I recently took a little break from playing solo RPGs. On the one hand it was because I was reading a lot of sourcebooks for my next campaign I want to play (more on that in another post), and on the other hand because I felt that my Obsidian setup was a little bit too cumbersome.
I love my Obsidian setup, but it all felt a little bit too overloaded. I coded several small plugins to help me with daily tasks just like my Weather Generator for HârnMaster. I have name generators for hundreds of cultures (historical, contemporary and fantasy), random lists that generate delicious meal destriptions, whole NPC generators that make use of all meaning tables from the Mythic magazines and books. My leaflet maps were full of markers and linked obsidian notes.
It was great but… also meh! Something had to change.
A few months ago I discovered the Lonelog, a notation system to make notes in solo RPGs. Short, intuitive and elegant. I was often asked to provide mechanics and fate rolls in my playthrough summaries, but I never really wrote them down… not even for myself. With Lonelog, this changed already. A typical fate question might look like this:
? Do I hear voices behind the door?
-> Yes (d100=30)
=> I can hear several muffled voice behind the door.Just a short note: The system is perfect, but I still felt the urge, to add a little modification. To me, the notation for Inline Prose (=>) was a bit misleading, because it uses the same markdown symbol like the Consequences (=>) so i changed it to >, that way it will turn into a quote in most markdown editors.
But I didn’t stop there. I want to change the way I play completely, even if it is just for a while. I now have two different options:
- Going completely analogue, writing everything in a notebook with a fountain pen and using a printed character sheet.
- Using the Mythic app exclusively and write everything inside the scene note editor. The logging system of the app is almost identical with the Lonelog system and since the last update, you can also add custom text blocks to the log. When a scene is finished, I just copy the whole log into the scene and start the next one.
I already tested both options and they have their pros and cons. The first reduces the pace of gameplay quite a bit, but it requires some kind of contemplative mindset I think I don’t have. The second option is not that relaxed when it comes to writing longer texts, but it is very convenient because you can play literally everywhere. Just put your character sheet on your phone and use the integrated dice roller when you don’t have physical dice or not the space to roll them.
Regardless of the option I choose, I will still have to use a computer or tablet for my books, because I bought the last RPG print product ages ago.
Given that spring and summer are just around the corner and that I can use the Mythic app in a deckchair on my terrace with one hand (meaning I have one hand free for a glass of wine… lol), I think that I will settle with the app.
This decision is also is aggravated by the fact that I just cleaned all our terraces and driveways with a high-pressure water blaster yesterday, for them to be nice and tidy… aaaaaand I might have hit one or two flowerbeds.
