What’s a bookmark game?

A bookmark game is a game small enough to fit on a bookmark, played alongside the book it's tucked into.

The book is the dice.
The typography is the system.
The reading session is the play loop.

When you set your bookmark on a new page, that page tells you something. The first word might set a tone for a scene. A page full of quotation marks might mean you've walked into a confrontation. A lonely line at the top of a paragraph might mean someone is isolated. You read what's there, mark a tally, jot a word in the margin, or just hold the outcome in your head, and keep reading. The next time you pick the book up, the next page tells you something else.

Bookmark games are designed to share a reader's attention without breaking it. Most of the time, you're just reading the book. Now and then (every page or chapter, session, or even just when the player chooses), the typography prompts you. You respond. You move on. A whole game can play out over the course of finishing one novel.

The format is small by necessity. A bookmark typically has maybe two columns of usable space (although we can get into more complex areas with folding and multiple bookmarks used in tandem later). That constraint is the point: bookmark games are short, light-touch, and ride alongside the reading habit rather than compete with it. They're closer to a daily crossword than a board game.

A system reference document (SRD) for creating bookmark games

Backbone SRD (or simply “Backbone”) is a system that you can use to create your own bookmark games. These are games meant to live on a bookmark and be paired with a book. While this implies that they should be small, once you consider that the book itself can be an extension of the game, or that the words on the page serve as seeds for the mechanics, then a lot more possibilities open up.

Contains:

• An introduction
• Notes on how to use this SRD
• Guiding principles
• Design considerations
  • Pacing
  • Choice and randomness
  • Sentence and paragraph variability
  • Tracking play and progress
• Oracle prompt types
• A LOT of mechanics
• Three game samples
• CC BY 4.0 License