A rambly update

Even though my blog has been somewhat quiet, I've been busy trying to make concrete some of the  thoughts I've had about a solo rpg'ing structure based on the monomyth. I've  shared previous attempts, which were fun, but did not quite have the results or feel I wanted, so I've been tinkering a lot and play testing-- trying to make it simpler, clearer, more inspiring, and more fun to play (for me). 

And the Liebster Blog Award goes to...

Ricardo, author of the Fantalonia blog was kind enough to nominate me for a Liebster Award. As he does a better job of explaining the award than I can, I'll quote him: "This is a kind of viral/blogger-to-blogger award meant to promote less known blogs (and well, it's nice to give and get some recognition.)"



The Rules:The Rules:

• Copy and paste the award to your blog, linking it to the blog who nominated you.

• Pass the award to your top five blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their blog posts to notify them that they have won the award and list them on your own blog.

• Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you have made someone's day

• There is no obligation to pass this onto anyone but it is nice if you do.

I have all the great RPG blogs I know of both on my blogroll, but also at this page. I wish I could nominate them all, but since I'm only allowed five of them, I'll nominate the ones I think are under-appreciated:

• Battreps, by Aleksandar Šaranac: I have really enjoyed his solo rpg play reports. Those have been both highly entertaining and idea inspiring. Aleksandar has also been a very encouraging participant on my blog's comments, which is always appreciated. 

• At the "Old Dessauer's Table"  by  Steve Turner: Unfortunately Steve has apparently taken his other blog The New Story Board down, but I first found a link to his Mythic GME stories on the Yahoo Mythic group. The stories I got the chance to read, along with sketches, were fun, and always made me want to play solo games. I hope he decides to put them up again. 

• Dad by day, Geek by night by Joshua C: A relatively new solo blog which looks very promising to me. Joshua C posts are great resources for tools in the solo gaming trade. He has even built his own Mythic GME implementation in Python! How hardcore is that?

• Moni's catbox by Moni: I remember this author's posts from the Yahoo Mythic GME group. The blog is sparse, but the few posts that I've read there have been helpful. In particular, check out "Using Mythic with a module" from November 2009.

• Golden Ninja Warrior Chronicles by Jesus Manuel: This blog has absolutely nothing to do with RPGs, but it's one of my favorite resources for finding out the history behind those crazy and infamous Ninja movies that took old obscure 60's and 70's kung-fu movies and spliced them together with new Ninja footage. Some of the most popular of these, often had  Richard Harrison as its star (who turned down a role as The Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's western, "For A Few Dollars"). If you have a geeky but sick sense of  humor like me, you must get acquainted with these movies, and, of course, Jesus Manuel's blog.

Player Character death in a solo game

How do you feel about it? How do you handle it? 

I've seen it work great in some actual plays of dungeon crawls that have been posted on the Yahoo group for Mythic. After a while, I got the impression that all of those dead characters added a backdrop, and a sense of emerging history to the dungeon. 

Still, I try to avoid player character death in my own solo games. Often, I find myself fudging results so that the story can go on, rather than come to an abrupt stop. I'm not worthy enough to kiss Hitchcock’s shoe soles, so I won't even try to pull a trick like he did in Psycho by killing the Heroine early on. 

With that pre-amble, I wanted to share an idea that I've been playing around with. I have been calling it Consequence and Repercussion tokens interchangeably as the mood strikes me, but I think "Pick Your Poison" captures the feel better.  Here’s how it works: 

[Shock] Please help me with premise for a session of Shock rpg

I'm a big fan of Bladerunner and Neuromancer, so this premise is nothing new.

My premise for a session is that in this cyberpunk world there is an agency called Turing Police (mentioned in the Sprawl Saga), which is for detecting and containing (possibly destroying) any emergent self-aware AIs.

I want to play a veteran Turing Police operative whose own mind is trapped inside cyberspace when a renegade AI he was tracking takes over his e-brain. Now he must find a way to stop the AI who took over his body, while evading the same Turing Police agency of which he used to be a part, since he is now a disembodied entity.

Monomyth Structure: Session 13

A Surprise At The Second Flying Citadel 

Monomyth Structure: Session 12

The Fortune Teller (also referred to as the "FT" in shorthand) arrives at the former city-nation of Scandonia, a.k.a The Cursed Battlefield.

Monomyth Structure: Session 11

Eli runs into bad fortune before the adventure really begins.

Mythic GM Emulator - with log window

A member of the Mythic Yahoo Group, who goes by "grant_erswell", created this excellent little html page that allows you to perform Mythic Fate rolls and create Mythic random events. I was playing around with it to add Tom Pigeon's description table, which is very very handy.

Anyway, I got a little carried away and added a text area to act as a log window to capture Fate Chart roll, and event results so that I don't have to type them by hand. I can also use it to write my narration so that I just need to copy/paste the whole thing and save it to a file.

Since not everybody has access to the Yahoo Group-- though you really should! :)-- I'm putting it here so that anyone who wants can use it on the blog, or get the source to put it on their own device.

Enjoy!

Youtube Vid: "Making the most of the Monomyth Structure"

Just passing this along as it's directly related to RPGs.

Monomyth Stages as Mythic Meta-Threads - Template

This is an unfinished "template" for the Monomyth Stages. The basic purpose is to treat the various Stages as "meta-threads" under which the normal Mythic Threads are organized. The questions pertaining to the Monomyth stage  are treated as Mythic Threads to follow as you see fit. Those questions can either be resolved, or used to generate more specific Threads as the story evolves.

As mentioned, the template is unfinished, as not all of the Stages have been fleshed out with questions. Most of the questions were directly lifted from The Writer's Journey, and this Hero's Journey document.

The reason I decided to go with this is that I've already been using the questions in the Writer's Journey to guide me in much of the session, but I wasn't taking advantage of the Mythic list organization, nor was I explicitly or concsiously thinking of the questions as Threads to follow. I find that organizing these as Threads provides me with direction when I'm stuck.

An example how this template is being used can be found here. Note: some of the Threads there have been retrofitted to this structure.

Monomyth Archetypes Cheatsheet

  

Purpose: Look at this cheat sheet of sorts for ideas and direction whenever you are stuck as to where to go with a character. The ideas from here can be fit into one of the Hero’s Journey stages as Mythic threads or Fate questions.

I guess you could also treat this as a Mythic Character List by putting your story's characters under the Archetypes that make sense.

Monomyth: Eli's Story- Mythic Threads

Some of the Threads here have been retrofitted to the structure.

Monomyth structure - Session 10

Eli runs out of options.