Crystal Lake native creates role-playing board game through crowdfunding

A new tabletop role-playing board game brings to life a Crystal Lake native’s world filled with illustrations he created of woodland animals based on his favorite fantasy novels.

The game, called Woodlander, is centered in a world of animals with human characteristics exploring a wilderness. Players participate as woodland creatures such as squirrels, rabbits, mice and foxes. It was created in 2011 by Crystal Lake native Alexander Johnson, who graduated from Crystal Lake South High School.

Johnson’s art and game is influenced by the children’s fantasy novel series “Redwall,” Disney’s “Robin Hood” and the “Mistmantle Chronicles” novels. He describes the game as set in a “vaguely medieval fantasy” setting and a “wholly original set of rules equally focused on coziness and heroics as players explore a delightful yet dangerous world of anthropomorphic characters.”

“It’s very quaint and charming,” he said.

Johnson, based in Elk Grove Village, is an illustrator, character designer and cartoonist. He has made about a couple dozen illustrations for his game, all in a black-and-white, featuring a mouse on his hind legs navigating a treacherous world and usually armed with a sword and shield.

His game will soon come to life after almost 500 people financially supported his endeavor through the online campaign website Kickstarter and raised more than $32,000.

“I definitely got a lot more attention than I was expecting,” he said. “I was expecting to crawl along for at least the first week or so, if not the entire month. There’s been a much larger turnout than I was expecting, which is also very encouraging.”

Johnson created unique mechanics not found in other popular role-playing board games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Players have to manage time, rest and tension in order to survive the game. His ideas came from years of playing role-playing board games with a desire to add characters and stories from his favorite fantasy novels.

“I just kept tinkering around with different ideas for several years, play/testing things,” he said. “It was a lot of trial and error and experimentation.”

His love for role-playing board games goes back to his time at Crystal Lake South when he started a role-playing club with his twin brother and a friend. The last he heard, the club had evolved to a board game playing club.

“That was pretty successful,” he said.

Now that fundraising for Woodlander is finished, Johnson is in the production process of creating the board game pieces and booklet. This will be his first time seeing and handling the physical elements.

“I hadn’t had anything physically printed before now,” he said. “It’s all been PDFs on my computer.”

Once production is figured out, Johnson intends to have Woodlander sold online in the near future.

“Money isn’t really my main goal, like I’m not just doing this for a profit,” he said. “I just want to get this realized for other fans of this subgenre of fantasy to also enjoy my project.”

Information about Woodlander at Kickstarter.com/projects/woodlander/woodlander-0.