So I have decided to wrap up (well, take a hiatus) from my weekend Ironsworn game to focus on family time. I still am so interested in playing different systems and exploring different ways of story telling. Thus comes along some solo roleplaying. In particular, three things prompted and promoted this desire: I bought the 30th anniversary version of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game by West End Games, I learnt about the Mythic Game Master Emulator and I started to watch Me, Myself and Die!
After a little bit of a nostalgia trip about my second edition Star Wars book (which was sacrificed at the alter of moving to another country) I decided to have a little look at the price of said book online. I learnt that Fantasy Flight Games had recently (2018 or 19 I believe) released the first edition with the source book as a two book set. It arrived quite promptly from Amazon and I was amazed at the quality of the product. Both books are beautiful and I relished the new book scent that wafted off them. The soft finish on the cardboard case felt so premium as well. The rules inside are excellent (for those that may have never played) and quite easy to use. Not pages of modifiers and stats (which I feel the second edition started to get bogged down with). I wanted to play, right away, but how?
Along came the Mythic Game Master Emulator. It is an elegant and easily used system which feels very familiar from my eight months of experience playing Ironsworn both Coop and solo. I love the use of a percentile die with chances for a ‘critical’ yes / no option. It really helps to frame chance in a digestible way. The system will be utilised in my Offworlders game coming up next Thursday to help me be surprised as well as the players and to help cut down on prep time. Having some experience with this type of roleplaying (asking questions to a randomly determined chance) would definitely help get the most out of this system. But for those that don’t have much experience or who really like to see things in action there is…
The YouTube show Me, Myself and Die! makes extensive use of the Mythic GME. I am only three episodes in but not only is the host entertaining, but he uses the Mythic system in a very explicit manner. It isn’t quite a tutorial but if you have had a cursory read through the pdf / book you’ll be able to really make strong connections with how the system can be used. Trevor Devall also has supplementary videos on various supplements he uses to help with the solo RPG experience on his channel as well. Highly recommended for both lovers of live-plays and solo RPG’s alike.
Through the use of these tools, I hope to keep experiencing different systems and types of games that can be hard to get a group together for. I don’t have the pressure and time commitment of being the GM for the group. Some systems I would like to play more of are: WEG Star Wars D6 (1st edition) and some Mini-six (more modern settings). It is also going to be interesting to see how seamlessly I can use the Mythic system in my group GMing to help me be surprised and to cut down on preparation time. Really exciting times!
RPG Downtime 