How often do you engage a randomizer for story needs?

It seems to me that for one to engage in solo roleplaying some sort of random input is needed to direct one's imagination. Without it, the exercise becomes plain creative writing, or storytelling.

Still, engaging a randomizer results in a break in the flow of imagination as you interpret the results. The break in the flow might be short, but it is there. I've found that trying to keep a cohesive feeling to the story sometimes means that the breaks are longer as I try to make sense of some random result in context of what has happened in the story prior to that.

What is your sweet spot in terms of percentages? Do you have any rules of thumb as to when to call upon Randomness?

In your solo roleplaying, how often do you engage your randomizer for story needs?
	Around 10% of the time
	Around 20% of the time
	Around 30% of the time
	Around 40% of the time
	Around 50% of the time
	Around 60% of the time
	Around 70% of the time
	Around 80% of the time
	Around 90% of the time
	More than 90% of the time
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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.

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.