Philosophy & Ethos

What We Believe

Netghosts: Infinite Worlds wasn't designed in a vacuum. Every rule, every mechanic, every card you play exists to serve a vision of what tabletop roleplaying can be when narrative and gameplay become inseparable.

This page isn't about the specific mechanics—that's what the rest of the wiki is for. This is about why the game works the way it does, and what we're trying to achieve at the table.

The Core Principles

1. Telling Your Story and Playing the Game Are the Same Thing

In too many games, there's a disconnect: you have the "roleplay time" where you act in character and describe what you're doing, and then you have the "mechanics time" where you roll dice and move pieces around. Netghosts rejects that separation.

When you switch cards, you're not just swapping mechanical benefits—you're showing a shift in who your character is in that moment. When you invoke a negative Tag to gain Energy Points, you're not just optimizing resources—you're leaning into your character's flaws because it creates better drama. When your Netghost evolves, you're not just getting a power boost—you're manifesting the emotional intensity of your bond taking a new form.

The game isn't an obstacle between you and the story. The game is how you discover what the story becomes.

2. Your Character Should Feel Real Without Filling Out a Form

Traditional character sheets ask you to quantify everything: Strength 14, Dexterity 16, Persuasion +5. They reduce complex beings to numbers and checkboxes. That approach has its place, but it's not what we wanted here.

In Netghosts, you don't have "Charisma" as a stat. You have Tags like "Former theater kid who still remembers all the manipulation techniques" or "Smile that makes people want to trust me." These aren't just flavor text—they're your actual mechanical capabilities, written in human language that means something.

When you look at your deck of cards, you should see a person, not a spreadsheet. And when someone else looks at your cards, they should understand your character immediately—who they are, what they care about, what they struggle with.

3. Drama Emerges From Systems, Not From Railroads

The Facilitator (GM) in Netghosts doesn't decide when things go wrong for the players. The dice do. The resource economy does. The choices players make do.

Negative Tokens accumulate naturally over play as players roll badly or push themselves too hard. The Facilitator doesn't spend them arbitrarily—they spend them when the story demands escalation, when a reversal would be most dramatic, when the stakes need to feel real. But those tokens had to be earned first. The danger is player-generated.

This creates a specific feeling at the table: collaborative tension. Everyone knows the pressure is building. Everyone can see the Facilitator's token pile growing. And when those tokens finally get spent on a boss transformation or a devastating complication, it doesn't feel unfair. It feels like the inevitable consequence of everything that came before.

4. Choices Should Matter, But Failure Shouldn't Be Boring

When you roll the dice in Netghosts, success means you succeed. Failure means you fail. There are no "success with a cost" or "fail forward" mechanics built into the core resolution. This is deliberate.

But failure isn't a dead end. When you roll 0 Power, you give the Facilitator a Negative Token and mark Potential on your Tags—you're funding future complications and building toward character growth. When you roll negative Power, you also gain a Positive Token. Even your worst moments create opportunities.

The game isn't about softening failure. It's about making failure productive—for the story, for your character, and for the dramatic economy of the session.

5. Evolution Should Feel Like Transformation

Leveling up in Netghosts isn't about incrementing numbers. When your Netghost evolves, it's not "+2 to attack rolls." It's their entire form changing, new capabilities manifesting, the visual representation of your bond growing stronger.

The act of overlaying an evolution card onto your base card has weight. You're spending resources you earned through struggle. You're choosing this moment to push beyond your limits. And mechanically, you're not just getting stronger—you're expanding what your character can do, accessing new Tags and abilities while keeping your foundation intact.

Evolution is transformation. It should feel like one.

What This Game Is NOT

Just as important as what we're trying to do is what we're deliberately not trying to do.

Not a Simulation

Netghosts doesn't care about realism. We care about dramatic truth. The dice represent narrative weight, not physics. A character with "Track star who never gives up" might use that Tag for physical endurance or for pushing through emotional exhaustion—because thematically, they're the same thing.

If you're looking for granular tactical combat with measurement and facing rules, this isn't that game. If you're looking for dramatic showdowns where every move matters and the story writes itself through play, welcome home.

Not About Winning

You can absolutely lose in Netghosts. Characters can be taken out. Missions can fail. Consequences can be permanent. But the game isn't structured as you-versus-the-Facilitator. It's structured as everyone-versus-the-story-we're-creating-together.

The Facilitator has tremendous power through Negative Tokens, but they're not trying to defeat you. They're trying to make your victories meaningful by ensuring you had to fight for them. The best sessions end with everyone exhausted, exhilarated, and already thinking about what comes next.

Not Rules-Light, Not Rules-Heavy

Netghosts sits in a specific space: there are more rules than pure narrative games, but far fewer than tactical simulation games. What rules exist are there to create specific effects—dramatic tension, meaningful choices, natural story beats.

If a rule doesn't serve the story, we don't include it. If a story beat needs mechanical support to feel real, we build that support. The goal isn't "more rules" or "fewer rules." The goal is "the right rules for what we're trying to do."

The Design Philosophy in Practice

So what does all this actually look like at the table?

It means when you're negotiating with a corporate executive, you're not rolling "Persuasion +3." You're looking at your cards, finding the Tags that apply—maybe "My dad worked himself to death for these companies" and "Learned to read people from years of retail"—counting those Tags, rolling dice, and generating Power. The mechanics flow from who your character is.

It means when your Netghost evolves to save you from danger, it's not just a power-up. It's a narrative moment: the desperation, the energy flowing through the soul link, the transformation sequence as their Shell rebuilds itself into something greater. And then you overlay the Super card, stack those Inherits, and suddenly you have access to new capabilities that reflect this evolution.

It means when the Facilitator spends five Negative Tokens to have the enemy boss transform into their true form, everyone at the table knows this didn't happen because the GM felt like being mean. It happened because you all rolled badly at key moments, because the pressure built naturally, because this is the price of the story you've been telling.

The philosophy isn't abstract. It's in every roll, every card swap, every evolution, every token spent. It's the game teaching you how to play it by playing it, revealing what kind of stories it wants to tell through the act of telling them.

What We Ask From You

If you're playtesting Netghosts, we're asking you to engage with the game on its own terms.

Don't try to make it D&D. Don't try to make it Powered by the Apocalypse. Let it be what it is: a game where your character is a deck, where drama flows from resource management, where evolution means transformation.

Play with the systems. Push them. Break them if you can. But play them as designed first, so you know what they're trying to do before you suggest changes.

And most importantly: tell us what works and what doesn't. This is a playtest. Your experience matters. Your confusion matters. Your moments of "holy crap that was incredible" matter.

We're building this together.