Worlds Without Harmony
Ideological Conflicts, Unanswerable Questions, and the People Caught Between Them
Some questions have no right answer. How can humans preserve the world without sacrificing progress? What is the proper way for a government to relate to its people? How tough do things need to get before people should prioritize themselves over others?
No one answer satisfies everyone, because the things we want are sometimes mutually exclusive. Camps, factions, and parties organize around answers to these questions, but some people don’t know where they fit in. Worlds Without Harmony is a game about those people, exploring the stances and factions in a conflict, and changing and watching those Factions as they come together and tear apart.
Each game of Worlds Without Harmony revolves around a Tension, a single irreconcilable ideological question. This game contains the following three Tensions:
Natural and Industrial
How can civilization ethically make use of the world while still looking out for itself? Explore this question on an adventure through a world that still teems with spiritual power, focusing on the majesty of nature and the ingenuity of the human spirit.
Liberty and Order
How should a government relate to its citizens? Explore this question in a freshly overturned nation in the Revolutionary era, when the power of oratory carried the day and a single passionate night was all it took to upend the status quo.
Survival and Decency
How much of our humanity can be compromised to live another day? Explore this question under the constant pressure of scarcity in a world where there just isn’t enough to go around and cutthroat competition is matched only by compassionate cooperation.
It also contains guidelines for writing your own Tensions to explore. Worlds Without Harmony is a GMless game for 3-5 players.
Worlds Without Harmony marries large-scale factional conflicts with individual stories of personal discovery. It does so with literal cards and colored string, forming a shifting web of connections and power.
Cost: $10 (PDF), $20 (Softcover)
References and Downloads
The play reference sheets here are available for free.
Here are an array of Quick-Start Worlds built upon pop culture references, framing the core conflicts of Princess Mononoke, Avatar The Last Airbender, the historical French Revolution, Pokemon Black & White, and Mad Max Fury Road in terms of the game’s core Tensions.
Worlds Without Harmony has been played by a couple of podcasts! I was involved with the episode of All My Ideas Are Bad, while I merely provided the game for the Party of One episode (feat. Sean Foer).
