Ever Meet A Game That Just Speaks You?

Don't judge me...

Well, I'm back. Maybe. I guess. The time between Thanksgiving through New Year's/end of January generally suck for me. I tend to put all my projects on hold and generally go into lurker mode/ go dark online during those times, so apologies to anyone finding my digital doodlings interesting.

Speaking of going dark I've been looking over the usual suspects in terms of RPG'ing (all of whom I've discussed previously), considered different things for them, but nothing has been grabbing me.

Somehow, over the weekend, I ended up stumbling over Monsterhearts and giving it a closer look. I'd heard of the game before, but casually dismissed it both because of it's subject matter, and being labeled as a "story game".

Both of these turned out to be a mistake. Taking a closer look at this, it resonated with me, both in terms of theme, and mechanics. Looking at the Giving and Getting Threads on other characters mechanic, putting Conditions on each other and so on, I "got" Story Games in a way I haven't before.

Normally I'm a moderately rules crunch guy, with a very 80's pedigree in terms of actual games I like and styles of play. And even though this one is a very rules lite affair, I really like how it very mechanically codifies social interactions, which is what the game is all about. Plus the idea of a less mission/combat/objective oriented game and one that is more loose, improvised, free form, storytelling and drama oriented is just appealing to me at the moment.

SO, here I am, looking at attempting to run this thing Solo. Madness? Maybe. But as I mentioned in the title, it spoke to me. One thing I've noticed in my Solo RPG career thus far is that I seem to like solving problems to challenges of things that "can't be done" in Solo. Thus, here I am contemplating running a story game that thrives on social dynamics and interaction as a solo. *lol*

I've improvised a few off the cuff scenes, (just picking a couple characters, a setting, a situation and GO), bouncing interactions off my favorite tools for that very thing: The Mythic Game Master Emulator and UNE Universal NPC Emulator and very satisfactory results, so I'm convinced that my mental proof-of-concept on how I'd like to approach this is valid.

In the meantime, I've been furiously scribbling "keyword" style hooks of just ideas, themes, and so on. Gathering Skins and materials. Listening to and reading Actual Plays and Session Reports. Just getting into the "mood".

I have a lot more to say on the subject, but I'll save that for later as I've got the time and opportunity and enthusiasm to do some prep right now!