Mind Games — A Rules-Light Guide to Playing in the Culture

Mind Games is a compact, open, system-agnostic toolkit for running stories inspired by Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels.  It focuses on the top level world-building for running Culture-inspired stories at the levels of Minds, not drones or panhumans.

This booklet is built for collaborative, emergent storytelling. It takes inspiration from games like Microscope, The Primal Order, The Quiet Year, and Paved in Blood; works that invite players to explore worlds together, to create big sweeping histories, quiet human (and non-human) moments, and the strange, unexpected threads that emerge from shared imagination. Mind Games leans into that ethos: the Culture is vast, contradictory, utopian, cynical, playful, and often terrifying. It is best explored together.

If you want a player-focused version, then by all means get in touch. I've been hacking this for a while.

This is an unofficial fan work. No challenge to copyright is intended. If you haven’t read the Culture novels, please do;  they are some of the smartest, boldest, most humane science fiction ever written.

Mind Games is released as free and open content. Hack it, rebuild it, fold it into your favourite system, or spin up your own vast interstellar histories.
After all, the Culture would approve.