As both a teacher and a game designer, one of the best pieces of advice I give to others is that it’s always good to look at what others have already created before starting work on a project—the foundational pieces of what you are creating may already exist! As an educator, I often urge new teachers to use worksheets, activities, lesson plans, and whole curriculums created by others before spending time creating what they need for their class. For game design, its rules, mechanics, and game structures—all of which can be found and often freely used within the SRDs of game systems.
SRDs with an open license are fantastic tools for both aspiring and experienced game designers. They provide a solid, tested framework to design around—an easy way for new designers to learn by building off an already established set of rules, and a creative challenge for established creators to either expand or design within the restrictions of someone else’s system.
SRD stands for System Reference Document. It contains the rules necessary for playing with a game system. Some SRDs offer only the most basic of rules necessary to play, while others offer fully complete systems with extensive mechanics, lore, and sometimes even the complete text of a published book.
TTRPG designers and publishers will sometimes release the SRD for their system under a license that allows anyone to create, publish, and sell products that use the text for concepts and mechanics found in the document. Wizards of the Coast released the SRD for the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons (originally via the Open Gaming License and more recently under a Creative Commons license) allowing 3rd-party creators to publish material that is compatible with the game. Other companies have released SRDs for their game mechanics under a variety of licenses, such as Pathfinder by Paizo, Basic Role-Playing by Chaosium, and Powered by the Apocalypse by Lumpley Games.
When using an SRD, it is important to carefully look over the license granted by the document and identify what is and is not allowed to be used for your own creations. Most SRDs will grant permission for rules and mechanics but not necessarily allow use of intellectual property such as characters, names, and stories.
The following SRDs are either explicitly designed for single player, GM-less journal games or can easily accommodate the creation of such games with little to no modification of the rules and mechanics.
The SRDs selected for this article are ones I have studied and that have inspired my own work. I have played games created with all of the systems reviewed here.
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Anamnesis
By Blinking Birch Games
https://blinkingbirchgames.itch.io/anamnesis
CC BY 4.0 License
Anamnesis uses a Tarot deck to answer prompts and develop a multi-part story. The game itself is published under a CC BY 4.0 License, making the full game a functioning SRD for other creators to use. The base game focuses on narratives of memory loss and self-discovery, but the core structure and mechanics of the system can be used to tell just about any kind of story. Games are broken up into multi-act structures, with prompts determined by act-specific decks made up of a single suit of Tarot cards. Major Arcana cards are used once per Act to trigger a major plot twist or milestone event. Games created with the system have easily expanded the gameplay by adding player abilities and multiplayer variants.
Example Games: Anamnesis, Tangled Blessings, Death of the Author
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Caltrop Core
By Titanomachy RPG
https://titanomachyrpg.itch.io/caltropcore
CC BY 4.0 License
A very straightforward system focused on a single resolution mechanic: rolling 4-sided dice to determine success or failure. Using either stats or a token-system, players resolve any uncertain question by rolling a number of dice equal to the stat value or number of tokens spent. The highest number rolled among the dice determines the result: Absolute Failure, Partial Failure, Partial Success, or Absolute Success. Stats/Tokens allow players to customize their experience and have some choice in how to resolve things, while the dice rolls keep the final result somewhat randomized. Although not designed specifically for solo or journal games, its simple mechanic makes it a perfect oracle system for these games.
Example Games: Delivered!, Classified!
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Carta
By Peach Garden Games
https://peachgardengames.itch.io/carta-srd
CC BY 3.0 License
Carta is an amazing system for exploration games. The base system uses a deck of standard playing cards to create a map by laying cards face down in a grid. Players move around the map one card at a time, spending resources to move and reacting to encounters and prompts determined by the cards as they are revealed. This foundational structure allows for all kinds of different games that capture the feel of exploration and discovery across an unknown region. It is so easy to add on other mechanics on top of this system to create games that feel like a board game or video game, while maintaining the player responses to randomized card prompts as the core storytelling mechanic.
Example Games: Apex Predator, Dragon Dowser, No Map, No Plan
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Guided by Firelights
By Fari RPGs
https://fari-rpgs.itch.io/firelights-creator-kit
CC BY 4.0 License
Another game system that emphasizes exploration, Guided by Firelights is inspired by the Metroidvania genre of video games—games that allow for open-ended exploration of connected regions that require returning to previously traveled areas as the game progresses. Like the Carta system, it uses playing cards to build a map, but also includes card drawing and stacking as a combat mechanic, a challenge resolution system that uses dice and “approach” modifiers, a treasure and information mechanics that grant another option to resolve obstacles, and tables to randomize descriptions and story elements. This is a crunchier system than most other solo-journal games, but it recreates its video game roots very well.
Example Games: Firelights, The Librarian’s Apprentice
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Lost and Found
By Jack Harrison / Mousehole Press
https://srd.mousehole.press/
Modified CC BY 4.0 License
Rather than play a person, the Lost & Found system has players take on the role of an object and explore its history and relationship to people and the environment over the course of an extensive period of time. The basic gameplay consists of focusing on an era, identifying the Agent using the object during that time, and answering questions to assign new traits and add on to a visual drawing of the object. There is then a period of Rest, during which the player is encouraged to pause and reflect for a set period of time then answer questions about what happens during this period. At the end of the game, the player is left with a detailed history of the object. Many of the games created with this SRD encourage transfer of the completed history and object into other games or stories.
Example Games: Artefact, Bucket of Bolts, Haunting, Tales From the Cockpit
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Wretched & Alone
By Chris Bissette
https://sealedlibrary.itch.io/wretched-alone-srd
CC BY 3.0 License
The Wretched & Alone system is full of simple yet perfect mechanics for creating a solo game centered on building tension and dread. The SRD encourages narratives where failure is highly likely or inevitable, and has options for multiple endings based on how the player succeeded or failed. Games begin with the building of a physical block tower (like Jenga) and gameplay involves drawing from a deck of cards, with each card providing a journal prompt. The format of the system gradually builds tension by prompting the player to pull blocks from the tower in response to card prompts, while searching the deck for cards that will add up to victory or failure. It is a fantastic system for horror games or games of self-reflection, and is designed specifically for solo-play.
Example Games: The Wretched, Vanity: Glass & Stone,
I enjoy learning about new SRDs and brainstorming what kind of games I could develop with them. My fairy-tale horror game, Vanity: Glass & Stone, was created with the Wretched & Alone SRD, and I am currently developing a few projects that will be using some of the other systems highlighted above, including Carta and Lost & Found.
Have you used these or any other SRDs to design your game? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments!
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