Playing the Game

Playing the Game

How-to. For players. You have a character and a Novel is active. Everything on this page is something you do by talking — the AI maps your intent to the right tool.

What makes this different

In most AI RPGs, the AI decides if you hit. In Holonovel, the dice decide — and show their work. The engine enforces every rule. The AI narrates the outcome. You get real mechanics with natural-language input. No commands to memorize. No drift. No forgetting.

Badges and characters

Holonovel has four badges — Player, Game Master, Observer, and Editor. Badges are server-enforced roles that control what tools you see and what the AI narrates. See Badges for the full explanation.

You create characters step-by-step or in a single call, store them permanently in the roster, and set personality and voice examples that control how the AI portrays you. See Character Creation for the full tutorial.

Dice

Every roll shows its work. You see the die faces, the modifiers, the target.

"Make a Dexterity save to dodge the trap." "Roll a Stealth check to sneak past the guards." "Attack the ogre with my longsword."

The AI translates your intent into the right roll. Advantage flips two dice. Critical hits double damage. RNG is seeded — the same seed with the same input always produces the same result. Dispute an outcome, replay it, get the same result. The AI narrates. The dice decide.

Saving throws, skill checks, and weapon attacks all follow the same pattern: you describe what you're doing, the AI picks the right tool and reports the outcome with full transparency.

The engine also validates narration before you see it — if the AI tries to describe a mechanically impossible outcome (Fireball dealing too much damage, a spell being cast without a slot), it's rejected with a corrective suggestion. You never see the invalid narration.

Source: spec §5.1 (REQ-003 — roll transparency, REQ-312 — pre-narration validation), README.md §2 (Dice).

Action suggestions

You don't need to memorize tool names. Describe what you want to do:

"I want to sneak past the guards." "What can I do in combat?"

The AI maps your intent to ruleset-legal tools. Suggestions are context-sensitive — they know the scene type, your conditions, and your badge's visible tools. Your GM briefing also surfaces proactive Available Actions: the most contextually relevant moves given the current scene, filtered by what your character can actually do.

Source: spec §5.3 (REQ-023, REQ-084a), §5.8 (REQ-084), README.md §2 (Action Suggestions).

Looking up rules

The server indexes every rule, spell, monster, class, and piece of equipment in the ruleset. Look them up by name:

"Look up Fireball." "Search the rules for grappling." "What can a level 3 rogue do?"

Every result cites a source page. Full-text search returns match context, ordered by relevance. Canonical lookups include pointers to related sections when the source text cross-references them.

Source: spec §5.1 (REQ-113), §5.2 (REQ-111), §5.3 (REQ-110, REQ-112), §5.8 (REQ-114) — rules access, README.md §2 (Rules Access).

Player signals

You control the game's direction. Send structured signals that persist in the GM's briefing and shape every response until you change them:

"I want things to move faster." (pace) "Make this harder." (difficulty) "Boundary: no body horror." (boundary) "I want more exploration, less combat." (focus)

Five axes: pace, difficulty, tone, focus, and boundary. Each signal carries the value you set and when you last updated it. Signals don't get buried in chat history — they're part of the GM's briefing every turn.

Source: spec §5.6 (REQ-069, REQ-128), README.md §2 (Player Signal).

Knowledge gating

Characters only know what they were present for. If your rogue scouts ahead alone, the rest of the party doesn't learn what they discovered. The engine tracks entity presence per scene. This is enforced by badge gating. See Badges for details.

Source: spec §1 (REQ-307, REQ-308).

Undo and redo

"Undo that."

Every mutation is a snapshot. Undo reverts the last step — 10 levels minimum per badge. Redo puts it back. The undo stack survives server restarts. Mutations clear the redo stack, matching standard undo/redo semantics.

Source: spec §5.6 (REQ-041, REQ-116). README.md §2 (State & Recovery).

See also

• Getting Started — setup and first session
• Badges — the four badges explained
• Character Creation — building your character
• Combat — running combat from the player's side
• Game Mastering — the other side of the screen
• FAQ — common issues

Last updated: 2026-10-12.