Storyteller Creator’s Guide

By Pandion Games Version 1.0

What is Storyteller?

This Creator’s Guide is for making your own games, content and supplements using the mechanics from Pandion Game’s Storyteller Narrative Campfire Game, which can be found at https://pandiongames.itch.io/the-storyteller.

Storyteller is an ad-lib narrative system that uses a Story Prompt to create the structure of the tale to be told, and a character profile for creating characters. Each of these are used by fill-in-the-blanket options for each ad-lib. Action resolution is done through completion of different kinds of tasks.

The Core Design Principle

It is important that the mechanics conform to the core design principle:

Play happens while out camping, around a campfire, with only the materials or items campers would likely have on hand during such a trip.

Don’t assume they have dice, pencils, bright indoor lighting, a flat playing surface or are gathered closely next to each other at a table.

This does not mean players must play outside or around a campfire, but the design or change of any mechanics should revolve around that core principle.

Using this Guide

This guide will describe the core mechanics and concepts for Storyteller games. If you wish to use this creator resource to simply expand on Storyteller’s Character Profiles and Story Prompt options, monster descriptions, or folklore and legends, we have provided descriptions below to help write that.

If you want to create a Crafted with Storyteller game that uses a different theme, tone, or genre a new Story Prompt may need to be created, which will affect the options, and we provide guidance on that as well. Generally, the Character Prompt itself will not need to be changed, but that is ultimately up to you.

Safety Tools

Anything created using the Storyteller Creator's Guide should include some kind of safety section. Call out potential content warnings, explain your favorite safety mechanics, such as X-Cards, Rewinds, Script Changes and Lines and Veils. Be specific and remember the Core Design Principle. Most safety tools will need to be tweaked to accommodate it.

Ensure that people in an audience can signal discomfort in some way to the Storyteller subtly to not attract the unwanted attention of possibly tens of people.

The mechanics of this game lends itself very well to playing with children, as such it is doubly important to provide information, up front, to the expected audience, age and required maturity for your games and content. If your game needs adoption for play with children, add a note specifically to parents or adults what needs to occur.