Review: Mythic Game Master Emulator
Dynamic role-playing adventure without a game master
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A weekly blogletter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop.
This week’s post is a review of a tabletop book that seem to be the first name in solo role-playing: The Mythic Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition by Tana Pigeon of Word Mill Games. Since the release of this revised edition in January or 2023, I’ve been seeing it mentioned all over the place and so I got my hands on a copy.
To date, I’m not big on solo play for role-playing or board games, may main focus with gaming is the connection with others at the table, but in endeavor of endless improvement of game mastering and design, I am always willing to take a serious look at something new - at least new to me. I must say though, the more I read of this book, with it’s myriad play examples, the more I wanted to take parts of this and give it a try myself.
The following review focuses on the highlights of the game system, the book itself, and my thoughts regarding useful things for any game master therein.
TLDR: This book could be used for testing out a system or a rule before bringing it to your table, or yes - to play an entire story out by yourself.
What is the Mythic Game Master Emulator?
A question-based resolution system, adventure generation and management systems, and meaning generators for any role-playing situation.
How does it work?
The basic game-play loop is all about building the expectation and context of the narrative through play. Once that context reaches a decision point, the dice provide the answer to keep the story moving forward like any other resolution system, but the framework provides odds based on what you think about the given situation.
The crux of this entire system is the “Fate Question”: A yes/no question that has a likelyhood determined by the player and then roll a percentile (D100) for the answer on a table of moving probability based on a “Chaos Factor” that moves up and down depending on how in-control the player thinks their character is of what is going on in the scene.
The player asks the question, determines the likelyhood of a yes for this question, and then rolls D100 and the Fate Chart determines the result to be a “Yes”, “No”, “Extreme Yes”, or “Extreme No”, which is then interpreted by the player and applied to the current scene’s context.
As the game starts to flow, the scenes are evaluated by the player for how much control the main player character(s) had and then a “Chaos Factor” is adjusted. What makes this important is when a new scene is being started and the outcome is uncertain, the player “tests” the scene to see if what is expected in the current context occurs, or if something unexpected occurs. Once something unexpected occurs, the system will either suggest a tweak the expectation, or a use of a random even to inject some real chaos into the story.
One of the major pluses of this book and system is the very useful meanings tables. These are lists of randomized singular words within a category that are combined to kickstart your imagination. As a game master who certainly has a groove they ride narratively, these kinds of lists are excellent. Since it’s still up to my mind to interpret the words in a context, I can flavor something weird and interesting into a narrative while still having it seeded from my imagination. With a mind marinated in pop-culture tropes and movie lines, it is fun to be surprised but with something that will fit into a cohesive story.
These tables are combined with the last two piece of the puzzle that makes Mythic a complete and ingenious system: Lists and Threads.
Lists are what they sound like, a list of elements of the story. Characters and threads are written onto separate simple lists, but that list is also an organically growing contextuatlized rolltable. As the number of elements grows, the die used to roll on the table gets bigger. In this way, you actually get to discover what a story is about through play, because the more something shows up and gets added to the list, the more likely it will show up again when you roll a random event and utilize this contextualize rolltable.
Threads are plots/goals within the narrative context. If your characters are on a big damn quest, then that would be on the list of threads, and likely would show up in many scenes, meaning you are adding it to the list often (to a max of 3 by default).
This is the guts of the thing, the Mythic Emulator. It is easy to see the passion behind this project though, as this book spans almost 230 pages where the author explains each situation and then gives a solid example to support the written rules. The back of the book contains a summary of the rules and reprinted pages that would be very easy to scan and print for someone to pick and choose what they want to have at the table with them.
This is a complete system, there are sheets for tracking your adventure as you go, and seem to make it easy to put away and pull back out at any time. I am not someone who loves book-keeping at the table, I wouldn’t end up using every suggested form of note taking, but I can see serious value in the threads, lists, and elements tables. Even if I never use some of these things, I really appreciate the heart that went into fleshing out this idea. This was definitely a positive purchase for me.
This book could be used for testing out a system or a rule before bringing it to your table, or yes - to play an entire story out by yourself.
What do I think?
At first glance, the explanation of “your expectation” sounded like a cop-out to me. As if the game system is saying it was up to me to make the game rather than giving me a real rule-set to utilize or pick and choose from, but while reading the copious game-play examples in the book, that is clearly not the case.
When I am game-mastering, I often need to balance pulling something out of thin air with keeping the situation fair to the other player’s expectations. Player versimilatude is important for players to feel like they’re exploring something real which will make them care about the outcome. Many times i’ve sacrificed narrative cohesion for something I thought was funny or interesting and that is not usually the best move.
To go back to this solo game-mastering loop, this practice of building context and expectation and then either following or subverting it based on how LIKELY things are actually makes a lot of sense, and I think is an excellent way to think about things when you are behind the screen running adventures for other players. I’ve spent many years bumbling through situations where I was the chaos factor at the table from the game master chair, and I don’t think that is the game I like to play. I have found alot more satisfaction in being the telegraphed and deliberate narrative thread, while the players introduce endless chaos that I am folding into that context.
One of the enjoyable research tidbits for this article was discovering the Youtube channel: Me, Myself, and Die! with Trevor Devall. Check it out.
Useful Things For Your Game
Spotify Playlist Add - Baseline
What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Mythic: Flee, Mortals! by MCDM
Audiobook: Make Time - by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky
Project: Almanac of Abominations Zine - System Neutral
Current Campaign: Shadowdark - Custom Setting (Giathos)