The core principle of PaqueStone as a game engine is this: you as a player should have vertical and horizontal freedom to play the exact game you want. ##### Vertical Freedom Vertical freedom means that a player can control an individual character infiltrating an enemy hideout, jump into one of their fighter jets and survive in a dogfight, and then escape home in the captured aircraft and continue administering their faction at large, without once needing to switch between different rulesets. In PaqueStone, player characters, vessels, and domains are each operated using the same fundamental mechanics, just on different layers of the game map. If you know how to knife-fight on the combat map as a character, then you know how to fight galleons on the high seas using the tactical map, and you know how to clash with vast space empires using the strategic map. ##### Horizontal Freedom Horizontal freedom means that PaqueStone is not focused on any specific genre or setting, and doesn't implement rules or mechanics that limit gameplay to any one time or place. Skill trees, rather than classes and levels, indicate what an agent is capable of only in broad terms, leaving the GM free to explain the specifics of their world. Players can jump an agent between genres and settings without changing anything on their character sheet, whilst maintaining internal mechanical consistency. As PaqueStone progresses, settings which are directly designed to work with PaqueStone will be created alongside.