Our Principles

Games belong to those who play.

A game only truly comes to life when it is owned, shaped, and expanded by its players. The community must have the tools and freedom to create, adapt, and make a game their own. Eterna must grow through the contributions and creativity of those who love it. The core system must be open-source and must always be free. Every spell, weapon, ability, location, and other core element added to the main repository must always be freely available to everyone.

Play must be boundless and welcoming.

Inclusivity and accessibility are non-negotiable. Eterna must be open in every sense - open to interpretation, open to creativity, and open to everyone who wants to play. The rules must always be accessible and free, and the stories must be welcoming to all, regardless of experience or background. Whether you’re a seasoned gamer or new to roleplaying, the game must feel like a space where your ideas and contributions matter.

Creativity deserves reward.

Eterna development must include a bounty system, with community-driven prioritisation, to fund new features, updates, upgrades, artwork, and more. This system must ensure that those who contribute to the evolution of Eterna are acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts.

Secondly, Eterna requires a license that allows the community to build, share, and sell their creations based on the core system while allowing the core system creators to keep their licensing rights.

Finally, we acknowledge the role of AI in filling in the gaps where a human artist or writer can't be found. However, the community must decide how we recognise and treat AI-generated content and use our resources to replace it with the infinitely more valuable contributions of real artists.

Words have Power.

The language of the rules must be as intuitive and evocative as the world they describe. Terms should feel natural in conversation, vivid in play, and meaningful in context. We must avoid a glossary of cold acronyms or clinical shorthand. Instead, mechanics are named to reflect their narrative and emotional weight.

Evocative language is immersive by default: when the words match the fiction, the rules become part of the story. If the mechanics are named well, declaring your action should sound like casting a spell.

The rules of the world are your guide.
The world of the rules is your inspiration.

A game doesn't need a labyrinth of rules to be engaging or meaningful. Instead, it needs a coherent and consistent understanding of the world it inhabits. Eterna's design must be predicated on simple, elegant concepts that form the backbone of gameplay. From these foundational ideas, complex, emergent stories and gameplay will arise naturally.

Cohesive vision is better than mechanical bloat. The core principles must be flexible enough to accommodate new ideas and unexpected situations, allowing creativity to thrive without losing coherence. The craziest stunts may be attempted; the most imaginative spells can be improvised - and the system must tell you exactly how it should work.

Complexity must grow from clarity.

The rules must be simple enough to learn quickly, yet coherent enough to support deep, modular complexity. Every mechanic is built to be expanded - never replaced. You must be able to start with the basics - attacking, defending, using Aura, and navigating The Eternal - and build from there. The core system already includes rules for armour, injury and more, but the same principles must scale smoothly to support everything from sieges to spaceflight, without ever losing coherence.

All roads need maps, not just the warrior’s path.

Too often, roleplaying games give undue focus to combat. Eterna must balance this by ensuring that non-combat interactions are just as engaging, structured, and rewarding. The core rules already include simple but sensible rules for many situations, even those that don't usually get a mention in other TTRPGs. If the guidance you need isn't there, the core principles must make it easy to devise a fair mechanism on the spot. And when you find a good solution for something new, you should be able to add it easily to the core for others to use.

The GM needs tools, not textbooks.

Game Masters are at the heart of the TTRPG, and their role must be a creative joy, not a burdensome task. GMs must have the best tools, both on paper and digitally, as part of the core system. Pen and paper tools remain invaluable, so we must provide intuitive, beautifully designed sheets to make running the game as smooth as possible. At the same time, we know that digital tools can enhance gameplay, so the core system on GitHub must be machine-readable, offering a single source of truth for any digital tools built around it.

Balance should be calculated, not guessed.

Eterna is designed to be simulated, by giving the same statblock format to every entity in the system - from dragons to doorknobs. This is combined with one of the most important parts of the core, a software tool that enables a new feature to be added to the game and simulated a few million times, so that the feature's pros and cons can clearly be seen and optimised for balance. This guarantees that balance is not an arbitrary guess but a calculated, reliable outcome. Whether adding a new spell, weapon, or creature, the system must ensure it fits naturally within the world, maintaining consistency and fairness.

The hero’s journey should be felt, not just told.

Above all, TTRPGs are about collaborative storytelling, and Eterna's rules, tools, and feel must be there to promote epic moments and mythical story arcs. The system must support the highs and lows, the failures and triumphs that shape a hero. Character progression itself must build in moments of narrative transition, giving every player an arc that feels earned and meaningful. Instead of just narrating grand feats, Eterna must encourage players to experience their characters' struggles and growth, making each journey deeply personal and immersive.

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