Last week I released the first edition of Sigils in Seralia, a diceless OSR/rules-lite TTRPG, as part of the Landesknecht Diceless TTRPG Jam. This was my first time doing a game jam, and it was a fun experience trying to put something together under time pressure. I believe the result is something I can be proud of, although there's a lot I wanted to do that had to be cut out in the interest of making the deadline.

The intended general setting for Sigils in Seralia is a parallel world to 19th-century Europe, inspired originally by Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. The rulebook presented here only hints at this setting, and the foundation of the game is flexible to be translated to pretty much any setting. 

In the world of Sigils in Seralia, certain people move through society while bearing mysterious "sigils" on their skin. "Silmarkt," as they're called, wield magical powers and attributes that separate them from the rest of the populace. Although the Silmarkt can be very powerful, they are distrusted and often ostracized, and thus they tend to hide their sigils to avoid discovery. 

Since this game was developed for a diceless TTRPG jam, the rules contain a method of diceless play that focuses on drawing from 40 tokens, each colored red or black (ala playing cards) and bearing a sigil design. The downloadable files for the game include printable red and black tokens to be pasted on coins or discs, but I originally was picturing marbles with the sigils drawn on them. 

Hopefully some folks enjoy the mechanics of the game. I'll talk about my decisions in trying to design a diceless game in a later post.