Staff Blog: Simplicity is What Sets Our Game Apart

Once upon a time, people gathered around campfires and told stories. Some of the stories were based on true events, others were embellishments or allegories or fictions. They spoke and the stories grew in the telling, but the tales were organic and grew. Eventually, these people invented ever more complex cultures that saw them grow apart, go to war and record all that had been done. And some looked at what had been done and drew up a complex series of rules so that they could relive old battles, acting as generals and attempting to do better than what had been recorded. Finally, someone decided that didn’t want to play a general but a soldier instead.

This is a simple account of how role-playing came to be. At it’s heart, it’s about story, about crafting a tale and enchanting an audience. It should be enthralling, captivating, fun. But sometimes the rules get in the way. They’re too complex to learn, too rigid, force stasis or disallow players from doing the things they want with their characters. Sometimes, the rules get in the way of playing a role or telling a story or even make the game itself not as much fun as it could be. They take forever to learn, are boring to read about, provide too much to argue about and take away from actually playing the game.

And all of that is ridiculous. This is a game. It’s leisure, a complex entertainment that requires intelligence, flexibility, and creativity. It encourages free thought. The rules shouldn’t get in the way if this – they should reward these qualities. The Triune Legacy possesses a system that does that and is dead simple to learn. It’s intuitive, quick to pick up and easy to play with, expansive enough to allow for any action or situation with no bother or fuss.

It is a system that has been play-tested for fifteen years, been used in everything from high fantasy to science fiction, swashbuckling to thriller, superheroics to outright horror. It was designed for ease of use in telling stories, so that anyone can do anything so long as it is within character, to make the greatest number of thing possible without requiring too much studying. This is supposed to be fun, after all. This is supposed to be entertaining.

May we present a system that is elegant and variable, a system that requires little time to learn so that you can go about playing the game and telling a story and having fun. The campfires may have faded but the dream remains the same – to take players back to those times, to tell a story together without the rules and systems getting in the way. May we give you this system so that you can share epics with others and develop them together, with your friends and colleagues and whosoever else you choose.

May we present you with this system so you can tell stories and enthrall yourself and others just as we used to in the oldest of times. There is nothing in this world so rewarding as crafting a story with others without letting rules get in the way. But don’t take our world for it – experience this for yourself.

Aaron is the principle author and creator of the Triune Legacy mythos and the 8Fold Soul System. Find out more about Aaron and the rest of The Triune Legacy Team. This Staff Blog entry was posted on August 18th, 2009.