News: We’re excited to introduce the new Tableau: Accelerated Core ꩜ Rules 📜, a streamlined edition of our Collaborative Cinematic Storytelling system. As part of our upcoming crowdfunding campaign, we’re also previewing our first Accelerated StorySet 📚, Lovecraft Country: Dark Expeditions 🏕️. Both are available in a convenient “Print-at-Home” format using Avery 10-up business card punch-out paper. Download them both now for free or Name a Fair Price.
You are fellow travelers on the Twilight Road 🛣. Together your journey will take you through choices & transitions, quests & trials. What will you discover on your way? Will you find your destination or return home? Either way, you will arrive changed. These are the stories of the Twilight Road 🛣. Every game session is different, every road, every journey is unique.
Embark on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. Unravel the themes of identity, purpose, and belonging as you navigate The Road filled with choices, challenges, and intriguing characters. Experience a transformative journey filled with choices, challenges, and intriguing characters as you navigate the winding path of Twilight Road 🛣.
Tableau offers cinematic storytelling in 2-3 hours, with no prep or GM required. Composable rules on poker-sized cards provide multiple playsets for versatile gameplay with 2-5 players, ages 14 and up. Explore the opportunities for collaborative storytelling and thrilling cinematic adventures possible with Twilight Road 🛣 and the Tableau Games system.
Available from…
Twilight Road 🛣
Tableau: Twilight Road 🛣 playset is available print-on-demand from 
in three different versions: Cards w/Tuckbox! version contains 72 poker-sized Playset & core cards; Just the Cards! version banded in a plastic wrap without a tuckbox; or a Print-N-Play! PDF version suitable for printing on US Letter-sized card stock and cutting out manually using the cut-lines for use with poker-sized card sleeves.
Video Overview
Discover the rich narratives possible with the Tableau: Twilight Road🛣 layset 🎞 in this detailed 14m video overview!
Overview of Play
There is only rule required for Tableau Games: Tableau Core ꩜ which is described on three poker-sized cards:
After review of these Core ꩜ rules, the players will either choose a pre-defined Playset 🎞 of cards that works well together or combine specific Rules 📜 cards to define the mechanics of collaborative storytelling, Story 📖 cards to describe the elements of the narrative, and optional Character Traits 👤 to create unique and complex characters.
Here is an example of a specific Rule 📜 that might be placed on the table: Drama Tokens 🎭, where the storytellers do not use dice for tension, but instead use a form of good & bad karma to balance the different Moves available to Lead characters. But the storytellers might instead have chosen the Declare 🎭 or the *Push 🎭 card, which uses dice to determine outcomes and is useful for different kinds of stories.
During the game, most selected Rules 📜 will stay on the table, but some will be taken up and held by the storytellers. Typically each storyteller will have four cards in their hand, such as:
A Player Role 🗣, such as The Director 🗣, who is used in GMless-style games, or The Narrator 🗣, who is a storyteller with a unique perspective or a player who has been given narrative authority for a full act or a session. These are the most common Player Roles 🗣, but there are others such as The Spotlight 🗣 or this optional one: The Mapper 🗣, who is used in both Twilight Road 🛣 and Gate Watch 🚪.
A Story 📖 card that gives a storyteller authority over an element in this story. (This one is from Twilight Road 🚪 but could be chosen by the storytellers for any story):
One or more of Character Trait 👤 cards to help define the unique character that a storyteller portrays. This one is Charming, an Approach 🛠 from Twilight Road 🛣 but it can used as a Character Trait 👤 in other stories:
Here is an example of a second Character Trait 👤. This one is a Face 🧑🏼🦲, which it is an archetype associated with a particular type of story. This one is The Runaway 🧑🏼🦲 from Twilight Road 🛣, but like all the other cards, could be used in other Tableau games.
Storytellers can have a huge numbers of options available for play in the game, but they will only use a few during any scene in the story.
Kinds of Twilight Road 🛣 Stories:
Types of Stories
Tableau inspires players to be creative, supporting a nearly infinite variety of potential stories.
While playtesting the Twilight Road 🛣 Playset 🎞, the cards collaboratively selected by storytellers resulted in a wide variety of settings & genres:
- a historical fantasy, where a river journey across the Viking lands of ancient Russian followed the trail of Uncle Ingvar, lost while he was searching for the Silk Road and a lost city and treasure;
- a 90s paranormal fantasy, in which a spring-break car trip led free-spirited students across America, each trying to find a lost icon on Route 66, looking for answers to a secret in their family history.
A game mixing storytelling cards from both Twilight Road 🛣 & Gate Watch 🚪 Playsets 🎞 was:
- a dark historical fantasy, where a water well located in a German farming village at the end of WWII was the only escape from invading Russians, but led the villagers into a perilous journey through the lands of the fae, with no way home.
We’ve found the mechanics of Tableau work well for experienced gamers as well as those who are completely new to collaborative story games. From improv actors to experienced role players, a wide range of people have found the instructions and mechanisms easy to understand and fun to play. The resulting stories were imaginative, the settings and genres intriguing, the play dynamic, and most importantly, all had a satisfying ending in just a couple of hours of play. Tableau is a fun evening’s entertainment.
Inspirational Quotes for Twilight Road 🛣
“It is always darkest before the dawn.” ~ Thomas Fuller
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” ~ Lewis Carroll
“Road movies have always been songs of the doomed, warnings that once you enter the open hinterlands between cities, you’re on your own” ~Michael Atkinson
“Take a walk on the wild side.” ~ Lou Reed
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.” ~ William O. Douglas
“As the world fell, each of us, in our own way, was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy: me or everyone else.” ~ “Mad Max” Rockatansky
“It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air - there’s the rub, the task.” ~ Virgil, Poet
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.” ~ Jack Kerouac
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged.” ~ William O. Douglas
“My paintings always feature trails that dissolve into mysterious areas, patches of light that lead the eye around corners, pathways, open gates, etc.” ~Thomas Kinkade
“Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
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Credits
Written & Designed by: Christopher Allen ChristopherA@DyversHands.com
©2022-23 by Dyvers Hands Productions, LLC. — All Rights Reserved
(no license is granted for redistribution or derivation without permission, however, our goal is CC-BY-SA after a successful Kickstarter stretch goal)
Images © original creators & are Permissively Licensed. More info & image credits at www.DyversHands.com/Tableau
Tableau Games™, Dyvers Hands™, and Twilight Road™ are trademarks of Dyvers Hands Productions LLC.
Creative Contributors: Shannon Appelcline, Aaron Reed
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