From the introduction: Tales of Arcana provides a simple structure for a collaborative storytelling game. The Story Master (SM) leads the narrative while the players use cards representing their characters to affect the story. The text and images on the cards serve to guide storytelling. The players can’t reuse cards until they play most of their hands, so they have to be creative. The ideal number of players is three, though the Story Master can decide to include more. Each game session takes 1 to 3 hours and requires at least 1 six-sided die (d6), which you can find in many board games... Each player creates a character with a hand of six character cards. This represents the character’s narrative DNA. Cards can be drawn at random or drafted. A character hand must include 1 Race card, 1 Class card, 1 Trait card, 1 Armament card, and 2 Ability cards. You can use these cards to recreate classic RPG classes or beloved fictional characters. During play, you might pretend that you are that character, adopting mannerisms or accents, or you might simply describe his or her actions.