Mythic Adventures In Risus

This past summer, I purchased the Mythic Game Master Emulator on a lark. While I was enjoying my face-to-face games (including the long running Slaying Solomon), I was feeling frustrated that I wasn't getting in enough gaming and that I wasn't getting enough genre variety. So I started experimenting with solo play. Initially, I tried to use the old-fashioned AD&D random dungeon crawls. Unfortunately, I found this to be unsatisfactory at best. In Robin Laws's taxonomy of roleplayers, I am at least 80% Storyteller. Random dungeon crawls didn't cut it because there could be no story.

Then I read some reviews of Mythic and I was intrigued. Feeling like I didn't need to learn a new system, I purchased the GM Emulator (and eventually Mythic Variations) and sat down to play. After a few false starts, I suddenly hit upon a fantastic and utterly engaging story involving one of my former characters. I couldn't believe how Mythic's simple mechanic (a chart for resolving yes/no questions along with allowances for random events) could so easily tap into my subconscious to produce suprising and exciting stories.

I think the key is that Mythic relies on stimulating the player's own imagination. The player asks questions of the environment and the Mythic gives answers according to the player's own ideas of how probable a yes answer might be (adjusted by the factors that raise or lower tension from scene to scene). Random Events make use of ongoing plot threads and recurring characters and essentially use a couple of words to inspire the player to go with the first thing that pops into their head. I really works.

What does this have to do with Risus?

Well, after buying the Mythic Game Master Emulator, I tried to decide on what system I'd use. Almost immediately, I decided to use Risus. I didn't want to get bogged down in fiddly bits and I definitely didn't want a system that required any sort of tactical complexity. And looking back on the examples of Risus play that I wrote a few years ago (such as here), I realized that Risus is almost a natural for solo play even without help from Mythic. In Risus combat, tactical decisions are mostly just color. After declaring your action, the dice get rolled and it's up to the GM or player to narrate the results.

Mythic is the primary reason I returned to the Risus Monkey. I look forward to posting session logs and advice for really making Risus work for Mythic.