Tableau Core ꩜ Rules (“name your own price” Print-N-Fold Tableau Booklet 📖)

Ignite Your Creativity with Tableau Core ꩜!

“The best stories are the ones we tell together!”

Great tales are like wildfires—all they need is a spark to spread creative passion. Tableau Core ꩜ Rules provides that vital spark in this easy printable Booklet 📖  format. With these foundational rules, you and your friends can craft immersive stories in a single evening.

With Tableau Core ꩜ Rules, your group can conjure any story you desire—from high fantasy kingdoms and gritty detective noir to intense stories of characters dealing with life changes and their relationships. The story possibilities are endless!

Define complex characters motivated by their past experiences and life bonds. Bring these characters to life through cinematic scenes brimming with vivid details. Guide their dramatic and emotional journeys toward a satisfying climax. And embrace memorable stories filled with laughter, tears, and celebration.

About Tableau

Tableau is a storytelling game system that emphasizes collaborative storytelling and character development. The game’s mechanics are designed to be flexible, allowing players to create stories in just a few hours from a wide variety of genres and styles without the need for advanced preparation or a designated game master.

Tableau consists of composable sets of Rules and Story Elements to establish themes, moods, settings, and character traits. Players use these Rules and Story Elements to collaboratively create a narrative, with each scene focusing on a single question and building toward a satisfying cinematic tale.

The system is designed to be approachable for players of all skill levels and encourages creativity and player agency. Tableau is ideal for players who enjoy immersive role-playing and narrative-focused gameplay.

Whether you are a seasoned RPG veteran or a newcomer to tabletop gaming, Tableau is a great choice for anyone looking to tell their own stories in a collaborative and engaging way.

Using Tableau Core ꩜ Rules

These Core ꩜ Rules  distill the process of telling a story together down to a few key procedures, including: 

• how to make choices about what story elements to include;
• how to cast your leads;
• how to introduce them with truths and open questions written on index cards;
• how to direct and frame scenes;
• and the central story mechanics of character moves and drama.

Safety rules with guidelines for respectful play are also included.

In addition to these essential Rules, Tableau Core ꩜ includes some basic Story Elements 📖 and some optional Rules 📜 for when you are playing without an existing Tableau Playset 🎞️ or Storyset 📖. By paring down the most essential rules of Tableau into an abbreviated format, these Core ꩜ Rules simplify the learning process for new players.

We also offer a wide range of Booklet Storysets 📖,  each curated to inspire your sessions with the additional ingredients for your stories! Additionally, Tableau Core ꩜ Rules are easily adaptable for use with story elements and characters brought in from ‘belonging outside belonging‘ style storygames.

With new Booklet Storysets 📖 supplements being made available every month, and Playsets 🎞️ like Lovecraft Country: "A Study in Madness" on the way, there’s always more storytelling excitement to explore. It all starts with Tableau’s vital spark. Let Tableau Core ꩜ Rules ignite your creativity tonight!

Pay what you want to light this spark. Gather some index cards, some tokens, and optionally one dice, and you're ready to collaboratively tell stories. Then watch the flames of imagination spread as you and your friends craft an unforgettable storytelling experience!

Contents

These Tableau Core ꩜ Rule Booklets are all you need to begin crafting cooperative narratives. They include:

They include:

• About Tableau - An overview of the game and its storytelling goals
• Core Rules - Blueprints for collaborative storytelling
• Core Narrative Rules - Scaffolding to build your story on
• Core Casting Rules - Guidance for casting compelling characters
• Core Drama Rules - Techniques to raise the narrative tension
• Core Safety Rules - Methods to foster a safe and inclusive experience
• The Director - A key Player Role for shaping scenes
• Sample Genre Beats - Templates for pivotal events to pace your tale

With just these Tableau Core ꩜ Rules, you have everything needed to start telling stories! To take your adventures further, Tableau's  Booklet Storyset 📖 supplements and Playsets 🎞️ offer a treasure trove of detailed settings, evocative themes, fascinating characters, and much more.

“Name your own price” to light this spark. It all begins by printing the pages, making a few folds, and watching imagination come alive in your hands. Gather some index cards, some tokens, and optionally one dice, and you’re ready to collaboratively tell stories. Then watch the flames of imagination spread as you and your friends craft an unforgettable storytelling experience! The storytelling possibilities are endless.

Tableau Booklets 

Instead of poker-sized cards, this version of the Tableau Core ꩜ Rules comes in 8 folded Booklets 📖 designed for convenience and affordability.  This compact format simplifies setup and portability. Print at home, gather some friends, and you're ready for spontaneous storytelling.  Its compact size also makes it great for travel and conventions. 

Each rulebook page prints single-sided on a standard US Letter 8.5" x 11" paper. Print the pages, make a few origami-inspired folds, and you have Tableau Core ꩜ Rules in the palm of your hand!  This Tableau Booklet 📖 format makes setup fast and hassle-free.

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.

 

Also try our Tableau Storyset Booklets 📖

Once you have the Tableau Core Rules, you will find our Booklet Storysets 📖 supplements useful. They introduce additional rules and Story Elements to enrich your Tableau stories. 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. To use a Storyset 📖, simply unfold the Booklet to the desired Story 📖 Element page and have a storyteller Take Up 🫰 that Booklet to assume control of that Element just like they would a card featuring that Story 📖 Element.

• Tableau Storysets 📖 (Print-N-Fold Booklets)

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

Tableau Core ꩜ Rules  was written & designed by Christopher Allen mailto:ChristopherA@DyversHands.com

©2022-23 by Dyvers Hands Productions, LLC. — All Rights Reserved (no license is granted for redistribution or derivation without permission). Images © original creators & are Permissively Licensed. More info & image credits at Dyvers Hands website.

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

Creative Contributors: Shannon Appelcline, Aaron Reed