Setting in a Box

A Setting in a Box (SiaB) is a package of informations meant to allow players of FateLess to explore a rich and deep setting without the need to know it beforehand.
Each box provides three tools:
- a Setting Seed
- a list of Crunchy Bits
- a minimal World Deck



A Setting Seed is a very brief text, usually a page or less, that explains the core concepts of a setting. It should be read aloud during the SetUp stages of any game to get Players on the same page and spark ideas.

The Crunchy Bits are pre-cooked game elements meant to better represent the "official" setting through active play. Some are little more than re-colored and pre-defined game elements, bringing no real change to the basic rules. Others describe additional sub-mechanics, and others still modify how some basic rule of the game actually work. Usually the first kind is the most common, and in general the underlying philosophy is to alter actual game mechanics as little as possible.

The World Deck is a list of "cards" presenting evocative People and Places and Things. You can use them as a bite sized extra-small sourcebook, or as a random generator of interesting stuff. You can use them verbatim or be inspired by any element: the title, the picture, some part of the text, anything that strikes your imagination.

Thanks to the support of my amazing patrEons all present and future SiaBs will be offered here on my website as completely FREE game material!


- Boxes & Other Boxes -
FateLess and Tactical Ops mechanics are pretty different, but also similar in many ways. The Crunchy Bits created for one might not work "out of the box" for the other, but they are a very good starting point to hack the relevant material from one system to the other.