SEEDWORDS
A downloadable storygame
In Seedwords, books are fertile ground, and their words are the seeds that grow into vibrant, living narratives. Each page you turn and every word you discover lays the roots of your characters, cultivates the plot, and nurtures the stakes of your adventure. Whether you’re tending the soil of a classic novel, a modern fantasy, or even an instruction manual, the worlds and challenges that blossom are drawn from the ink and paper.
Features:
- Book-Based World-Building: The book you select is your garden bed, sprouting the feel, tone, and direction of the story. Will you harvest a dystopian world from an old sci-fi novel, or an eerie mystery from a gothic romance?
- Unique Character Creation: Grow your character by digging words from the pages, allowing the book to define their traits, motivations, and history. Each seedword you sow adds layers of complexity and depth to your character’s persona.
- Dynamic Relationships: Cultivate bonds, rivalries, and alliances through seedwords that define how your characters intertwine. The book’s language weaves a tangled vine of connections between them.
- Stakes Are Your Choice: As players, you decide the weight of each action. Will the outcome be minor, or could it change everything? The higher the stakes, the more tangled the garden becomes.
- Plot Discovery: Generate compelling scenarios by combining seedwords into scenes that outline conflicts, challenges, and opportunities. Each new sentence is a tendril reaching the narrative forward.
- Narrative Power: The role of Narrator rotates among players, each one tending to the story, guiding it with the words they find, and revealing new twists like buds unfurling.
Why Play:
- Your Book, Your Story: The book you choose isn’t just a tool—it’s the soil in which your story grows. Its words will guide your choices, set the tone, and determine the challenges you’ll face.
- Player-Driven Stakes: In Seedwords, players control how much they water each action. The more you risk, the more exciting the story becomes, with the potential for epic harvests or withered attempts.
- Collaborative Storytelling: Work together to cultivate a narrative where every player’s input shapes the world, characters, and plot. Every session is a unique garden, defined by the seeds you plant.
- Endless Replayability: Each game is freshly tilled ground, given life by the book you choose and the decisions you make. Play again and again, with new stories blooming each time, even from the same well-thumbed pages.
- Imagination Practice: Seedwords encourages players to let their creativity blossom, weaving connections between words and ideas to build a rich, immersive narrative. It utilizes stream-of-consciousness processes like those used in Surrealist art practices.
- No Experience Necessary: Whether you’re a seasoned storytiller or new to role-playing games, Seedwords is accessible to everyone. The book’s words guide you, making it easy to plant the seeds and watch your story grow.
- Social or Solitary: Play with friends and enjoy a communal plot of creativity and communication. Or plant your seeds alone, delving deep into the fertile soil of your own imagination.
Get Started: Download Seedwords and discover how language can sprout immersive, ever-changing stories. Whether you play solo or with friends, cultivate new life from the dusty tomes on your shelf and watch your narratives flourish.
Note: I apologize for the bounty of garden metaphors. It was hard to stop.
Status | Released |
Category | Physical game |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (11 total ratings) |
Author | what else |
Genre | Role Playing |
Tags | GM-Less, One-page, Simple, Solo RPG, storygame, Tabletop, Tabletop role-playing game |
Average session | A few hours |
Languages | English |
Download
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Comments
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That's so cool, I love the book mechanics! Would it be ok for you if I translated this game to Polish?
Thanks for the kind words; you are absolutely welcome to translate!
It took some time, but the translation is live!
https://solskaia.itch.io/zrodloslow
Hello, I'm a librarian who works with teenagers and young adults, and i wonder if it would be okay to play this with them, to give them a pamphlet. And maybe translate it to swedish? I can't see your copyright information about this so I contacted you, before i do anything. I'm planning our librarys autumn program right now and really want an answer soon. Thank you!
Hi there! You are more than welcome to do so, and I’d love to hear about how it goes. My email address is bennyogre@gmail.com. Please keep me posted!
Amazing, thank you very much! Absolutley, i save your email and answer with my workemail and keep you updated! This really means a lot! This game is perfect in libraries.
Character creation was super fun using this system. To get super meta, I grabbed the Call of Cthulhu Keeper rulebook and rolled up a stiff German fellow who excels at dodging and kicking, two strengths which won't help him against his fear of Shoggoths.
I love the idea of using rulebooks! They're already curated to give such functional words.