TSPN: Tabletop Solo Pet Nursery

TSPN (pronounced ‘teaspoon’) is a solo tabletop pet simulator game by Tanner Simpson. The game entered public beta in mid April, and I found it through Tanner’s Instagram. I immediately got interested based on the premise. This wacky indie game is a fairly unique concept; I can’t say I’ve ever encountered a tabletop pet simulator before. It’s obviously based on digital pet simulator toys/games, such as Tamagotchi and Neopets, but it’s played with physical dice and figures. It’s full of opportunities for small scale creative projects: crafting pets, their environments, and objects within. The rulebook was written and illustrated by hand, and the manuscript was then scanned. As a result, it’s not the easiest to read at times, but for me that quirk adds to the game’s charm. The game is still in Beta, with content being added or tweaked on occasion. The PDF rulebook is free, and will remain free.

Highly intrigued, I joined the dedicated Discord server and plunged into it. My plan was to do a month of play, trying the game’s various features and doing some hobby work. The month is now up, and it’s time to show and tell!

Getting Started

My starting pet of choice was Snail Man. I painted that model some time ago and I really enjoy photographing it, but I’d never used it in a game before this. The mini is from Wilhelminiatures, with a few details on the face and body modified. The character looks wistful and a bit pathetic.

When creating a pet in TSPN, you choose or randomly generate their type, diet, stats and nature. If you go fully random, you can have fun making a model based on the rolls. I already had a figure I wanted to use, so I selected the Mollusc type to fit my creature. I rolled for the rest of it, and I ended up with an intelligent and anxious thing that feeds on excrement. Snail Man has mid to low HP, danger, and aesthetics, but is fairly magical. His Anxious nature means he cannot participate in pet pagents or talent shows. Can’t do much of anything but sit in the garden and eat shit... Once I had everything, I filled out a pet sheet for my starter with the characteristics, stats and metres. The game suggests you use d10 dice on top of the sheet to keep track of hunger, hygiene, etc. that change every day, but that would mean the sheet has to sit somewhere undisturbed at all times. I prefered pencil and eraser, since I wanted to be able to fold my pet sheets and put them away when I’m done for the day.

Next step - building an enclosure. There are twenty different habitats to choose from - Prairie, Factory, or Bathroom, there’s something to suit whatever pet you create. My pet’s prison is, of course, a Garden. This habitat comes with a water source and has a chance of spawning a plant and a vermin daily. Recommended pet home size is 3x3 inches, but that was way too cramped for the pet figure I had in mind so I went for something more spacious. I modelled my mini garden inside a 10x15cm Ikea picture frame. The terrain is cork sheet painted green and covered with green flock and tufts. There’s a small pond in one corner to represent the water source. It was made with clear UV resin and glitter.

A dedicated journal is an essential component for daily gameplay. I used an A6 blank notebook and date stickers. The journal keeps you accountable and documents the happenings for future reference. Missing a day has in game consequences, neglected pets can run away or even perish. In the front of the journal book I have the rulebook copied by hand. In the first week of the Beta, a Discord user’s printer failed while printing the rules PDF, and they decided to copy by hand instead. Then a few more people did it for fun, including me. I used a bunch of scrapbooking materials I had on hand to decorate it: washi tape, stickers, paper with floral print. This was a fun bonus activity,

and it can solve the illegible handwriting issue if you find that distracting or annoying. Copying the book also helps remember the rules and options.

Check the Gallery for a better look at each pet featured in this playthrough: TSPN Gallery. Some are older minis, and others were made during the playthrough.

Week One

Snail Man was deployed in the garden, and settled in. I pet him, cleaned him, and watched him eat his own poop. I bought him a ball of swamp bile and a beautiful stick to play with (count as small toys). Speaking of shopping, there is an in-game currency called TSPN Tender, which can be used to purchase various useful or decorative items from the shop. The player starts with 500 of these, and receives 25 per day for working, or a weekly allowance of 100. Food is one of the things that’s most commonly bought, but since Snail Man eats poop I didn’t have to spend on that.

On Day Four I introduced my second pet: Slow Death. This is another Mollusc, and another source of dung. I was concerned about Snail Man eating his own crap; it can’t go through him over and over indefinitely. Slow Death is a fungivore, so I had to purchase mushrooms for it daily. Leftover shrooms have a chance of developing sentience after a week and becoming a Fungi type pet, and I was hoping to get a shroom pet this way. It’s one in three chance. Slow death is dumb as a stump, but quite magical. I actually bought it from the Necromancer Vertebras. The mini is a conversion of one of my early sculpts, currently available as part of the Miscellaneous Monsters set from Meridian Miniatures.

Each day pets interact with the owner and each other, and rolls are made to adjust their Friendship level (1-12). Pets can attack pets they severely dislike. I managed to get along well with both snails, but Snail Man started hating Slow Death very soon. I suppose he doesn’t like to share. Slow Death was super into Snail Man, though.

Week Two

Pets can participate in certain activities twice per week: the Pet Pageant, Pet Fights, Talent Show, or be rented out as Familiars to wizards. Each of these can earn you money, and what you choose to do will be based on your pet’s stats. The Pageant judges your pet’s Aesthetics, the Fights are good for Danger-heavy pets, the Talent Show tests their Intelligence while preforming tricks, and the Familiar job uses their Magic to help wizards in their work.

Snail Man is not of much use, but I sent Slow Death to a pit fight during the second week. He was paired against Bufo, a sanguivore amphibian (mini is from Mammoth Miniatures). Slow Death got battered and I had to forfeit. Instead of winning money, I had to spend on bandages to fix my little friend.

This week also saw our first vermin in the garden: a Pink Slug. They are Mollusc Ovivores with danger level high for a vermin. It polluted the enclosure for a day, and then Slow Death killed it. Vermin negatively affect the Hygiene of pets, and can be removed by pets themselves, or by purchasing traps. Another Slug appeared a few days later, this time Snail Man was the one to wipe it out. I sculpted five slugs so I don’t run out, but luckily they never managed to cause an infestation.

The end of week two a leftover mushroom stood up and started walking.

Week Three

Hypha, the Violent Coprophagous Fungus , evolved from a mushroom. I sculpted the mini from scratch, a few days late since I didn't expect to get a sentient fungus on my first try. This thing is an absolute beast, and I had to immediately buy a chain and a muzzle to bring down its danger level. On the other hand, this means Hypha is an excellent pit fighter. In its first week of sentience it beat Bufo the bloodsucking frog, and instantly killed Uzumaki, a Mammalian Detritivore. That was a shame, I had just painted the figure... It’s another Wilhelminiatures banger. I named it after Junji Ito’s comic that I’m pretty sure inspired the sculpt.

Slow Death is still making good money being a Familiar this week. Makes sense, it came from a wizard after all. Not all is good, though. The pets are bickering a lot. Hypha is a proper bully, and Snail Man is scared and frustrated, so he lashes out at poor SD. I had to buy more bandages.

I used Granny’s Bunker for two days since I would not have time to take care of the pets. Having three is getting much, and I welcomed the break. Granny takes care of pets for a 40 per pet fee, which I could fortunately afford at this time.

Week Four

Sadly, on May 4th Snail Man dies from injuries he sustained in a scrap with Hypha. I was sorry to see my first pet go like that, but such is life. Slow Death is now alone with Hypha, and they can’t stand each other.

On Friday the 5th I attended the Public Market for the first time. The market came in an update, and it allows the player to set up a stand and sell products harvested from pets. I could sell magic manure produced by Slow Death, but investing 200 in a stand was not an option at the time. I needed money for bandages. At the Market, a player also has the chance to meet one or more of forty random Peculiar Passers-by and interact with them. I met the following five weirdos:

• Tree Man, who can encase your pet in amber for a fee. Didn’t need that service.
• Green Thumb, who can make your plant become a pet free of charge. I had a plant, but didn’t want another pet.
• Dellon, who told me about gaming systems he wrote and gave me 250 cash for listening. He mostly talked about Void Horizon, a miniature agnostic tabletop war game in 15mm scale.
• Rat Boy Rory, who gave me cheese. This doubled the chance of vermin appearing in the garden.
• Leper, who can infect your pets if you’re unlucky and sells bandages at a bargain. Nobody got sick, and I stocked up on cheap bandages.

The two pets continued to tenuously coexist until the end of my four-week playthrough.

Final Thoughts

Being in the Discord server with other players was fun, especially since I joined early and there were few enough people I could keep up with the discussion. I loved seeing what everyone else was doing. The beauty of this game is there's endless space for self expression, so it's fantastic how unique each player's pets and enclosures ended up being. Another rad thing - as Tanner updated the rules a few new pages were added, and a bunch of our pets were immortalised as illustrations on those pages.

TSPN is a solo game, but there are mechanics for your pets to interact with your friends’ creatures. On a related note, this game seems great for gaming with your kids. It’s uncomplicated, super creative, and it can even be mildly educational, as most pet types and diets are based on real life biology. It doesn’t require much time, space, nor money (although it can if you really want it to). The rulebook itself is free, and you decide how much you want to invest in crafting materials and hobby time.

Three or more pets is too many. Each pet needs their daily dice rolls, but also has to roll interactions with every other pet. At some point the amount of dice rolling gets overwhelmingly tedious, which defeats the point of playing the game in the first place. It’s not supposed to be a chore. I found that I had the best fun when I only had two critters.

There were some mechanics I haven’t tried on this playthrough since my pets were not suited for them, or they just didn’t randomly occur. There’s replayability, since each pet is a unique combination of variables. And the game is still not finished, so we may see further new content.

I’ll be putting this down now so I can focus on trying other new games, but it’ll be there in my display cabinet if I ever feel the need to take care of fake snails and mushrooms again. I recommend you check it out if you want something a bit different in your tabletop gaming. You can join the TSPN Beta Discord server by following this link: LINK.

EDIT: TSPN is now one of the free games hosted on the 28 Mag website. You can download it HERE.

If you decide to give the game a try, tell me about your pets in the comments!

As always, I must thank my patrons! Your support is appreciated. If you’re not a member, you can join here anytime: PATREON. The extra coin allows me to experiment with new ideas, tools, materials and techniques - and produce quality content for everyone to enjoy.

Disclaimer: this is not a paid promotion and I am not affiliated with the game’s creator or publisher. Everything stated is my personal, biased opinion.