Book One of The Far Road Campaign

No Heroes Are Coming

A tabletop Game Master wakes inside the fantasy campaign he created, only to discover the heroes never arrived.

No Heroes Are Coming cover

Publishing September 29, 2026

Joshua Pilbert knows exactly how this story is supposed to go.

He built the world himself.

When Joshua, a thirty-five-year-old tabletop Game Master, wakes up inside the fantasy campaign he created, he thinks his knowledge might be enough to keep him alive. He knows the towns, the quests, the monsters, and the villains. He knows where danger waits, and how the heroes are supposed to stop it.

There's just one problem.

The heroes never arrived.

Now trapped in a world that was never meant for him, Joshua must gather a party of his own: an exacting elven wizard, a quick-fingered gnome rogue, a towering blacksmith shield-bearer, and a powerful orc druid. Together, they'll have to survive a story that is already beginning to go wrong.

Because knowing the plot is not the same as surviving it.

No Heroes Are Coming is a warm, high-stakes fantasy adventure about found family, impossible expectations, and what happens when the storyteller becomes part of the story.

What to expect

A party-based adventure with a human heart

Adult portal fantasy

A thirty-five-year-old protagonist carrying adult habits, anxieties, and unfinished questions into a dangerous world.

GameLit-adjacent

Tabletop logic and campaign structure without stat screens dominating the story.

Warmth and consequence

Banter and found family alongside violence, grief, responsibility, and choices that cannot be reset.

Book details

Publication information

Publication date
September 29, 2026
Series
The Far Road Campaign, Book One
Genre
Adult portal fantasy / tabletop-inspired adventure fantasy
Publisher
Open Seat Press
Formats
Kindle ebook and 5.5 × 8.5 paperback
ISBN
To be added before publication

Preorder bonus

His Last Ordinary Week

Preorder readers will receive a free EPUB edition of the prequel novella exploring the table, the players, and the final ordinary days before Joshua's world changes.

How to claim the bonus

“The best worlds are never made alone.”

— The Far Road Campaign

Start reading

See whether the road is for you.

Receive the first two chapters in EPUB and PDF when the creator sample campaign goes live.

View the sample-page example