An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play. If I have a manifesto for gaming, the biggest assertion I want to make is a simple one: of all the marvellous games available for us to enjoy in our spare time, the fantasy roleplaying game has the greatest value as an infinite game. Yesterday, as I was enjoying my current solo expedition into the Wildwood, disaster struck: my main character was brutally killed in a chance encounter with an enraged Wild Boar. His two companions managed to best the beast but, alas, Kellyn perished after being gored. The beast is fuming with ra ..read more

The past four days I have been puttering around with my hobby, playing alone with a favoured old game. It’s a prototypically English thing to putter and I heartily recommend it. For the longest time, I would worry about my roleplaying games. The worlds were not detailed enough, the prep I did was not thorough enough, and the sessions themselves lacked pace. This worry eventually stopped me from playing. I’m a deep fan of theory about these games too. This can lead to paralysis as you spend more time thinking than doing. You worry about the competing opinions of luminaries who dare to publish ..read more

Continuing on from yesterday’s solo actual play post, this completes the first foray in playing from a cold start with Imagine and the Mythic GME 2nd Edition. As before, this is a largely unedited upload of my play notes – make of it what you will. I hope someone enjoys it as much as I did. The pair turn back towards the archway at the north end of the passageway and slowly Delbyth leads the way forward, his light blazing forth from the torch in his right hand… Things are still in their favour but it’s getting creepy. The Chaos Factor is reduced to 2. I make a note of “Stone Giants” on the ch ..read more

I’ve decided to run a new fantasy game with the intention of exploring the Imagine Roleplaying System. To get started, I’m going to try out Mythic GME Second Edition and see what arises from the experience. I am very nervous about playing solo and have decided that uncertainty is the point: we need to play to find out and that includes the question of whether playing solo with a game system I’ve only played a little can work. I’ve decided to record the game as a narrative in third-person but present tense as I hope this will aid with the Otherworld-immersion I am seeking. I have already genera ..read more

The best way to learn a new roleplaying game (or, as in my case, re-learn) is to play with it. Feeling a little low this morning, I decided to double down on learning the Imagine Roleplaying System. Even though I’ve been dabbling for a week or more, the time has come to create a game. To begin, I picked up 7d4 and rolled up a new character. My intent was to create a simple fantasy scenario and populate it with a small group of adventurers. As luck would have it, I got good enough attribute scores to build a Civilised Human Priest. Brother Delbyth is an Acolyte of… a Good-aligned Deity. Yeah ..read more

What if the the term Non-Player Character is a misnomer? If we accept James D’Amato’s assertion that the Game Master is a player at the table too then surely this is the case. Which got me thinking about what an NPC really is all about. This post is me thinking out loud. Playing solo, I create for myself a primary character with which to play. I might even build an entire party of characters who are (for want of a better word) the protagonists of the adventure. But then, because this party faces some opposition, I also get to determine the characters who are antagonistic to that primary group ..read more

I stand on the precipice, the spot that the old tome suggests is the beginning of the path. The chasm falls deep below, the sound of water rushing through the rocks muffled by the thin mist that floats between here and the Wildwood on the other side. I’ve been struggling with a tension in my roleplaying experience between service to the groups I play with and service to my own creative projects. Having aired this tension through the GM’s Journal, I’ve received messages of encouragement. This helped me to lay aside the prep for my group games and pick up something solo instead. A tall gnarled ..read more

Abstraction has dulled our experience of the world. This is a fact which eludes most people but lies at the root of feeling disconnected from everyday living. Much of that abstraction arises from our use of language. The way in which we use language changes our experience of that which we describe. When we generalise is when we also abstract; we move away from the specific of this particular moment and enter into a category of experience. In roleplaying games, and specifically in play wherein we seek to immerse ourselves in the Otherworld, the goal is to speak and be spoken to in-character so ..read more

I’ve mentioned before that I tend to carry 3D6 in my pocket when I am wandering around in life. Over the past week or so, I’ve found myself carrying 4DF as well. What’s going on with that? Fudge Dice (or Fate Dice, as they have come to be known after they got appropriated by that game) have been around in my life since the late 1990s. FUDGE itself, the game system, entered my consciousness in 1996 and has stuck in my consciousness resolutely through all the years. I always loved the descriptive FUDGE ladder – wherein seven levels of ability were rated with words – and the idea of rolling the ..read more

This is a solo actual play write up from in-play notes. As I commented in Monday’s post, I am very much in the mode of exploring a new game’s possibilities but because I enjoy making characters, that’s where I began. This is unedited and may contain minor typos. I sense the world of the game is very magical, highly infused with spirit, and alive with strangeness. Because of this, I turned from Mythras Imperative to Mythras Core Rules over the past day and invested time in reading four chapters: Magic, Folk Magic, Animism, plus Cults and Brotherhoods. Little Fox has been imagined. I would ..read more