Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Starting a Game (section)

==Discussing the Setting==
The first step in putting together an ''Unwritten'' game is discussion. The players and the GM sit down and talk about what they want to do with the game. The GM will usually have some ideas about the game they want to run, and the players will have ideas to bring to the table as well. Let’s look at what you should think about as you start your game: the big questions and the key decisions. After that, you will collaborate with each other to fill in the details of your game.

===The Big Questions===
The future of D’ni, the Ages, and the Art are in front of the characters, and that opens up some serious questions. When you start your game, you should decide which of these questions interest you and your group the most, or if there is some other question you would like to address.

''What should the future of D’ni be, and what is the explorers’ place in that future?''

What purpose does the cavern serve now? Should D’ni be rebuilt anew? Are the explorers the spiritual successors of the D’ni people, or is this the beginning of humanity’s turn as stewards of the Ages?

''What will the explorers do with the power the Art provides them?''

What happens when someone has the ability to seemingly create whatever world they want? What will explorers do with such abundance? Will they see themselves as masters of the Ages, like the D’ni? How will they treat the peoples they meet and what will they do with the worlds they find—learn and explore, or exploit and dominate?

''How will the Art change the world?''

The Art is, if you will excuse the pun, a game-changer. What happens when the rest of humanity finds out about it (if they ever do)? How will it change society? What new societies will develop? What new technologies will we discover because of what we may encounter? Will space travel simply become passé when you can just open a book to go to the next universe over?

''What is out there on the Great Tree of Possibilities, and what does it mean?''

Just what is out there? What sorts of new things can we find? Are there other civilizations who know the Art and what are they like? What is the possibility that the characters my discover something that fundamentally changes their understanding of the universe?

===Key Decisions===
Once you have considered those big questions, here are some decisions you need to make about your version of the setting.

====The role of D’ni====
D’ni is a hub for everything that happens in Unwritten, but you should decide how central will D’ni itself be to your game. Is it just a place to stop over on your way to exploring another Age? Or will the cavern be an important backdrop for your game? What you choose here tells you some of the details you need to think about. 

If D’ni is central to your story, then you will need to think about how many people are actually in the cavern at any given time, and what influence the various factions will have over the population in general and your characters in specific. The Ages in the game will be secondary locations and whatever drama happens out there will have effects back in D’ni. However, if D’ni is just a place for quick stops and the occasional interlude, then you won’t have to sweat these details. More of your focus will be the Ages that you will be visiting.

====Accessibility of the Art====
Explorers have been slowly rediscovering the Art, but how much of that will actually be in the hands of the players?

If the Art is completely inaccessible to the players, then travel to the Ages is entirely dependent on what Books they can find. Getting to a particular Book may be an adventure in itself, whether they are blocked by physical obstacles or unhelpful NPCs. It means that the place in the Age where the Book links to is inherently a key location, since all incoming visitors will end up in the same place. Access to a new Age is a significant event here, and requires discovering a Linking Book. 

On the other end of the scale, if the Art is central to your game and some or all of the characters are Writers, you have significantly different possibilities. The availability of new Ages is defined by the skill, vision, and time of the characters (limited by the availability of appropriate books and ink). Solving a problem by Writing an Age that has what you need is a potential option, with all of the ramifications that come with that. Mistakes may literally have cosmic implications.

A middle ground may be that your characters have the ability to create Linking Books, but not Descriptive Books. In this option, new Ages may not be forthcoming, but travel between existing Ages will be more flexible as characters write Linking Books to new places in existing Ages. 

====Puzzles====
You can’t have a ''Myst'' game without talking about puzzles, and it’s important to discuss up front how they will fit into your game.

Ask everyone how they feel about puzzles. If not everyone likes the idea of explicit puzzles in the game, then building your game around them is a bad idea. Also, some of your group may dislike particular types of puzzles—that’s another thing to get on the table right away.

Discuss how you want your characters to interact with the puzzles. Will puzzle solving primarily be the purview of players, or will the abilities that your characters have that you do not affect puzzle solving? Answering this question will tell you how often you should bring in game mechanics to provide hints or solve problems.

Also, consider how other elements in the setting will interact with puzzles. Devices like KIs will keep characters in contact with each other and allow them to record information, or they may be able to contact knowledgeable NPCs when they come up against something they can’t decipher. Similarly, Linking Books (especially Relto Books) provide easy ways of bypassing physical obstacles. If those solutions don’t appeal to you and your group, discuss limiting access to them, or removing them from the setting entirely.