Playable Folktales: A Design Manifesto

These are games without reckoning.

Not because we're pacifists (though we might be), but because the
creative constraint—"Can we have a game without beating someone up?"—
unlocks a different dramatic space entirely.

In traditional TTRPGs, conflict is opposition: you vs. the monster,
the empire, the rival. Victory is zero-sum. The die decides.

In Playable Folktales, conflict is entanglement: you are inside the
thing that haunts you. The system (technological, seasonal, historical)
cannot be defeated—only witnessed, tended, negotiated with.

The stakes shift from external (Can we win?) to internal (Who will
we become for our community?).

The resolution isn't rolled—it's chosen. And every choice costs
something worth keeping.

These games emerge from exhaustion—not the spectacular nihilism of
2020's apocalypse porn, but the quiet, accumulating fatigue of 2025's
long emergency. They ask: What does persistence look like when triumph
is impossible?

The answer: Maintenance. Care. The anti-spectacular labor that keeps
the lights on, the archive patched, the harvest gathered, the refugees
sheltered.

We call them Playable Folktales because they function like folk stories:
portable, repeatable, teaching through parable rather than preaching.
They're TTRPG meets hauntology—collaborative rituals for processing
what can't be solved.

The pattern:

• Ordinary people (no heroes)
• Uncanny setting (the place is protagonist)
• Four movements (ritual structure, not plot)
• Three paths (preservation, defiance, balance)
• Recognition over resolution

The food bank teaches us: One can donated = one can distributed.
One dollar donated = six cans distributed through the system.

Our games ask: Do you trust the efficiency of the system, knowing
what it costs? Or do you choose the direct, inefficient, human action,
knowing you'll fail to save everyone?

There is no correct answer. Only the choice you can live with.

Welcome to the quiet persistence.