Firelights Creator Kit and SRD

This is the Firelights Creator Kit. Within this document, you will find the game's System Reference Document (or SRD) as well as a checklist of things to consider when designing your own game Guided by Firelights.

Come talk about the Firelights Creator Kit on our forum and on Discord.

TRANSLATIONS

• Español (Spanish)
• 한국어 (Korean)

Firelights is a condensed and open licensed solo/co-op role-playing game about a guided journey across a plagued land. It is a game of exploration, discovery, and challenges inspired by the Metroivania video game genre. 

Players take on the role of a last of its kind lone-protagonist whose role is to guide back the dead back to the underworld after a corruption took over. 

Using only the most accessible gaming material (2 six sided dice, a deck of card, and a notebook), players will tackle challenges, evade danger, explore and create a map of the land, fight dangerous bosses, search for treasures, and more.

SYSTEM

The Firelights System is based on the following:

Player-Facing Actions: The protagonist interacts with the world using a set of Actions. Each action requires the player to draw two cards from the deck of cards, roll 2d6+{modifier}, and compare their score to each card individually. Depending on if their score is higher than two, one, or no cards, each action guides the player forward in the story.

Map Making: One of the player's Actions is to Discover a Region. This uses the cards drawn during their action and, depending on the numbers written on the cards, creates a physical map of the protagonist's current land. Each region is unique, and its details are filled in using various rolling tables present in the game.

Trigger-Based Gameplay Loop: Instead of a traditional gameplay loop, the game uses triggers to guide the player through the story. As the player makes Actions in the world, these either prompts the player to use another Action or adds new dramatic elements to the narrative.

Approaches: Instead of skills, the player interacts with the world using three Approaches. This subtle difference makes the engine extremely versatile, as players don't focus on which skill they are best at, but instead consider how they will approach each situation.

Fatigue: The character's overall wellbeing is managed via a Fatigue track. Some Actions might trigger the player to mark fatigue if the Action's final result isn't high enough. To clear the track, the protagonist needs to rest, which incites them reshuffle their deck of cards and to fill an entry in a journal.

Bosses: When the protagonist is faces a boss, they must make fight them by stacking a number of cards to match the boss's strength. Each boss is unique in both fiction and mechanics, as they have different vulnerabilities and the cards stacked on them behave differently.

LICENSE & ATTRIBUTION

The text of Firelights is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license.  For more information about Firelight's license, check out the official Guided by Firelights guidelines here.

FIRELIGHTS JAM

To celebrate the release of Firelights, we are also launching the Firelights Jam which calls all game designers to create something using the Firelights system.

RESOURCES

• TEXT & LOGOS
  • The game's Creator Kit can be found here. This kit includes the game's open licensed text, as well as a check list on how to hack the different systems and create your own game.
  • Guided by Firelights logos can be found here.
• SAMPLE GAMES
  • Guided by Firelights Collection
• FONTS used in the templates and creator kit include:
  • Ramajara (free) is used for the headings.
  • Hind Madurai (free) is used for the body text.
  • Dicier (free with attribution) is used for the d66 tables
• COMMUNITIES
  • Fari Community Discord
  • Fari Community Twitter
• TOUCHSTONES
  • Hollow Knight, by Team Cherry.
  • Ori and the Blind Forest, by Moon Studios.
  • Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, by Nintendo.
• INSPIRATIONS
  • Ironsworn, by Shawn Tomkin
  • Apocalypse World, by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker.