Links and physical books
A quick update on printing the longer version of Named with some suggested links.
Lulu is increasing the price of printing at the end of the month, so if you want a book now is probably the time. Also I just ordered all the copies I need for a while and numbers of printing is dropping off, so I might remove the simple ordering process soon. After that, you’ll still be able to print the PDF via Lulu or other printer, but it will take a little more setup.
Stumbled on the Joy Of Dice blog, which has some intriguing evocative parallels to what we are doing with our tools with different perspectives on similar ideas like traits, emotions and [dark] secrets. Written with passion about passion. Start with The Aching Heart and explore further and follow if it sparks a similar interest for you. A delicious taste to draw you in:
In this system, character creation is not about completeness. It is about direction. Nothing has to be final. Everything can change. Everything will change. You may begin blank. You may begin radiant. But the real sheet emerges in motion.
https://joyofdice.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-aching-heart-character-creation-in.html
Also want to point you to Worlds Funsome and Free: Understanding Open Role-Play Adventure. This is a beautiful consolidation of a philosophy and style of play very similar to my own. A snippet of where the approach comes from:
The experience is de-commodified. In a world straining under an increasing preponderance of commercialization… It’s home-crafted and self-reliant, a DIY folk-art experience. You don’t need any official materials – your worlds, adventures, and even rules are entirely yours to create and explore.
https://ethric-t-s.itch.io/worlds-funsome-and-free-understanding-open-role-play-adventure
Immediately after a recommendation which pushes back on commercialisation, without irony I’m making a recommendation for a commercial product. The creator Nathan is a single person selling at low cost above printing and has gone out of his way to make community copies available. Gamemaster’s Apprentice cards are pretty much the only tool I use to GM and it is rolling out updated versions. The new version adds ‘Yes, and’ and ‘No, but’ to the oracles, and a bunch of other refinements. The Base and Cyberpunk versions have already had this treatment, and Apocalypse version is crowdfunding now.
Still playing a wide variety of worlds with Named, but I always wanted to play a Pendragon like campaign of knights over generations, but the mechanics didn’t click for me. But I am currently working on a MOSAIC version of the Knights for the excellent Mythic Bastionland so I can play it with Named. Highly recommend running this as a system as is or a framework for other play, as the rules fit tightly on a few pages so most of the book is usable as a world. Chris McDowall is another single person developer., and there is a shorter free version available with all the mechanics and only a sample of the prompts and a Quinns Quest video that are worth checking out.
https://chrismcdee.itch.io/mythic-bastionland
Happy gaming.
Files
Get Named: Wightbred’s Toolkit
Named: Wightbred’s Toolkit
The longer Named toolkit we use for immersive worlds and emergent characters
| Status | Released |
| Category | Physical game |
| Author | Wightbred |
| Tags | fkr, PbtA, rules-lite, Tabletop, tabletop-role-playing-game, Tabletop role-playing game |
More posts
- ‘Final’ Toolkit and PrintingOct 24, 2024
- More Art and 'Almost Final' Version AvailableSep 08, 2024
- Incoming art and progressMay 11, 2024
- Suddenly WolvesJan 06, 2024
Comments
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Thanks so much for these recommendations, I'm going to read them all.
I own the softcover and coincidentally just got it off the shelf an hour ago - it's been on my mind since a brand-new roleplayer in my group (he's played six sessions of Mothership) mentioned that he's trying NOT to learn the rules, because he doesn't want to make decisions influenced by perfect knowledge of the probabilities. I'm interested to see players naturally and immediately moving away from reliance on rules, and seeing it as an obstruction in the way of engaging with the fictional world and inhabiting a player character. I'm going to see how they like the ideas in Named.
Thank you again!
I hope Named helps with this, because addressing this challenge is at the core of what it does for us. Long before FKR existed or I had heard of Eisen’s Vow (players shouldn’t know the rules), we experimented with running D&D 3e with what we would now call ‘black box’ gaming (all the rules behind the screen) to try to better engage with the fictional world. Named is our evolution from that to something that makes staying in the fiction easy for us, but still has high impact rolls that change the direction of play.
I do think there are different balance points for people in staying in the fiction, so recommend you experiment around it to define your own balance using Named and any other tools that make sense.
All the best with your journey! Feel free to reach out if I can help.