The Manifesto

As players and designers, we embark on a journey to play and create tabletop roleplaying games rife with peril, strangeness, and imaginative variety. We shall craft episodic adventures forming exciting picaresque tales, not monotonous novels. Our stories will reward cunning ingenuity, not repetitive bloody slogs.

We set forth to design a game capturing the spirit of adventure, where the dice may not favor the players, yet their tales will overflow with perilous quests, unexpected encounters, and demand clever solutions. 

We will craft a realm embracing myriad possibilities, where heroes know triumph and defeat, revelation and confusion, as they journey through mystical lands challenging their strategies. While including combat, we measure our design by how it inspires quick wits and teamwork. Our adventures will be unpredictable and ever-changing.

In our tabletop adventures, risk and loss must feel real in order to make success earned and meaningful. Players should know that defeat is possible and that suboptimal choices will have consequences. While we won't overwhelm them, challenges must feel perilous, with smart play and clever thinking required to overcome them. Character growth will come not just from accumulating power, but from learning from mistakes and bouncing back from failure. By making risks authentic, loss impactful but not permanent, we ensure players feel they are on a knife's edge where both caution and daring are required. Our adventures will thrill because one false step could spell doom, but ultimate success comes to those who learn, adapt, and display sound judgment along with boldness. With true risks comes greater reward when players prevail by their cunning and resilience. 

Adventure means stepping outside the known and comfortable. Our tabletop stories will take players to strange new lands filled with unexpected people, creatures, and customs. Travel will be transformative, forcing heroes to adapt both mentally and physically to unfamiliar terrain. While confusion may arise, persevering through the unknown will ultimately be rewarding. Mysteries should compel players to learn more about the world, overcoming initial unfamiliarity through courage and curiosity. Though strange at first, embracing differences will allow greater connections. We aim to design adventures where confusion gives way to wonder, where characters journey from closed-mindedness to open-heartedness as they explore. The true spoils of adventure are not just material victories but widened perspectives. By venturing into the unfamiliar, we gain the greatest treasure: realization that strangeness often holds beauty.

Adventure arises from variety, not repetition, so our tabletop game will craft episodic tales that feel picaresque, not like one long novel. Every gaming session will take players somewhere fresh, with new challenges to overcome. We will design adventures to be modular, able to be recombined in many configurations for maximum replayability. Within each story, players will have opportunities to make impactful choices pushing the narrative down unexpected forks. By emphasizing free-flowing creativity over pre-determined outcomes, we allow nearly limitless story possibilities. Our episodic structure means characters can undergo small arcs of growth and change that together form a grand epic. No two journeys will be the same when fueled by imagination. With emphasis on variety and player agency, our game will capture the spirit of unbounded adventure.

True adventure arises from cleverness and cunning more than brute force. We will design our game to reward ingenuity, lateral thinking, and imaginative solutions. Players should feel free to approach challenges diplomatically, stealthily, or unconventionally rather than always resorting to violence. Victory will come to those who outsmart foes, navigate tangled problems with insight, and persevere through challenges with flexibility. While combat has its place, it should feel situational, not inevitable. We aim for smart risk/reward systems that encourage daring over mindless hack-and-slash. By emphasizing brains over brawn, our adventures kindle the thrill of out-maneuvering peril through clever improvisation. Heroes act not just with power but wit, guile, and cunning improvisation. Thus adventure emerges from rising to meet challenges with all one’s faculties.

We believe player creativity should be unbound when facing challenges. Our game will encourage players to attempt any plausible tactic or approach a problem, rather than limiting solutions to a predefined set. The Referee's role is to adjudicate proposed actions, rewarding clever and well-executed ideas within the fiction. Players should feel emboldened to think laterally and engage problems with the full range of their characters' abilities and resources. While success is not guaranteed, we aim to play systems that embrace creative problem-solving and provide the flexibility for heroes to try the unexpected. Our adventures emerge when players feel free to innovate, take risks, and unleash their full imaginative potential.

We believe adventure emerges from the active participation and imagination of players, adjudicated by a fair referee. Our game will create opportunities for players to make meaningful choices through engaging mechanics that promote agency. The referee's role is to impartially adjudicate actions, not dominate the narrative. While guided by rules, the unfolding tales arise from players' choices. We will design an inclusive RPG where everyone at the table feels their contributions matter, not just a tyrant game master. By keeping fellow adventurers invested from start to finish, we fulfill the promise of shared adventures where groups of heroes rise to meet fantastic challenges. Our manifesto centers the spirit of adventure within the gathered party, bound together on a journey of imagination guided by a referee upholding the rules.