Hey, I put up a sort-of-AP of Swords Without Master. It was fun but definitely needs a bit more tweaking to play solo for my taste.
I say "sort of" because it's mostly me discussing it followed by three phases/scenes. The mechanics will probably be hard to follow since I was feeling them out myself.
My blog:
https://exposit.github.io/katamoiran/2017/08/05/swords-without-master-session-1/
And the game should you wish to examine it:
https://dig1000holes.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-city-of-fire-coin/
There's a freely available adventure with all the rules you need to play, and the game itself is only a few dollars. I'd recommend picking it up just for the read and the fresh perspective and the deft design.
https://dig1000holes.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/the-city-of-fire-coin/
I hope I conveyed how much I love the system! I really am not surprised at all how much people enjoy it. Wish I'd been better able to do it justice. I found it a bit harder to manage solo than the "two hats" of S\lay w/Me, for sure.
ReplyDeleteEven solo the tone/phases setup really helps you push through the initial "blank page" problem. I'm thinking in a group, with many minds to push against, it would be almost effortless to create a vibrant and exciting world and adventure!
At this point, I'm thinking for solo you'd want to take the opposite approach to what I did. Make 1-4 heroes to play, letting the oracle, dice, and something like Mythic's complex answers chart play the Overplayer. Keep to a two to three line text block from the Overplayer.
I think for someone more disciplined than I am, using a d6 + companions threatened vs 5+ to determine when the player holding the dice throws them would be effective. It was agonizing rolling to see if Kitu would roll the dice!
But I found myself stalling as the Overplayer; I think switching control of the Overplayer to the computer (so to speak) and taking full control of at least one of the heroes would work better.
Great AP of a great game. I look forward to the rest of the game.
ReplyDeleteIn the game, you rolled 5+ after each paragraph as a transition, then you changed to the d6 + companion threatened. One thing I have done in other games is to continue as long as I roll over the number of paragraphs(scenes, rooms, etc) that I have played. For example, if you roll a 2+ on the first paragraph, you continue. If you roll 3+ on the second, you continue. And on and on. I think I got this idea from John Fiore. When he failed the roll while searching a dungeon, that was where the goal was.
Yeah, I was aiming for a 5+ but I got impatient because my invisible player wasn't rolling the damn dice! Haha.
ReplyDeleteI originally was using a +1 for each roll thing but that made it just too predictable.
My gut feeling is that the fellow player has to be manually directed or a lot of the drama will be lost. Well, unless you want to play cutthroat and if your fellow player doesn't roll, tough cookies.
I toyed with going that route but ended up liking my heroes too much! There's a real push-pull tension built into the game that I can see would be amazing with a group.
My thought is, how do we capture that tension solo? Can we? With S\lay w/Me, amassing dice to buy the ending you want was a big part of making it solo-able.
I definitely have to think about it, and how I'd handle the next session.