Ordinary World Chart - Stage Directives & Archetype Functions

As I've mentioned a bazillion times, I've been tinkering for a long time with the monomyth structure as a way to solo play. In the past, I posted a list of questions and items for the archetypes and stages of the monomyth. They've been somewhat useful, but I want something that's a bit easier to use as a reference, so I've created a little table to help me with the stages.

Hidden Information, Spontaneous Information and the solo RPG experience

I often make pretty random posts which are more like a way of trying to synthesize things I'm thinking about, or reading about, in my quest for a satisfying solo RPG experience. 

A discussion at the Story Games forum regarding games with "Hidden Information" got me thinking about the opposite concept (spontaneous information/non-existent information) and their relationship to each other. Of course, I'm also interested in their relationship to solo gaming, though I didn't focus specifically on that aspect while participating in that discussion. Here is my attempt to apply some of what I got out of that to solo rpg'ing.

Story structures: template vs map approach?

Just thought I'd share this here, as it was part of a 9Q's discussion on the Mythic GM Yahoo group. One of the members had expressed a reluctance to try the 9Q's because it seemed to him the stories always followed the same formulaic pattern.

I thought it was an interesting observation, though I don't necessarily agree with it. It made me think of the advice Christopher Vogler gives in his book about not thinking of the Monomyth as a step by step guide (if I remember correctly). Advice which I didn't really 'get' as much as I thought, until I saw the results of going against it for myself in my own tinkering with this structure as a gaming aid. 

Anyway, much of my thoughts are in my reply to the fellow member, in the rest of this post. I hope these help.

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

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

Experimenting with game structures

As usual, this is just me daydreaming about mechanisms to make my solo experience closer to the feel I believe an RPG should have. Lots of half baked ideas, etc. I do intend to play with these in actual play...some day.