All Updates
Every story, chapter, dispatch, and dossier — in order of release.
The Best Military and Squad-based LitRPG (and Where to Start)
A reader's on-ramp for the Integration Era The best squad stories in this genre all run on the same engine: the moment the team should break and doesn't. Someone holds a line they have no business holding. Someone spends themselves so the others get clear. And the system is right…
The Military: One Power that Trusts the Overlay
A field guide to the institution that built itself entirely inside the system's rules, and what that costs the people who live there. Walk onto a military installation and the first thing you notice is that nobody argues with their overlay. Everywhere else in the human sphere, th…
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Six
Chapter Six For a full day the door had gone quiet, and I was the only one on site who knew it could go quiet for good. That fear kept me alert during the repeated debriefings on the surface. "It was all according to plan," I said for the seventh time of the day. Dr. Rao was tryi…
One Codebase, Two Brands
This site and charlieforet.com are the same program Here's something you can't see from where you're standing. integrationera.com and charlieforet.com, my other site, are the same program running on one server, wearing two faces. One codebase, one database, one machine. Different…
You're Reading this on Software I built
The designation quiz you took. The character generator that rolled your stats and told you which Foundation you'd qualify for. The stat screen that ticks up while you read. None of that came out of a box. I wrote it, from scratch. This whole site runs on software I built over the…
Engagement Criteria - Chapter Five
Chapter Five "You didn't promise me anything today," Nev said. We were outside, walking toward the shelter we were sharing with Harko. The researchers' cheers were still ringing in my ears. "I didn't break any promises either." "You should go to school and become a lawyer with th…
The Fringe: Where the Overlay Starts to Lie
A field guide to the ragged edge of the human sphere, and the people who live where the system can't see straight. Cross into the Fringe and the first thing you notice is your own overlay getting a little dishonest. Nothing dramatic. A Signal read comes back a point low, then rig…
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
Two standalone one-shots for 3 to 5 players and a pile of six-sided dice. Signal Break is an investigation inside an Architect ruin, with no monsters in it. Hard Lock is a four-wave holdout on a 90-minute clock, and the blog has a full play-through you can listen to before you ru…
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.