Story Engine - Universal Rules (Revised Edition)

Story Engine uses relative instead of linear scales, fitting everything from superheroes and high fantasy to film noir and murder mysteries. The rules adapt seamlessly to any genre, giving you fluid, fun games that focus on the story and not the rules.

The rules system used in a game has an effect on the reality of the world itself. Rules systems often establish everything from how many feet a person can jump to the number of minutes a person can go without air. Story Engine is designed to accommodate every kind of story and doesn't attempt to quantify what is and what is not possible. Most game mechanics are simulations, in which the rules attempt to simulate the laws of physics. Story Engine is a narrative game, in which the rules guide the storyline.

Most game systems use a "quantitative" system that assigns numbers and values to everything. These rules strive for a more "realistic" resolution system (often called "verisimilitude") by trying to duplicate real physics and the actual way in which things happen in the real world. The downside to these systems is that they rely on charts, tables and a good deal of math that can slow down the game (and action scenes in particular). These systems inadvertently define the style of play by giving absolute values to how the world works, such as how much a person can lift and how fast a car can go; "quantitative" systems don't adjust well to genres that have a different scale of reality from their own.

Some game systems, like Story Engine, use a relative scale to rate things. In this way, something described as "strong" is always "strong," even if "strong" in one genre means a heavyweight boxer and "strong" in another genre means a seven hundred foot reptile. The laws of "what is possible" are relative to the genre, so in a heroic adventure the hero can swing across the ravine while dodging bullets and still keep his hat on, though that wouldn't be possible in a game of modern espionage based on the "real" world.