This is a totally unauthorized summary of the Wildsea.

The Wildsea is a post-apocalyptic world where an event called “The Verdancy” caused hyper-accelerated plant growth that consumed civilization in days, creating a vast sea of mile-high trees whose canopy now forms the navigable surface of the world. Survivors live on mountaintops and salvaged settlements, sailing ships with chainsaw prows through the branch-and-leaf waves of this dangerous tree-ocean where mutative chemicals, predatory plants, and evolved beasts threaten unwary travelers. In this world of scarcity and salvage, wildsailors brave the rustling waves to trade between settlements, explore ancient ruins, and hunt the creatures of this verdant wilderness while struggling against both the sea's physical dangers and the psychological toll it takes on those who dare to sail it.

The Wildsea uses the Wild Words Engine, a conversation-driven system where players roll 1-6 six-sided dice (built from edges, skills, and advantages) and take the highest result, with 6 being triumph, 4-5 being conflict (success with complications), and 1-3 being disaster. The game centers around tracks - visual progress meters represented by boxes that are marked to show advancement toward goals, dangers, or events - which serve as both mechanical tools and narrative reminders of what characters should be doing. Action rolls are only required when actions are difficult, dangerous, or dramatic, with the system prioritizing natural storytelling flow over mechanical complexity, supported by optional “cutting” mechanics that let players voluntarily increase difficulty for potentially greater impact.

Edges (7 total)

• Grace: Elegance, precision, agility
• Iron: Force, determination, willpower
• Instinct: Sense, intuition, reaction
• Sharps: Logic, wit, planning
• Teeth: Savagery, passion, destruction
• Tides: Exploration, learning, lore
• Veils: Shadows, ciphers, secrecy

Skills (16 total)

• Brace: Defense, hard-headedness, weathering attacks
• Break: Demolition, smashing obstacles, fragments
• Cook: Spices, meals, chemical concoctions
• Delve: Ruins exploration, ancient traps and artifacts
• Flourish: Showmanship, performance, dazzling others
• Hack: Carving through vegetation, clearing paths
• Hunt: Marksmanship, tracking, beast knowledge
• Outwit: Stealth, infiltration, disguise, smooth talking
• Rattle: Mending, crafting temporary gear from salvage
• Scavenge: Finding valuable items, assessing worth
• Sense: Environmental awareness, social insight
• Study: Investigation, pattern recognition, detailed recording
• Sway: Convincing arguments, changing minds
• Tend: Healing, plant cultivation, emotional support
• Vault: Climbing, acrobatics, scaling heights
• Wavewalk: Personal navigation through dangerous wilderness

The Wildsea uses three main play modes: Scenes for immediate dramatic action (exploration, interaction, combat), Montages that condense longer time periods into brief tasks allowing characters to split up and pursue individual goals, and Journeys for ship travel across the dangerous wildsea with helm/watch mechanics and encounter systems. Combat is fluid and conversation-driven with no initiative system, where the narrative spotlight moves naturally between characters, and death is always a narrative choice rather than a mechanical inevitability. The game emphasizes player agency through discovery mechanics (spending charts and whispers to create new locations), resource management (salvage, specimens, whispers, charts), and collaborative storytelling where players can contribute twists and world-building details while the Firefly (game master) maintains final authority.

Characters in the Wildsea are built from three background elements (Bloodline, Origin, Post) and use seven broad Edges (Grace, Iron, Instinct, Sharps, Teeth, Tides, Veils) that add 1d6 to rolls, plus sixteen ranked Skills and multiple Languages that provide both mechanical benefits and cultural knowledge. Aspects are the core of character uniqueness - traits, gear, or companions that provide special abilities and absorb damage through their tracks, with players able to develop, combine, or create custom aspects as characters advance. Characters are driven forward by Drives (personal goals that provide mechanical benefits when pursued) while being dragged down by Mires (psychological degradation from wildsea exposure that impose penalties), with advancement happening through Milestones that fuel project tracks for improving skills, aspects, and other character elements.

Characters are created by combining one Bloodline, one Origin, and one Post. Players can use Quickstart creation (choosing one of each element and following preset kits for balanced characters) or Freeform creation with either Young Gun (limited starting options, high growth potential) or Old Dog (full power level) approaches. Each background element provides specific edges, skills, aspects, resources, drives, and mires that reflect both the mechanical abilities and cultural/narrative context of that choice, with extensive customization possible through aspect development and unique background creation.

Young Gun

• 3 Edges
• 8 Skill/Language ranks (maximum starting rank 2)
• 4 Aspects taken from any bloodlines, origins or posts
• 4 Resources
• 3 Drives and 3 Mires

Old Dog

• 3 Edges
• 15 Skill/Language ranks (maximum starting rank 3)
• 6 Aspects taken from any bloodlines, origins or posts
• 6 Resources
• 3 Drives and 3 Mires

Bloodlines (from left to right in the above picture):

• Ardent: human
• Ektus: cactus
• Gau: mushroom
• Tzelicrae: a hive mind occupying a single body
• Iron Bound: a spirit inhabiting an inanimate object
• Ketra: jellyfish
• Mothryn: moth

Origins:

• Amberclad: survivor from pre-verdancy, frozen in amber and recently thawed.
• Anchored: a spirit anchored to a specific object.
• Ridgeback: raised on solid land, usually the peak of a mountain.
• Rootless: born on a ship.
• Shankling: grew up in a tallshank before taking to the wildseas.
• Spit-Born: grew up in a temporary settlement floating on a spit.

Posts:

• Alchemist: brews potions.
• Char: cooks.
• Corsair: sailor.
• Crash: breaks stuff.
• Dredger: combination fisher and archaeologist.
• Hacker: chops stuff.
• Horizoneer: rogue scholar.
• Hunter: hunts.
• Mesmer: gets high, explores minds.
• Navigator: navigates.
• Rattlehand: engineer.
• Screw: metalworker.
• Slinger: of guns.
• Steep: makes drinks, particularly tea.
• Surgeon: heals people.
• Tempest: zaps stuff.
• Wordbearer: delivers mail.