The World · EpicRoll.ai

Jump in. The world fills out around you.You start with one place. Everywhere else exists the moment you go there.You don't sit down to a finished world. You start at one place, go somewhere, and that somewhere becomes real. The world is the trail behind you and the horizon ahead.The map starts almost empty. The reader stands in one place, and the only things on it are the one or two places that one raises. Travelling to a place is what makes it real, and arriving raises the next. There is nothing to exhaust: once every place is found the markers become travel between them.The reader starts at The survey museum, and finds these:

The survey museum. You start where the ledger starts: two rooms behind the survey office, three cases of potsherds and one that nobody has catalogued.

The harbour mole. The harbour mole, built longer than this trade needs. Someone has been counting the tides in chalk along the inner wall.

The fallen colonnade. Nine columns still standing and a tenth lying where it fell, in a line the road bends to avoid rather than cross.

The fishing jetties. Six houses and three jetties on the far shore. The boats go out at dusk and come back light, and the catch is landed somewhere else.

The spring under the palms. A spring the dry ground has not taken, ringed with palms and walled at the lip by somebody with better stone than the town has.

The standing crag. A single crag out of flat ground, with a track worn to it out of three directions and nothing at the top worth wanting.

The sea citadel. A citadel on the point, held by four men and a ledger, guarding a channel nothing has come up in living memory.

The lighthouse. The lighthouse keeper logs the weather every hour and has left one hour blank every week for eleven years.

The river terraces. Terraced fields stepping down to the river, cut into a hillside that was cleared a very long time before anyone here planted it.

The inland village. A village at a crossroads inland: six houses and a walled yard, and every door on the road faces away out of sight of the sea.

The world keeps moving.A tavern keeps its own hours. So does everywhere else.The harvest fails because no one stopped it. The captain comes back because no one warned him. The factions you ignored met in the dark. You'll find out when you get there. So will everyone else.Nobody presses anything here. Before light. The fire is banked, two of last night are still asleep at the far bench, and nobody has unbarred the door. The day runs on a clock the reader does not control, and the tavern trades through it:

5:00 am — The dray comes up the lane before light. Eight barrels down the chute, and the cooper takes his cut in coin.

5:00 am — The dray is late and short. Six barrels, and the drayman will not say what happened to the other two.

7:00 am — The cooper re-hoops three barrels in the yard and is paid before he will start on the fourth.

7:00 am — Two of last week's doubtful barrels turn out sound after all, and the cellarman is smug about it for an hour.

9:00 am — The morning mash goes on. The whole yard smells of it by nine.

9:00 am — A batch comes off the boil thin, and gets set aside to be sold cheap later.

11:00 am — The maltster wants settling up. He waits in the doorway until he gets it.

11:00 am — A cart of malt arrives nobody remembers ordering, and it is good, so it stays.

1:00 pm — The kitchen order goes out: flour, mutton, and more onions than seems reasonable.

1:00 pm — The butcher is short of everything and charges for the privilege of being told so.

3:00 pm — The last cart of the day. Six barrels rolled down and the strongbox noticeably lighter.

3:00 pm — Five barrels and a cracked one. The drayman knocks something off and leaves quickly.

5:00 pm — The doors come unbarred. Three of the regulars are already leaning on the wall outside.

5:00 pm — Doors open on an empty lane. Two come in anyway and sit where they always sit.

6:00 pm — The room fills. Nobody counts how many, which is how the landlord likes it.

6:00 pm — The quarry gang come in wet and stay until they are dry, which takes some doing.

7:00 pm — A wool merchant takes the corner table and buys for the whole table to prove he can.

7:00 pm — Somebody starts a song at the far end and half the room is in it by the second verse.

8:00 pm — A harper nobody booked sets up by the fire, and the room decides to stay for it.

8:00 pm — The kitchen sends out mutton and the room orders another round to go with it.

9:00 pm — A fight over a wager. One table broken, one man barred, and the wager still unpaid.

9:00 pm — The rain stops and a dozen of them remember somewhere else they meant to be.

10:00 pm — The late crowd arrives all at once, off the last cart in from the coast road.

10:00 pm — Word gets round that the harper is still playing, and the room doubles on it.

11:00 pm — Somebody goes through the cellar hatch while the room is loud. Two barrels gone.

11:00 pm — The wool merchant settles up, loudly, and takes four of them with him when he goes.

12:00 am — Midnight, and the ones who are left settle in properly. This is their hour.

12:00 am — Midnight. Two more come in off the road looking for a bed and take a drink first.

1:00 am — Last orders, called twice, and then a third time with feeling.

1:00 am — The harper takes his fee and goes, and a good half of the room goes with him.

2:00 am — Turning out. The stubborn ones are turned out first, which is the only way it works.

2:00 am — The fire gets banked while three of them argue about whether it has been banked.

3:00 am — Doors barred, fire banked, the takings counted twice because the first count was better than it should have been.

3:00 am — Doors barred. The landlord sleeps in the taproom rather than climb the stairs.

From a room to a galaxy.A coffee shop or a galaxy. Play at whatever size your story needs.The world holds every scale at once. Tell it what you want, where it lives, what's around it. Change your mind whenever.It opens in a coffee shop, and every step out is something a player could simply say. The same world holds all of these at once:

A room

A street

A city

A planet

A solar system

A galaxy

What a player says to get from one to the next:

Put it on a corner. What does the street look like?

Zoom out. I want to see the city it's in.

Keep going. Show me the whole planet.

Wider. What else is orbiting that star?

All the way out. Where is this in the galaxy?

The rest of the site is at /, and the terms and privacy at /legal.