by TheChin!

So I've made the mistake many have warned against. I've been reading and prepping and reading and thinking and reading and fantasizing, but I haven't been actually playing. The Endless Session 0. I decided to put the campaign on pause and just do a short dry run of a basic character doing some basic stuff just so I can learn to do what I need to do. To learn the game loop and get a feel for what it takes and how long it takes.

What follows is me pushing buttons and pulling levers trying to see what works for me. In the long time since my last post I came across Lonelog for doing notation/logging/journaling and will be using it for all my game play stuff. Lonelog uses markdown for ease of reference and searching, but for people unfamiliar with its structure it isn't exactly easy to read. While using it in reminds me of a screenplay, that isn't good or bad. It also reminds me of programming, which to me is fun, but again not great "flow" reading. We'll see how it evolves. I'll put it raw for this time and then clean it up for the formatting that makes sense in this blog and link to the raw log which for the time being I'm just putting in Google docs like all my Rifts stuff. For a brief explanation of Lonelog from the author go here.

Right off, I am still not in the groove as to how much to lean on the Oracle and other tables and how much is just me creating narrative out of the context I have already built up in my own mind. So this first two sessions were a lot of expostion and not too much using Mythic yet, but I did do some and as time goes on I will be leaning even more into it. I was trying to get this off the ground so fast, I didn't even fully populate the character sheet for my PC yet. Some of that I just might leave to Mythic as the time comes.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, sometimes I'll be linking Google Docs here. Those docs will contain links, some of them will work and some won't and that is because I have transposed Rifts information from my PDFs to Docs and I don't think it's legal to share that information with the world. But my own content and house rules should be clickable.

Anyways, here's my official foray with more to come.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Title: Dry Run
Ruleset: Rifts RPG, Mythic GME 2E
Genre: Multiversal
Player: Chin
PCs: Yahta Bitar,”Bits” Justice Ranger
Adventure List: Dry Run
Start_date: 29Jun26
Last_update: 01Jul26
Tools: Lonelog
Themes: Manhunt, Vengeance, Justice
Tone: Dark, Gritty
Notes: Short little campaign/adventure to just get my feet wet in SoloRPGing

\--- The PC has followed the trail of the murderers of his mentor and his mentor’s wife to mete out justice ---\

# [Dry Run]
## Session 0
*Date: Before 29Jun29 | Duration: 4hrs*
```
(note: Creator Yahta Bitar character, linked in header. Added “Find the Murders” to Threads List and “Sonny - Mentor” and “Lisst - Greot Hunter” to Characters list.)
```
## Session 1
*Date: 29Jun29 | Duration: 2hrs*

**Goals: Enter Ciudad Juarez**

(note: This first scene will, in Mythic GME terms, be an “Inspired Idea” scene. I already had developed a possible idea in session 0 when I was creating the character and really this will be just me doing a little narrative with no surprise to stick my toe into the syntax of Lonelog and writing using it)

### S1 *Road to Ciudad Juarez, Late Afternoon|CF:5*
```
\--- Yahta “Bits” Bitahr sits astride his steed, Nestor, looking at the buildings of Ciudad Juarez in the distance, blurry in the heat shimmer of the Mexican heat. He’s tired and thirsty, his canteen all but empty. ---\

=> Been close to a year since me and Felipe had been to Juarez, I never thought I’d be coming back here so soon on my own. But debt is a debt, and the scum who needed to pay is somewhere in that dungheap. I guess I better get moving.

=> After a half hour of travel, I start to pass the ramshackle hovels of the outskirts of town. The adult residents ignore me, but the children watch curiously. The kids catch on quick that Nestor isn’t a biological horse and stare intently. Sure he has the correct body for a horse and moves just like one, but he’s painted in desert camo and his hooves hit the hard packed dirt with a much heavier, metallic tread.

? What is Bits’ mentor’s name?
tbl: Mythic Elements Names d100=74 -> Sah
tbl: Mythic Elements Names d100=60 -> Nn
-> “Sonny”

=> Nestor wasn’t always my horse, he was Sonny’s, my mentor. But now that he’s gone Nestor and I are a team. He’s a good bot. And it’s not like I don’t like live horses, it’s just that a robot is a robot. They don’t get tired, don’t get cranky and don’t get spooked and they are smarter than the smartest circus pony.

⇒ I nod my head to the children, but don’t stop. I need to get some food and drink in me and find my quarry before they decide to leave town or something in Juarez gets them before I do.

(note: At end of scene, add “Water & Food” to threads list. No characters to add yet. But I’m thinking about adding Nestor, I need to read about robot horse intelligence a little more to figure out how NPC-like they can be. Normally Chaos Factor (CF) would drop by 1 after this scene, but since it was more exposition than anything I think I’ll keep it a 5.)

```
## Session 2
*Date: 1Jul26 | Duration: *

**Goals: Eat, drink, visit the CyberKnight**

### S1 *Police Patrol Fix it Shop, Late Afternoon|CF:5*
```
=> Expected Scene, greeted by Officials/Patrol. I figured that a road from outside of town might have a couple law enforcement/militia types on the lookout for troublemakers, but Mythic had other ideas

? Test Expected Scene
Tbl: Testing The Expected Scene d10=4 -> Interrupted Scene

? What is the new scene?
Gen: Random Event Focus d100=15 -> New NPC
Meaning Table: Action 1 d100=4 -> Agree
Meaning Table: Action 2 d100=77 -> Repair
-> Cousin Jobie’s standing outside Opie and Bea’s Fix it Shop and offers to help repair Nestor’s battle damage for the Ranger.

=> I rode into the city proper and noted a heavy-set man outside a long single story building with a sign that said Opie and Bea’s Fix it Shop. He was smoking a cigar whose dank odor seemed to just hang in the air around him and into the street. He was unarmed and unarmored, which doesn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous, but it reduced the odds.

=> He noticed me and his eyebrows went up when saw my Ranger star. Some Ranger’s don’t reveal their badge in some seedier places, and Juarez could be as seedy as they come, as it can attract the wrong attention. I always wore it because I didn’t want there to be any confusion of who and what I was. Kept “honest” beings honest.. Mostly.

N: (Jobie): “Howdy Ranger!”
PC: “Hello”
=> I wasn’t going to be any friendlier than I needed to be until I figured his angle.
N: (Jobie): “Fine horse you got there, looks like a fairly older model, seen some miles.” I looked down at Nestor, I suppose he was a little rough around the edges, but I suppose we both were.
PC: “Yep, he’s seen his share of open country.”
N: (Jobie): “Looks like it took some gunfire and could use a once over, why don’t you let us take a look at it.”
=> I looked skeptically at him and then the shop.
N: (Jobie): “Totally on the house, it’s the least we could do for the Rangers. Quetzacoatl knows we could use more law and order these days”
=> I thought on it for a few moments. My experiences as Sonny’s deputy included accepting the generosity of the good people we were protecting. There was no shame in it. I nodded my head.
PC: “I’d appreciate that alot, what can I call you, you Opie?” I said as I looked up at the names one their sign.
N: (Jobie): “Oh hell no, Bea and Opie call me Cousin Jobie, but you can call me Jobie.”
PC: “You can call Bits”
N: (Jobie): “Sure thing Ranger Bits, just come around the rear of the building and we’ll get your horse checked out and fixed right up.”

=> After getting the horse secured, Jobie took me into the back of the shop and told another man to stop what he was doing and go check out the horse to see what all needed to be done. The man was a agreeable and went right out.

=> I asked Jobie if there was a palace where I could grab some grub and he mentioned a few places within walking distance. I decided to pass on the fancy restaurants and saloons (for now) and chose to go to a nearby sandwich shop he said was called Hogie’s Heroes.

(note: At end of scene added Cousin Jobie to characters list along with Nestor, I decided to just do it and see how it plays out. Adjusted Chaos Factor to 4 since everything is still under control.)

### S2 *Shop Closed Late Afternoon|CF:4*
```
=> Expected Scene: Eating/Drinking at Hogie’s Heroes

? Test Expected Scene
Tbl: Testing The Expected Scene d10=1 -> Altered Scene
-> A sign on the sandwich shops says “Be back later” with a clock face and two dials indicating 1 hour from now.

(note: I might be interpreting this a little far towards an "interrupted" scene, but I thought it was a reasonable minor change.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I ended with a Scene Test and will continue in my next post. I figure it's good to end a session with the cliffhanger of what the next scene will entail that way I can stew on the context in the meantime.

by Thomas King

Despite how long it’s been, there aren’t a ton of games this time. My game group has been watching a lot of movies lately, mostly watching Christopher Nolan’s filmography in preparation for The Odyssey. In the past month, we’ve barely played at all.

If you haven’t seen it yet, my new game, Winds of the North, has a free demo available if you want to give it a try or just see what it’s about. It’s a solitaire gamebook set in Viking Age Scandinavia, where you can do just about anything you want: build, explore, hunt, trade, farm, raid, and much more!

Winds of the North Demo

On that note, I’ve also started the final updates for WotN, and once those are done, it’ll be time to submit them to DriveThruRPG, and once their approved, it’ll finally go on sale.

Lastly, I posted a trailer for my previous game, The Unseen World. I’ll be trying out trailers in the future, and maybe some gameplay overviews for my games. I went into more detail in a recent blog post.

Youtube Video

Games Played

>>For the full post with photos, head here!<<

Agricola (Revised Edition)
Brass: Birmingham
Race for the Galaxy
SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (with SETI: Space Agencies)
Nippon: Zaibatsu
Saltfjord
Valheim: The Board Game
Tenby
Fall of Rome
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game

Agricola

This was our first game with a physical copy, but we’ve played a bunch on BGA, and I’ve also had the app for a number of years. My copy is one of the anniversary versions with the big box, though I got mine on sale. It’s quite overpriced normally, given how little there is other than the game, and the box and insert are not particularly high quality.

Otherwise, I really like the updated components. I wish at least one of the included bonus decks had been a normal one to just add variety, but they’re all pretty strange decks. We haven’t played with any yet, though. We were also surprised that, despite these cards having been updated and improved, there were a lot of cards that were still confusing, and we only knew how they worked because of BGA. And after this play, I played a card on BGA that turned out to work differently than what we thought when we had played at the table. Maybe someday, we’ll actually know what these cards do.

Agricola: 9/10 one of my favorites.

Brass: Birmingham

We’ve played Brass (one version or another) a few times now. This time, it was back to the cardboard components (it’s a long story), but I wasn’t a huge fan of the 3D printed ones. The token trays for the player boards aren’t too bad, though.

This was a close game, and for the first time, I won (barely). It’s sometimes painful needing to take loans in this game, but sometimes you need them, and it’s a great tool for spending less money during a round, making it easier to go first in the next round.

Brass Birmingham: 8/10 a tense but fun Euro.

Race for the Galaxy

I forget which movie it was, but there was one I wanted to make sure we had time for, so I picked this to bring back out. We hadn’t played this in the group for several years, though I’ve played the app a few times.

Mechanically, it’s such an easy game to bring back out once you’ve gotten the hang of it. And it’s loose enough with the theme, that it’s good to bring out if just want a dash of sci-fi flavor. At the time, I was playing or had just finished a Rimworld playthrough, and wanted a bit more of that sci-fi empire/territory building. I got some good mileage out of some alien cards this time.

Race for the Galaxy: 8/10 a quick and satisfying card game. A shame about the expansions, though.

SETI (with Space Agencies)

We haven’t played the base game that much, but we were interested to see the “prelude” part of the expansion. Ultimately, it didn’t end up as the auto-include we had hoped. You play 1 fewer rounds, but by the end, turns are more complicated and slower than in the base game, so you don’t save time.

Overall, I still enjoy the game, though turns can get a bit fiddly sometimes, especially with certain aliens. Lots of little steps to make sure you do, and rewards for things that might add more little steps, triggering more little rewards. By the end, it can be difficult keeping track of who was actually taking a turn when it’s been five minutes of triggering things and other players getting points or whatever else.

SETI: 7/10 a solid, crunchy Euro with a cool theme.

Nippon: Zaibatsu

We’ve played the original a few times, and we’d followed the campaign of this one, so we were eager to see the differences for ourselves. Production wise, there’s a few areas where they could have toned it down some, used less space, simplified layouts a little. But the iconography seems good, overall. The game has become more fiddly, unfortunately; there are just so many tiny pieces now.

There are definitely some neat changes, like the ships and bonus workers, and simplified contracts. Though, this version of the game is definitely less streamlined. It’s a modern Euro now, warts and all.

Unfortunately, during the game, I seemed to be doing well, setting up lots of things, getting bonuses, and my brother seemed to be struggling almost every round. But by the end, I lost by a fair amount, and my brother won by a fair amount, and no one at the table could really tell why. All three of us were just, “How did that happen?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Is this game just full of more “noob traps” than most Euros? No clue.

Nippon: 7/10 an excellent heavy Euro.
Nippon Zaibatsu: ? a more fiddly, modernized version I guess I need to play again.

Saltfjord

Two of us were pretty interested to try out this one after it had some decent buzz and looked good. We’ve never played Santa Maria, the game this one is based on.

It can take time wrapping your head around the action mechanism in the game, with rows and columns and needing dice in the right color and value to do things. This was definitely a learning game, as there were some things, like the other ability tiles, that we barely touched.

Overall, not a bad game. Though it’s more of a mid-weight game, there can be moments of AP, trying to navigate several actions, counting resources, to try and arrive at one action later that you need to do. And towards the end, you might sit there for several minutes calculating only to realize it’s not mathematically possible to do what you want.

Saltfjord: 7/10 (first impressions) a pretty solid Euro, but maybe doesn’t stand out much?

Valheim

This one was my brother’s pick, and he chose a scenario with no frosaken battle. We were going a bit slow, and time was running out when we sailed off to explore the second island. We just happened to land on the abomination, the boss stand-in for the scenario.

At some point, we’ll have to try the campaign. It follows a progression similar to the video game, where you can’t gather certain resources until you’ve defeated the right boss. But defeating bosses gives you a new power for the rest of the campaign. Can’t wait to see what they do with the next few biomes.

Valheim: 8/10 a fun if maybe loose adventure game.

Tenby

This was one we heard about a lot and were interested to try out. In the first few rounds, it didn’t seem like much, but after a bit, things clicked, and the decisions got a lot tougher. It’s definitely that kind of game where you can get overly ambitious with your plans, and find that you can’t finish everything you wanted.

The pink scoring cards were a little odd. Some, like what I kept drawing, scored little but you could score more if you worked really hard. But my brother kept drawing cards that could only score once, but scored pretty well. Didn’t seem like it was worth it for mine to work really hard for maybe a couple extra points if you score the max; I’d have rathered the easier cards that still score just fine. I still won anyway, so it’s not that they felt unbalanced, necessarily, though most of my score was from my streets.

Tenby: 7/10 (first impressions) a neat card game with some tough decisions.

Fall of Rome

I had played this with my brother and solo, but this was our first 3-player game. We fudged things a little when a terrible chain reaction lost us the game only a few rounds in. I didn’t feel like resetting the decks, so we ignored the last outbreak (which would have run out of green). Things stabilized for a while, but the north exploded before we could get it under control.

This will hopefully make learning the Lord of the Rings one a little easier. I’d heard it’s quite a bit more complicated than the rest of the Pandemic games.

Fall of Rome: 7/10 a quick and tense co-op and my kind of theme.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

I thought this series looked really fun, so I showed it to my friend as something different for us to try. And since we have been watching lots of movies lately, the longer games have been set aside.

The first couple of chapters were definitely more about getting a feel for the game than anything. But we were getting the hang of it by the end. It’s an interesting co-op since you can’t communicate about your hand at all; you basically use the tricks as a way to communicate, and everyone needs to be paying attention. Everyone enjoyed it quite a bit. There are some neat ways they integrated theme into the characters.

The chapter card flavor text was pretty bad, though. They’re so low-effort, I’m not sure why they bothered. If you couldn’t get permission to do a short excerpt from the book, just do a little summary. We’ll probably skip them in the future unless one is humorously dumb.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game: 8/10 (first impressions) a very quick, engaging co-op; easy to play multiple hands at a time.

by Eric R.

Last post was about Grimes. This post is about Brooke Candy, the lady in chrome armor in Grimes' Genesis video. Brooke Candy is a nepo baby whom I don't generally listen to, but she did make one thing that really stands out to me. Brooke made two version of this song. This one, which has no vocals, and Happy Days which is more standard with vocals. Both are good songs, but I prefer the music one by itself. Still she made videos for each so I can share them both.
Youtube Video

Youtube Video

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