House Ailurus
0 Tomes — 0 TourneysHouse Chiroptera
1 Tome — 0 TourneysHouse Lapin
2 Tomes — 3 TourneysHouse Meles
0 Tomes — 3 TourneysHouse Mollusca
1 Tome — 1 TourneyHouse Sauropoda
1 Tome — 1 Tourney
Game of Tomes
This article is a work in progress, and may be subject to changes.
This article is part of a series related to streaming the Game of Tomes. For more information, see Streaming Game of Tomes.
Scope
The motivation behind building Game of Tomes
The Game of Tomes is a team-based game for writers on Twitch that happens in conjunction with National Novel Writing Month events. If your House gets the most words, you win!
The "GoTverse" was created almost by accident. What started as a running gag in which we presented ourselves as newscasters at a "sports" event when a zombie apocalypse happened, blossomed into its own internally consistent universe. The events of the story are written by the results of the game, so every player ("Tome Knight") contributes to this co-created interactive fiction.
The GoTverse is intended as sheer fun; ridiculous funny nonsense that still somehow manages mind-numbing horror and heartbreaking drama at turns. It draws heavily from pop culture, literature, and general nerdiness, which all makes sense internally because magic is accomplished through use of creative writing.
It surprised me how much people seized on the Lore, however, and how strong the community is! It made me want to embrace the madness and the creativity, and bring this world to full-colour life.
The goal of the project
We do this for fun. That is all. Above all, we want to give writers tools to inspire and motivate them to write more, and with friends. It turns writing into a team sport and an improvisational play. We tell the story of the world of the Game of Tomes through what we call "Lore videos" and through music that is usually a "filk" - musical fanfiction, often parodies of existing songs. We think we've accidentally created something magical and unique, and we want to share it.
Game of Tomes's Unique Selling point
This universe is entirely co-created. While a tiny group of people co-ordinate things, and a handful of people end up as the "main characters," it's all strictly volunteer. Each and every Tome Knight writes the story, through the results of their writing, if nothing else.
Theme
Genre
The genre is probably best described as "urban fantasy." The GoTverse is our world, except that secretly, a small group of word wizards called Literomancers have existed for centuries. Mostly their magic has had little effect, but in 2020, with the return of an artifact called The Iron Tome that is said to have the power to literally re-write reality, that changed.
The Game of Tomes is also "dark fantasy." The reappearance of the Iron Tome also led to a zombie apocalypse. A Tome Knight can become one of the Undead Horde at any time, and there is something disturbing in the fact that you can be the bad guy at the flip of a coin. Some of our plotlines can get very dark, and we might surprise you by hitting you with stomach-punching drama right after a gag skit.
We maintain that the bad guys make this whole thing FUN.
The GoTverse is also "comedy-horror." Like Shawn of the Dead, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, or Army of Darkness, some stuff is just completely wacky and weird. We're not afraid to use gags as plotlines, and we definitely don't take ourselves seriously.
Reader Experience
The vibe is something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's real horror. There's real drama. And there's also goofiness, campiness, and people being delightfully, imperfectly human. Like an Avengers movie, it ranges through many different genres too, but stays consistently and recognizably its own thing. We like it this way.
Reader Tone
The tone of the GoTverse is probably best described as "Knightcore" on the Tone & Setting Alignment Scale:
Hanging on a thin thread between hope and despair; given enough effort, groups of individuals may be able to make a dramatic effect on the world. Even if true permanence is just beyond reach.
Another way to describe this might be "Hopepunk." Although the world is often a dark and terrible place, the characters choose, in general, to embrace radical hope. This is not the clean, sparkly hope of the Care Bears or My Little Pony or a Disney animation; it is savage, gritty hope; the kind of hope that tears off its fingernails as it attempts to climb the sharp, sheer rock wall of an abyss. And somehow, even though the Undead Horde returns every year, the living continue to survive, and, for the most part, work together to ensure that continued survival, even with forces allayed against them that try to prevent them from doing so.
Recurring Themes
Character Agency
PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!! Itty bitty living space.Technically, there are very few limits to what a literomancer can do. Their powers are primarily restricted by their ability to tell a convincing and moving story. There are characters who are practically stars (the outer space kind) and others who are living fire. BUT, magic is also limited by the rules of literature. Literary tropes are magical laws that are hard to break, and the effectiveness of a given power is always limited by the needs of the plot. Further, no matter what the Tome Knights do, every November, the Iron Tome will disappear from the hands of the living, the Night Monarch will return, and the Undead will begin spawning once again. Otherwise, there can be no Game of Tomes. The characters are beginning to figure this out. However, within those limitations, the central characters actually do have a lot of agency. Because most of them are based on the people who actually play them, they have complex human reactions, and they learn from their mistakes (or not!) They make decisions that drive the plot. Each character must react to the individual decisions made by other characters, as well as the conditions of the world they find themselves in. It's important to understand this. There's really no such thing as a "private plotline" in Game of Tomes. People will react to what you do, and you are expected to react in turn.
Focus
Drama
The Missing
Sometime near the end of The Third Word War, a bunch of people just disappeared. There was at least one Major House that once existed, and now it does not, and no one remembers a thing about many of their members. Some of the former members of the House, known now as The Castaways, are wandering through the Realm with big holes in their memories, lost, and unsure of what to do next. And there were others as well who are just... no longer there. What happened? Did The Iron Tome re-write reality imperfectly somehow? Will the Castaways be able to find their way in the world? How does anyone cope with mass worldwide memory loss?The Company
An evil corporation called The Company has been CONTENT WARNING: human experimentation, genocide.performing bio-experiments on literomancers in secret for at least 40 years. Some of their victims have been the scions of the literomantic Houses.
Strange Things in the Deep
House Mollusca has recently sent an ambassador ashore to let the drylanders know about a threat that may affect them both. For years, they have been fighting things that should not be in the deep, which they believe come from a rift in the ocean floor near to The Zafforza Trench; one of the reasons they have built their stronghold there. But now, these creatures seem to be mutating to enter fresh water, and have been seen in most of the world's major estuaries. What is causing these mutations? Can they be stopped?The Nuggie Revolution
In an alternate plane known as The Void which touches on this reality, a race of mutated sapient moldy chicken nuggets is threatening to escape into their reality. A group of literomancers who are connected to the Void, known as Voiders Anonymous, is terrified of what might happen if they succeed. They have been disturbingly quiet during the Third Word War.Politics
With House Sauropoda in possession of The Iron Tome, the Avis - Sauropoda Alliance seems to be going strong. But the Avisians are a significant power in and of themselves, so is their alliance as stable as it appears? Will the Birbs make a move towards becoming a Major House, especially with The Missing House's absence? In the meantime, having discovered that their royal families are all one big family, the Woodland Family Alliance is solidifying its ties, and becoming one of the strongest political forces in the Realm. What does this mean for the balance of power? Also, what's this rumour that House Chiroptera may have found some esoteric knowledge that no one else has? And what does that mean for the alliance they built with House Mollusca during the War?
All content not otherwise specified is copyright (c) 2025 by Aradia Publishing. All rights reserved.
All public Game of Tomes videos are released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives license
The GoTverse map and the Iron Tome font are copyright (c) 2025 by Makenzie Turney. All rights reserved.