Description from the publisher:

Bhaloidam is a time, a person, a feeling. Bhaloidam is a language, an idea, a place, and a memory. Bhaloidam is a modern expression of three timeless cultural forces: bha to tell, loid to play, and dam the tribe. In other words, Bhaloidam is where Story, Play, and Community come together.

Bhaloidam is an indie tabletop game from Zakelro! that is an open and accessible storytelling platform. With it you'll spin character-driven stories and weave them together with the stories of your friends. You'll exert your influence upon the storyworlds you create together, shaping its future and controlling your characters' destinies as you perform their successes and their failures.

Story

Bhaloidam can be used to build any type of storyworld you and your friends want to explore. Sail the high seas as vicious pirates, uncover inter-dimensional conspiracies as government agents, solve murder mysteries as retired librarians, or scheme for power as members of the Elizabethan court.

Bhaloidam’s rules free you from context-specific actions, so your stories don’t need to revolve around combat, or even conflict. You can find yourself rolling the dice and using the rules to determine the outcome of a conversation, the impact of a musical performance, the success of a cunning plan, or any other action you wish to perform. This works because Bhaloidam provides you with thematic ways of Influencing the world and characters around you, and these Influences can be interpreted differently depending on the needs of the story and of your character.

This empowers a Skein (group of storytellers) to explore deeply personal stories together. And because each Spinner (storyteller) is in complete control of their character, they are encouraged to interpret their failures in ways that advance the story and provide opportunities for character growth.

Play

The rules of Bhaloidam are powerful and flexible, but they are also intuitive enough that new players--young or old--can learn them and start spinning stories within 45 minutes. Through the use of iconic visuals we are even able to represent every game rule you need to remember on the Lifewheel itself. Each storyteller uses one of these colorful gameboards to keep track of their characters’ influence upon the storyworld, and the storyworld’s influence upon their character.

Community

Bhaloidam can serve as a Spinner-only platform, meaning everyone has equal influence upon the story. But it can also serve a more traditional approach, wherein one person takes on the responsibility of creating the storyworld, writing the plot, and acting as final authority on the interpretation of the rules. We call this role the Weaver and encourage you to see this role as a support position rather than an authoritative one, helping the Skein spin the best possible story threads they can and weaving them into a compelling tapestry.

Bhaloidam is also a flexible and scalable platform you can build on. The clear and consistent rules serve as a solid base that you can add to as needed for your storyworld.

Games