Questing
- Structured goals with narrative weight and branching resolution.
- Quests arise in an emergent manner, from tensions and characters within the Tapestry; not authored, but discovered.
- No quest markers, minimal tracking. The player must rely on memory, symbol, and intuition. In the spirit of Morrowind’s journal system, but a bit more committed.
Permadeath
- Incarnations are perishable and unique.
- Death is transformation, not failure; it feeds the Eidos system.
- Incarnations may live on through legend, memory, or spiritual resonance.
Procedural Generation
- All Tapestries are procedurally generated.
- Procedural content is influenced by prior playthroughs, Eidos fragments, and narrative entropy.
- Nothing is truly “random”; the player’s past lives ripple forward.
Exploration & Mapping
- Discovery-driven play.
- Players explore physical, narrative, and symbolic terrain.
- Some truths only exist once; maps may shift or deceive.
Build Diversity / Stat Systems
- Variation in player experience and capabilities.
- Builds reflect cultural, ideological, and metaphysical traits, not just stats.
- Some powerful “builds” may be fragile, cursed, or narratively destabilizing.
Lore & World-Building
- Deep, layered, discoverable world design.
- Lore is reactive and recursive; players change the canon.
- No objective world state; every Tapestry is a hypothesis.
Combat, Magic, Alchemy
- Potential for conflict, transformation, and systems of influence.
- These systems are rooted in Eidos; spells as narrative interventions, alchemy as symbolic recombination.
- Combat may not always be “winnable” and might result in metaphysical shifts, not just HP damage.