GRIMWIRE and other tabletop role-playing games are about co-creating a story with other players. Players create characters that they will portray within the story.
One player assumes the role of Game Master (GM). The GM prepares a scenario to engage the players. A scenario is a set of circumstances that the players’ characters (PCs) interact with, including quests, locations, non-player characters (NPCs), and other story elements. A scenario is not a preordained story, but a series of situations that the players must respond to. The story is therefore a co-creation of the players and GM.
The basic gameplay loop runs as follows:
The GM tells the players what’s going on in the story:
GM: “You see a rusty metal hatch ahead of you.”
The players tell the GM how they would like their characters to respond:
Player: “I open the door.”
The GM says what happens next:
GM: “The hatch slides open with a screech. Beyond it you see a collection of rusty parts that look like the remains of an automechanical.”
The player responds and the loop repeats.
A story told through GRIMWIRE (and pretty much any tabletop game) involves the following three elements:
Exploration
A game of GRIMWIRE may involve the PCs struggling to survive at the edge of the known world. Or the entire story may take place in one location as the PCs delve deeper and deeper into its secrets. The PCs may travel to teeming metropoles and ancient ruins, find ways around obstacles, search for clues, discover powerful artifacts, and learn information about the world, its people, and its history that will help them on their journey.
Conflict
The world of GRIMWIRE is tough, and PCs will certainly encounter resistance on the path to their objectives. This may take the form of life-or-death combat scenarios, races against time or competition, battles of wits and everything in between. PCs may choose to flee from conflict, talk their way to a non-violent solution, or leave a trail or corpses in their wake.
Character Interaction
Throughout the adventure, PCs will plan, argue, persuade, seduce, interrogate, lie and be lied to, or may even fall in love.
How prominent each of these elements is in any given game is up to the players and the GM. They can be more or less balanced, or one element can dominate to the virtual exclusion of the others.
As long as everyone is having fun, there’s no wrong way to play.
Weird Looking Dice
The GM and the players are not the only factors in creating the story. There is another contributor, one that can often be the most decisive factor: chance.
The PCs’ success or failure in their attempted actions is determined by dice rolls. The dice can throw the players into circumstances that neither they nor even the GM are prepared for.