The Lighthouse 002 | What We Mean When We Say Narrative First
I always wanted to do creative work. I went to The Kubert School planning to be an illustrator, but I learned pretty quickly that to make a living at it, you had to be both fast and good, every time. I could manage one or the other, but not both. Not consistently. Not at the pace the industry demanded.
So I shifted into freelancing. Mostly writing. That I could do quickly, and it paid just enough to keep moving. But freelancing mostly means making things for other people. Their needs. Their timelines. Their rules. It’s work that rewards volume, not vision. And even when you’re good at it, you’re still on someone else’s schedule.
For a while, I tried the corporate route. Steady job, full-time hours, all the structure that’s supposed to make life easier. But I hit a point where I just couldn’t stomach that lifestyle anymore. The endless meetings. The shallow metrics. The way everything creative got flattened out for approval. I had to get out.
At the same time, freelancing was burning me down. So I started building something of my own. I went to business school to learn how to turn my creative work into a sustainable career, which some people seem to think of as selling out, while others celebrate it a little too much. Wanting to pay the bills so you can keep creating is neither a sin nor a virtue. It’s just how the world works.
That turned into Lightspress.
For the past nine years, I’ve kept up a steady, breakneck pace. One-person shop. Small, useful books. Ideas that helped people run games, tell better stories, or see roleplaying through a new lens. The work connected. And it kept the lights on. I’m proud of that.
But speed always comes at a cost. Typos slipped through. Concepts drifted. I was juggling multiple systems, and sometimes books contradicted each other. Terms changed. Structures bent. I did my best to patch things, but I was always working from behind.
The truth is, the need to release constantly kept pushing long-term planning out of reach. As a one-person shop, I knew I needed to tighten my focus. But short-term survival kept winning. Every release had to cover the week that came next. That meant the bigger picture never quite held together.
Last year I made the first big change. I picked one system and committed to it. This year, I’m doing the rest.
This is the reboot. Not just cleanup. Not just polish. I’ve gone back to the core books and done the work the way it should have been done all along. Unified structure. Tight continuity. Strong foundation. These are the definitive versions. The ones that hold. Everything else builds on top of them.
The Simple Approach Core Line
These are the foundational books. They’ve been rebuilt with care, aligned to a single system, and written to last. Everything else will build on this.
Principia: The Simple Approach Corebook
The rules. This is the heart of the system. No extra math. No secret tables. Just clear mechanics built for story-first roleplaying.
Building Characters: The Simple Approach
How to create people worth playing. Fully aligned with the system, written for players who want personality, purpose, and room to grow.
Building Worlds: The Simple Approach
Coming soon. A complete rebuild of one of the most-used titles in the old catalog. Tools for making settings that feel alive and hold together.
Building Adventures: The Simple Approach
Coming soon. A clean, final version of a book that needed more time. This one says what it was always meant to say, and gets out of its own way.
Character Record: Universal
Some people still want a sheet. So here it is, along with a short companion book on how to document your characters in ways that actually help play.
Campaign Record: Universal
Structure for settings, factions, arcs, and session notes. Clean templates and a guide that keeps it all tied to the story, not the admin.
What We Mean When We Say Narrative First
At Lightspress, we write for storytellers.
If you're more interested in who a character becomes than what their stats are, you're in the right place. If you care more about the tension between two choices than the weight of a die roll, welcome. If your sessions feel more like novels than maps, you're already doing what we do.
Our work is built around one principle: the story leads. Always.
Mechanics are there to support fiction, not interrupt it. Every tool we design clears the way for what matters at the table, relationships, consequences, emotional turns. We’re not interested in balance charts or simulation logic. We’re interested in what happens when a character finally says the thing they’ve been holding back.
We don’t follow traditional roleplaying design because we’re not trying to recreate war games. The roots are tactical, but we’ve grown in another direction. Our books don’t simulate. They invite.
That’s why we keep things minimal. Not to be clever. To stay out of your way. Every page adds weight. Every rule competes with the spotlight. We cut what you don’t need so the story has room to breathe.
Our books aren’t written by committee. They come from one voice, start to finish. That’s why the tone holds together. That’s why the focus stays sharp. We don’t ask what the market wants. We ask what the story needs.
We don’t like to call it a game. Games have winners. Stories don’t.
And we don’t like to use the term gamemaster. That’s not what’s happening here. There’s no master. No referee
We use those terms because they’re familiar, even though we find them inaccurate.
No top-down control. There’s a guide, a narrator, a collaborator. Another voice in the room, asking what happens next, and listening for the answer.
We don’t do filler. We don’t do lore dumps. We don’t do spectacle.
We do story.
We do structure.
We do clarity.
And we build tools that help you do the same.
If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re in the right place.
Thanks for being here. More soon.
Thank You
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