Playing Guardrail with Chris Knox

Chris Knox will host a session of his story driven table top role playing game Guardrail during the 2025 LIFE is Good Unschooling Conference. There will be room for 6-8 players, but additional copies will be made available for people who would like to run a game themselves.

Guardrail is a tabletop role playing game that is driven by story more than rules. Built in the tradition of the Free Kriegspiel Revolution, we believe that the mechanics should serve the players and the players should serve the story. We do not require players to spend hours prepping before the game, we do not demand they have detailed character backgrounds, or even a full understanding of the rules. Our players don’t control just one character and it’s perfectly reasonable for a player to begin and have no idea how to play. In Guardrail we write as we go and so we learn in the same fashion.

Players answer questions they find in the Storybook to generate the story itself. These questions act as the “guardrails” of our game. They are vague in how they can be answered and ensure that no two stories will ever be told the same way. Guided by a Game Master we call “The Host,” players may discover that the characters they have created and the worlds they have designed may not quite be what they seem.

Guardrail is meant to be accessible to all. It’s for people who have been playing role playing games for years and it’s for first timers as well. It is especially for people who have tried role playing games in the past and either decided it was not for them or had a negative experience. We hope that anyone who sits down to play Guardrail, no matter their background, will love it as much as we do.

We kept the stakes low and the prerequisites non-existent. All we ask is that you come to the game with your imagination and your willingness to tell a story. Because the players are the ones that create their own content, they get to tell the stories they want to hear, with characters that interest them and can relate to. They are their own audience, telling a story that is just for them.

Guardrail is for you.