Bookstore by Chance

Your World | Your Bookshop

This game is about exploring an imaginary world through the perspective of a bookstore worker. Talk to customers and keep track of their stories as you work day to day. These interactions are driven by prompts based on your dice rolls and are completely made up by you as you write in your journal. Interactions are taxing on your Social Energy, but this can lead to fun roleplaying moments.

Gameplay

Balance your social energy as you interact with customers that come and go. Roll from tables or use bibliomancy to guide your conversations. As you play, customers are liable to return to the shop. The more books you've sold them in the past can help open them up to conversation. This lets your relationship with them develop in such a way that slowly unfolds at a natural pace. Some customers are much more outgoing than others, so it can feel great when you finally break through to the more standoffish sort of customers.

Designed for remixing

The game is designed with a simplicity that allows you to remix the rules as you see fit, or even use external RPG tools to guide your customer interactions. You could even use this game to supplement another RPG.

===============================================================

Example of Play From Anonymous Player

Shopkeep: Vidar

Setup:

"I run my bookstore in a cosmic, gentrifying world. I'm part of the "old guard" species, and while many are suspicious of the arriving inhabitants, I'm open-minded and welcoming."

Vidar is endlessly curious, and would rather meet new travelers than fear them. He always allows for the bookstore to be a safe haven for those down on their luck and he can't stand the xenophobic trends in the "old guard" population.

===============================================================

Day 3 - Energy: 20

The latter half of the previous day put me in the best mood I've been in for weeks. I sleep well, wake up an hour earlier than normal, and open the shop with high hopes for an interesting day.

The player goes for a level 1 difficulty of interaction and rolls successfully.

My first customer of the day is a local --- the first I've had in the shop for several days. A giant, spindly spider in casual religious dress, he crawls over the walls to peruse books on upper shelves.

"Reverend Carillo," I call out to him. "It's a pleasure to see you here, but please don't walk on the walls." I've had to remind him of this rule for years, and yet, he always seems to do it.

"Vidar," he calls back. "My apologies." He comes down from the wall to greet me at the counter. We idly catch up before he cuts to the chase.

"Am I to believe the rumors that your shop is now catering to ENDO Skeletals?"

I sigh, then tell him, yes, my doors are open to any and all curious minds. And just as I knew he would, Rev. Carrillo begins to lecture me on his doctrine of belief that endoskeletal creatures are unnatural and wicked in the eyes of the great queen mother.

The player rolls to see if the customer buys a book and succeeds.

I let him carry on, but when he finishes, I tell him we'll just have to disagree. To my surprise, he browses for a while, then picks out a book and brings it to the counter. We wish one another well, but he can't help himself by tossing a final warning against the newcomers over his shoulder as he leaves.

End of session sample

The player in the gameplay sample above used many tools alongside this game for their play session including:

The Everyone Everywhere List (generating customer names)

Maze Rats (generating customer species)

UNE - Universal NPC Emulator (generating quick customer descriptions)

GUM - Game Unfolding Machine (help determining setting)

Mythic GM Emulator - 2nd Edition (rolled on “Locations” table for setting)

Ex Novo (rolled on the “Culture” table to establish the world a bit more)

Between the Skies (used some character creation tables for my PC)

These tools aren't at all necessary to play but are totally welcome in the process.

===============================================================

Share your sessions!

If you run a session of this game and wouldn't mind sharing, I'd love to read it!  Feel free to share in the discussion boards.