Tabletop RPG
The Wheel and the Balance RPG
A no-combat narrative RPG about decisions, costs, and the marks they leave.
A tabletop RPG set in The Grey School and the wider City of Arz. Players navigate emotionally complex scenarios where every decision carries a mandatory cost and leaves an irreversible mark on the world.
There are no hit points, no combat, no death. Only choices, costs, and echoes. Three to six players plus one Game Master. Six-sided dice (8–10 recommended), pencils, character sheets. Age 13+.
Three Laws of the World
Players experience these as the physics of the world, not as abstract rules. They are absolute, non-negotiable, and structural.
The Wheel
Every scene contains at least one decision. Indecision is a decision. Looking away is a decision. The wheel always turns.
The Balance
Every decision has a mandatory cost — physical, emotional, social, or perceptual. Cost may be delayed but is never cancelled.
The Echo
Decisions leave irreversible physical marks: cracking surfaces, heavy air, distorted sound, flickering light. These cannot be erased — only integrated.
How the Echoism Engine works
A scene opens. The Game Master presents the situation, the room, the people in it.
Each scene contains at least one decision. Every option has a visible or hidden cost.
The player rolls a d6 pool against the chosen action. Bonds and Pressures shift the dice count.
A successful roll: the decision takes effect. A failed roll: it does not — but something always happens.
The cost is paid. The Echo is recorded. The world remembers, and the next scene begins from there.
Crystalpunk Aesthetic
The visual language is glass-line shimmers, crystalline textures, and tuning-fork resonance. Not fantasy, not sci-fi — a grounded school setting with subtle reality distortion. No blood, no gore, no combat. Instead: glitch, crack, heaviness, pressure, distortion.
Tabletop Edition — Game Books
The same world, played with friends at a table. d6 Pool / Echoism Engine. No combat. Decisions, costs, and the marks they leave.
P22 — Starter Kit
Free introduction · 22 pages · One scenario
P23 — Player Book
Complete character & resolution rules
P24 — Game Master Book
Running the world · Companion to the Player Book
A digital 2D play-card version of the same world for school-age players is in development — see the School Edition.