Story-Mode is Story-Driven

 The difference between a role-player and a story-teller has always been particularly vague for me. Oftentimes I try stories as a game, or a solo-game becomes a story. Since the "Covid-Solo-Revolution", (where we all stayed home, baked sourdough, became insane, and threw dice for a table of none-existent players) solo-games & tools have cropped up in abundance.

Yet many of them, if not most of them, get in the way of the writing. If using traditional RPG's as a solo session, you can almost forget about brain-storming (think about how much you have to look up if you play AD&D solo). Or the rules are too static to write anything about the story (the case against “Four Against Darkness”. Which I do love, especially for dungeon maps).

Further, while heroic fantasy is a great read, I grew tired of solo-playing from one point of view. I would become disinterested, even tired very quickly. This is one of the biggest reasons why I tended to not get
into “Ironsworn”. Given, I consider Ironsworn to be one of the, if not *the*, best solo game of all time. Thanks to Shawn Tomkin for leading in the CSR. I just need to think up “Party-sworn”.

I have always been in search of a tool, a set of rules, which can focus on one group, not one main one character. Along with that I wanted a set of rules that don’t get in the way of the writing.

Thanks to Matalina on Github, at https://story-mode.just-us.net/, I may have found the Shangri-La of Story-driven/Group-driven Solo. It has everything I would want except for one small thing.*

Taking inspiration form the Cypher Rules, Matalina has created an online "desk" that allows for a multitude of writing actions, and inspiring things. At the center of the system is scene difficulty. Rather than giving each action in a scene a difficulty task, Story-Mode gives the whole scene a difficulty. This eliminates not only a lot of game-clutter, but also a lot of game-thought. Game-thought, worrying about stats, looking up rules, and character sheets, are perhaps the major obstacles to "Writing with Dice" (the fusion of writing and RPG).  

Cutting out all the block red tap, Story-mode also it eliminates all stats. Too much? Are you hanging on to your RPG security-blanket-stats? Not to worry you can add or subtract as much as you want for an action using the buttons provided. You have control but have the joy of randomness to keep that noodle in your skull busy for hours (as you can see from the example).

This results of this scene difficulty were truly liberating for one who writes with dice. You look nothing up, everything is in front of you. There isn't the need to think and rethink, the muse just ignites you. 

And, there is an oracle- smartly represented by a crystal ball.

I played with this thing for hours and hours. I opened it on my laptop to expand on a dream I had the night before into a story. Then later, I started another called 'Time Vikings. On every occasion Story-Mode was a companion, that helped and inspired, never getting in the way. 

Given, stories and setups cannot (currently) be migrated from device to device (a procedure far beyond this humble enthusiast) but you can copy the entire session and paste it anywhere 

and it appears like so (font choice was my own...)

(The following and the picture is an expansion of a dream I had. It focuses on a setting and series I have in mind called Rivermoon)

`RIVER & ARCANA\
Notes: I know the language- the accented. It is New Orleans but dangit have some fun, open stuff up, Make Jackson Square La Plaza de Armas again.

*Players in constant danger, anything could happen*\
**Scene Status:** Insane 5 (15)

Scene Difficulty is Insane!

**Do:** Does the Elixir come at a Vodoun Shoppe, there in what is to be the District or something?\
\
**Fail, but** \[5(15) → 4]\
Goods, Stray, Slice

No but the ingredients are from there, a slice of this good, and something stray.

**Q:** No doubt, I will figure that out. Now to ask the oracle, what major event comes at that time, what is the first thing in other words?\
\
**No, but** *(1d20: \[9] = 9)*\
Son, Priest, Dream

**Do:** The man, fideous fench, we shall call him, thinks it is a dream, and appears on a bench in front of what he thinks is the St. Louis Cathedral. But damn it is NOT the Cathedral. Is it daytime?\
**Fail, but** \[5(15) → 7]\
Love, Command, Song

`No it, is night but there is a couple at the other bench looking at him really weird, like New Orleans there is a song in the air. He thinks it is nothing but cosplay.`

This makes for no more RPG accounting mess. Hell, no more rule-books or character sheets. Story-Driven is literally one place for everything, one scene fixes ALL.

*And what is that small thing? Just give me the ability to hit <return> when I write something down, rather than having to use the mouse. 

And with that all my rule are condensed into one site, one scene-many actions, infinite inspiration. 

Too old for this Sh**?

 These days every time I boot up a new game, I feel like Murtaugh in the ol’ Lethal Weapon movies. I hear him whisper his catch phrase weeks away from his retirement. “I’m getting too old for this shit.."

Its not that I consider the new generation of games to be childish, on the contrary. I find them more challenging than my ACTUAL LIFE. I just know that when the company logos are all done its going to be either a thick-ass plot line to go through; or a learning curve not seen since my days at graduate school.

Whatever happened to the simplicity? Has our society gotten so complex that we just can’t turn on a game and start akilling? No, you have to part of a global conspiracy, or indoctrinated into a story, or educated in the ways of a secret cult. Gone are the days of hit the reset and you are blasting within moments. Given those were in the days of dot versus dot. But still I don’t have time for all the meringue, I want CAKE!

Further, once the game is happening and I’m psyched. I’m hit with so many ERRANDS. Get this, bring me that, take this for this purpose. I think that is the reason why I so adore ‘open world’ games, the ones where you just float in a reality without any agendas. 

Sure, when I was younger the prizes are more than worth it. Satisfying. But now, on the darker side of a mid-life crisis, they just don’t seem to matter. If I want that sniper rifle, if I want that thing, damn it I just hit the cheat code without hesitation. 

It reminds me of the constant battle that I had years ago with Chuk Barber; my mentor of video (carnage) games. He was the one that introduced me to Quake, Halo, Rune, and the entire FPS genre. Chuk was twenty years my senior and the minute he got a game he immediately searched for the cheat codes.

“But Chuk,” I protested. “What about the challenge, the game wasn’t made for you to cheat, complete it first man!"

“Bro,” he shot back. “I have a stressful job, and Im way too old to do things over and over to a checkpoint, I need to get to some blood and gore now!” 

TILDE ACTIVATED, CARNAGE ACHIEVED!

I no longer bicker or whine about the loss of plot line or gameplay. We no longer live at a time like Zork where we had one game and it had to last us for centuries. Gone are the days of milk a game for all its worth. I am shamed to say I have over 100 games on my Steam account and I've only burned through 10 of them lately. 

There is a mid-life impatience that i feel. I feel nothing but rebuke (like Burl Ives did when he said "Mendacity" in cat on a hit roof) when I find myself carrying rabbit food or a part for a machine or the ingredient for a potion to get the experience or a better weapon. Sorry, I’m just too old for that shit!

I think that today's games are made to replace rather than supplement our reality. Reality replacement is exactly what young players want. But older players seem to only have time/energy/memory or patience for a supplementary reality. 

After all, its all we got its all we can. 

So load up another game Riggs. I'm just going to sit here and wait until we get mobbed. Then I'll crack my neck and start blasting with this Smith & Wesson. Until then let me just close my eyes and...

What? No I dont want to save those people for a better gun. Just hit control tilde and type KILLALL! 

There we go...

Dungeonance

Looking over these blogs, these posts, my account on steam- it seems we are going through a dungeonance, a renaissance, a rebirth of the good ol’ dungeon crawl. I wonder many times if it is because the dungeon masters and players of the 80’s and 90’s are now having children and they want to relive those thrilling crawls of yesteryear. Even pixels, PIXELS, have been thrown back to their 80’s equivalents. This is astonishing in a world that has such reality games as Skyrim or Metro and Borderlands. 

Why are we going back to those underground memories of old? What lies there? Memory?

My dungeon crawls usually happened on Saturday mornings, starting at 9 am and ending about twelve hours later. Or in the school cafeteria, or the back of Lab class (the dissected frog was our dragon). Even to this day graph paper is a comfort, a dungeon map is a way of organizing my universe- am I am OSR-OCD? 

I am happy for this. Our children are descending into our dungeons, fighting our monsters, reliving our legends into a new age. Our monster manuals are no longer dusty, babies are teething on oversized D20’s and Nethack has a whole new generation of divers and warriors to plunder. 

It is a great thing to hear about these blogs, forums and posts about the next generation growing bright eyed and bushy tailed in the stank, soot and bile of an old-fashioned dungeon crawl. Like fathers like sons I guess, and no character sheet shall ever go dusty. 

Write Up- Rogue of Changes

The floor rushed up, but pain meant life. Murk landed on his feet but a metallic taste hit is palate with equal force. He knew he was poisoned. Sweating, he watched the hall moving off to the north. Illuminated a sharp orange, morning stars hung at ten paces apart, shedding the light on the cobblestone walls. The shadows stretched outward, moving unlike the fire. Murkstav quickly took a hold of his sword, eyeing the two bandits at the end of the hall; where the passage opened to a entrance at the top of wide steps. Once again the taste of metal, seemingly green even, flooded his palate. 

“We always have damned company, Silio” the one on the left in dark robes mentioned turning as Murkstav moved north to confront them. 

“Oh and this one seems quite intent,” the other said, dressed in leather and cape. 

Murkstav did not respond. Never respond to an enemy, he thought simply meeting the sword of the caped one, taking the deep breath away from him, but giving him just enough time to pull out his obsidian dagger. 

But something was wrong, really wrong, the caped one began to infer, wave, evoke and use the prefixes of a conjuring. Blast, a conjurer, by the time one enemy was dead, there came another two. The dungeoneer knew he had to make this fast. That metallic taste drove him, and things were beginning to get fuzzy.

The conjuring continued. Murkstav felt and heard a wind at the corner of his vision. Something was definitely coming. The bandit sliced downward, Murkstav blocked and slashed his wrist with the obsidian. The man reeled, an amateur, and the dungeoneer shoved his sword in a space in the leather armor. His torso slid off the blade as Murk kicked. 

Turning, the whisp slashed at him. Murk slid and pushed his way to the conjuror, knowing well it was the source of the summoning. Not expecting the attack, the summoner fell forward. Murk kicked with his heels and struck upward with the hilt of his sword and cut the man’s thigh. Going down, Murk impaled his dagger in his neck. Exhaling the metal taste, he knew he had to do something about that taste. 

“At least this one’s dead so…” he whispered to himself. 

Yet the whisp still churned in the air, still mixed with the lights and screeched for his blood. 

Who indeed was conjuring who?

(Re) Purpose

Either life or circumstance or just the smell of the subterranean, I got the bug again. Returning here to this rare place to write of things, treasures and monsters under the realms. The main them of this blog is a dungeon crawl as story. But this time it is going to be a bit different. Now it is a story fueled by the thrill, rolling and role-ing of a traditional pen and paper dungeon game. 

People say there is a reason why dungeon crawls do not make it into stories. But nothing in my experience inspired me more than rolling a dice and seeing how the character's life changes from moment to moment. It is a door, a lock, the trigger of a trap, or the growl of something that is not at all human that conjures archetypal ideas. Well, at least in my brain. 

Consider this as a journal of that purpose. Now I have more of a solid methodology to this strange craving of madness. 

NOTE: Nothing gets in the way of the writing, nothing. When confronted with any of these rules, or any of the rules of an RPG and/or oracle I will choose the write, the creative flow of the words destroys any and all rules and numbers. RPG is to be used as an AID not to replace writing.  

Thus next up, methodology, what the hell am I doing?

Scrawl Session 3

Our heroes are in deep trouble, the party is split and things are looking rather unripe. A ramp has separated the two groups: Swann and Jestur and Malfor and Onilio. Alas how does it happen, sounds like a serious serious session with the good ol’ mantrap man. The Gods have not figured on how to get them out of there, thus we switch stories to Otilio and Malfor- the farmer still out from the fight with the Ettin. 

     Malfor coughed, his mind racing after the soul-ring grasped his consciousness from the lost worlds. Upon the brink of death the white-gold carried him forth, returning him to the realm of the living. We wakes but he is very weak, the ring pulling his consciousness from the brink of doom. It floated there and the metal surrounded his spirit until it rushed back to the mortal world of wonder, an greatness to behold. But Malfor returns incredibly weak and tired, barely able t carry his wondrous stuffings.

     Otilio heard the heroes fall down the hall. Heard the familiar slide, it was an old trick devised by a more intelligent culture, but he thought but could not place the magnificent tiles upon the service. The Gnorc entered the tomb from its eastern face, coming across it upon the cliff he scaled with a party. 

     The Gnorc, Otilio rushed down the corridor from where his new-found companions recently screamed from, he found nothing, the handle was on the base, he did notice the curtains waving a bit and the sand-marks of a drag or scuffle. 

     “They must be about here, I am sure of it” he thought to himself. Blazing forth toward the room, the Gnorc knew that this only meant doom to touch the torch but surely there was an alternate trigger. He noted about there was a sconce in the wall behind the torch

     Gnorc grabbed a length of rope, tying it about his waste and flung it over one of the railings supporting the curtains. Hanging himself from the waist he placed a torch upon the sconce. He felt a click, closed his eyes and hoped for the best. 

     Deep below Swann and Jestur fought flinging the remains of a former guest into the leech-flooding hole, they suddenly heard a clang, and the iris of the hole shut, slicing a leech in half.

An Inspired Dungeon Crawl

     The dungeon to come, the scrawled map on leather, scrawled upon by blood more than ink; had come to Ingabod in one of his maddened magical infusions. The rooms spilled out like tentacles about the eye, and when he woke, sliding beakers, decanters, books and scrolls to the side, he had absolutely no idea what he was looking at. Yet the woman who had the disgrace of sharing his bedchamber, and his loins, knew precisely what she was looking at. 
     She was looking at a purse of gold.
     So with delight, and to Ingabod’s surprise, she accepted his foot on her flank as he kicked her out of bed. But with a swoop and a yelp, she also took what the magic-addict had scared on the fine lamb’s skin (a piece had been torn to wrap about his member (just enough to keep his essence out of her, for fear of gaining more power than Ingabod) that place, that unknown place, that dwelled more in the madman’s mind than in the treasure-laden realms of the continent.
     Taking the leather, the strumpet followed the twisting paths away from that dragon’s lair, off to a tavern, or a plaza, to sell to a random cast of characters, enough to pay for another chamber, another night another meal, until another called for her to warm his bed.
     So there it was before Jester, the lambskin, promising riches more than he had heard in the thrones of kings. For surely if these manner of men could do it, he could as well...