Twenty Faces
Everything you need to host a night. No experience required.
Written for people who have never touched a twenty-sided die. Read it in ten minutes. Learn it in one. If you can tell a story about your day, you can play this game.
The game itself teaches as you play. This book just makes you the host who already knows.
Chapter one · The idea
One player faces a dramatic moment: a dragon's cave, a heist gone sideways, a king's courtroom. They announce what they're attempting, roll a hidden number that decides how well it goes, and then act out the result without ever saying the number. Everyone else studies the performance and guesses how big it really landed. That's the whole game.
Then you are exactly who this book was written for. Set aside everything you think a "dice game" involves. There is no game master. There are no character sheets, no stat blocks, no math homework, no rules lawyer, and nothing to memorize. Never played Dungeons & Dragons? Perfect. Neither have most tables who play this.
Twenty Faces is closer to charades than to anything with a rulebook this thick usually attached. Except in charades you act out a word. Here, you act out how well something went, and your friends try to read you. The tension isn't lying. It's how hard it is to be read, and how good it feels when someone reads you perfectly.
"d20" is just shorthand for a die with twenty faces, numbered 1 to 20. In this game, one roll decides how big a moment is: 1 is utter ruin, 20 is the stuff of legend.
Chapter two · What you need
Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, nothing to buy. The game runs free in any browser at play.twentyfaces.app, on one shared phone or on everyone's.
Two works. Four to six sings. Eight is glorious chaos. The game adjusts its own length to your headcount.
Pass a single phone around the table, or everyone joins on their own phone with a room code of three die faces. Both are the full game.
A standard night is a tight half hour and change. Pick Quick for a taster or Epic for a saga. You choose at setup.
No reading ahead for your guests, no setup pieces, no cleanup. The app deals everything and walks the table through its first round.
Bigger tables get fewer cards because every card is one full lap of the table: each player takes one turn performing per card. The game suggests the right count automatically. Quick trims it, Epic stretches it, and you can fine-tune by hand.
Two of you? You take turns: one tells, the other reads. The reader banks the read. The teller banks half of it, rounded down, and you both keep the streak bonus, so a dead-on read leads by 3, one off by 2, two off by 1. Full Resonance asks more of a lone reader, so land within 1, not 2. An Oracle's Gambit that hits banks double the exact read: 12, or 24 on the final card. Playing Live, the host can open the GM tab and seat up to four phantom seers in chairs nobody claimed. They read along and keep their own tally. They never touch your Glory and they never take the crown.
Chapter three · The heart of it
Every turn, the player holding the die does these three things. Then the table reads them. Learn this and you have learned the game.
Say out loud what you're going for: the bold attempt, not how it ends. Now the whole table knows what to watch for. When a scene ends on a choice, the app sets out both paths. Pick one and promise it.
"I vault the banquet table and snatch the crown off his head."
Roll the d20 where no one else can see it. Only you know how big it landed: a fumble, a triumph, or anything between.
The screen shows you, and only you, a 6.
Play the scene to match your roll. The table reads the moment, never the number, and every read within 2 banks Glory.
"I clear the table... mostly. My boot catches the gravy boat."
Then comes the part that makes it a game. Everyone else locks in a guess from 1 to 20: how big do they think that hidden roll really was? The die shows. A read dead on banks 3 Glory, one off banks 2, two off banks 1, and the teller banks as much as the best read. Then the next player takes the die.
All five beats repeat for every player around the table. Each scene card is one full lap: when the last player has told, their roll turns the card, and the night moves to the next scene.
Four friends. The Fantasy world. Maya has the die. Step through her turn exactly as the night would play it.
Fantasy · Scene card
Heat rolls out of the cave mouth, and gold runs ankle-deep over the bones of everyone who came before you. Somewhere in the dark, scale slides on scale, slow as a tide. A loose coin rings on stone, and the breathing stops. Two eyes the color of furnace-light open and find the lot of you.
Everyone reads the card. It's Maya's turn to step into it. Nobody knows how her moment will go yet, including her.
Chapter four · The twenty sizes
This is the game's shared language, and it's the same ladder the app shows at the table. Tellers use it to size their performance. Readers use it to decode one. Slide through it.
The version they retell for years. Effortless, impossible, unforgettable.
It lands well. Heads turn. The room takes genuine notice.
It works, cleanly enough. A nod, not a roar. The first real success.
Falls short. Not a disaster, not a win. Something breaks the wrong way.
It goes wrong. Damage done, dignity gone. But you're still upright.
The worst the moment can be. It fails, and it costs you something.
This is not a bluffing game. When you roll a 6, your job is to perform an honest 6: not to fake a 20 and fool the table. The teller and the table are on the same side of a delicate craft. You try to be readable. They try to read you. The game gets richer the better everyone gets at it, and the scoring rewards exactly that.
And you never say the number. Not a wink, not "somewhere in the teens," nothing. The performance is the only clue the table gets. Numbers stay sealed until the reveal.
Chapter five · Glory
Glory ✦ is the game's only score, and reading well is how you earn it. At the reveal, every guess is measured against the secret roll.
The single closest reader also earns the closing seat when the card turns: the honor of telling last on the next scene. If two readers tie for closest, fate breaks the tie: the game crowns one of them itself.
Your Glory as the teller mirrors the sharpest read of your performance. If someone reads you exactly, you both bank 3. A performance clear enough to be read pays the performer. That is the whole deal: the dice decide the moment, but only craft earns the points. At a table of two the teller banks half the read, rounded down, and both keep the streak bonus. A dead-on read leads by 3, one off by 2, two off by 1, and twice that on the final card.
If every reader locks in and all of them land within 2 of the roll, the table resonates: everyone's Glory for the turn doubles and a streak begins. Each turn the streak holds piles an extra +1 on the whole party. A table reading in sync is the highest gear in the game. With two players there is one reader, and that read must land within 1.
Once per game, each player may replace a normal guess with a declared exact call. Hit and you bank 8, and the whole table rings: every other read doubles and the streak climbs. No doubling touches your 8. At a table of two you bank double the exact read instead: 12, or 24 on the final card. Miss and you bank nothing this turn. One seer may call it on a telling. Call it when you are sure.
The last card of the night is where half the Glory sits. Every read and every teller banks twice the Glory there, and Resonance tightens: every read must land within 1, not 2. The app marks it on the card: final scene, all Glory doubled, Resonance within 1. A lead going into the last card is never safe.
Set Maya's secret roll and the table's three reads. Watch the Glory fall exactly as the app would score it.
| Player | Read | Off by | Glory |
|---|
Doubling shown is the first Resonance of a streak. Held streaks add +1 to everyone on top. An Oracle's Gambit that hits banks its caller a flat 8 instead and rings the table. At a table of two it banks double the exact read.
Chapter six · A full night
Here is the whole evening, start to finish. The app walks the table through every one of these steps itself, so nobody needs this memorized. Least of all your guests.
Someone opens play.twentyfaces.app in a browser and taps New Game. First-timers can tap Learn to Play instead for the in-app primer, but you won't need it after this book.
One device passed around, everyone on their own phone, or alone. Chapter eight covers all three. For a first night with friends in one room, either of the first two is perfect.
Twenty worlds come free: Fantasy, Pirates, Heist, Zombies, Detective Noir, Ancient Egypt, and fourteen more. Each brings its own classes, items, and scene cards. Can't decide? Roll the d20 on the world screen and let fate choose. "The die is cast."
Type in everyone's names (2 to 8). The game then suggests a card count for your table size: Quick, Standard, or Epic. For 4 players that's 2, 3, or 5 cards. Remember: one card means every player tells once.
The app deals every player a class and two items from the world, at random. Your Knight with a Lute of Charm is the night's first joke and the story's first thread. Chapter seven explains what they're for.
Before the first scene, the game shows "How a round turns": the same five-beat wheel from chapter three. Anyone can reopen it mid-game from the book icon in the corner, along with the size ladder and the Sage, the in-game tutor.
Scene by scene, lap by lap: call your shot, roll in secret, perform it that big, read, reveal, pass the die. Between cards, the world occasionally interrupts with an Event or a passing sting. Chapter nine has those.
When the last card turns, the player with the most Glory wears the crown. Then the whole table gets judged together: your party's shared performance earns a rank, from a shameful start to legend.
Win or lose alone, you're ranked together, by how much Glory the whole table pulled per telling. Chase the top one as a team.
When the night ends, the game can export a Tale: a printable record of who rolled bold, who read the room, and how the story turned. Proof the night happened, and a reason to play again. You can also forge a character of your own from the title screen and carry it between game nights with a share code.
Chapter seven · Your character
Your character is story fuel, not math. Nothing on these cards adds or subtracts from any roll. They exist to make your shots easier to call and funnier to perform.
Each world has eight classes, and you're dealt one. It's a personality, a costume, and a suggestion all at once. When you call your shot, let your class color it: a Knight charges the dragon, a Bard tries to compliment it into submission.
Fantasy · Class
Talks the party into trouble, then sings them back out.
Charm · Lore · Audacity
Fantasy · Class
Sworn blade and shield wall. Holds the line when others break.
Valor · Heavy Combat · Honor
You're dealt two. Each is a single line with an edge hidden in it, because every item in this game gives with one hand and takes with the other. When it's your telling, you may brandish one and weave it into your shot. How it plays out is up to your roll and your imagination.
Every world swaps in its own eight classes, its own armory of items, and its own deck of scenes, so Pirates plays nothing like Detective Noir, and Cowboys plays nothing like Eldritch Horror. Twenty are free forever. Five more, Space Opera, Mystery, Wasteland, Kingdoms, and Wrestlers, are out now as honest one-time buys. Browse the whole wall of crests.
Chapter eight · Three ways to play
The read is the same in all three. What changes is the shape of the night, and what you play for.
The classic. A night of standalone scenes with friends, no thread between them. You take turns telling, the table reads you, and every read within 2 of the roll banks Glory: 3 dead on, 2 one off, 1 two off. Most Glory wears the crown. This is the game chapters one through seven teach, start to finish. 2 to 8 players, and it runs two ways.
Not scattered scenes but one branching adventure, played as a team, with no personal winner and a single shared fate. Each beat, one of you takes point and the rest read them true, and the size of that read is the steering wheel: read as one and the story turns kindly, misread and it turns on you. There are 125 tales, five for every world. 2 to 8 players, Live or pass-and-play, all free.
Party is a game you win. Story is a tale you survive together.
One player, one die, same skill. In Solo the roles flip: the game hides the roll and performs the moment in prose, and you are the reader. You set your read on a 1-to-20 dial painted with the same six size bands from chapter four. It is a roguelite run, drafted fresh each time, that death itself advances into a growing legend. 1 player, no table, no waiting.
Solo is also a sharpening stone: ten minutes of it makes you noticeably better at reading a live table.
Chapter nine · Between the cards
When a card turns, the night occasionally interrupts itself. The table plays each moment out loud. The app keeps the books: it moves the turn, skips the scene, rolls the open die and moves the Glory a card names. A few cards change how a read scores. The app settles those when the next Adventure ends, and the card names every number. Before the last card of any night of two cards or more, one Event always lands, and its rule holds for the whole final round. The roll you can't see stays sacred. This is everything around it.
Every seat gets its share of the cards. Fate picks who closes the first card, and each card after opens one seat further round the table, so a stake lands on a different teller each time. When a card names the least Glory or the most and seats are tied, fate breaks the tie, the same on every phone. A verdict docks last place only when one player holds it alone. A forfeit card covers every read of the next Adventure, not just the first. And a card never claims a loss the floor stops: a player at 0 has no Glory to lose, and the card says so.
Event
A scarred sell-sword falls in beside you and asks for a cut of the next job. She has the look of someone who's worth it, or someone who's robbed a hundred parties just like yours.
She rides along for the next Adventure. After it resolves, roll the d20 in the open. 10-20: loyal. The round's Glory winner takes +2. Describe how she turned the tide. 1-9: treachery. The winner takes none. Describe her betrayal.
Resolve it at the table. Any Glory change is yours to track: the app keeps its own tally.
An Event is a full interruption: read it aloud, do what it says, argue about it, love it. Some ask for an open roll, some hand out dares, some rearrange who's winning. The app deliberately doesn't enforce them. The table does, together.
"Three days of dead ends later, the file is thicker and the truth is no nearer."
A sting: one passing line between scenes. Say it, feel it, continue.Stings are lighter: a single line of connective tissue, sometimes with a blank the table fills in aloud. A breath between scenes, not a rule.
Chapter ten · Table manners
Everything here keeps the game generous. None of it is enforced by the app, because it doesn't need to be.
The teller's craft is honesty at the rolled size. The table's craft is attention. Nobody is trying to trick anybody. That's what makes a perfect read feel like telepathy.
Shy players are welcome here. "I reach for the crown... and my sleeve catches fire" delivered flat is a complete, readable telling. Nobody has to stand up, do voices, or be theatrical. How you say it carries plenty.
On any middling roll (4 through 17), the teller can privately tap for a Whisper: a one-line nudge like a complication to fold in, or a push to play it bigger. It never reveals the number, and only the teller sees it. Extremes get no help. A 1 and a 20 explain themselves.
A telling should be a moment, not a monologue. Twenty seconds of committed performance beats three minutes of winding up. No clock hurries you, so the table keeps the pace. If a phone goes quiet, two taps move the night past it.
Play events double, skip the streaks, let the youngest player re-roll once a night, whatever your table loves. The app tracks the official tally. Your table owns the truth.
Chapter eleven · Questions
No. Nothing. This game borrows exactly one object from that world, the twenty-sided die, and uses it for something entirely different. There's no game master, no rules to memorize, and no wrong way to perform a moment. If anything, total newcomers are often the best readers at the table.
You have to describe a moment. How theatrically is entirely up to you. One dry sentence with the right amount of wince in it is a great telling. Some of the best players never leave their chair.
Never. Twenty Faces has no bluffing. The teller performs the number they actually rolled, as truly as they can. The challenge, and all the comedy, lives in the gap between what they meant to attempt and how big it actually landed. You're reading a moment, not calling a bluff.
No. The final card counts double: every read and every teller banks twice the Glory there, and Resonance needs every read within 1. A lead going into the last card is never safe.
They both keep the Glory they earned. The game breaks the tie itself and crowns one of them for the closing seat. Fate has the final word.
No. In Live games the table can move past an absent player with two taps, so one sleeping phone never stalls the night. A dropped player rejoins with the room code and reclaims their seat. If someone has left for good, any seated phone can seat them out from the Party tab. In Pass & Play you can hand the teller seat to someone else at any time from the turn screen.
Yes. Live mode is built for it: share the room code, then run any video call alongside so you can watch each other perform. The performances need faces. The game handles everything else.
Comfortably. The rules are learnable in a minute and there's nothing unsavory built into the game. Scenes are dramatic in the campfire sense: dragons, heists, haunted crypts. Pick the world to match the room, and note that kids are frequently terrifying readers of adults.
Nothing you need. The free game is the whole game: twenty worlds, every way to play, every rule in this book, forever, with no ads and no trackers. If your table falls in love, five new worlds are $3 each (or $10 for all five), and a More Everything pack deepens the base twenty with extra items, classes, and scenes. One-time buys, yours for keeps.
A Standard game at 4 players runs 3 cards, which is 12 tellings: roughly 25-35 minutes. Quick fits in a lunch break. Epic is the whole evening. You'll know your table's pace after one night.
Any device with a browser works: iPhone, Android, laptop, tablet, in any mix. Nothing installs, nothing syncs to an account, nobody signs up. Open the link, type a name, play.
Each world scores itself with its own ambient bed, built into the game. It's mood, not mechanics. One tap on the speaker icon silences it.
Chapter twelve · The cheat sheet
Keep this open at the table, or print it and leave it by the snacks. It's the whole game.
Table reference · twentyfaces.app/rulebook
Then everyone else locks a read, 1 to 20, and the die reveals.
Exact 3 · within 1 2 · within 2 1 · further off 0. The single closest read earns the closing seat on the next card (ties: fate picks one). The teller banks the best read's points. At a table of two the teller banks half, rounded down, and both keep the streak bonus.
Everyone locks in and every read lands within 2 (within 1 with two players): all Glory doubles and a streak begins. Each turn it holds adds +1 to the whole party. Broken streaks reset to zero.
Every telling, every Event card and every tap on the board goes on the record, with the phone that made it. If the board and the record ever disagree, the tab says so and lets the table log the difference.
The last card counts double: every read and every teller banks twice the Glory. Resonance there needs every read within 1.
Declare an exact number instead of a normal read. Hit: you bank a flat 8 and the table rings, every other read doubled. At a table of two: double the exact read, 12 or 24 on the final card. Miss: you score 0 this turn. Call it when you are sure.
Each scene card = one telling per player. Last teller's roll turns the card. Play all cards. Most Glory wears the crown, and the party earns its shared rank. Events between cards keep their own score, unless the host turns off Events keep score in the drawer. Stings are played out by hand.
That's the whole book
Pick a world. Roll in secret. Let the table read you. You're the host who already knows.