Recent content by BenjaminPey

I love the new MM and use it exclusively since this summer. Fast and easy to use monsters, at last! No more crazy tactics you have to come by by yourself in order to get them to be the least bit frightening. They're all straightforward, now. The directly-applied conditions are a must, too...

Then I'm at loss as to why you don't see any roleplaying in solo games. You're responding to inputs, internal and external. You're acting, making decisions in character. You're trying to get immersed in a story. You're trying to get immersed in the head of your character. The only thing missing...

Well, maybe it's not for you, then. But even so, that's a good way to be sure your solo-gaming will be full of surprises. A pbta engine for instance always works great. But anyway, my point is: solo gaming can be (and is) full of surprises. Even when you're following written modules, surprises...

Well, add an element of play in you being in this role and, well... wouldn't you be roleplaying?

By... roleplaying? Being in the head of the characters, making them act as in their shoes, feeling what they feel and playing this all out (albeit or an audience of one?) There's the same kind of inputs as always: in the fiction, or in the mechanics. Let me ask you this: do you think there's no...

Who talked about narrative-based mechanics? Playing to find out is a state of mind, a low-or-no prep, open-minded way to approach the game. There's no mechanics involved.

I would not say that, no.

I don't know how you play RPGs and only answered your question as to how can you be surprised. If you don't like surprises to begin with, well... why did you ask that?

Oracles can surprise you, yes. But so does the fiction. Something is suddenly becoming obvious, something you haven't thought of before, and bam. It's quite common when writing. and even more so with this kind of open-ended fiction where you write -- and play -- to find out.

These can be randomly assigned, or even pre-written in a module you pick up, if you dislike having to choose your own challenges. (For me I think the fictional positioning is often enough to guarantee surprising outcomes, even when not relying on random generators or pre-written stuff. You just...

I'm a writer by trade and I found solo RPGs to be very worthwile. It can produce for me new, fun constraints — a good thing in and of itself. It might help me to leave the too well-trodden roads of my mind and engage with uncomfortable outcomes, at least for a while and sometimes for good. It...

First session done. (First with people, I'd already played some solo games.) For now I'm still in my CoM shoes (which is a very good thing), there hasn't much been much difference, apart from two things: — the biggie: no triggers. That's kinda huge. It feels much more like a trad game without...

I love CoM but totally recognize that they have made some great progress regarding the way they introduce their concepts and present the game. LitM is very much clearer indeed. And I think too that it came from the previous experience. They learnt a lot. BTW, it is rather a mix of PbtA and...

Legend in the Mist specifically, not yet. We launch our campaign next thursday!

I ran Dragon Heist twice, the second time around in reverse. They were Xanathar's goons in charge of retrieving the dragons, which Jarlaxle stole. They had to reverse-engineer the whole heist to understand what happened, under pressure from their crazy boss. It was super fun — and only made...