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

===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.