Our Story
Since we can remember, our team has always enjoyed modifying the various RPG systems, attempting to push the boundaries of our stories by exploring novel ideas and placing characters in situations there were often no established mechanics for. And for many, many years, we were quite happy to improve other established systems to fit our play style and narrative proclivities.
Eventually though, a few of us became curious if there was a better way…
So we set out on a multi-year endeavor to create a system that could be used throughout all the various paradigms that we love to play (which is all of them). We eventually developed a lovely yet horrific TTRPG frankin-system. And again, we were content to use our hodgepodge rule set to fuel our epic adventures, for a while.
But our stories continued to grow in breadth, depth, and scope. The challenges presented by the collaborative stories we were creating sent some of us down the rabbit hole of game philosophies and mechanics. Further and further we delved, always with the delving, into the structures and rationales underpinning the systems we have loved for so many years. This exploration brought to light various truths about the nature of the games we use to tell our stories, truths about our inherent need for the story, and the unpleasant truths regarding how much this need is capitalized on by our corporate overlords to the detriment of the craft. And with the whip-crack of clarity, we began to see all the manipulations used to leverage our love of story, collaboration, and games. Tactics, such as the revisions of rules to force another round of book sales, calling recycled ideas new, pretending that all stories should be told on 2,160 square inches, mechanics designed by board rooms, stories written by formula, and encouraging a “rules as written” paradigm. The fact is, our world of exploration and expression has, some time ago, been co-opted by greed. So, as many people do, inspired by the idea of a better way and fueled by righteous indignation, we started our pipe dream of machinations.
But truly this is not just our story, as such grand schemes are not obtainable alone or in a vacuum. Imagine our delighted surprise to discover that we were not alone in our wicked discoveries. And so, through the course of many months of diatribes, soap boxes, and a few drunken rants, it became more and more apparent that there were so many others who also recognized the space for what it had become, others of passion and talent who simply needed a call to arms. Eventually such a call was made one late Thanksgiving evening. Since then we have, for love of the story, created, argued, laughed, experienced paralyzing fear, and more than once threw everything out with the bathwater all in order to create something new and beautiful to share with you who share our great love of exploration and adventure.
Without reservation, we stand by our belief that through our efforts Black Coffee Games has created the single greatest story-focused RPG to grace the human experience. And we hope that someday Black Coffee Games will be recognized as the team who ushered in the next great gaming paradigm. We are beyond excited to share this with you. Thank you!