Story Games
In September of last year, I wrote an entry on solo adventure games. Since that time, I've been playing several solo-adventure games, largely in three categories: single-page pick-up games, gamebooks, and a game I'm playing using the Mythic Game Master Emulator.
When I initially began playing solo games, I thought I would spend most of the time playing gamebooks. It turns out that the majority of my time has been spent playing Mythic. Briefly, I do the following:
I've tried, in playing, to steer the characters in a specific direction, only to find that the process of getting them there makes the original goal unattainable. In short, I haven't been able to anticipate the story I'm telling, there is a legitimate element of surprise.
I have learned, in playing, that I'm not very fast at moving through plot twists. I can only handle so much surprise before I have to put the books down and take a break. I'm not sure if this is a skill I should improve on, or whether it is more a signpost on the road to greater perspective. I do occasionally feel stuck in the story, and one of the things Mythic has given me is a methodology for resolving an impasse.
I've mentioned here in the past how wonderful role playing games are for practicing most of the skills a well-rounded human being should posses. In playing solo games, I've also been slowly introducing myself to a world of role playing games that didn't exist when I first started this hobby.
I played D&D for many years, and the stories we crafted and the adventures we had form a significant part of the mythic narratives I brought with me from boyhood. But as a game, it really only appeals to a small fraction of the people I'd like to storyjam with--the intended audience is too narrow. The world, by design, is very black & white. Good guys are good, and they know it, Bad guys are bad and they know it. These days I demand a bit more relevance from my games. Ironically, given the fear inked about D&D over it's history, role-playing games are far, far more real to me than they were growing up. I expect to walk away from a session having learned something.
I've been particularly anxious for Jason Godesky to publish a new version of The Fifth World. I started reading Jason on The Anthropik Network, where his 30 theses distilled human history into a story I found topical and useful to incorporate into my own story. He is now working on a role-playing game focused on bioregional animism. Taking a map of where you live and creating characters whose story is the story of the land and the relationships within it. Inspiring stuff for exploring the mental changes that accompany participation in the environmental movement.
Reading about the process of creating The Fifth World, I've been introduced to the broad category of story games. Story games are the DIY/open source/free culture/anarchist/collaborative portion of role-playing games. These are games without game masters, as conflict resolution is built into the rules and distributed equitably to all players. You aren't given an adventure to play through, but rather a method for co-creating your own narratives. It is a way to discover your own stories, rather than consuming someone else's. A way to eliminate consumer culture as a mode of thinking, which is a prerequisite to eliminating it as a mode of being.
I've really begun to want to play story games with other people, and have generally been looking for pick-up style games that have simple rules. The kind of thing I could have ready to hand should the opportunity present itself. Playing story games alone, I feel compelled to write things down. That is helpful to me after the process, but it interrupts the flow while I'm playing. I haven't yet tried playing a game without writing, but it seems like it would be more fun when there are multiple people to hold the story. I think it would be easier to see in the air in front of you, having someone to bounce it off of.
When I initially began playing solo games, I thought I would spend most of the time playing gamebooks. It turns out that the majority of my time has been spent playing Mythic. Briefly, I do the following:
- I keep two books, my gamebook and my log book. The gamebook includes permanent information about people, places, and things of interest. It is a reference guide for the part of the world and story that is already baked. The log book is a chronology of the story as it is unfolding, as well as meta-level discussion about what each person knows when I needed to do processing to figure out what happens next. In theory, I could get a different log for each game and keep the gamebook as long as I found the world interesting.
- Play the game a scene at a time, answering any questions that come up by using Mythic. In practice, I want the gamebook to contain slower moving and more frequently referenced material while the logbook is faster moving but less permanently relevant. As well, sometimes I feel like world building and sometimes I feel like story telling. Somes scenes go really fast, some take me weeks or a month to figure out.
I've tried, in playing, to steer the characters in a specific direction, only to find that the process of getting them there makes the original goal unattainable. In short, I haven't been able to anticipate the story I'm telling, there is a legitimate element of surprise.
I have learned, in playing, that I'm not very fast at moving through plot twists. I can only handle so much surprise before I have to put the books down and take a break. I'm not sure if this is a skill I should improve on, or whether it is more a signpost on the road to greater perspective. I do occasionally feel stuck in the story, and one of the things Mythic has given me is a methodology for resolving an impasse.
I've mentioned here in the past how wonderful role playing games are for practicing most of the skills a well-rounded human being should posses. In playing solo games, I've also been slowly introducing myself to a world of role playing games that didn't exist when I first started this hobby.
I played D&D for many years, and the stories we crafted and the adventures we had form a significant part of the mythic narratives I brought with me from boyhood. But as a game, it really only appeals to a small fraction of the people I'd like to storyjam with--the intended audience is too narrow. The world, by design, is very black & white. Good guys are good, and they know it, Bad guys are bad and they know it. These days I demand a bit more relevance from my games. Ironically, given the fear inked about D&D over it's history, role-playing games are far, far more real to me than they were growing up. I expect to walk away from a session having learned something.
I've been particularly anxious for Jason Godesky to publish a new version of The Fifth World. I started reading Jason on The Anthropik Network, where his 30 theses distilled human history into a story I found topical and useful to incorporate into my own story. He is now working on a role-playing game focused on bioregional animism. Taking a map of where you live and creating characters whose story is the story of the land and the relationships within it. Inspiring stuff for exploring the mental changes that accompany participation in the environmental movement.
Reading about the process of creating The Fifth World, I've been introduced to the broad category of story games. Story games are the DIY/open source/free culture/anarchist/collaborative portion of role-playing games. These are games without game masters, as conflict resolution is built into the rules and distributed equitably to all players. You aren't given an adventure to play through, but rather a method for co-creating your own narratives. It is a way to discover your own stories, rather than consuming someone else's. A way to eliminate consumer culture as a mode of thinking, which is a prerequisite to eliminating it as a mode of being.
I've really begun to want to play story games with other people, and have generally been looking for pick-up style games that have simple rules. The kind of thing I could have ready to hand should the opportunity present itself. Playing story games alone, I feel compelled to write things down. That is helpful to me after the process, but it interrupts the flow while I'm playing. I haven't yet tried playing a game without writing, but it seems like it would be more fun when there are multiple people to hold the story. I think it would be easier to see in the air in front of you, having someone to bounce it off of.