The World Well is a world-building game designed to create worlds specifically for TTRPG and similar games. It does this is by creating a series of important points of contention and mystery and then having those points be battled over by Factions, made more potent by Fractures and wracked by sudden Falls. This session makes use of the expansion which focusses on using the system for a single city and otherwise our only other ideas to start with were “The Boer War” and “time travel”.

You can get the World Well now on our itch site and the City expansion by subscribing to the Patreon.

Nobody knows where – or when – the city came from. Although there are a few flashes from some far-imagined future, the dominant powers date from the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century – which seems natural since all of history must be leading to that eternal bastion of liberty and truth. Those inhabitants call it Pantempolis: the City of All Time.

At the centre of the city lies the Station, which holds the Gates: twelve gigantic vaults that with careful attunement lead to fixed times and places throughout all of history – Rome under Julius Caesar, Britain under Queen Victoria, Prague under Rudolph II, the Aztecs under the Triple Alliance, the Zulu under Senganzakhona, the Tonga under Momo, Babylon under Hammurabi, China under Wu Zeitan, Mali under Mansa Musa, Vedic India and the Iriquoi Confederacy. Some speculate that other gates might be possible but this is considered a fringe belief (or fringe science). Beyond the walls of the city lies the Timestorms, great roils of thunder and lightning, water and earth, that only the brave or foolhardy dare to explore with their timeships. These folks can reach other times, if guided by a Navigator, and bring back wealth, knowledge and other invidiuals from across time. This gives the Navigator’s Guild great power in the city. Most folks travel to and fro via the Gates. Both systems are heavily tracked, taxed and recorded but of course the rich can get around such things.

Of course, being able to cross the timestreams leads to many problems. The city is guarded by the Paradox Police, who uphold all the laws but one more than any: non debes duplicare – nobody may exist more than once in the city itself. Many find themselves in the city unable to pay for their journey to it, or arriving by accident, and these folks pay off their debts by serving the PP. Of course, many say that the Paradox Police, or their masters, go back in time and arrange for you to arrive penniless. But that’s a very cynical thought. To help people assimilate to the city you are supposed to wear an item of clothing, typically a hat or helmet, from your originating time and place, and new arrivals will be given stand-ins at the gates until they can buy their own. You are also supposed to mingle across time, but some folks insist on building enclaves only for their historical period – New Rome is very snooty, and Victoriana grows larger every year. Many of the more recent citizens (as in those whose history is more modern) look down on tthe anient ones as being primitve, but wealth cuts across all such groups. Some speak of a time which will be beyond all time and will come rushing into the city and erase everyone or replace everyone, but this is foolish superstition. A much more pleasant superstition of the city is that the last digit of your birth year is a horoscope for your nature and fate. On the festival of Gates, Fates and Dates new arrivals are welcome to the city and there are parades, and ceremomies in the Polyopticon, a fine observatory-cum-tea-room where one can view any period of history you might imagine.

Sometimes, people get erased from time, or die before their time, especially since many Pantemporians like to brag they have killed their own grandfather. No amount of historical meddling can seem to change this. In this case, a practice of soul-carrying exists, where a subject has the spirit of the deceased or erased placed along side their mind, usually permanently. The poor are paid handsomely if they volunteer for this, but it is a rare and dangerous process, reserved for the desperate or the powerful.

Factions

The richest family in the city are the Vigeronts, who claim their family history goes back through the Hapsburgs and Merovincians to Alexander the Great. They have invented retrochronostic fermentology, allowing them to take things like alcohol and pickled foodstuffs and un-ferment them, bringing out an incredible new taste. They like to suggest that this made them rich but in fact they are rich because they meddle with time. So much so that they show off by not aging or aging backwards, using retrochronostic engineering and timeloops to avoid change. If this goes awry, a soul-carrier will be used to hold the person until the mistake can be rectified. A lot of this is illegal but they effectively own and control the Paradox Police. Their weakness is that they are ruled by their obsession with geneaology (theirs and others) which they must always establish to be pure, and show this off. They also like to show off by recruiting the most powerful figures from history and reverse-aging them. In some cases – and nobody knows why because retrochronostic technology is a closely guarded secret – de-aging these people reverses or unmakes the things those people did in history. This allows the Vigeronts to pretend they are humanitarians, unmaking great crimes or slaughters.

The Chrononumerologists are a loose collection of amatuer scientists and scholars who study time and the time storms and would dearly like to know how retrochronostic technology works. They are aware that the guards of the Gates can change the gates to go anywhere and anywhen they wish, and that Navigation is not some in-born talent and anyone with a timecompass can do it, and anyone with good enough mathetmatical models can predict the timestorms too. Their expertise means they can cast horoscopes and appear to be extremely accurate, which suggests they can maybe even change history on a personal level with their detailed knowledge. They are well-regarded but lack any organisational power, and suffer from internal division. Without a set agenda, some want to use their knowledge to build a better world, others simply want to invest in historical real estate markets and get rich.

The Causeless are a semi-religious secret society who believe that true power is to have no cause. To enter their ranks you must first find a member and then prove you have killed your own grandfather and survived the ensuing paradoxes, a process that proves you have a divine power above that of others. They believe that if they can figure out where the city came from they can destroy its cause and thus make it unmoored from time and divine like them. Their beliefs in this divine transcendence mean many wish to join their ranks, but as more and more join, they are becoming more reckless. The Causeless know each other and often cluster in shared districts of the city, and thus keep their membership secret, but more and more their actions are easy to spot as they leave chaos and mistakes in their wake.

The Unfinished began as a loose collection of people who felt history had cheated them: snatching away victory or life at the last minute, killing them when young, robbing them of every chance, or worse – some shenanigans caused their entire timeline to vanish or end prematurely. Slowly, these folks found their stories resonating with the poor of Pantempolis, and now the Unfinished argue that the work of the city is Unfinished: it is supposed to be a place to right history’s wrongs, starting with the rich ruling over the poor.

Fractures

The Sixers – Residents of Victoriana have found evidence that anyone whose birthdate ends in a 6 is likely to be a criminal, and have campaigned for the city police to let them exile everyone born with that date from their entire district. This includes plenty of well-off sixers who would lose their livelihood and standing and so they have been campaigning for the city to establish districts for each digit. Lord Neveryoung is an unscrupulous local figure of Victoriana who doesn’t believe the 6 suspicion but is very happy to use it to his own advantage to rise in power and reach the ranks of the ultrawealthy, who have denied his entry on account of him being the son of a tradesperson and thus not of noble blood. Meanwhile, Mr Fatechanger is a rough-hewn figure of no-clear-time who claims for a small fee he can change your birthdate by slipping back into your past, and seems to be legit. Is it legal? Depends if you get caught.

The Bloodstorm – Timestorms always happen far beyond the city, until now. All of a sudden a tiny localised bloodstorm has appeared at random times inside the Telecommiseum. This was once the city’s first aetherial wave station (before that technology was erased from history) and has since been repurposed as the premiere sporting ground of the city, where various bloodsports take place. The storm – believed by some to be drawn to blood and brutality – swallows up athletes and throws them across time, and also deposits other athletes from time into the arena, often to perilous results and terrible injuries. Some Vigeronts have welcomed this as a new and exciting way to find great heroes they can de-age, with one young scion believing he can use it to help remove violence from the timestream. The city hospital has deployed agents for the folks who end up being heavily wounded but one of these agents isn’t healing them at all but stealing the Potentiality of new arrivals for his own nefarious purposes.

The Big Freeze – the Paradox Police have got wind of a terrorist attack being planned on the Day of Gates, Dates and Fates and in order to stop it from happening and uncover the perpetrators they have cancelled time in some streets of the city. Since they are bought and sold by the Vigeronts and corrupt themselves, the time freeze also allows them to plant whatever evidence they wish, which is complicated by the fact that there is a member of the Causeless who is trying to make the terrorist attack happen and kill himself in the explosion so there is no cause of it, and he has found the frozen time areas helpful for covering his tracks. The PP have also used this threat to declare the Unfinished a terrorist organisation and any members can be arrested. Molly Jones, a well-known Unfinished is helping her friends lay low.

Falls

With this new purge against the last-digit-horoscopes, many are suggesting it is all just a silly fancy and should be abandoned. But there are many in the city who feel that even if it is silly it would be giving it up for the wrong reasons. Others want it to maintain power or just their business selling fortunes and jewellery with your year on it. So as it falls, some intensify it all the more, to the point of clannishness and over-emphasis.

There have been a few scares and small terrorist actions in the public squares where meat is traded, normally procured by grabbing pork futures. This has made it too risky to be a future-butcher and the city has had to go back to importing meat. At the same time, the vast fields of grain and barley that grow across the rooftops of the city where they are easily exposed to timewinds so grow fast have become suddenly unmanagable. It is getting harder and harder to predict the timewinds and grow a sufficient harvest in a way that also makes money and isn’t sending some people broke. This will force the city to start importing grain too, leaving them terribly dependent on a history they have been very careless towards…

You can get the World Well now on our itch site and the City expansion by subscribing to the Patreon.

Five Years After is the next game by me coming from Tin Star Games. It deals with apocalyptic events, uncovered in a reverse chronological fashion. This is a session report of a five-player game run at Go Play Brisbane in 2025.

Five years after the event, the world has changed…

Zutroy lives on an isolated farm, where he’s been able to stay out of things and, it seems, enjoy a good lamb casserole. But then Captain Crackle shows up and indicates the farm belongs to them now. Crackle is a masked warlord who drives a cyber truck with a huge electricity transformer on the back. Elsewhere, Fletcher walks through his warehouse filled with mowers, realising he only has one of working engine between them. Lily, a one time high court judge packs her bags to leave the city for good. Captain Crackle visits Hannah who runs the meat network of out of the old morgue and for the first time ever she is late with a delivery. Crackle tells her not to let it happen again or he’ll take her son for his army. He leaves on Jessica’s boat and tells her he will no longer be allowed to go on her expeditions up and down the river: he needs her by his side now, to be sure he can get where he needs to be.

Five months later is when we knew it was over…

Jessica is called into meet Judge Lily, who has taken on the role of head administrator of Brisbane after the armed forces have abandoned them and the government has gone on extended leave. Jessica is asked to use her psychic gifts to protect them but she says they can’t change the future, nobody can. Fletcher is also there and he silently assents to Jessica’s punishment instead of doing what he feels is right. He says he’s a pilot and he definitely has a plane that can go get help. Hannah is by the judge’s side, too. She bears the news that the food stores are all gone. Lily doesn’t have the time or capacity to see that Hannah’s organisation skills might be good but her mind is broken, and Hannah weeps alone after the meeting. A figure in a mask accuses the judge of failing them all. On his farm, Zutroy watches the zombies eat his sheep and looks in his fridge: there is only cat food. Chunky Lamb Casserole.

Five weeks after, the city was in chaos…

As the city burns, Lily sits in her apartment alone. She always told herself she was self sufficient but she knows she needs others. She runs into Hannah who is bleeding but rebuffs all offers of help, assuring the judge that Lily will never not be able to rely on her. Hannah never needs help and never makes mistakes. Lily and Hannah call Jessica, the famous psychic for advice, if it’s true that the Whitsundays are a safe haven, but her powers have abandoned her. Zutroy uses his mower to mow down zombies and a few sheep by accident (there’s plenty more where that came from), surrendering to the bloodlust. Fletcher runs to an airfield and hammers on the door. It’s his sister’s office and her plane and her pilots licence but he finds her dead. She had a map on the wall of the islands off the coast. Fletcher takes her hat and goggles. He’s a pilot now, it seems.

Five days after, we had no idea how bad it was…

Sirens wail and the military and the cops patrol the city but a wedding can’t stop just because there’s some health emergency. It’s a big beautiful posh affair with food provided direct from paddock to plate by Zutroy. Jessica comes for reasons she can’t explain, only to meet Hannah who knows someone who has a clue about Jessica’s mysterious childhood … someone who is acting strangely and biting people. The secret is lost, Zutroys best friend is devoured, Hannah discovers good and bad people alive suffer. Everyone looks to the celebrant, Judge Lily Toomes for guidance and she finds herself at a loss. A few survivors rush into the car park with the bridezilla in the lead. She grabs her wedding car and when others try to get in she tells them it’s her special day not theirs and leaves them to die. Some smash the glass windows cutting her face but she drives off triumphant in her ribboned cyber truck.

Five hours after the first moment, we began our destruction…

A hush falls over Brisbane at night. Jessica appears on the news telling them about a future of blood, where the masked bride brings death. She is ridiculed. Fletcher is watching the news and doesn’t see his cat run away. Hannah tells her parents she hates them for sending her to boarding school and leaves on bad terms. Judge Lily quits being a judge saying she can’t handle the pressure of deciding people’s fates. Zutroy borrows Fletcher’s best mower to tidy his lawn but the bride to be tasting his menu says it’s not good enough and he should do better. He finds a new kind of mushroom to add to his dishes, not noticing the effect it has had on his livestock.

Five years later, Fletcher visits Zutroy and takes his mower back and uses it to complete his makeshift plane, which they combine with Jessica’s boat to make it a sailplane. Lily doesn’t leave: she tells Hannah she’s sorry she never checked in, but if she comes now, she and her son can maybe reach safety with the plane.

Outside in the darkness, between them and the river, electricity crackles.