Storyboard Preview

The materials on this page are copyright © 1996 by Magus Creative Games. You may print them for personal use, but if you like them, please order the Storyboard rule book.

The Origin of Storyboard

Once upon a time, there were eight people who got together each week to play games. They would forget the tedium and tribulations of day-to-day life, and pretend to be supernatural achievers in dark and dangerous worlds. They would create stories, with these imagined characters as the protagonists. The stories would last for months, sometimes years. The characters would grow and change as they faced the problems of their world.

After one such story had ended, these eight people wanted to try something a little different. All their previous stories required rule books hundreds of pages thick, that they all had to understand to some degree. Their games required hours of preparation.

This group wanted to play a game that was flexible enough to allow their imaginations to run free, yet simple enough that they didn't have to spend more time preparing than actually playing. Nothing previously available fit the bill. They had to make up something new. The result was an early version of Storyboard. The concept was so simple, it didn't need to be written down.

They played it and liked it, and now it is written down to share with others. Everything you really need to know about Storyboard, you can read in fifteen minutes and never forget. However, since I'm writing it down and sharing it with everyone, I decided to add some hints, advice, and examples so that people may have a reason to buy it even after learning the rules.

Read it over -- it could replace every other role-playing game you've ever played. If you want to go light on rules, and heavy on imagination, this is your game.

Basic Storyboard

Storyboard is a very simple role-playing game with emphasis on the role-playing. There is very little structure behind the Storyboard game. The following are guidelines to keep the players in line and on track.

Characters

A character may be described by a story, with the main Traits circled as the words or phrases appear in the story. This is a better way to get the role-playing feel of the game than just listing the Traits.

Actions

An Action Roll cannot exceed five dice for normal starting characters. Remove any excess dice.

The Game Runner assigns a difficulty to the roll, from 2 to 10 (2 being very simple, 6 being typical, and 10 being nearly impossible). The player rolls 1d10 for each die of the Action Roll. Each result equal to or higher than the difficulty rating adds one success. If you don't have d10s, use d6s instead (with difficulty from 2 to 6, 4 being typical).

The action succeeds with just one success. With more, the action succeeds well. Zero Successes means the action failed.

What else is in Storyboard?

• Character Advancement
• More ways to think about Traits
• How Storyboard allows multiple Game Runners
• How to assign Action Roll difficulties
• Combat rules
• Equipment rules
• Diceless rules
• Improvised characters
• How to design fantasy races and beasts
• Genre Starter Kits: Cyberpunk, Dimensional Travel, Fantasy, Gothic Horror, Mean Streets, Secret Agent, Space Opera, Super Hero
• Advice for players and Game Runners
• Character Examples
• Sample Adventure

How can I get it? (Storyboard Ordering Information)

Please direct questions or problems to magus@mcgames.com.
Storyboard is a Trademark of Magus Creative Games. The rules and materials are Copyright © 1996 by Magus Creative Games.
This web page is Copyright © 1998 by Magus Creative Games.

---

---