Swanholm - How It Works

31 Mar, 2026

What is this?

Swanholm is a modular, story-driven framework for community- or domain-level play in character-driven tabletop roleplaying games. It is designed to “snap on” to an existing game, providing a larger frame that focuses on a people or place rather than the insular unit of the party. It borrows from:

• “Otherkind Dice” by Meguey and Vincent Baker
• “A Spectre (7+3 HD) Is Haunting the Flaeness: Towards a Leftist OSR” by Humza K.
• The Quiet Year and The Deep Forest by Avery Alder
• The Goblin Laws of Gaming by Arnold Kemp
• Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures by Flatland Games (in which this game finds its name).

These rules will come in three parts: this introduction to How it Works, a detailed breakdown of Fronts & Dilemmas, and an extended Example of Play (cobbled together from weeks of unpublished session reports).

Thanks to Adele, Berlynn, Nagina, Rould, Sabine, and Uwe for their willingness to test this out and for their insightful feedback.

How It Works

This system assumes a base game that has something like an ability score test, individual initiative, and rules for overland travel. If you don’t, you might have to do some hacking. It also assumes you have a town, keep, or people that the player characters are attached to.

Setup

As soon as possible (perhaps in a Session 0, but otherwise the next time the characters emerge from an adventuring site), set up the following:

Fronts

A front is an opportunity, threat, or ongoing situation impacting the community. Fronts have a threat value between 0 and 5. When it hits 0, the situation is resolved (or at least stable in the near term). When it hits 5, the community is thrown into crisis.

To start, invent a number of fronts equal to the number of players plus 1.

Resources

The community has three resources, things they’ll need to resolve the fronts. These vary from game to game: in a medieval feudal setting they might be troops, treasury, and status, but in a survival horror context, they might be food, survivors, and medicine. Resources flag the material concerns of the community and can be spent or generated by the players in play.

To start, assign the resources the following array: 2, 1, and 0.

The Basic Loop

Play takes place in weeks. Each week, the referee puts forward a number of dilemmas equal to the number of players in the session. A dilemma is always a question with a clear answer, but it need not be a “yes, or no.” For example, “Do peace talks break down between us and our neighbors?”

Through their actions, the PCs will generate Effort Dice (d6s), representing their actions to address the dilemmas facing the community. As these dice are generated, assign them to a specific dilemma.

The referee lays out the dilemmas, narrating what’s going on in the community this week. Then:

1. The player characters (PCs) roll initiative to determine the order they will act this week.
2. The PCs take turns. Each week, each character may:
   • Move a week’s worth of travel distance.
   • Contribute an Effort Die to a dilemma.
   • Take an Action from the list to follow.
3. Roll the Effort Dice assigned to each dilemma, in order, interpreting the results.

Actions

Each week, each PC may do one of the following:

• Push Themselves. Frame a scene to describe how they address a dilemma. It doesn’t need to be the same as the one they’ve already contributed an Effort Die to. This may result in a fight, a skill test, or some other character-level challenge. Alternatively, you can spend a resource to automatically succeed. On a success, add an Effort Die to that dilemma.
• Study the Situation. Requires a relevant source of information, perhaps a library, expert, or character skill. The player asks one question about the situation that the GM answers truthfully. The player describes how they figure that out and adds +1 to a relevant dilemma when rolling the Effort Dice.
• Start a Project. Create a new dilemma to represent it and add an Effort Die to it for this week. A project can produce a resource for the community. Large projects may require multiple Effort Dice to complete.
• Withdraw. Focus on personal matters or venture away from the community. If your base game supports downtime actions like magical research or long-term training, take this action to do so. Ditto if the players go on an expedition.

Rolling the dice

At the end of the week, the PCs roll the Effort Dice they have pooled for each dilemma. Interpret the highest result as follows:

• A 6 means the players get the outcome they desire. Reduce the corresponding front’s threat by 1.
• A 4-5 means the players get the outcome they desire, but must pay a cost, strike a hard bargain, or accept a worse result.
• A 1-3 or no die means things break bad for the players. Increase the corresponding front’s threat by 1.

And so on…

The results of this week’s dilemmas may immediately spur those of the next, but sometimes it’s nice to let a situation simmer in the background and bring a previously under-explored front to the fore. Here are a few suggestions for a GM interested in running this system:

• Between sessions, write more dilemmas than you think you’ll need. You can adjust them on the fly, but the re-rack between weeks can be intense. Call a break while you review your notes.
• Pick dilemmas that will require players to choose between different locations, factions, or approaches.
• If a resource hits 0, make a dilemma about how the community responds to that critical lack.
• If a front’s threat hits 0, make every dilemma about that front. This is how you build towards a “Battle of Five Armies” or a similar setting-shaking event.

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