Integrity Engine
The Integrity Engine is a tabletop RPG framework for stories where competence matters, choices carry weight, and character is revealed under pressure.
It powers Open Almond's pressure-driven roleplaying games and is designed for combat, debate, investigation, survival, temptation, and moral conflict without separate subsystems.
Integrity is more than virtue. It is wholeness.
3d8
Core Roll
Trials
Conflict Model
4
Core Actions
4
Human Pillars
One engine for physical, social, mental, and spiritual conflict.
Why Integrity Engine Exists
Rules reward behavior. Integrity Engine is engineered to reward wisdom, adaptation, courage, stewardship, sacrifice, and meaningful agency.
Meaningful stories begin with meaningful decisions.
Pressure does not create character. It reveals it.
The design target
Meaningful Stories
Competence Should Matter
The engine needed preparation to matter, expertise to be noticeable, and exceptional outcomes to remain exceptional. A 3d8 curve gives the table that behavior without adding a new subsystem.
Randomness creates surprises. Character determines outcomes.
Probability by result
Probability by result
Momentum Without Complexity
TN means Target Number. A roll can miss, meet the number, beat it, create Edge at TN + 3, or open into Answered Prayer at TN + 7.
> TN
Outcome 3
You accomplish the goal.
A success resolves the immediate intent cleanly. The fiction moves forward because competence mattered.
Complete the declared aim and advance the Trial.
Pressure Is a Strategic Resource
Pressure measures how adversity changes decision-making. As one Pillar fills, the engine does not command diversification. It makes adaptation the wisest move.
In this example, Strength Pressure makes another Combat defense risky, so the player defends with Awareness instead. Because Awareness is a Mind skill, any failed defense routes strain toward Mind.
How pressure teaches adaptation
Every Challenge Is a Trial
Pressure needs a consistent arena. Trials give combat, debate, investigation, survival, temptation, and spiritual opposition the same procedural backbone.
Every meaningful story is, at its heart, a story about what holds a person together.
One engine loop
Trial
Action
Four Actions Are Enough
The engine keeps the core verbs clear so players can focus on intention, stakes, and consequences instead of remembering a different subsystem for every scene.
Verb 1
Directly engage a challenge: attack, persuade, investigate, repair, treat, restore, overcome an obstacle, or resist.
Verb 2
Change tactical position, posture, zone, approach, concealment, cover, footing, or engagement.
Four Ways to Face Pressure
A single threat can be answered through mercy, conviction, clarity, or embodied sacrifice. The Pillars define what kind of cost a character chooses to bear.
Characters are whole people, not collections of isolated abilities.
Heart is courage for others: mercy, loyalty, leadership, reconciliation, and the willingness to carry relational cost.
Skills
Calm a frightened crowd.
Failure Still Contains Agency
Most games ask for the best defense number. Integrity Engine asks how the character responds, then routes the consequence through that choice.
What you rely on determines what can be wounded.
One attack, four honest defenses
Threat
Keziah is attacked by a swordsman
Parry the blade and risk bodily Harm.
Read the attack early and risk mental strain.
Refuse fear and risk spiritual burden.
A Unified Tactical Language
Most games separate positioning, buffs, debuffs, and status effects. Integrity Engine unifies them into one visible tactical language.
States
Base track
Chosen Postures
Chosen stance
Imposed Conditions
Imposed effect
Competence Becomes Mastery
Skills let characters perform expected tasks consistently. Disciplines unlock exceptional techniques that change how the rules operate, representing mastery, specialization, and remarkable capabilities instead of simple numerical bonuses.
Skills establish competence. Disciplines redefine what that competence can accomplish.
Skills allow characters to engage the world reliably. Disciplines expand the boundaries of the universal actions, allowing experienced characters to accomplish things ordinary skill alone cannot.
Mastery changes positioning, protection, and timing inside the same four actions.
Consequences That Carry Forward
Pressure clears after a Trial. Minor Conditions clear with rest. Major Conditions require specific recovery. Lasting Harm requires recovery checks and persists beyond a single scene.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Heart
Relational strain and emotional closure.
One Engine, Many Worlds
This is proof of flexibility, not a footnote. The same pressure language supports covenant adventure and near-future resistance without making them feel identical.
Scripture-rooted Bronze Age adventure
Covenant identity, courage, and costly trust in an ancient world shaped by Scripture and survival.
Explore Warriors of the CovenantDesign Principles
These principles keep the rules focused, reusable, and accountable to the stories they are meant to serve.
Pressure reveals what comfort conceals.
Rules reward behavior. Integrity Engine is written so the table practices wisdom, adaptation, courage, and stewardship.
The engine cares about what people choose when the clean answer disappears.
A failed roll should move the Trial forward, expose cost, or create a harder truth.
Players choose how they respond to adversity and what kind of strain they risk.
A small set of repeated tools lets the fiction carry more weight.
The same framework can serve combat, survival, debate, investigation, temptation, and spiritual opposition.
Resources / Get Started
Download the current character sheet, open the live digital tool, and follow core rulebook development as the framework moves toward broader release.
Rules tell us what is possible. Stories reveal what matters.
Core Rulebook
In Development
The central rules text for the framework behind Warriors of the Covenant and Legacy of the Remnant.
Core Text
Design framework, core procedures, Trials, Pressure, recovery, and player-facing rules.
In Development
Answers for players, facilitators, and designers trying to understand what the engine is built to do.
The Question Under the Rules
Some ask whether you can win.
Some ask whether you can survive.
Integrity Engine asks: who do you become when the pressure builds?
The Integrity Engine exists to tell stories about whole people facing meaningful pressure.
Meaningful Decisions
Meaningful Consequences
Character Revealed
The engine is built backward from this chain: decisions create consequences, and consequences reveal character.
Click any box to set the current strain. Five filled boxes means that Pillar is at capacity.
Harm
Recovery
Growth
Danger, timing, position, and endurance.
Logic, credibility, pressure, and public stakes.
Clues, terrain, fatigue, and incomplete information.
Terror, conviction, breath, and resolve.
Mercy, truth, patience, and relational cost.
Exposure, scarcity, injury, and morale.
Verb 3
Prepare another character for success. On success, grant Edge. On Edge Success, grant Double Edge.
Verb 4
Respond immediately to a trigger, usually defensively. Protect yourself unless a Discipline expands what is possible.
Lead refugees through panic.
Tell the truth without crushing trust.
Soul is conviction under pressure: worship, conscience, faith, temptation, repentance, and spiritual endurance.
Skills
Stand firm under intimidation.
Discern a false peace.
Refuse despair when the room turns hostile.
Mind is clarity with incomplete information: awareness, knowledge, medicine, precision, planning, and interpretation.
Skills
Read the ambush pattern.
Treat a wound under stress.
Find the missing fact in a negotiation.
Strength is embodied sacrifice: endurance, combat, survival, movement, discipline, and the courage to physically bear cost.
Skills
Hold a doorway.
Cross dangerous terrain.
Carry someone farther than comfort allows.
Protect another and risk relational cost.
Skills & Disciplines
Mastery tools
Tactical mastery is visible in posture, timing, and protection choices that let the table adapt under pressure.
Connected readiness tracks
Base states are clickable until a selected Posture or Condition controls that track. Postures override Conditions on the states they affect.
Exposure
Shielded (+1)
Stability
Anchored (+1)
Mobility
Neutral (0)
Fear causes hesitation and self-preservation.
Secondary Effect
The character cannot voluntarily enter Engaged range with the source of their fear.
Exclusive stance
Stackable complications
Conditions apply immediate State changes and a unique secondary rule. Minor Conditions usually clear between Trials; Major Conditions remain until treated, recovered, or resolved through play.
Minor Conditions
Clear automatically with rest between Trials.
Major Conditions
Remain until treatment, recovery, counsel, restitution, or narrative requirement is satisfied.
Disciplines can alter when actions happen and how success creates follow-through.
Experienced characters can shape the field instead of only acting inside it.
Recovery exists, but it is one part of a wider mastery of cost, risk, and endurance.
Some Disciplines resist, reduce, or prevent complications before they define the scene.
Mastery turns individual reliability into coordinated advantage for the whole group.
Disciplines can reveal openings, change conversations, and widen what the fiction permits.
Soul
Conviction strained by guilt, temptation, or despair.
Mind
Discernment, memory, or focus disrupted.
Strength
Bodily injury and lasting physical cost.
Collapse does not automatically mean death. It means removal from the current Trial, with consequences determined by stakes and fiction.
Near-future Christian dystopia
Resistance, scarcity, surveillance, and community endurance in a world where comfort has a cost.
Explore Legacy of the RemnantThe rules exist to make consequences legible without flattening the fiction.
The best moments are remembered because they ask what kind of person a character is becoming.
A printer-friendly sheet for character creation, system demos, and early table exploration.
Open the live digital character sheet for Integrity Engine character setup and table use.
Companion Resource
A companion card line for Acts of Faith and conviction-driven table prompts.
Explore Hall of FaithEvery good story contains moments that cannot be earned—only received.
Support the Work
Your support helps fund the website, character sheet apps, and Scripture-rooted digital tools that keep the Open Almond ecosystem useful, stable, and growing.
One-time and monthly giving are available through GiveSendGo.
Get studio notes, playtest opportunities, and Integrity Engine release updates.
