How it works.
Every quest is the same shape: an impossible task, one ordinary object, and somebody who has already made up their mind. You have five to ten moves to change it, as the quest sets; most run seven. The Chronicler plays the world straight, the council scores what you did, and the story that results is yours to keep.
Your Moves
You write each move yourself, in up to 150 characters: what you say, what you do, what you try with the one thing you are carrying. There are no buttons to pick from and no hidden right answer. The object is ordinary and stays ordinary. A spoon is a spoon, and saying it is enchanted does not make it so.
The Chronicler
The Chronicler narrates. After every move it tells you what happened, in the voice of the quest and without doing your thinking for you. It plays your opponent straight: a dragon, a mage or a troll tests what you say, concedes only what you have earned, and does not believe you are a wizard because you said so. It does not drop hints, and a move that does nothing gets a reaction, not a rescue.
The Ending
After your final move, the Chronicler weighs the whole story and writes how it ends: victory, stalemate or defeat. A victory has to be set up: a story with nothing built before the last move can be no more than a stalemate, however good that move is.
The Judging
When the story is over, the council reads the whole transcript and scores it out of 100. It rewards plans that are daring, funny and actually sound, and it is not fooled by long speeches aimed at it. The five categories are the same on every quest; a quest may weigh them its own way, and its verdicts say so.
| Audacity | Daring. A premise that reframes the problem, or absurdity committed to so fully it works. The widest axis, and the best sign of a great run. |
| Wit | Comedy you caused, not the Chronicler’s. Most runs are occasionally amusing; the top is for one that made the council laugh. |
| Logic | Whether the plan actually holds together, step by step, in what the story established. |
| Object Use | Whether the object you carried was essential to the plan, not decoration. |
| Payoff | Whether the ending pays off what you set up. |
The council also names your adventurer, gives the story its title, writes a line of lore about it, and picks the single best line anybody said.
The Ladder
Every judged story lands on one of 8 rungs. The rung comes from how the story ended and what the council scored it.
| Mythic | A victory, within the rules, scoring 85 or more, with logic of at least 12. Inventive, sound and genuinely funny, all at once. Rare on purpose. |
| Legendary | A victory, within the rules, scoring 79 or more. |
| Epic | A victory, within the rules, scoring 73 or more. |
| Heroic | A victory, within the rules, scoring 65 or more. |
| Average | A victory below 65, or one that bent the rules to get there. The village is standing; nobody is writing songs. |
| Stalemate | The story ended in a stalemate: the threat is not gone, and neither is the village. |
| Doomed | A defeat with a real plan behind it, scoring 25 or more. It did not land, and it was worth watching. |
| Failure | A defeat with little behind it. The shortest stories, and the ones the council has least to say about. |
After the Verdict
Played signed in, a judged story is visible straight away: it gets a page of its own, a deck to read it in, under the name you played as and your username if you have one. To have one taken down, ask from Contact.
Finished stories are listed in Stories. Signed-in readers can vote for other people’s, never their own, and each quest’s Hall of Heroes ranks stories by votes first and score second. Village Idiots immortalizes the worst attempts.
Ready?
Pick a quest and see how far a spoon gets you. Choose a quest, or play the featured one.