Review: MiSO RPG

I confess I have an "envy" book, a book I wish I had written. The book is 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman The moment I read through its pages, the moment I experienced the caress of pantheons of gods joining me here on earth, I felt a literary tear in my eye.

I am here to also confess that I have an envy role-playing game. The game is Minimal Solo RPG (MiSO) by Sophia Brandt and it is quite brilliant in its simplicity- serious "why hadn't I thought of that before!".

Inspired by Bivius RPG by Riccardo Fregi's strict binary choices, MiSO assigns a die of differing faces to one of two choices. Like reaching a fork in the road and assigning the high sunny road a (d20) and the low dark road a (d4) (I mean wouldn't you?) and rolling. The winning fork continues the journey that is the story/ game.

As many of you know that are still reading this blog or follow me on G+, I am always looking for a system, or a machine, that fuels both my fantasy writing and my solo gaming. That fusion is what most of my fiction (sparse that it is) stems from. MiSO is the perfect choice for anyone with gamer's/writer's block. Nearly an oracle, I have even given MiSO some real world choices:

                -watch another episode of Star Trek (d12) 

                 -vacuum the living room (d6) 

                 (wouldn't you believe that I vacuumed!) 

Expanding (or branching) on it, I have assigned characters, enemies, or things, a heavier die based on their skills or experience; much like The Window RPG. In the future I will be writing up a session where I use MiSO to knock out one of my fatal writer's blocks.

Conclusion: The rules are straightforward and clearly written for the storyteller-gamer in mind. The examples given are all about branching the story, and thus the creation of other sub-stories. So I would definitely recommend it. In fact, every time I read through it, I feel that tear on my cheek. A happy muse that something great was lying right there on the road less traveled (d4).