How to take a cool idea and accidentally break an entire system. Includes a PDF attachment of the Spellpoint Codex. Up now on Patreon for paid members.

A system-adaptable roleplaying scenario focused on missing persons cases, community pressure, and unresolved grief. Investigate disappearances, navigate conflicting accounts, and decide what truths to uncover or leave buried.

If we’re going to challenge all assumptions about how roleplaying works, we have to look at the root of most rules: dice. This comes directly from wargaming and is the element that makes it a “game.” Rather than assuming things have fixed outcomes, randomness and probability are introduced under the guise of fairness. Failure, or anything other than the rationally expected outcome, is explained away after the fact, if it’s explained at all.

Using Narrative Play with Legacy Roleplaying Systems. Learn how to use Principia Canonica with any roleplaying system to keep situations moving through pressure, decisions, and consequences without rewriting your rules.

Read this article now, for free, on Substack or Patreon.

This is a repost from the Story at the Table Substack.

The next series of articles for Story at the Table will focus on the idea the Dungeons and Dragons is complete, and that the only way forward for game design is to move away from the paradigm it established.