Have you already checked out the DeScriptors: Anything Goes PWYW Version? It’s a free way to get started playing the diceless tabletop roleplaying game of clever wordplay…or you can leave a tip when you purchase it! (Thank you!) But then maybe you’re left wondering why you should spend the same amount of cash as your favorite local coffee shop’s vanilla latte to upgrade to DeScriptors: Definitive Edition. Wonder no more! Here are five reasons to make the jump.

#1. Micro-settings for Sci-fi, Supers, or Fantasy

If you like micro settings in the genres of sci-fi, supers, or fantasy. Or all of the above!

DeScriptors: Definitive Edition features a diverse line-up of five pre-built settings in all different genres. Each comes with introductory fiction, core setting details, scenario ideas, and pregenerated characters to get you gaming immediately. Let’s take a look at each one.

Ethanol Pop: Wondrous Days. This steampunk fantasy slice-of-life game is filled with wondrous gizmos, genre-bending mashups, and scenarios that are equally at home in a pastoral fantasy or an airship pirate campaign!

Anything Goes: While You Were Gone. The setting featured in the PWYW “Anything Goes” edition of DeScriptors and inspired by the micro fiction story “While you were gone” reappears here for completeness’ sake! This bizarre setting has been described as “RIFTS as played for laughs”: portals to alternate dimensions have ravaged the world, but you can run funny, scary, or epic scenarios with equal ease.

Hunters Guild of the Ancient Lands. This fantasy campaign setting is perfect for monster hunter scenarios or a “gotta collect ’em all” monster training/fighting scenarios! The players build characters who are members of a guild that strikes out into a truly fantastic, utterly mysterious monster-filled world, hoping to catalogue them, tame them, fight them, or harvest them for trade. The vistas are truly remarkable, and certainly the product of some kind of great magic. What mysteries might be unearthed while searchng for incredible monsters throughout the Ancient Lands?

SUPERMAX! A superhero campaign in a “dystopian utopia” – superpunk, if you will! In this setting, superpowered folks beat back an alien invasion and helped unite the Earth’s government, creating a utopia. Except, if you’re a powered individual, you’re either in prison — SUPERMAX prison, of course! — or you’re one of the prison guards. “Utopia” indeed! Also, as it turns out, there’s a conspiracy involving alien technology recovered from the invasion force…

The Philosopher’s Stone. You are one of the brave few that stands against the madness-inducing interlopers from beyond the realms of reason, hoping to heal the wounds of reality-warping Cthulhu-esque monsters as they ravage the land. This setting works in a fantasy world, in 1920s New England, or in the modern world: the point is that the madness is palpable, and only you can help repair reality.

#2. Do you enjoy flash fiction?

If you enjoy flash fiction micro-settings for inspiration, regardless of what you play.

As mentioned, each setting comes with an opening fiction. More of these sorts of fiction are posted on the DeScriptors Facebook page, so you can get inspired to game in new worlds right away.

And hey, maybe you don’t like the diceless nature of DeScriptors. We won’t fault you. But these settings and their details, scenarios, and pregenerated characters are great fodder for your game system of choice. The use of adjectives to describe these characters and conflicts should make it easy to use them as keywords when dreaming up your own stats in whatever game system you play! (Not for nothing: DeScriptors is incredibly easy to port to games like Fate Core, Fate Accelerated, Dungeon World-based offshoots like Simple World and Universal World, and some OSR systems like Vagabonds of Dyfed!)

#3. A peak behind the curtain

If you want to understand some of the game design goals, concepts, and choices.

One of the coolest chapters in DeScriptors: Definitive Edition is the FAQ. Game creator Matthew Bannock is accompanied by Worldbuilder’s Anvil podcast creator and host Jeffery Ingram in answering eight big questions about the DeScriptors system and narrative, improv-heavy gameplay in general. Their years of experience provide great insight, clever tips, and useful design tips that translate to DeScriptors and many games besides.

That chapter is followed by two other great ones, one of which is an extended Example of Play.  You can follow along as Razmile the Wizard deals with an exasperated messenger, fishes for some rations for the journey ahead, and squares off against a band of roving goblins!

#4. Endlessly expandable ideas

If you want to see how such a simple, adjective-based mechanic can be expanded to suit more options and genre conceits.

We mentioned two cool chapters after the FAQ, and the second one of them is called Options, Variants, and Add-ons. It is filled with additional rules you can add on top of the simple core of DeScriptors. Read about managing meaningful gear, using consumable magic, running multiple characters, hiring on mercenaries, and more. In fact, as new settings and scenarios are created for DeScriptors going forward, we update this chapter periodically with any new mechanics we come up with! Think of it as a living document of options, changes, and icing on the cake!

#5. Support more fiction, characters, and settings!

If you want to support the design team for future endeavors and additional fiction and characters.

You’re supporting the creators behind DeScriptors: Definitive Edition when you purchase the game. Matthew Bannock continues to develop new settings and scenarios for DeScriptors. He’s also constantly building new RPGs (like FARM Champions and Dragon’s Grave), and releasing content for existing systems like the 5th edition of the world’s most popular roleplaying game. Tim Bannock is a best-selling creator and editor on DMsGuild, and works with Matthew to release exciting new adventures and settings for 5th edition and OSR game systems. We in turn support our collaborators: artists, editors, cartographers, and everyone else. We endeavor to pay fair rates and lift up our fellow creators, so supporting us means more work and support for them, too!

Pick up DeScriptors: Definitive Edition in our Shop!

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Happy gaming to ya!

Whether you’re interested in diceless roleplaying games or not, and whether or not you’ve already checked out the Pay What You Want “Anything Goes” Version of DeScriptors, you may be wondering what the deal is with DeScriptors: Definitive Edition. Here are five reasons to check it out, highlighting its best qualities!

#1. Ready to play in minutes.

You can learn the game, have a character created, and be ready to play in minutes.

Many roleplaying games feature rules where the fundamentals can be learned after a 20 minute read-through, but how many have rules that fit on a single page and have characters that can be generated in under 5 minutes? DeScriptors is notable for having a one-page rules reference that explains the full game (yet there are endless add-ons and “dials” to change things up, without altering the fundamental game play). Characters are generated simply by choosing an overarching concept and a few descriptive words, then you’re done. You can read the rules in about 3 minutes and spend the remaining 2 hitting it up a thesaurus for good adjectives. Easy peasy.

#2. Choices matter.

If you want a “narrative-style” diceless game where choices matter.

Many folks say “narrative-style” when they really mean “rules-lite.” DeScriptors hits “narrative-style” in two distinct ways:

1. Simple yet highly expandable rules.
2. The mechanics drive an unmistakable change in your character, creating a character arc.

It’s inside of that second part where your choices throughout a game session of DeScriptors really matter. At its heart, DeScriptors relies on you “bidding” or spending the descriptive words that make up who your character is in order to overcome challenges. You can “fish” for new descriptive words, altering the sorts of things your character has equipped, the resources they have available, or the knowledge they gain by investigating a scene. You might also suffer setbacks, which are descriptive words you pick up as a result of failing to overcome a challenge. When it comes down to it, what makes up your character — who they are, what they can do, what they use from conflict to conflict, what they know — changes in every single scene as a result of the choices you make or the challenges you face, whether or not you succeed or fail.

Your character simply will not have the same traits at the end of the session as they began with. A true character arc!

#3. Quick and decisive conflict resolution.

If you want a game that resolves conflict quickly and decisively.

Some gamers love highly tactical, crunchy combat systems, and we can’t fault them; we love ’em, too! But there are some who don’t see combat as any different from other forms of conflict (negotiation, interrogation, puzzle solving, investigation, medical procedures). DeScriptors uses the same mechanic for all conflict, and it’s incredible simple: the Storyteller frames a scene and presents a possible conflict, and the player(s) chooses to succeed (spending an adjective) or fail (gaining a setback). The Storyteller and the Player then work together to narrate how this looks in the fictional world, and progress to the next scene as a direct result of their success or failure.

In point of fact, combat does have one slight difference that suggests it’s not the best path to resolving most conflict: it costs two adjectives to succeed, not just one. The fact is, any fight worth narrating is going to be challenging, and thus a character will suffer unintentional scrapes, bruises, or stress even if they succeed.

#4. Perfect for gamers of all ages.

If you want a game with simple rules that can be enjoyed by young and old players alike.

Because DeScriptors doesn’t rely on math, reading dice, or probabilities, and since characters only have a handful of words to track at any given time (or less!), it’s super simple for young gamers to understand. If your five-year-old wants to play Rika the Scrappy Princess who is Smart, Sneaky, Magical, and Happy, that’s their character. Rika might have to be stealthy to get past the ogre without it noticing and reclaim the Scepter of the Seven Kingdoms, but all that requires is crossing off “Sneaky.” Anybody can play this!

But adults and more advanced gamers aren’t going to find the experience lacking just because DeScriptors features a simple system. First of all, there are tons of add-ons and expansions in DeScriptors: Definitive Edition. Secondly, you don’t need add-ons to see why some folks are going to enjoy the fact that DeScriptors…

#5. Emphasizes wordplay and improv.

If you enjoy wordplay, puns, synonyms, and thinking on your feet.

When your character goes “fishing” in a scene to gear up for a battle they see coming, maybe they’ll pick up some knives and add Sharp to their character sheet. But maybe you diffuse that fight before it ever happens, and in a later scene, or even a later game session, you’ve still got Sharp on your character sheet. Maybe that stands for your Sharp suit; you look good at the cocktail party in which you have to hobnob with the elites to find the culprit behind a murder mystery. Or maybe you have to talk your way past a guard, and use your Sharp wit to convince them. Or you use Sharp words to get the Grand Duke to back down in his accusations against your investigatory powers.

The Storyteller frames scenes. The players narrate their successes and failures. The Storyteller then creates the next scene, informing it with the consequences that come from the players having chosen success or failure. Everyone at the table pitches in with ideas of how things might go, or what they might look like. Everyone keeps an eye on their ever-changing adjectives and setbacks, developing an arc for their characters, and discovering that too many successes means dwindling traits to spend when things heat up.

Exciting improv. Clever wordplay. Sometimes silly puns. DeScriptors utilizes language to develop a character arc for everyone at the table, and a story arc for everyone to engage in.

Check out DeScriptors: Definitive Edition in our Shop. You can purchase it through DriveThruRPG or itch.io, so it’s always in your Library of choice!

If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!