Tales

Tales is the general name for a system that Vulpinoid Studios has been developing for a number of years. It has gone through many incarnations, and has evolved in a few different directions. Despite these changes, the concepts have fundamentally remained the same. Tales is intended to be a modular roleplaying system. It is designed so that a group of people may choose a setting, choose a theme, then develop a story together. The basic core rules for the system remain the same no matter what setting or theme is chosen, but special modular rules are connected to the base, to provide a unique experience to reflect the chosen story type.

Work on the Tales game engine has just resumed after a year of developing and publishing the Eighth Sea, and this work is now focusing on two paths. The first is a core rulebook, based around a world like our own (except that every myth, urban legend and faery tale is real); the second is the world of Horizon, based around an ancient city where secretive factions have waged a shadow war for millenia.

A new setting has also been developed, Rajah Spiny Rat, linked to the world of Horizon; it has just seen completion as a part of a competition entry. This is a self contained game about civilised animals in a world sharing features with the Hindu myths and legends of our world. It has been developed as an exercise to show the fundamentals of the new system.

The base seting is currently being explored through the wiki referred to as the Quincunx Public Archive.

Evolution

Through the blog Observations of the Fox, and the forum The Forge, a number of roleplaying concepts have been explored and developed. These have forced the evolution of Tales from a simple system of task resolution into an engine that actually meets it's originally intended goals of collaborative and communal storytelling. The basic engine still evolves as it is exposed to new ideas.

For archive purposes, you can also download the earlier version of the Tales Quickstart Core Rules PDF.

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Immersion

Maps

Quincunx is designed to be played by a group of players using their local environment, the town or city in which they live. Other games under the "Tales" umbrella also use maps, so these pages offer some great ideas for making truly memorable game maps and heavy duty charts that will last as long as any campaign.

A few downloadable maps should also be made available on these pages shortly, as well as links to some useful sites across the internet where antique maps and other cartograhic references can be found.

Storytelling

With a name like "Tales" it's hardly surprising that this game is about the telling of stories. But what are stories? How can they be told by a group of people (competitively or collaboratively)? Contained on these pages are a number of links to pages that detail the theory behind good storytelling and thwe tricks commonly used in various narrative forms (from television to theatre, novels to opera).

Setting the Scene

Roleplaying is a social activity, it's a chance to escape the everyday world. There are many ways a group can heighten this escapism and the following pages provide some ideas that can be used to heighten the drama while telling a story, or sepearate the fiction from the outide world.