Roleplay, Playmat, and Rules Folio

I've decided to separate the rules from the hookbox into a separate rules folio for a couple reasons.  For one, the game is a bit complex. It feels like it ought to have a bit more room to breath and have examples and clarifications.

The second was that the brevity of the rules meant some players approached the game from a very neutered mechanical angle.  I have seen groups approach the game from a role playing angle and I wanted to honor that style with more than a brief safety tools section that tells you that roleplaying is optional.

In lieu of rules, the hookbox now provides a bit more guidance for approaching the game from a role playing angle.  It doesn't give you prompts exactly, it instead gives the players permission.  The inside of the box doubles as a play area with flavor text to describe the intended context of each component, what the support deck represents, what happens to cards in the reject pile, and what distinguishes the idealist from the stalwart.  It also gives a brief thematic framing of what happens in each act of the game: the setup when the quarrel begins, the conflict when the players take turns, and the resolution when the players end the conflict in one way or another.

I had originally filled the box with prompts for the players to execute if they wanted to use a variant set of rules for roleplaying.  But by the time I had finished it, it felt unsatisfactory to me.  I didn't want the roleplay elements to be forced, and wanted the story to emerge naturally, even at the risk of it not emerging at all.  The interactions between the players were more important to me, but I wanted to give the players enough context that they could derive their motivations and visualize the shape of their conflict without having to lean so hard on their imagination.

That's the hope anyway.  I hope you enjoy the story you discover.