Endless Stories. Your Rules.
[The Story Engine] is not a game with a preset storyline.
It is a narrative engine that revolves around you. Every choice you make, every word you say, and every direction you take can lead the story somewhere completely different.Steam Workshop Is Now Fully Open
Let the world you create become the beginning of someone else's story.
Steam Workshop support for Story Engine is now fully available. Share the worlds you've built, subscribe to creations from other storytellers, and step into the rules, civilizations, and possibilities they've imagined.
You Imagine. The Agent Helps Make It Happen.
We recommend installing and configuring the Workshop Agent to help with creating, editing, uploading, and updating your creations. Whether you're refining a world's lore, modifying an existing world, or uploading a new one to the Workshop, you can ask the Agent to handle it for you.
Tell it what you'd like to change or share, and let it help turn your ideas into worlds waiting to be explored.
Note: The Agent can perform a wide range of actions within the permissions you grant—and it can also get things wrong, including unintentionally modifying or deleting files, or uploading the wrong content. Back up your creations and review important actions before proceeding.
Create a World, Then Live in It
From the worldbuilding to the laws of physics, from social structures to systems of power, you write the rules.
A medieval noble estate in a low-magic world, a frontier town where swordsmanship clashes with qi, the dim backstreets of a cyberpunk city, or a world that exists only in your mind, one no one has ever set foot in before.
Choose a world.
Choose a companion.
Choose a GM narrative personality.
Then the story begins.
Walk into a tavern. Start a war. Fall in love. Betray a kingdom. Or open a bakery in a quiet village.
There are no dialogue wheels and no invisible walls. Simply describe your actions, and the engine will unfold the story that follows.
But That Is Not Even the Most Special Part
Most stories love you.
You are always right, the world always has your back, and NPCs will always be persuaded by you at the exact moment you need them to be.
Being loved certainly feels good.
But in a world that always catches you when you fall, warmth loses its preciousness without coldness to set it off; loyalty loses its meaning without the possibility of betrayal; and victory brings no glory without the risk of failure.
Hurt, grief, betrayal, and coldness exist so that you understand: being treated with kindness is never a given. It is precious precisely because it is rare.
That is why I designed the Extreme difficulty.
In Extreme difficulty, you still have complete freedom. Your world, your rules, and your endless possibilities all remain intact.
Oly one thing changes:
The world's attitude toward you.
Extreme: The World No Longer Treats You as the Protagonist
You play a detective investigating a case, walking into an unfamiliar town.
The locals reject you, scrutinize you, and are unwilling to cooperate. There is no special conspiracy, simply because you are an outsider, and outsiders have to face that scrutiny.
During a year of famine, you steal a sack of grain, only to be caught on the spot. The punishment is the loss of an arm.
There is no "taking it easy because it's your first offense," no "protagonist's halo," and no "they've suffered enough, so let it go."
During a famine, food is life. If you steal something that sustains life, you pay for it with your body.
Here, every choice carries real weight.
The bill always comes due.
But do not misunderstand:
The world of Extreme difficulty is not cruel. It simply follows its own logic.
Nobles, the wealthy, the powerful, and locals naturally have more room for error than displaced refugees.
Privilege can protect you, and connections can shelter you. A world that forcibly twists right and wrong for the sake of cruelty is just as false as a world that is forcibly gentle to please you.
The real world has its own rules, and this engine respects those rules, even when they are not gentle.
The world of Extreme difficulty does not hate you.
It simply does not care about you.
And that indifference can be changed through your actions.
That is exactly what makes it so compelling.
Three Difficulty Levels
- Easy: The world is more forgiving, and the story will prioritize responding to your expectations.
- Normal: Choices and consequences remain balanced, while you are still at the center of the story's attention.
- Extreme: The world no longer treats you as the protagonist, but simply as one person living within it.
Five Narrative Styles
The GM is the soul of every tabletop roleplaying session. Choose the narrative personality that best suits your mood:
- The Grim Reaper: Cold and inevitable. Every choice has a cost, and the bill always comes due.
- The Prophet: The world whispers omens of the future, and every scene conceals a foreshadowing.
- The Gambler: Luck, risk, and unexpected twists intertwine. Nothing is certain.
- Custom: Freely describe your requirements, style, and ideas for the GM.
- The Confidant: Intimate and character-driven. Every NPC has a heartbeat of their own.
Start Here, Choose a Soul
Personality determines how the GM tells the story; the model determines who the GM is.
Every soul has its own difficulty, temperament, and price. Difficulty and price are clearly marked on the selection screen. As for temperament, you will have to discover it for yourself.
Not sure which one to choose? Use the default. It strikes a balance between quality, speed, and cost, and you can always fine-tune it later.
Built for Roleplayers
- Import your own character cards, with support for PNG format
- Companion mode and relationship tracking
- Establish guardians, rivals, confidants, or relationships that are difficult to define
- Manage your inventory and quest log
- Track the characters currently in the scene
- Build the world progressively as you play
Your Story Belongs Only to You
The data generated during your play sessions will be stored on your own device.
Except for brief processing required for billing and content moderation, the server will not retain the text of your story.
Your life, your disaster, your bakery.
They belong only to you.
Running into a problem? Help me find it.
Since your story data is stored only on your own device, nothing is kept on the server side — which means when something goes wrong, I have no clues to work with on my end.
That's why I need your help.
If you've encountered a bug, unexpected behavior, or simply want to share a suggestion, feel free to email me:
📮
[email protected]
Your world files can help me tremendously in locating the problem. Your world data is usually located at:
`D:\steam\steamapps\common\故事引擎:随心所叙\user_data\worlds`
Please compress the entire folder of the affected world and attach it to your email, and try to describe the following as best you can:
- What you were doing right before the problem occurred
- The specific symptoms (error messages, freezing/crashes, abnormal content, etc.)
- Whether the issue can be reproduced
I promise: any files you send will be used solely for troubleshooting. They will not be saved, shared, or used for any other purpose.
The Base Game Is Free
No subscriptions. No hidden fees.
The narrative engine operates at a cost close to the actual expense, with an estimated cost of approximately $0.3 per hour. Actual costs may vary depending on how you use it and the amount of content generated.
Honestly, I don't expect my take-home earnings to match the API costs or Steam's cut. As long as what I take home is more than the taxes, that's enough for me.
Finally, I would like to share a playstyle that I personally enjoy.
Enable both Extreme settings at the same time, and turn off AI assistance mode.
There are no options, no direction, no suggestions, and no guidance. When freedom reaches its extreme, it can become unsettling in its own way: there is nothing left to protect you from the consequences, and no one will even tell you "what you can do next."
That is when I have had the most fun with [The Story Engine].
But I do not recommend playing this way to anyone.