The Loom SRD

The Loom System is a tabletop role-playing game system that replaces dice and the Game Master with player-driven, archetypal storytelling. The Loom empowers players through shared and individual playbooks, and pushes you to ask the question: what does a game look like where progression is mechanically irrelevant?

The Loom System Reference Document is a toolkit that contains everything you need to design a game that is Woven on the Loom. It is a box of toys, spilled out onto the table. It is a belt of tools, unrolled and dangling in the air. It is a hook on the end of an invisible thread, splashing into the water. It is as much yours as it is mine, and over time, more so.

You can always access the Loom SRD on our website, free of charge.

Core Principles

1. Playbook-Based Mechanics: The game's structure is driven by the capabilities and limitations outlined in these two types of playbooks, which provide a framework for gameplay.
2. Diceless Play: The outcomes and story progress from player choices, negotiation, and the interplay between Character and Domain Playbooks.
3. Collaborative Storytelling: Players share responsibilities for building the world and advancing the story, with no single Game Master to guide or dictate the narrative.
4. Thematic Contrasts: Character Playbooks and their associated Domain Playbooks offer contrasting perspectives, creating dynamic narrative tension.
5. Abstraction of Concepts: Language in the Loom is intended to be simultaneously interpretable as literal and as metaphorical. A big part of the game is thinking laterally about the way moves are written and enacted, and abstracting moves to gain surprising and unexpected flexibility in a scene.

In This Document

• Playbook frameworks
• Rules skeletons
• System interactions
• Functional examples
• Third-Party License
• ...more?

Cover art by Sebastian Fazio, liaison of Houndsman House