Game of Tomes
WIP
Streamer
Missing
Status: Location Unknown
Deceased
Status: Deceased Character
Retired
Status: Retired Character or Article
Scope
The motivation behind building Game of Tomes
The Game of Tomes is a team-based game for writers on Twitch that happens in April, July, and November. 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 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. Once they were much more powerful, but sometime in the early Renaissance, Literomancy fell into decline. Mostly their magic has had little effect on the modern world, 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 dinosaurs or ancient cosmic beings. 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 Horde 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 Will of the Tome
It has long been suspected that The Iron Tome has its own sentience, and many those who have carried it for any length of time over the past few years agree. Recently, the Tome has proven it by communicating directly with someone through text: Queen Sable Aradia and Princess ShyRedFox, declaring them "the Great Librarians" and charging them with the maintenance of the Great Library, a storehouse of literomantic knowledge maintained by all the Houses. It also directed them to forge an Order of Royal Librarians among the Houses. On the bright side, a Renaissance of shared literomantic and historical knowledge exchange is underway. But what implications does this have for the Tomeverse? How much control does the Iron Tome have over reality, anyway? Is it truly responsible for the creation of the Night Monarch, as many suspect and as Erin Righ claims? And if so, why? Does this artefact with godlike powers love humanity — or hate them?Politics
Borders and crowns are shifting. Recently, the Claw Summit's Fudge Festival and Treaty between Houses Ailurus, Meles, and Sauropoda have resulted in a change of borders, which had just settled from the Meles Ailurus Treaty of 2024. Talk of borders is once again on the table as a result, and numerous treaties, particularly regarding embassies and power source exchanges, are underway. There are also a number of coronations on the horizon. With Anassa JaySeaBoom of House Mollusca only recently coronated herself, the Tomeverse is now looking to the imminent coronation of Princess Badger Purpleheart of House Meles and Regent The Bard with Many Names of House Ailurus. And when will Regent EGryph of House Avis be coronated? She has been resisting, but pressure is mounting.The Great Migration
Last year, the Tome Knights acted to try to save as many people as possible from the 1337 Speak Reality, a parallel Earth that was about to be destroyed in a fiery apocalypse. Millions were evacuated, and the world is still dealing with the repercussions of that. The 1337 Speak evacuees are integrating into society and carving out their own place, and some of the Houses are only just recovering from the incredible costs.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, many still 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? 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.
What's Happening with the Great Houses
In the meantime, the Tourney of Tales JULY 2025 is about to begin...
All Game of Tomes content not otherwise specified is copyright 2020 -
All Hero Forge character art and tokens created and owned by, and used under license from, HeroForge.com. HeroForge.com is not responsible for the content of this show, clip, or segment, and hereby disclaims any and all content and views expressed herein.
2026
by Aradia Publishing. All rights reserved. All public Game of Tomes videos are released under a Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives license.
All Hero Forge character art and tokens created and owned by, and used under license from, HeroForge.com. HeroForge.com is not responsible for the content of this show, clip, or segment, and hereby disclaims any and all content and views expressed herein.