FAQ

Sit down with an account. Forge a spark — a character with a name, a kit, and a private aim. Pick a tale. Take the seat. Then act. Do not wait for a menu of options. The table will not invent your plot for you, and it will not stall while you shop for a better line.

A spark walks from where they last stood. The table will not drop them into a new town. First sitting, they come in off their own road. After that, days of mud, then the door. The opening is written for that person: name, kit, the last ground under their boots.

Each message you send is a turn. The world moves. If the beat is uncertain — a lock, a lie, a swing, a fall — the table will ask for a die. That is the whole loop.

If the hall blinks — a reload, a dropped reply — and your last action is sitting there unanswered, Ask again. If the world failed to answer, those credits were returned in full. The line stays. Ask again bills that turn once, and never twice. The box also keeps the words you had not sent yet.

Choose a fable · Forge a spark

A tale will not take an empty chair. Someone has to walk into the room. The spark is that someone: ancestry, class, scores, a portrait in their own clothes, a homeland, a company if they wear one, and the thing they want that is not the plot. Each ancestry has its own traits — night eyes, a reroll, salt lungs — written on the sheet. The table honors them as written. Named perks you spend are tappable. Always-on traits are already true.

Experience, deeds, and renown live on the spark, not on a single sitting. If a house tale closes before you wrap, the mark stays. The next table may have heard the name.

You forge a spark once, then seat that same person at as many tales as you like. There is no guest adventurer. An empty chair is not a character. Tap the portrait on the sheet or in the library if you want a different face later.

If you are done with one, open the library, open Sparks, and Unmake them. Type their name. Sittings close. Deeds go with the face. Credits already spent do not come back.

Other sparks live on the same roads. You can read their deeds on the legacy board. You will not sit with them. There is no shared table and no voice in their ear.

If a name is famous enough — spoken in the towns, or they already walked the tale you sat — a rumor, a song, or a wanted notice may carry it into your sitting. The table uses the deeds they earned. It will not invent glory, and it will not put them in the room.

Unmake a spark and the board forgets them.

Three bars sit on the character sheet: hit points, magic points, and action points. They are not decoration. When a bolt finds a shoulder, HP drops. When a first-circle spell leaves the hands, MP drops. When they swing, dash, or cast in a fight, AP drops. The table writes the numbers as the world answers — you should see the bars move without touching them.

HP and MP follow the spark between tales. Rest at the table (say so, or tap Short rest / Long rest on the sheet) to fill what a rest fills. AP refills at the start of each combat turn and when nobody is fighting. A martial calling has no MP; a mage's MP is the cost of the slots they still hold.

If the bars are wrong, the plus and minus on the sheet will correct them. At 0 HP they fall. The next beat is death saves, not an off-screen ending.

Temporary HP, MP, and AP sit in front of the real pools. A stew, a blessing, a haste-charm, a priest's ward — they add a pale band on the bar and the number reads 12+4. Damage and spent magic eat the ward first. A long rest clears it. A short rest keeps it.

Inspiration is not a toggle for flavor. The table reads the spark's manner and private aim. When they stand as that person under pressure, it is spent — the check has the extra luck, then it is gone. When they earn it, the wick on the sheet lights. If those fields are empty, nothing is invented.

The tray lives under Roll, at the bottom of the tale. It holds a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. Tap one. The die leaves your finger, hits the floor, and the number is sent as your turn the moment it lands. You do not type the number. You do not paste it into the box.

Paint the kit if you like — bone, soot, glass — from the palette next to the tray. Color does not change the math.

Use the tray for a check, a swing, damage, or anything the table names as a die. If it names a save, use the sheet instead, so your modifier rides along.

Skills and spells on the sheet are buttons at the table. Tap a skill and it is sent as your action — Perception to notice, Stealth to slip. Tap Cast on a spell and the table honors the range, the save, and the slot as written. You do not have to type the name.

When the table asks for a Dexterity save — or Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma — open the panels and tap that save. On a wide screen the panels slide over the tale, and on a very wide one they dock at the right. On a phone they rise from the bottom. The sheet remembers what you left open.

The save throws a d20 the same way the tray does, adds your modifier, and sends the total. A natural 20 or a natural 1 is named on the face, before the bonus. The save the table asked for lights up so you do not have to hunt.

If the table says with advantage or with disadvantage, two d20s go. Advantage keeps the higher. Disadvantage keeps the lower. If both would apply they cancel and you throw one. Inspiration spent on a check that is your manner or private aim is advantage — two dice, then it is gone.

Tapping a naked d20 from the tray will send the face alone. That is the wrong tool for a save. Tap the save.

The old cheat was: throw a die into the draft, erase a three, throw again until a nineteen looks back at you. That door is shut.

A throw is a turn. While a die is in the air, the box is locked. While the table is waiting on a die, the box stays locked — you answer with the tray or a save, not with a typed number. If you wanted a better face, you should have been luckier.

Reduced motion skips the toss and still sends the number. There is no quiet path that lets you preview the face.

The first seat includes 1,000 credits. Each turn costs, according to the voice you picked — Scribe is lean, Archmage is expensive and does not flinch. A reply of fewer than three sentences, such as a call for a die, costs a flat 5 credits. A painting costs extra, and only if you ask for one.

Buy more at the bursary. If a turn fails to come back, the credits return. Credits never buy steel. A sword is paid in gold the spark took on the road.

Gold lives on the spark, not on the account. Loot, bounties, and honest pay land in that purse. Spend it at the Grand Reliquary. Alex keeps the counter. He walked the last mark as a warrior and hung the sword up. Arms, mail, scholar's robes, priest or priestess vestments, packs, bandages, draughts — whatever that calling is trained to wear. He will enchant a weapon or a coat one quality at a time, if the spark's mark is high enough to wear the work.

Quality runs Common, Uncommon, Rare, Mystic, Legendary, then Divine. Mystic work and above has a name, and a property that is not ordinary steel. Divine sits above Legendary. Alex does not sell it, and he does not buy it back, not even for a coin. The Black Market and every other shop are the same. It never turns up as a rare roll on a counter. A character can craft one, or find one in a forgotten dungeon of immense power. From mark 10, Kingdom Vaults on the same floor will trade Mystic work and above with any court. A court will not open its own sealed Divine unless it is offered another Divine it wants. The pay is influence, office, land, or a modest stipend, not a shop price. A Divine is not a cottage or a clerk's desk. Courts answer with manors, keeps, commissions, and lasting sway. The strongest crowns charter a town only when the piece can reach a settlement, break a wall, clear a square, or kill past ordinary restoration. A piece that only guards the body does not. Poorer courts sign lesser land. The coin stays small beside the grant. Prices climb with quality. He buys back the rest at two fifths — a stack, the bag, or the steel they wear.

The bursary and the Reliquary are different tills. Credits buy turns and paintings. Gold buys what the character can carry. We will not mix them.

The table permits a wide range of conduct. You may play a hero or a villain. Violence, theft, and cruelty toward those who can choose are allowed.

The following are forbidden: sexual violence, including rape; sexual content involving a child, an infant, or anyone under the age of eighteen; and the killing, torture, or ritual sacrifice of a child or infant when that harm is the player's chosen act.

The world may still contain tragedy you did not elect: disease, famine, war, or the crimes of others. You may prevent that harm. You may not inflict it.

Violations are recorded. The first is a warning: the action is refused and is not billed. The second erases the character in play. The third closes the seat, erases the account, and bars the email on that seat from returning to the hall.

Each week the house seats three or four new one-shots. Nothing leaves the hall. Every tale you start stays open until you are done with it. Your experience, deeds, and renown live on the spark.

Roam the Marches has no fixed plot. The spark walks from where they last stood, or from their homeland, and the house fables are out there as work you can notice, take, or walk past. A quest plays with that fable's own rooms and people. Set it down, and the road resumes. Travel between regions takes days.

One spark keeps one open-road table. Sit again and you return to the same road. Seating the open road is free. Every reply from the DM costs the same credits per turn as any table, including the reply when you take a quest or set out for a new region. Setting work down is free.

Pick a spoken voice on the sheet. Ask it to read a turn, or to read each new one as it arrives. Speech costs credits — brief, standard, or epic, same as the length of the sitting. The hall speaks at full quality. When a man or a woman talks in the tale, the voice follows them. Playing the same passage again in that sitting does not spend again. Change voices mid-tale; the current passage stops.

When the table marks a line with a star, that fact will matter later — a rule, a name, a clock, a cost. It shows as Keep. Copy it into your notes if you want it on the sheet.

Paintings are optional. Sketch a beat, or set the table to paint after each action. They cost credits. The canvas uses the spark's chosen or uploaded portrait — the same face you forged, not a stranger. They are not the story.

Experience lands on the spark after a turn that earned it. When the bar is full, level up from the sheet. You cannot take a mark you have not paid for.