Playing the Game

Warped World's core gameplay is built on a collaboration between the players and the Game Mediator. As the game progresses, the player characters will come into contact with the various people, creatures, and objects of the game's world; and in order to facilitate that experience we have some rules that not only guide the process but add difficulty and suspense. The basic structure of the game is as follows:

  1. The GM narrates the scene and its actors, describing and actions the non-player characters (NPCs) take, the scenery and objects in it that the players can see, hear, smell, etc.
  2. The players take action within the scene, narrating what their character does to interact with the scene's elements and actors.
  3. When a player interacts with an element in a way which requires some degree of skill, or is acted upon and must react or resist that action, a roll is made. This could be the player trying to search a room for an alarm system, or an enemy attempting to grapple a player character.
  4. The narrative continues in this way until the session ends. See ending a session

The aim of the game is to create an emergent narrative together, with the players and GM working together towards this goal. The narrative that the players and GM craft and navigate will shift and change as the group attempts to achieve their goals, encounter challenges, and shape their world. Unlike some more traditional tabletop RPGs which have specified moves for individual actions, Warped World focuses on the narrative experience and leaves much of the roll-based decision-making to the players and GM. With the exception of combat, which will be covered in the Combat section, actions that player and non-player characters can take are largely at the discretion of the group. We will get into the specifics shortly, but as a golden rule, play occurs in such a way that what you describe a character doing is what they do, or attempt to do. Rather than asking, "can I do this?", a player should instead say, "I'm going to try to do this", or "I'm going to do this".

Player Narration

Olive's character Jason is trapped in a room with an explosive anart work which is rigged to a timer, and is trying to escape or nullify the object's effect.

GOOD: Jason studies the object looking for anything that could interrupt its functions
BAD: Can I do anything to stop the object?

Rather than rote memorization of a specific list of moves and actions, players are encouraged to narrate their character's actions naturally, even in cases where that character might attempt something they've never done before. While an action a character is unfamiliar with or untrained for might be difficult, it is not impossible to attempt.