How the game works
The engine rolls the dice and decides; the narrator tells that one outcome from every point of view in the scene.
The engine decides, the narrator tells
A real game engine runs the world. The narrator tells what it decided, and changes nothing.
Every 60-second tick, the command with the most votes is settled by fixed rules: a dice roll, the hero’s stats and gear, and how many players agreed. The narrator describes the result as a story. It can’t fudge the rules, bring back a fallen hero, or add loot.
One action, a point of view for everyone in it
Our Story is an MMO at its core, and that means the story is told from more than one point of view. Think of how a game master runs a table. When Ayla swings her sword at Borak, that game master doesn’t read one line aloud to the whole room: Ayla's player hears “you swing,” and Borak's player hears “she swings at you.” We run the same table, just with a crowd of voters behind each hero instead of a single player. The engine settles what happened exactly once. Then the narrator tells each side of the fight that one outcome from where it stands, and your hero's version goes only to the people steering your hero. Here is one sword swing, told three ways:
- The acting hero’s voters: “You swing your sword at Borak…”
- The target hero’s voters: “Ayla swings her sword at you…”
- Everyone else in the location: “Ayla swings her sword at Borak…”
The creatures get a point of view too. A wolf or a bandit standing in the location is not scenery on a timer. It takes its turn through the same rules a hero does, and when something happens to it, it is told the way Borak's players are told: the blow landed on you. That telling is what it reacts to. Wound a beast this round and it knows who wounded it next round, because that is the story it was given. Nothing in the world watches the scene from outside it.
When two heroes trade actions, each reads its own account of what happened. Catch more people in an action and the narrator owes more tellings: an area attack gets one for the caster, one for every target it strikes, and one more for everybody who watched it happen. All of them describe the same roll of the dice and carry the same ! context; the only thing that changes is where you were standing when it went off. Try it below: edit the action, pick what the dice said, and watch the three narrations pull apart while every one of them obeys the outcome you chose.
A clean hit on a hostile target.
Your fist cracks against the goblin's jaw and it staggers back toward the torchlight, dagger wavering.
Pain bursts across your face as the fighter's knuckles drive you backward into the heat of the flame.
Kaelen's fist lands hard, knocking the goblin back toward the guttering torch.