There you are a month into a campaign, deep in your story. You finally have a group that regularly plays (a rare thing, I know). The tale is being told. Torchlight flickers against damp stone as you descend into the cavern. The air grows heavy. Somewhere ahead, something ancient sleeps.
The party moves carefully. The rogue checks the traps. The ranger readies his bow. The wizard… well, he’s out of spells, but that can’t be helped. You round the bend and there it is. The dragon. It’s massive, terrifying, beautiful. Its breath heaves as it sleeps, its glittering body curled around a pedestal holding a relic of immeasurable power.
You’ve done everything right. Your rolls went your way. The plan worked. You finish the battle, steal the artifact, and escape by the skin of your teeth as cheers break out around the table. It’s a beautiful moment.
But then, you realize something. Something you’ve known for awhile but haven’t yet admitted to yourself. You’ve done this before. The whole thing. The cave, the dragon, even this version of yourself standing there triumphant feels oddly familiar. Was it last year? A decade ago? You can’t recall but you clearly remember this moment.
Different names. Different classes. Different table. But the same story.
This is what happens when the systems we play quietly guide us back into the same grooves, when characters are built from the same repeating choices. And the stories, no matter how lovingly they are told, begin to echo.
This was the moment where LoreFell was born.
My name is Nate Johnson and I’ve been a role player for thirty years. I started when I was only eight years old, when a neighbor of mine invited me to play with him and his mom’s boyfriend. The quest was homebrew, and a simple one… rescue a unicorn stolen by goblins in some ancient ruins.
My character was as much of a noob as I was. The entrance to the dungeons ruins was locked, but he decided it would be wise to kick the door down. I rolled a one and broke my leg. A few “the game is afoot” jokes later and I was done for. Addicted. Forever.
I became the forever game master. I played the modules, ran the games, and eventually wrote my own. I was constantly chasing that moment where the table goes quiet because everyone just realized that something unforgettable just happened. And I had my part in it.
For decades, my family and neighbor friends lived solely within one particular TTRPG system. We played everything it offered. Every combination of class, race, quirky characters we could think of. We experimented endlessly. We were not simply casual players. We were explorers, pushing the boundaries of what the game said we could do.
Then the characters blurred together. The campaigns followed shapes we had seen before, even when we tried not to. We delved deeper into homebrew and told even wilder tales. But even then, the feeling persisted.
One night, after a long session, my brother looked over at me and said something that landed harder than any critical hit ever could.
“I wish this game wasn’t so formulaic.”
When I asked him what he meant, he said that he felt like he could never make a new character. The same races, the same classes, everything felt so boxed in. Even the homebrew felt cookie cut. The rules were telling him how to be creative instead of letting him explore and create something for himself.
“I just can’t seem to come up with anything new,” he said.
And just like that, the forge was lit. We sought to create something all our own. We didn't want to outgrow the games we loved, we wanted to grow up from them. We started brainstorming. It was first just a conversation. But quickly, it became an obsession. Three months of spilling every idea onto the table, and we had our first draft. It was clunky. It was crazy. It was alive. And it was all ours. But we had only begun.
We started to peel back the layers. What if characters weren’t defined by their classes? What if powers didn’t come from leveling paths but by choice? What if the rules didn’t protect the system but instead protected player creativity?
Our first night of playtesting was chaos. I felt sick to my stomach as our violent mess of broken mechanics and wild ideas collided. But underneath it all, something felt alive. My players had a spark in their eyes. They asked questions the rules hadn’t yet answered. And somehow, they made characters that just simply could not exist in our previous system.
We listened. We fine-tuned. We broke things again and again. Even now, a year and a half from the start we are rewriting and fine tuning. Simplifying. We let the players push against the system and watched where it bends. Each time we play, something magical takes place, and it requires zero spell slots.
Our players have tried to build the same characters twice and just simply can’t. The game offers new and exciting evolutions to you, your weapons, your armor, and your companion animals. Players arrive without memory, with a past hidden to them that they discover as they play. Thirty six worlds, layered on top of each other, some not even knowing it. Your characters, the Fell, arrive with a purpose and instinct, with a will to survive. Here we have no classes. Our spells are not locked behind rigid schools. There is no single path to power. Each decision shapes your character and the story and adds to the lore.
LoreFell exists because collaborative storytelling is the absolute most powerful thing that a tabletop role playing game can do. The system is designed so that the players are co-authors to the story, not merely the passengers. Our masters of the game, known as LoreMasters, are only stewards and not gatekeepers. The rules exist to support your story and not to dominate it.
Our game was built on a simple but intentional philosophy: if creativity must work around the mechanics, then the mechanics have failed. Every part of the system exists to support that expression. From character creation to spellcrafting to worldbuilding, the rules are designed to stay out of the way once they have done their job.
And we aren’t done polishing and building. LoreFell thrives on contribution, iteration, and collaboration. We are still in playtesting and will be for a few years yet. But we need writers. We need artists. We need game masters and players. LoreFell needs you to add to its lore, to help shape what we will ultimately become.
This is why we turned to The Adventure Nexus as our portal to seek creative minds. I won’t lie. It may be clunky at first. We are scaling back a lot even now. LoreFell is not yet finished, and it never will be in the traditional sense. The table always knows things the designer doesn’t. When something doesn’t work, it isn’t defended but instead examined. Our goal isn’t endless expansion but careful refinement.
We started LoreFell because we found that something was missing in our games. A system was born where imagination is the law of the land, not an exception granted by a rule. So, whether you’re a veteran role player looking for something different, or a new adventurer seeking your first campaign, hear our invitation.
Come playtest. Come explore. Come break things with us. Whether through LoreFell or through the work The Adventure Nexus is already doing, the goal is similar: stronger tables, more intentional storytelling, and players empowered to contribute.
Take a breath, my fellow storytellers. Roll for luck. May your adventures be weird, epic, and never a shade of dull.
You will find LoreFell exclusively through The Aventure Nexus starting in 2026 with their weekly open playtest sessions, each Friday night at 8pm Mountain Time.
By Nate Johnson of Lorefell
