Courtly Shadows 👑: A Booklet Storyset 📖 for Tableau Games (Print-N-Fold)

In Courtly Shadows 👑 where honor meets deception, whispered secrets, and hidden agendas. A two page Booklet Storyset 📖 supplement for Tableau: Collaborative Cinematic Storytelling (available here on itch.io as Tableau Core ꩜ Rules in a “name your own price” Print-N-Fold Tableau Booklet 📖 edition).

Also adaptable for use in other ‘belonging outside belonging’ style storygames to accentuate tales of aristocracy, concealed motives, and duels of nobility.

Leverage these five pivotal Story 📖 Elements in your stories:

• Setting: The Court 🏘️: Waltz through an opulent realm of ambition and privilege, where every gesture hides a secret and power ebbs and flows like tides.
• Tone: Intrigue 🎶: Witness the intricate ballet of deception and hidden motives, as power players navigate the murky waters of politics and strategy.
• Theme: Status 💢: An environment where your worth is determined by lineage, power, and cunning, where every step up the ladder may cost more than it's worth.
• Faction: The Watch 🫂: Behind every great court lies an ever-vigilant protector. Stand alongside them as they guard against threats, both overt and concealed.
• Genre Beats: At Dawn 🥁: As the first light pierces the horizon, watch as destinies are sealed, and the fate of the courtly realm hangs in the balance.

In Courtly Shadows 👑, allegiances shift, secrets unravel, and the dawn may herald victory or despair. How will you shape the fate of your realm?

Tableau Booklet Storyset 📖

Tableau Booklet Storysets 📖 supplement Tableau stories with additional rules and story elements, but you'll require a Tableau Playset 🎞️ or the Tableau Core ꩜ Rules  to play. Storysets 📖 also are easy to incorporate into most  ‘belonging outside belonging’ style storygames and are adaptable for use with many other styles of tabletop role-playing games.

Storysets 📖 don't possess the same flexibility as a Tableau card-based Playset 🎞.  Instead, they are designed for a similar style of play using small, card-sized Booklets easily printed on US Letter 8½''x11'' paper. To utilize a Storyset 📖 just unfold the Booklet to a particular Story 📖 Element page and have a storyteller Take Up 🫰 the Booklet for control that Element just like a card with Story 📖 Element.

Assembly: Print booklet, single-sided. Fold long way (11'') with text out, then unfold. Fold short way (8-½'') with text out, then unfold. Fold short sides ¼ and ¾ inward with text in. Cut center guide, stopping at the ¼ & ¾ folds—don’t cut to page’s end. Refold as per image. Ensure cover is on front. Tighten creases.

 

About Christopher Allen (Writer & Designer)

I am fascinated by the art and craft of collaboration, and have its practice and the study of how and why collaboration works at the center of my professional career as an entrepreneur, a software architect, as well as a creator, producer & publisher in the game industry.

I have been a fan and supporter of games (especially roleplaying games) for decades, with old favorites including Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest II, while my new favorites are the collaborative games that have emerged in the last couple of decades, both in the form of GMless story games as well as in board games.

Professionally, I've done considerable work in the computer game industry: I was the lead designer for Castle Marrach and Lovecraft Country online games and producer for mobile adaptions of several strategy games by Reiner Knizia and Michael Schacht.

In the tabletop games industry, I produced Chaosium's award-winning Beyond the Mountains of Madness RPG supplement, resurrected Arkham Horror cooperative board game before licensing it to Fantasy Flight for their bestselling 2nd edition, and I support the tabletop gaming community as the owner/publisher of the popular website RPG.net.

Recently, I have been doing more personal projects, directly creating releases for the tabletop industry: I co-authored with Shannon Appelcline Meeples Together: How and Why Cooperative Board Games Work published by Gameplaywright with a successful Kickstarter in 2018, a successful Kickstarter in 2019 for the original 18-card Gate Watch 2019, and a 2023 Kickstarter for the first two Tableau Games, my cooperative storytelling card game system. I will be releasing other games & media through Dyvers Hands Productions. I am also an avid supporter of other game designers on Kickstarter and Patreon.

About Dyvers Hands Productions (Publisher)

“Dyvers Hands” is an archaic phrase used to refer to a project that has been contributed to by many people. Divers is a word of Latin origin (diversus) that is still commonly used in modern French language; it literally means “many and varied”. ~ Wikipedia

At Dyvers Hands Productions, we are passionate about creating and developing collaborative storytelling experiences across a wide range of media. Our focus includes tabletop games, online communities, graphic novels, short-story anthologies, and we hope to one day expand into TV and movies.

We believe that the best stories are the ones told together, and our mission is to foster creativity, promote collaboration, and bring people together through immersive and engaging gameplay.

Our latest project, Tableau, successfully funded on Kickstarter, is a storytelling game system that emphasizes shared storytelling and character development.

Credits

Courtly Shadows 👑  A Booklet Storyset 📖 for Tableau Games was written & designed by Christopher Allen.

©2023 by Dyvers Hands Productions, LLC. — All Rights Reserved.  Art “Castle Marrach” & “Queen Vivienne” by Stephanie Law.

Tableau Games™, Dyvers Hands™, and Castle Marrach™ are trademarks of Dyvers Hands Productions LLC.