Your Own Story

Every character now has a story of their own. When you make a character, the world writes one from your backstory or your goal: a real answer waiting to be found, clues in real towns, and someone working against you on their own schedule. And if you'd rather do something else, the world follows you instead.

We played this over twenty rounds of long test games before shipping it. Here's everything that changed.

Your own story

• A question with a real answer. "Who has my father's barge?" "What happened to my brother?" The answer is decided before you start, so it never shifts under you, and nothing on screen will contradict it.
• Clues you find, not clues you're told. They wait in real places: a mark on a crate, a line on a tally board, a dockhand who saw something. A thing is something you read or find; a person tells you in their own words, and most of them want something first (coin, a favour, a hand with their work, or a push that works on them).
• Someone working against you. Your rival acts on their own dates, and you hear about it as news: a price raised, a crew seen heading south, a hold emptied. They hold their ground and don't give it up just because you asked nicely.
• Deadlines you're told about. When time is running short, someone tells you, and everyone gives the same date. If the last move happens while you're standing there, it happens in front of you, and you can still stop it.
• Endings that count. When the question is settled on screen, the story ends there, and what you won goes on your sheet. The next story grows out of what you did.

The world follows you

• Walk away and it lets go. Ignore the story, turn it down, or get distracted by something better, and nothing gets pushed back at you. Keep at your own thing for a few scenes and the world writes a new story about that: the trade you're building, the crew you joined, the person you're getting close to.
• No means no. A job you turned down stays turned down, even if you only heard about it in passing from a barkeep. Nobody pitches it again, and no courier turns up later with the same news.
• Quiet stays quiet. Fishing, a long supper, a walk by the water: if that's what you're doing, the world gives you small moments in keeping with it, not ambushes.

Table talk does more

• Tell the GM what you want your story to be about. "I want this to be about Wink and me, and building something quiet here." The GM rewrites your story around it. A story about a person or a quiet life stays gentle.
• Mistakes get fixed properly. Wrong money or health is put right on your sheet, not just noted.
• Debts you've paid stay paid, and a story you're done with can be closed.

Scenes that move

• No more loops. After each turn the game checks whether the scene actually changed anything, or just replayed one from earlier. If it stalled, the next scene brings a change.
• People stop repeating themselves. The storyteller sees what each person has already said, so a warning isn't given five times in different words.
• It remembers your words. The storyteller now reads what you actually wrote for your last 25 turns, not a summary of it. Out-of-character notes, the line you said to someone, the thing you did in passing: all of it carries forward.
• Other players stay theirs. In a shared world, another player's character is never given a role, a meeting or lines in your story.

Journeys that add up

• Distances are the real ones. When someone says a town is "three days east", it is three days on the clock, and the trip footer and the clock agree.
• Going somewhere moves you there. If the story says you walked to the mill, you're at the mill on the map too.
• Worlds keep their own scale. Distances follow each world's map, so a short coastal hop is no longer a two-week trek.

Fights and money

• You can give up. Hand over what they want or surrender, and the fight ends. Against anything below a boss, your plain words are enough.
• Fairer fights. At most three attackers reach you in one exchange, blows stop once you're down, and a tavern keeper no longer hits like a warlord.
• Fights start when they should. Swing at someone and a fight begins; a sleeping guard or a bound prisoner doesn't fight back.
• Money that adds up. Prices can be paid, overspending is refused instead of emptying your purse, and change is made properly.

Smaller fixes

• The time of day is respected: no midday glare at midnight, and shops are shut at night.
• People keep the gender the scene first gave them.
• Notes the storyteller meant for itself no longer reach you as speech.
• Places named after another town ("the Borough road") are put beside that town.
• Your own family's mark or keepsake is recognised as yours when it turns up.

For world builders

• The storyteller thinks harder on the default model, for steadier stories and fewer slips. If your world runs on another model or your own provider, it's kept at a moderate setting so it doesn't overthink and stall.
• Battle maps fit your world. A fight on a seabed the sea left long ago is drawn on dry ground, not open water.
• Your map's own scale sets every journey time in your world.