Yarn is the working title of a home brew game system we’ve been tinkering with for a few years. It is a middle road between crunchy old school and modern narrative approaches. The main features are familiar to those who’ve played a lot of TTRPGs, but the mix is unique.
Yarn 0.1
Volume I of the Favored is done. Yarn held up well, and I learned a lot. We ran it every other week for the most part, for about 10 months. 18 adventures with no rules modifications.
Yarn 0.2
Now that we’re wrapping my campaign in our shared Traveller setting, I’m shifting to Symbaroum using Yarn rules.
This file is the second major revision, learning from the mass experiment that was the Favored. This is currently being tested.
Update: This is Yarn as of July 2025. Bookmarked and ready for play. I will give the players a few options for genre and setting, or let them use the Imagining from the rules.
Update for August 2025: Mike suggested I consider a published setting for the Yarn 0.2 test. I plan to locate the game in Symbaroum, from Free League . This is the opposite of the Favored, because the fantasy tropes are well-established, albeit with a Swedish spin on them, while the Favored was a home-brew in system and setting. I will wait on Mistrathe Manor for now.
Update for December 2025: Two sessions in to Symbaroum. Added two rules: another character can offer a help die to your feat if they forego their feat for the round; and players can “buy back” trouble from the narrator by playing their drawbacks in interesting and entertaining ways.
Symbaroum is turning out to be a good test for Yarn.