From the introduction: Ripples is a 1+ person worldbuilding game, which uses cards to explore a setting from the lens of a single person's influence. That person might be directly influencing big events, or subtly influencing them across time and space in a more indirect, butterfly effect-like way. This person-out approach to history and worldbuilding is meant to help provide a sense of interpersonal legacy that can be lacking when purely placing big events on a timeline.