STORY

Stories are a central focus of life. We consider stories to be the heart and soul of how we engage with an RPG. The story in an RPG isn’t like a story in a movie or a book whose scenes weave the same experience time and time again. This sort of story is alive, it reacts to your choices, it goes in unexpected directions, and it provides opportunity for you to explore situations beyond what might be possible in real life. 

Story and role-playing are the essence of a game for which we provide a framework of statistics and mechanics. Statistics give fate a hand in your role-playing, and mechanics provide structure to help build the story. One of our primary goals and desires is for role-playing and collaborative story to be aided by statistics, not restricted by them.

ROLEPLAYING

I generally think of role-playing as serious fun! It’s an engaging, immersive, rewarding, and humorous way to spend time. Group storytelling, socializing, problem solving, and confronting tactical and strategic challenges are the fundamental components of achieving that fun. You create and portray a character in a fictional universe, then you decide what your character says and does. The game is an intense and enjoyable experience in which anything could happen.

A game system explains how the “physics of the world” work. Chance, achieved by rolling dice, is necessary because there is an inconsistency in how different folks judge any given situation. Dice are the arbiter of physics and the progenitor of the relationship between cause and effect. Chance is change is risk is fun! Beyond the 'role' of the dice, a Game Master (GM) sets the scene and provides antagonists. Many players walk away after a session dreaming about the adventure - a vicarious experience gained through the machinations of everyone involved. There is laughing, arguing, rulestering, strategizing, problem solving, wonder, and creativity.

One notion of role-playing is that you are an improvisational thespian who feeds your role through constant attention to in-game circumstances. Another conception of play is to ‘game the system’, creating the best killing machine possible without paying much heed to the creation of a persona other than one that can eradicate whatever the GM creates. Most folks are somewhere in the middle. While we have preferences on how we like to play, we have no judgments about yours. Use the game as you will; there is no question that the mechanics of any RPG can be sculpted to suit different play-styles. Some people even alter the mechanics of many games to suit thier needs. For instance, Monopoly has no rule that awards $500 for landing on free parking, but as a house-rule it provides an impactful change to the game. Feel free, of course, to do the same with Telken Lost. We have no doubt the game will improve for you through experimentation with your own ideas.

Playing a role in an RPG is about imaging a scene laid out by someone else, then concocting what you think and feel. Then you narrate your thinking to the other players. You can verbalize what your character says and describe what your character does. You can go a bit further and depict what you want the rest of the players to understand about your thoughts and emotions. Often, it’s difficult to achieve clarity because a large part of the game is played in abstraction in the minds and hearts of the gamers. Consequently, there are routinely as many renditions of a scene as there are players.

And therein lies great fun. The clever manipulate it. The wise lovingly coerce it. And, hopefully, all find joy in it … and the rede.