Play to (incrementally) find out

There are RPGs that ask you to think of complications, setbacks, plot twists etc. in response to certain results. I've sometimes experienced fatigue with this. It feels difficult to keep coming up with complications, even when the game provides prompts for doing so. I think I've worked out the fatigue problem, in my case, and at the root is the idea of playing to find out.

"Play to find out" is one of those things that I've heard and read so often that I took it for granted that I had internalised it when actually, I don't think I had.

At first impression, "play to find out" means "don't plot out a complicated story before the game starts". But there's a risk that you take that advice and focus on the timing element. So, during play, you get to a moment when you're asked to introduce a narrative element, and you start plotting something complicated. You may think you're still playing to find out, because the complicated plot you are devising is being added during play rather than before it.

I think this interpretation can easily lead to fatigue. I've done this, and essentially it is taking the challenging work of plotting a story and moving it from the low pressure context of prep to the higher pressure context of in-game improv.

A fuller interpretation of "play to find out" is freeing and less likely to cause fatigue. At those moments when you need to introduce a complication, you don't need to approach it as if you are writing a story, where disparate threads are tied together in a satisfying way. You just need an incremental change. And you don't need to understand what that change means yet, because you'll play to find out.

Here's an example. I was playing a solo game where my character was tracking a thief who had taken something valuable. At the outset I didn't define what the valuable thing was, or any details about the thief. That all sounds reasonable from the perspective of playing to find out. My character entered a building during the pursuit and I rolled a result that prompted a new story element. I then did the work of defining the faction that had hired the thief, and some detail on what was stolen and what they want it for.

That was just traditional prep, moved from before the session to during it. It's a lot of decision making and consideration to be prompted by one die roll.

Consider this alternative: The character pursues the thief into a building and there is a complication. The complication is "you hear them talking to someone else". That's an incremental change that ultimately may lead to the same plot, but it's mentally easier and it is more playable. The PC now has choices about confronting the other characters or waiting to assess who they are first. Instead of thinking about information unknown to the PC, I'm just presenting them with the next thing they are aware of.

The writerly instinct may say "Yeah, but I'll still need to come up with who that other person is. Why not do it now?" Not necessarily. Maybe the PC will think they are outnumbered and retreat. Maybe they'll go in guns blazing and this new character won't last long enough to do anything. Maybe the pursued thief is just playing a recording, Home Alone style, to make it seem like they have reinforcements. Play to find out!

The other type of fatigue that can arise here is a kind of repetitive distortion and twisting of the story itself. If you introduce an elaborate narrative element every time you roll a complication - new characters, factions, plot twists - then the result is a story that becomes so twisted that it's like a worn piece of metal ready to snap. Incremental changes or hints at new circumstances, are far better at maintaining the integrity of the story.

The writerly instinct may pop up again now and say "Yeah, but eventually you have to do some work of tying things together." Yes, I think so too. But (I hope) the longer you hold off on "writing to find out" the more pieces will have fallen into place. The mental energy required to complete the puzzle should be lower. Remember, I'm not trying to solve the problem of how to write the best story, but rather the problem of how to spend mental energy while playing a game.

One more example that I think is useful is from the Ironsworn move Pay the Price. The move gives you the options of suffering the most obvious negative outcome, rolling to choose between two negative outcomes, or rolling on a d100 table to choose the outcome. In the past,  I tended to shy away from the first option of the most obvious negative outcome. It seemed like the lazy option with the less twisty and interesting outcome. And, I suppose, it is that. But sometimes lazy and less twisty means things progress smoothly.

At some point, when you're always reaching for the more challenging answer to a question, you've got to ask who is actually Paying the Price. Ahhhh.

Mythic Bastionland - Knotte - Session 6

This is the sixth session of my Mythic Bastionland campaign. At the start of the episode I mention a second Mythic Bastionland podcast which I am co-hosting. It's called The Smiling Fox and you can subscribe here:

📡 RSS feed
🍎 Apple Podcasts
▶️ YouTube
🎵 Spotify

Meanwhile, Knotte, Maldita, and Dorka ascend Broken Peak in their hunt for the vulture. As in the previous epsiode, this takes place at the Site which I have shared here.

The recording is here and you can subscribe to the podcast feed through one of the links here.

Music credits:
'Echoes Of Home', 'The Distant Sun', 'Meanwhile', and 'The Fury' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/
'Trauma' and 'City Quest'  by PrismaticNoiseProject, used with permission.
'Ancient Rite' and 'Drums of the Deep' by Kevin MacLeod - released under CC-BY 4.0. https://incompetech.com/
'Phantoms of War' by Brian Vaughan, used with permission.

Sound effects:
Wind (Artificial) by freesound_community https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/wind-artificial-18750/.

Timings:
00:00 Intro and The Smiling Fox
01:15 Recap
02:45 Ascending Broken Peak
14:38 A vision at camp
27:33 Lair in the mountain
33:08 Dorka's tale
38:58 To the monastery
48:44 A meeting
01:01:43 The hunt
01:23:00 Outro

Solo RPG Day 2025

Today is the first Solo RPG Day!

I've had a great time with solo play this year, so I wanted to make a small contribution to the day. My main solo game is the Mythic Bastionland one that I'm sharing on my podcast (episode 6 is nearly ready!), but recently I've been trying to make time for a private solo game. I love Starforged and a sci-fi game is a nice contrast to other stuff I'm playing, so that's what I settled on.

What I want to share is the approach I've taken to journaling this one.

A photo of 2 d10s and a d6 on my notebook, with some nearly illegible handwriting.

Journaling can be a stumbling block for playing solo. There are a lot of different approaches, none universally right or wrong, but I'll share something that has been working for me.

I'm thinking of my own memory as being the main artifact of play, rather than the words written down in the journal. A fragment like "Bustling; silent alcove" is enough to remind me of a location in a busy spaceport, and the private conversation that happened under the protection of a sound-dampening force field. I'm not trying to create a document that I could show to someone else to convey the events or feeling of the game, I'm just trying to capture enough so that the next time I play I will remember enough to jump back in. Maybe in a year I'll look at this and find it incomprehensible. But during that year I'll probably have played more than if I was writing more verbosely.

The lines in the journal begin with symbols which, for me, help with a bit of structure, to constrain my writing:

- A dash indicates an action taken by my character.

. A dot indicates some detail about the world.

+ A plus is something new injected by the game system (the resolution of an action, decrease of resources, etc.)

O A circle with a little line under it (like a head on a neck) is for introducing a new NPC.

That's all I have so far. Maybe I'll add more symbols as I need them.

Here's an example from the start of my second session:

+ Vignette: unrelated situations connected. Election & Unisphere. Governor brought them in. Info control & hack opponents.

O Gov. Spatz. regal attire. Pet panther. Discussing w/ aide.

. [μ=5] Seon, stakeout. Sees Unisphere coming and going.

- Identify Unisphere activity, by watching.

+ [μ=7] (Advance, Pride). Jade escaped with an item. Unisphere want to use it.

. Seon picks up, directional mic, a Unisphere agent mention Jade. They head on & Seon follows.

I don't expect that to make sense to anyone other than me, but for me it triggers a fairly clear memory of a scene from my game. The journal feels like a tool, and not an intrusive one, rather than being the focus of play.

As I said, there's no right or wrong way to do this. There are people out there writing novels fueled by Starforged play and that is very cool.

Anyway, happy solo RPG day!

Wanderlust

I'm thinking about making a game that focuses on traveling between places, and the end state of the game (or of one PC) is the PC settling down and ending their journey.

The mechanic I'm currently considering is to have a character attribute called wanderlust. It has a value between 1 and 20. When you roll equal or under (d20), you are content to travel onward. If you roll greater, then you have a connection to this place, and traveling onward is affected.

Rather than tracking this with a number alone, I'm thinking of drawing 20 cards (standard playing cards, face down). The player holding this hand has a tactile representation of their character's desire to travel. 20 cards feel substantial. As the hand is diminished, I would hope that it feels significant. The character is visibly coming to the end of their journey.

My thought is to have a "push your luck" feel to the journey. Engaging with a location means playing a card and diminishing your wanderlust. When you later plan to leave, there's a possibility that your interest in the place will hold you back.

The cards come into play as prompts for new aspects of locations. I'll need to write some tables for handling this part. For example, 8 of Clubs could give the prompt "Their history is based on a lie". If you want to learn more about a place, or significantly impact the place, you have to spend more cards.

When you fail a wanderlust roll, it means you have a newfound connection to this place and you hesitate to leave. I'm thinking of a checklist you can use to resolve that and move on. If you run out of items to check, then you have no choice but to stay in the location. The checklist could be something like this:

• Take a memento with you, to remind you of this place. 
• Leave something you cherish in this place. 
• A companion from this place joins you for the onward journey.
• Make a promise to someone who lives here.

And so on...

With a wanderlust that can only be reduced, it would limit the play time. If you wanted to extend it, you could have events that allow you to recover wanderlust - it could be something as simple as draw d4 cards when you travel onward. Or perhaps it would be linked to encountering wondrous things on the journey which inspire you to continue.

To summarize:

1. During character creation, set the wanderlust attribute between 1 and 20. A dedicated traveler can begin with 20.
2. Draw a number of cards (face down), equal to the wanderlust score.
3. When taking an action that shows personal interest in a place (investigating, protecting, challenging), turn over a card and resolve the associated prompt. The card is discarded and the wanderlust attribute is reduced by 1.
4. When deciding whether to leave, roll d20 versus wanderlust. Equal or under is a success and travel can proceed without issue.
5. On a failure of the wanderlust roll, either end your journey in this place, or check one of the unchecked prompts for connections to places you have visited.
6. Optionally, recover your wanderlust when you travel onward.

I have a little more in mind for the game this might fit into, but it might also make sense as a MOSAIC Strict text that could be used in different games.

My idea for Mythic Bastion-Jam

A Mythic Bastionland game jam will be launching soon on itch.

My enthusiasm for game jams tends to exceed my follow-through, but just to put something into the ether, this is what I have in mind.

A mini-game for advancing time between Seasons and Ages

This isn't something that I think is needed. The rules for advancing time are simple, clear, and work well. I'm just exploring the idea of switching gameplay styles briefly, and the gaps between Seasons and Ages might be a nice place for that. Plus, everyone gets a bonus character!

When advancing time by a Season or Age, everyone (players and referee) will play in a GMless mini-game, inspired by Wanderhome. Everyone takes on the role of a storyteller or chronicler who lives in the realm. The goal is to collaboratively give a little more detail to events in the realm. Each chronicler has opportunities to add to the narrative - "I met a farmer who was saved by the company..." Maybe some lesser consequences of the Company's actions can be fleshed out.

This isn't a replacement for the existing rules (players still need to choose pursuits for their knights, and the group still needs to find out how Unresolved Situations progress. It is just a way to add some additional gameplay and roleplay into that framework.

Some things I would want to include, if I get around to doing this:

• Inspired by Wanderhome, define actions that allow you to gain a token or spend a token. 
• Define traits ("things you can always do" from Wanderhome) for each chronicler. Maybe (eek) d72 of them?
• Define places that the chroniclers may come together to discuss the changes in the Season / Age.
• A gentle mechanic for protecting elements where the group doesn't want to share complete narrative control - the Referee may have something in mind for some drama in a holding, for example, or a player may not want their knight dragged into some scandal.
  
• Maybe something about the idea of unreliable narrators. The meeting of these chroniclers may not reveal the factual history of the realm, but just their version of it. (And the realm can be pretty hard to pin down anyway.)

That's it for now, but I hope to return to this.

Broken Peak: Episodes 4 and 5

Before getting into the episode notes, I'll just say something quick about actual plays in general. I've listened to a lot of them, and my main reason for doing so, is that I am trying to learn about a game I don't know. Sometimes (and it's quite pleasant when it happens) I'll also get drawn into the story and I'll stick with it to see what happens.

When I started making a Mythic Bastionland actual play, I tried to show something different in each episode. This is the kind of thing that would appeal to me as a listener.

• Episode 1 has character creation, wilderness travel (including omens from myths), and combat.
  
• Episode 2 has the creation of a holding and some character interaction in the holding. It ends with an encounter with a seer.
• Episode 3 has a duel.
• Episode 4 has the creation of a site (an adventure location).
• Episode 5 shows the rules for advancing time by a season, a return to the wilderness, and has exploration of the site from episode 4.

(You can subscribe in various ways here, to find those episodes.)

Direct downloads: episode 4 and episode 5.

I decided to release episodes 4 and 5 together, because episode 4 may not be satisfying for listeners who are looking for story progression.

I've also created an itch page for the adventure site. You can find that here. The main points of designing this are covered in episode 4, but I did tinker with it afterwards and made some more improvements.

I've included the latest map below, showing Knotte's progress through the realm.

Episode 6 probably won't be following that pattern of trying to show any particular feature of the game (though there is plenty more to dig into!). At this point I just want to see what happens to Knotte and Maldita for awhile 🙂

 

The other type of mail

In Mythic Bastionland, knights roam around the wilderness, seeking the myths. When they want the major news of the realm, they can return to a holding. But is there another way to stay updated?

This is a homebrew rule for using carrier pigeons to communicate with holdings. The company travel with a pigeon, trained to fly to a holding of your choice, and return to you.

When you want to send a message or ask for news, count the number of hexes to the holding. Roll that number of d6s.

Speed: How many 1s were rolled?

• 0 The pigeon returns on the next day. 
• 1 The pigeon returns d4 days later.
• 2 The pigeon flies to the wrong holding and returns d6 days later. 
• 3 The pigeon never returns.

Quality: What is the highest number rolled? 

• 1-3 The information returned is incomplete.
• 4-5 The information is complete.
• 6 The expected information comes, along with some additional news.

Does this make sense? It seems logical that a greater distance would increase the risk to the pigeon. Why should the information quality improve over a greater distance? I'm imagining the holding's postmaster (pigeon master?) being overworked and having little regard for mail from people who are within a day or two's ride. They scribble down a message and think it's good enough. Messages from greater distances are taken more seriously.