This project, and all D9 Game Design products, exists because I have spent more than forty years sitting at tables — kitchen tables, card tables, school desks pushed together, convention halls, living room floors, basements that smelled faintly of damp carpet and coffee. I’ve played crunchy games built on careful optimization and story-first games held together with vibes and trust. I’ve run rules-heavy campaigns, loose one-shots, experiments that failed gloriously, and sessions that landed so hard they stuck with me for decades.
What mattered was never the system alone. It was the people.
This game is built on the belief that roleplaying games aren’t about winning, fixing the world, or perfectly resolving a plot. They’re about showing up, making choices together, and discovering meaning in the aftermath — sometimes heroic, sometimes small, sometimes quietly human. They’re about the shared memory of “remember when…” that outlives the campaign itself.
I owe this book to the people who sat across from me and said yes. To those who taught me how to play. To those who showed me how to run a table with fairness, generosity, and teeth. To those who encouraged me when I doubted my own voice, and those who challenged me when I got comfortable. To those who guided me, argued with me, trusted me, and made me laugh so hard I had to stop reading boxed text.