Unwritten update and philosophy

Things have been quiet in the guild hall recently, but we continue to work on Unwritten. We are planning a Kickstarter to pay for editing, artwork and publishing late this year if possible. (No promises.)

I wanted to take a moment to talk about some of the concepts and philosophy behind Unwritten as a sort of initial preview.

First off, what you will not be getting for Unwritten is a rule book. That is, Unwritten is not intended to tell you how you must run a role-playing game set in the D’niverse. Rather, Unwritten is a ‘tool book’. The mechanics and guidance that are going into the book are intended to give you a wide array of tools that you can use to make all sorts of stories. The Fate community has a saying: “Fiction, not physics.” This is key to Unwritten. It’s not a linear walk-through like you would see on how to play Myst. Rather, it is more like a travel guide that points out all the interesting places, suggests travel routes and lets you build your own journey. The story does not emerge from the rules; the rules support the story.

Second, I wanted to describe the central themes of Unwritten as I am writing it. The D’niverse is a place for adventure. There’s room for all sorts of pulpy goodness that would fit just fine into an Indiana Jones movie or as part of a Steampunk novel. Unwritten gives you tools for having epic adventures. It’s also a place for discovery. There are always mysteries to solve. Some are puzzles, and others are like crime scenes. And beyond that, there are mysteries about ancient civilizations and strange sciences to delve into. Unwritten provides ways to role-play the journey into the unknown. And finally, the D’niverse is a place to accomplish things. “Find a way, make a home” as Yeesha said. You’ll be able to create amazing machines, take advantage of the strange things you find in the Ages, as well as work together with others to make changes to the your world, both local and cosmic.

We’re really looking forward to bringing this to you. You’ll be seeing more frequent updates come along as we finish the first drafts of the game and begin to plan the next phase.