What is Beyonder?

Beyonder is a role-playing game: an interactive story you can tell with your friends. In it you take on the role of a character and act freely within a world that the Moderator has created for you. Imagine with us.

How do I get started playing Beyonder?

All you need to play Beyonder is a rulebook, a Bestiary, some dice, and your imagination! (Also friends, but we don’t provide those.)

The first step in a game of Beyonder is creating your character. Whether you’ve played a hundred times before or this is your first RPG, this is a snap: in our rulebook there are options to build your character from the ground up if you want to, but you can also create your character simply by walking through a mini Create-Your-Own-Adventure book. Go through a fun story, and by the end we will have told you exactly what character you have! In five minutes, you’ll be ready to play.

Of course, the remaining factor is your Moderator: you need someone to tell the story as you play. If you’re new players, this should typically be someone with a little more experience. If everyone is new, though, remember that part of the fun of the game is learning it (and messing up) together – the point of the game is to create a world with friends, not to get every rule exactly right. Just have fun and you’re doing it right.

What is Flying NightBear Games? Where did you come from?

Flying NightBear Games is the company we created to publish Beyonder; it’s made up of Robin McEntire, Caleb McEntire, Simon McEntire, and Jordan Campbell (who always just has to be different).

While we formally incorporated the company in 2008, we have been playing Beyonder together since most of the partners were kids – Robin would Moderate the game, creating vast fantasy worlds for Caleb, Simon, and Jacob (his sons), and Jordan (who might as well be his son, after the time we’ve all spent together) to explore. As we continued to play and develop the rules, we realized that we were creating a product that we wanted to share with more than just our friends – we wanted to publish this game. And so FNBGames began.

That’s a cool story and all, but… what exactly is a Flying NightBear?

The Flying NightBear is a creature that sprang full-formed from the minds of several FNBGames partners during a particular rowdy role-playing session. While we can’t get into details here, suffice to say that it involved a poorly planned heist, an unexpected bear, and a less-than-graceful escape.

And where did the name “Beyonder” come from?

This was the name Robin gave to our game: while it began simply as “The Game,” he decided Beyonder conveyed the sense of imagination and stretching of creativity that we want our players to experience.

What are the differences between the two books you sell?

We have two books for sale: a Rulebook and a Bestiary. The Rulebook contains both the information you need to play the game and a lot of history about the world in which Beyonder takes place, in addition to a full-scale map of the Tamarran Continent where most campaigns will be set.

The Bestiary is written as the narrative of an in-game traveler, something like our Darwin. It is called “Imbelnhi’s Bestiary: Being a Traveller’s Account of Our Continent and Her Creatures,” and it contains over 60 fully statted creatures that you can use in your game. It also contains commentary from in-game historians and a wealth of beautiful art.

What kind of people play Beyonder?

All kinds of people play Beyonder! All ages, genders, races, religions, and crunchy versus smooth peanut butter preferences, can play, because at its core Beyonder is simply a way to imagine with friends. The idea for FNBGames began with a family sitting around their dinner table playing a game that brought them closer together. We want as many people as possible to feel that, too. We were careful to write in quick fixes for often-cumbersome projects like creating a character; with our character creation system, someone who’s never played an RPG before could pick up our book, read a short story, and have a character at the end of it. While the rules have great depth for those inclined to explore it, everyone can enjoy spending time around a table with Beyonder.

A guy on the street told me that two of your members were professional fire spinners, another singlehandedly programmed most of your online content, and another was a chef before he went into neurological research. What’s up with that?

Yeah, we’re kind of a big deal.

We are very happy with how diverse the professions in our group are: Robin is a computer scientist, Simon is a self-started marketing consultant who used to spin fire for a living, Caleb is a chef-turned-medical student, and Jordan is a teacher and juggler extraordinaire (and former professional fire spinner). Take a look at our bios section for more detail.

Where can I buy your books? Is there other sweet loot I can buy?

Check out the Store on our website! You’ll find books, PDFs (including game modules), prints of some of the Tamarran creatures, and a poster of the Ten Races.

What are “The Six Energies” and “The Ten Races” that I keep hearing about? Is there some glossary of all the terms in your game I can look at?

You will find a complete glossary of these terms, and more, in the Beyonder Rule Book.

Briefly, though, The Six are the fundamental building blocks of the Beyonder universe. In the same way that our world is governed by gravity, electromagnetism, and the quantum forces, so is the world of Beyonder governed by Emotion, Mental, Physic, Body, Shadow, and Spirit Energies.

The Ten Races is a commonly used term for the ten known sentient races that channel all six of these Energies. See the Races section of our website for more detail on each of the Ten.

I have an idea for a cool monster/city/Power/piece of artwork I want to exist in the Beyonder world. Is there somewhere I can post it, or someone I can send it to?

The heart of Beyonder – and of roleplaying games in general – is collaboration, which is one of the many reasons we love RPGs. We would love to see your creations; send them to submissions@fnbgames.com and we’ll gladly look them over. We’ll even post some pieces on our website!

where can i contact you to convey questions/complaints/adulation?

Go to the Contact link on our website, where you can get in touch and sign up for our mailing list to receive updates on new content, releases, and upcoming games and contests!

You can also email us at info@fnbgames.com. Prefer snail mail? Our mailing address is: Flying NightBear Games, P.O. Box 30129, Elkins Park, PA 19027.