…. freelance mariners engage in rambunctious games of capture the flag. Ships grapple together and try to, well, capture the other ship’s flag. Fun and games aside The Petrel must make its way through vision-inducing mists and challenging waters to collect a Tidesheep. Like most of the segments of the Cozy Companion, the Sea Change adventure has sidebars that educate as well as entertain. Do you know what’s so special about real-world North Ronaldsay sheep? I certainly didn’t.

That focus on education is both my favourite and least favourite part of Cozy Companion. I love the Science articles (this issue: Sunshine, Seaweed, and Kelp, Oh My!) but the Let’s Observe Activities are completely not geared toward me. Yet, if I were an early STEM teacher or a parent of younger kids, I would likely feel differently.

I only really have one other complaint about Cozy Companion. For context, I love cats, and this issue is full of them. Boomerang cats, pirate cats, a game designer named Cat, and even a game-reviewing cat. Yes, every issue closes with some brief topical game reviews by the Office Cat and Head of HR, Ryla. Here’s my complaint, despite being acknowledged in several places, Ryla isn’t listed in the credits under either Snowbright Staff or even as a Contributor. How. Rude.

But seriously, the fourth issue of Cozy Companion is coming in a few weeks, and there has been some interesting foreshadowing over the past few issues. I’m super excited to see what’s in store there, and the issue after will be in December and that excites me even more. 

You can all sorts of cozy things from Snowbright Studio online at www.snowbrightstudio.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/SnowbrightStudio.