The Mistaken journey I was on has ended. For years, I had searched for a game, then a solo game, then a program, that would easily point and direct me to the story I wanted to tell. That search is blissfully over.
I wish I could say that it was over because I ignored everything, every temptation and just wrote, but that is not the case. I stumbled across a system that has all but made me throw everything I found in the last decade away. (Right, and my DrivethruRPG is packed to the rafters with content.)
To begin, I am a complete and utter player dancing across a theatre of the mind. I finally found a system, or an anti-system, The Cryptic Gamemaster, that taught me that there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with doing it all in your head, no dice, no books, nothing. When I realized that, I felt I had been playing RPG’s in my head for a hundred year- never writing a word down.
The Cryptic GM is but a prop that lets your gamer’s mind *think* it is playing an RPG when it is actually just writing. It is a tabletop placebo, that never interferes with the writing.
Do you know how long I have been searching for that- a system, a guide, a list, a prop, a placebo; that does just that?
The Cryptic GM turns the gamer’s mind into a random table generator. Using a dramatically scaled down version of Mythic GME, with inspiration from FU, Hands- Free RPG, Daydream Universal, and Diedream.
In the end, I don’t really need any of the others. Other systems have become nothing but flavoring, for my writing. A bag of polyhedral dice have been reduced to nay one. Despite the CGM having a very concise and easy to follow dice-less system based on the Mnemonic System. But I still have a trusty d10 (ok, and a loyal d6, I confess).
The Mnemonic system makes words and letters into numbers, like Tilt or “Rolling with the Words”, makes for a completely portable & completely cerebral rpg/writing system.
Ultimate Dice-Writing!
So you can have your clunky solo-roleplaying, but I’ll stick to my mental adventuring; made gospel by the Cryptic GM.
