All Updates
Every story, chapter, dispatch, and dossier — in order of release.
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Four
Chapter Four There's a particular pride in standing in a crowd of experts and being the only one who's already seen the answer. I'd have enjoyed it more if Nev hadn't been standing right next to me with her arms crossed, wearing the same put-upon look I could feel on my own face.…
System Update: Story Ratings Enabled
Story Ratings Are Live You can now rate any story on integrationera.com. Five stars, right on the story page, and a comment box next to them so your score arrives with a reason attached. Ratings and comments are visible to everyone who reads the site. Submitting a rating requires…
The Soldier Standing Closest
The soldier standing closest when the world changed Meet Sergeant Voss, and the day the Integration began You know the person who gets up when there's work. The one who holds it together on the bad day, who leads when someone has to and carries the weight the rest of the time wit…
GM Modules for Free
Play the Integration Era: Two Free Tabletop Modules Two standalone one-shots, two very different nights at the table. Both free when you join. For a while now, the Integration Era has been something you read. Starting today it's also something you can run. Two tabletop modules ar…
What is a System Apocalypse?
What Is a System Apocalypse? A Newcomer's Guide to the Subgenre A reader's on-ramp for the Integration Era It's an ordinary Tuesday until a box of blue text appears in the air in front of every human being on Earth at the same instant. The message is short. It welcomes you to a S…
GM Resources
Game Modules Standalone modules with simplified rules to allow players to quickly get a feel for role playing in the Integration Era. Signal Break The survey team's last transmission lasted four seconds. Static. Then nothing. Someone has to go in. The system says you're qualified…
Progression Fantasy Without Power Creep
Writing progression fantasy without power creep A craft note on power creep, and the design choices I use to keep the numbers honest. There's a moment in a lot of progression fantasy where the air goes out of it. The hero hits a new tier. The threat scales up to match. That happe…
The Unmapped
The people who let the system count them, and keep the rest The Purists refuse to be measured. There's a quieter movement that takes the system's number without a fight, and worries about what the measuring is slowly turning all of us into. There are people in this world who let …
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Three
Chapter Three What I'd felt outside grew stronger as the lift descended. Harko read off the meters without cracking a joke. Nev kept her eyes on the readout, worried or just unwilling to talk to me. I could have used the conversation. The call from below felt like it was waiting …
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Two
Some doors feel heavier than they did that morning. With a promise to keep and a year of silence behind him, Kes sits his parents down to explain the thing he's never told them — where his anomaly really came from, and what he's quietly become since.
Engagement Criteria - Chapter One
A father watches the dawn and hopes his son will choose a safe, ordinary future. His son, Kes, has spent thirteen months waiting on a sentence the Integration started and never finished — *High Affinity, designation pending* — and getting nothing back. Amid breakfast banter and a swim plan with the girl who's already mapped his life, an overnight survey report surfaces: something three kilometers down that no instrument can read, under ground Kes knows far too well. The colony has no one who can read it. Kes suspects he might — and saying so would cost him a secret he's kept for a year.
The People Who Said No (And Still Have an Overlay)
A deeper look at the Integration Era's Purists — and the one thing none of them can refuse There are people in this world who have looked at the system, understood exactly what it is doing, and decided they will not participate. They don't develop their stats. They don't consult …
If You Loved Dungeon Crawler Carl, He Who Fights With Monsters, or Cradle — Read This
A reader's on-ramp for the Integration Era You finished the last one. The series you were bingeing ran out of pages, or you caught up to the release schedule and now you're waiting like everyone else, and the gap where the book used to be is genuinely uncomfortable. You know the …
Designation Rank vs. Integration Level: Why You Can Be High and Still Unranked
Notes from inside the system, for readers who already speak it Two numbers ride on every overlay in the Integration Era, and people who don't know better assume they measure the same thing. They don't. One tells you how far someone has come. The other tells you whether they ever …
Meet some characters
Three Kids, One System, and a Number Nobody Asked For Meet the high-schoolers at the far edge of the Integration Era You've probably already been sorted. Smart kid, jock, screwup, the quiet one. Somebody decided, the label stuck, and most days it feels like the matter's closed. N…
LitRPG vs Progression Fantasy
A reader's on-ramp for the Integration Era You've seen the three words used as if they mean the same thing. You've also seen someone get corrected about it, firmly, in a comment thread. Somewhere between those two experiences is a real distinction worth ninety seconds of your tim…
Harko Selt
He would rather be studying. Harko Selt comes along anyway — the friend who says the quiet thing at the right moment, focuses on the mundane, and lands it every time.
Nev Cassler
The one who notices everything. Where the others waver, Nev Cassler is already half a step back with the survey data pulled and the route planned. If Kes is the variance, Nev is the fixed point — and she has been waiting a long time for him to catch up.