Moomins & Dragons: Ultimate Edition

In a quiet corner of the tabletop RPG community, Bekah Walker has created something remarkable. Her homebrew "Moomins & Dragons" began as a birthday gift for a friend—a simple pamphlet adapting Tove Jansson's beloved Finnish characters for Dungeons & Dragons. What emerged in the 2022 "Ultimate Edition" is far more significant: a gentle but profound challenge to the fundamental assumptions underlying one of the world's most popular games.

Walker wasn't trying to make a political statement about RPGs. She was simply attempting to faithfully adapt a universe where problems are solved through understanding, patience, and community care. But that faithfulness necessitated what amounts to a radical reimagining of D&D's entire mechanical framework. When your source material features a world where even the "monster"—the lonely, misunderstood Groke—is fundamentally pacifistic, you can't really maintain a combat system based on defeating enemies. When your heroes' greatest strength is their capacity for empathy and hospitality, experience points through violence stops making sense entirely.

The result is accidentally revolutionary. Walker's adaptation reveals how many of D&D's supposedly "universal" mechanics are actually quite specific to a particular kind of power fantasy. The Moomins' radical kindness acts like a solvent, dissolving away everything in traditional RPG design that isn't actually essential to the tabletop experience. What remains is something still recognizably an RPG, but operating on completely different principles: cooperation over competition, healing over harming, understanding over conquering.

Consider the combat system redesign. Traditional D&D encounters become collaborative problem-solving sessions where initiative determines speaking order rather than attack sequence. Hit points represent emotional resilience rather than physical durability, and healing comes through acts of kindness—listening to complaints, offering small gifts, providing comfort. When a character's emotional health reaches zero, they experience a "breakdown" that removes them from play temporarily, but even this is handled with compassion rather than punishment.

The character races reflect similar thoughtfulness. Peikkos (the hippo-like creatures that include Moomins) gain mechanical benefits for helping other players, while Snorks' emotion-responsive color-changing fur becomes both flavor and function. Hemulens, as authority figures, face social challenges that mirror their canonical personalities—they struggle with persuasion but excel at intimidation, except with other Hemulens. These aren't just cosmetic changes; they're mechanics that actively encourage the collaborative, emotionally intelligent play that defines Moominvalley.

Perhaps most tellingly, Walker had to completely reconceptualize what constitutes an "encounter." In traditional D&D, encounters are primarily combat scenarios designed to drain party resources. In Moominvalley, encounters become opportunities for creative problem-solving, emotional growth, and community building. The sample campaign "The Quest for Jam" demonstrates this beautifully—players might negotiate with a Park Keeper, help scientists with their research, or simply survive the Groke's unintentionally dangerous presence through clever thinking rather than sword-swinging.

This transformation reflects something profound about Tove Jansson herself. As a Swedish-speaking Finn, a queer woman, and an artist in mid-20th century Finland, Jansson wrote from multiple outsider perspectives. The Moomins' radical inclusivity—where everyone belongs in Moominvalley, from anxious Fillyjonks to the terrifying-but-lonely Groke—springs directly from that lived experience of marginality. Jansson created a world where difference is celebrated rather than feared, where problems are solved through patience and understanding rather than force.

Walker's adaptation honors that spirit with remarkable care. The document itself reads like a love letter, complete with heartfelt dedications and gentle invitations for others to expand the work. There's no commercial ambition here, no attempt to exploit beloved intellectual property. Instead, we see the same generous, inclusive spirit that made the original Moomins so enduring, extended into a new medium with obvious reverence and joy.

The fact that this homebrew has been gently gliding under the radar since its initial 2020 publication speaks to both its creator's humility and the work's inherent integrity. Walker shares this as a gift to fellow fans rather than a product to be marketed. In an era of aggressive IP protection and corporate gaming, there's something beautifully subversive about a noncommercial fan work that demonstrates how much creative space exists within the boundaries of respectful tribute.

"Moomins & Dragons" proves that RPGs can tell radically different kinds of stories without sacrificing mechanical interest or player engagement. It suggests there's room for many more approaches to collaborative storytelling than the medium typically explores. Most importantly, it shows how the values embedded in our game mechanics shape the stories we're able to tell—and how changing those values can open up entirely new narrative possibilities.

In adapting the Moomins' world of radical kindness, Walker has created something that's simultaneously a faithful tribute to Jansson's vision and an unexpected blueprint for what tabletop gaming might become. It's a reminder that even our most beloved systems can be reimagined when we approach them with sufficient care, creativity, and love.

Oh, this is very exciting to see! I can't wait to check it out!