Playing
Playing a turn
What to type, how a turn resolves, steering notes, undo and shared rooms.
What to type
Write what your character does, in your own words. First person or third, past tense or present, a line or a paragraph: the storyteller reads your style and answers in kind. Speech in quotes is heard by the people around you. What your character only thinks or feels is narrated, but nobody in the scene reacts to it.
Say what you attempt, not what happens. “I lunge for the captain's sword arm” is a move the world can answer. “I disarm the captain” is an outcome, and the engine, not you, decides outcomes. Declared results get played out blow by blow instead of simply granted.
The world pushes back. A claim the room has no reason to believe gets the reception a room full of real people would give it. There is no railroad, but there is friction.
What happens in a turn
While a turn resolves you see a running line of what the storyteller is doing: checking who is here, looking up lore, reading its notes on you. In order:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Read Storyteller | Your action is sorted: what's visible, what's spoken, what's only thought; how hostile, how urgent, how big an effect you're reaching for. |
| 2. Look around Storyteller | The storyteller looks up the place, the people present, your history with them, any active quest and the world's lore. |
| 3. Act Engine | It answers through the engine's tools: spawning people, starting a fight, moving you, handing over an item. Each tool checks the world's rules before it changes anything. |
| 4. Pay Engine | The effort your action took comes off your stamina or mana. |
| 5. Record Engine | The turn is written down: NPCs remember what they saw, the clock moves, and anything notable arms the timer for word of it to spread. |
- Turns run on the server. Close the tab mid-turn and it still finishes; come back and you'll see the result.
- One turn at a time. A character can't start a second turn while one is resolving, even from another device.
- Suggested replies sometimes appear under a scene, phrased in your own voice. They're shortcuts, never the only options.
- Glowing phrases in the narration mark something worth following up: a lead, a way through, a danger, a name. Two or three a turn at most, and never decoration.
Steering notes (OOC)
You can talk to the storyteller directly, outside the fiction, by putting a note in brackets:(OOC: slow down, I want to explore this town). ((…)) and [OOC: …] work too. An ordinary parenthetical inside your action is still read as part of the action.
| Kind of note | What the storyteller does |
|---|---|
| Pacing (“skip ahead to dusk”) | Honours it. |
| Tone (“make this grim”) | Writes that way. Tone never changes health, injuries, death or how a fight resolves. |
| Direction (“I'd like to find a smuggler”) | Treats it as an interest. The world may lean that way; it won't simply hand it over. |
| Continuity (“I still have the lantern”) | May keep an ordinary, non-magical thing your character plausibly has. |
| Anything that asks for gold, items, stats or a character's decision | Declines it. |
No character in the scene hears these notes. At most three are taken from a turn, and the world's builder can turn steering off, in which case notes are read and set aside.
Time of day
Each character keeps their own clock. A day runs dawn, morning, afternoon, evening, night, midnight, and the time moves on one step every few turns (four, in Khorvale). Travel, resting, sea crossings and the storyteller skipping ahead move it further. Engine
Time matters: roads are slower at night, people sleep, and news of what you did reaches other towns a number of days later. See Travel and time and People remember.
Undo last turn
Undo last turn rewinds the world by your most recent turn, and only that one. Engine It:
- erases the turn's narration from the log;
- returns the health, stamina and mana the turn cost, and reverses the items and effects it applied;
- makes NPCs forget what happened from that turn on, and removes people the turn brought into being;
- takes back any money, items and experience the turn granted, so loot can't be farmed by undoing;
- ends a fight the turn started, and undoes any spread of your reputation it set off;
- reverses a death that turn caused.
Sharing a room
Every place is shared. If another player is in the same tavern, the storyteller sees both of you in the scene and you can act together. Your log shows your own story by default; switch to the shared room log to read every adventurer's. Only one turn resolves in a room at a time: while someone else's is being written you see “… is acting”, and your text waits for you. Engine
The storyteller never speaks or acts for another player's character. Parties aren't here yet; for now you play together by being in the same place. The Deck lists every living adventurer.
Falling, and dying
Downed
At zero health you're downed, not dead. A clock starts: someone has to stabilise you before it runs out (twelve in-game hours in Khorvale). Any healing that brings you above zero saves you. A downed character can still take turns (call for help, crawl, reach for something), since bleeding out is a scene too; you just can't stand, fight or travel. Engine
Death
When the clock runs out, what happens depends on the world. In Khorvale, and in any world with death set to final, the character dies for good. In worlds where heroes are beaten rather than killed, they wake later, barely alive. Engine
A dead character can't act, but their sheet and story remain. The death screen offers two ways out:Go to the memorial, or, if the world got it wrong, Undo the killing turn. In worlds where death is final, overwhelming damage can also kill outright, without a downed state; that judgement is the storyteller's. Storyteller