Player Handbook
How to play BARS Engine
BARS Engine is a quest system for metabolizing emotional charge into real-world action. You do this through four moves — a compass, not a checklist. Most sessions will touch one move deeply rather than all four lightly.
BAR stands for Basic Artifact Resource — the unit of creative and developmental energy in the game. Every charge you capture is a BAR. Every quest you complete is a BAR metabolized.
What success looks like
- →Session 1: you captured one charge and left knowing what this place is for.
- →Session 10: you have used at least two moves and felt something shift in the 321 process.
- →One campaign: you completed a quest end-to-end and contributed to someone else's work.
Stuckness is data, not failure. A player who metabolizes a Roadblock Quest has succeeded at something harder than smooth progress.
The four moves
Wake Up
Notice what is alive in you right now.
Raise awareness. See who is here, what resources exist, what feels charged. You cannot act well from numbness — waking up is the first move. Your Nation shapes how charge feels to you.
You are doing this when: Something feels charged and you stop to name it rather than let it pass.
Capture a charge →Clean Up
Move emotional energy through you.
Unblock what is stuck so you can act from clarity. When charge accumulates without processing, it drives behavior unconsciously. The 321 process metabolizes it. If the charge is heavy, the Emotional First Aid Kit is designed for that.
You are doing this when: You feel too stuck, too reactive, or too flat to act — and you work with that directly rather than bypassing it.
Run the 321 process →Grow Up
Expand your capacity at developmental edges.
Encounter the limit of your current worldview and step through it with effort, not comfort. Quests that ask for this are growth quests — they are supposed to be uncomfortable.
You are doing this when: You are asked to hold a larger perspective than is currently easy — and you stay with it.
Unpack a quest →Show Up
Do the work. Complete quests. Take action.
A quest is not finished when it is captured or planned — it is finished when you move it. Show Up is the move that makes everything else count in the world. Every completed quest earns vibeulons.
You are doing this when: A quest is not just noted or planned but actually moved toward completion.
View your active quests →When you're stuck
Stuckness means something is charged but not moving. That is the Clean Up signal. The fastest path through is the 321 process — not faster thinking, not more planning.
If the charge is intense or heavy, try Emotional First Aid first. It is designed for that threshold.
Your character
Your Nation is your emotional transformation pathway — the lens through which charge moves in you. Your Archetype is your agency pattern — how you move through the world. Neither is a fixed identity; both are frames that make the game's moves more specific to you.
Go deeper
Every concept in this game connects to every other. Pick a thread and follow it.