I love this.

It's a great, easy to use system that helps give you prompts no matter the genre or type of RPG you're playing.

The system does a few things really well:

• Answers yes/no questions
• Gives you description/action prompts
• Tells you if there's any twists in the upcoming scene
• Manages the pacing of the story
• The instruction manual is super well done, and includes a long demo of how it works

If you're on the fence, I definitely recommend getting it!

I purchased this product the very moment that I found out that it was available. (Disclaimer: I am on several boards and a mailing list from the author. While I am just a lurker I've been a long time fan of this system.) I wanted to wait to review the product until I had a chance to use it for a while.

Card based systems are a new thing for me, relatively speaking. I've been playing RPGs for decades though and even playing RPGs solitary for many years now. The Mythic:RPG system was my first successful foray into what I would consider free form solitary play. While I've used many oracles and some of my own design the Mythic:RPG system has been my goto for so long that it's like an old friend.

These cards are fantastic! They are a great adaption of the Mythic:RPG system into a card based structure. They also allow the system to run much faster and I find that this is one of the most important things for any RPG oracle. It needs to run the game, manage injecting randomness, but at the same time step into the background so that the game takes center stage. This is already something that I find Mythic:RPG to be great at, but using the cards just improves upon this quality to me.

An added tidbit of fun for me is that using the cards feels like a game unto itself. I don't dislike using tables, but they are sort of dry. Having cards that can be interacted with feels more fun and makes the whole thing more energetic to me. It also gives me a set line where the RPG system and its dice based mechanics are separate in my train of thought to the oracle.

All in all I highly recommend using these if you like Mythic:RPG, or solitary Oracle systems. If you are curious and want to try something like this out it would be great too. I hope that the author expands this to include other works, like the Location Crafter and the Creature Crafter.

Set your expectations correctly. It's worth noting what the Location Crafter isn't:

• It's not lists of room types, encounters, furnishings, doors, tricks, or traps for dungeons, haunted mansions, spaceships, supervillain lairs, box canyons, or anything else. It's not tied to any genre, setting, or game system. (Whether that's good news or bad news is up to you.)
• It's not a mapping tool. There's nothing to tell you where the exits are, how big anything is, what sort of cavern you're seeing, or how to get from one location to the next. There's no world-building guidance.

Location Crafter is about helping you build as you go, using inputs you've provided about the sorts of things that should be included.

Would Location Crafter help if you already have tables and generators for room types etc.? Maybe. You could let Location Crafter drive your building process, and use your generators for populating Location Crafter's lists. More on that below.

Would Location Crafter help if you had an existing map, but little or no content? Yes. You could have Location Crafter flesh out each map location, in advance or as you play.

Would you need Location Crafter if you already had a detailed setting? No, unless you use Location Crafter to extend what you already have.

Location Crafter uses a mix of planned and random elements.

Your prep work involves populating your lists of Locations, Encounters, and Objects. You're not tying them to a map or to each other at this stage. You might know you want guardrooms and a Temple of Awful Evilness on the list, for example, so you add them to your Location list, but (so far) you don't know where or when they'll appear.

You can make entries for unique locations, encounters, and objects (a named NPC, a one-of-a-kind object). You can make entries for reusable locations, encounters, and objects (a guest room, a band of goblins, a sack of coins). You can use None as an entry. You can repeat entries if you want them to come up more often. You can use Expected as an entry, meaning you won't specify what it is now, except to say it'll be something ordinary and expected when it comes up. If you have outside tables and generators, you could use them to help you populate the lists. You can use Special as entry to trigger a roll on a table that adds a twist to something you roll up. You can add Random as an entry, which will be determined randomly when you use the lists later. You can add Complete as an entry type so you can mark the end of exploration.

There's more art than science in deciding how to make up your lists. How far down should "Complete" appear in the Locations list? How far down should the evil boss appear in the Encounters list? How many "None" entries do you want? Do you want lots of "Random" and "Special" entries, or just one of each, or none at all?

That's the prep work. You could stop your preparations there, and not use the lists until game time. Alternatively, you could start using the lists ahead of the session to start fleshing out the content, but you'd probably still leave some of it for the session so you can be adaptive during play.

Using the tables involves rolling against the lists you've created. You're creating scenes. You create a scene by rolling up a Location, an Encounter, and an Object, and you give the PCs a way to reach the scene. You add and subtract Progress Points as you go, which biases your die roll toward the earlier or later parts of the lists. In other words, you'd put the stuff to find early near the top of each list, and the stuff to find later near the bottom. If you wanted to separate earlier and later content entirely (e.g. stuff on this side of the river vs stuff on the other side of the river), just make separate lists for each; you'd probably include a location in the first set that will lead you to the second set.

You could wind up with many combinations of Location, Encounter, and Object when you roll up a scene. To me, this helps you stay flexible. It avoids the old problem of opponents who sit in one room forever, waiting for an adventurer to wander by. If you have set pieces in mind (THIS encounter must happen in THIS location with THESE objects present), you can do that, but mostly the lists are for mixing and matching on the fly in random combinations.

While you're rolling stuff up, the various entry types mentioned earlier could kick into action. "Expected" is something you make up on the spot, or maybe you have an outside generator to help you. "Random" means you use Location Crafter's description oracle to roll up two terms (e.g. "Jovially" + "Fancy") that inspire you to create something. If you roll up a unique element, you cross it off the list so it won't come up again. You add and remove Progress Points as you go to modify later rolls. If you roll up Complete, there's no further exploration to be done.

If you need help with things like whether there's another way out of the room, or whether a door is currently locked, you could use one of Location Crafter's included oracles (Simple Questions, Complex Action Questions, or Complex Description Questions), or some other answer oracle you might prefer. The "complex" oracles have you roll up two terms and use them for inspiration.

A nice feature is that you can expand your lists as you use them. If a new Location, Encounter, or Object comes up during play, and if it might come up again later, add it to the appropriate list. This can add continuity and coherence to your setting.

You could use Location Crafer and Adventure Crafter in tandem, although neither mentions the other. Adventure Crafter is more about what happens and why it happens whereas Location Crafter is more about where it happens. When Adventure Crafter does make location references, you could use Location Crafter to flesh them out or to replace them. Location Crafter's Encounters list is largely redundant with Adventure Crafter's Characters list. You could use one or the other for both purposes, or you could make one the master list while the other helps populate the master list when needed.

To recap: Location Crafter is helpful for building an area as you go.

Adventure Crafter is a useful genre-neutral and game system-neutral tool if you're looking for inspiration when creating key moments in an adventure. It's modular, meaning you can employ or skip various elements as you see fit, and the tool still works. I recommend it.

You can use Adventure Crafter for solo play, or as a GM you can use it for inspiration on the fly or for planning in advance. You could use it for a one-shot session or an on-going campaign. You could use it for a single scene, or for a series of scenes. You could use it for GMless play to help you create scenes, but it doesn't include an answer oracle that handles questions like "Are there monsters in the room? Is the door locked? Is it raining today?"

The core element it deals with is the Turning Point: "Turning Points are the pivotal Scenes in your Adventure that propel the story along. They are the plot twists within your Adventure." Each Turning Point consists of "plot points" you select or roll up from one of five styles: action, tension, mystery, social, or personal. I had to get used to their use of the term plot point. Outside of this product, a turning point and a plot point are pretty much the same thing to me. What Adventure Crafter calls plot points would have made more sense to me sooner if they had been called tropes instead.

There are 40+ "plot points" that cover various things like what happens in a scene (someone runs away, mass battle, corruption, etc.), who's involved (an old nemesis, someone who needs help, etc.), or the circumstances of a scene (small town, night time, etc.). It's then up to you to fit these pieces together. There's also nothing stopping you from discarding elements that make no sense. There are various ways to use each plot point. For example, if you roll up a Mass Battle, the battle could be the trigger for the scene, or it could be the action within the scene, or the scene could portray a battle's aftermath.

Each of the five scene types (which Adventure Crafter calls "themes") uses its own mix of the various plot points. This is a strong point of the tool, because you might want one scene to emphasize action while another emphasizes social elements, for example. You whip up a short theme table that lets you prioritize the themes. You roll up (or choose) one of the themes using that table, and then you roll up a plot point for that theme. Do that five times, and you've got the ingredients of a Turning Point. You can get up to three "None" results, meaning you'll end up with 2-5 plot points per Turning Point.

Many of the plot points invoke new or existing characters. You maintain a character list that also serves as a table to roll against. When a plot point mentions a character (such as, "A Character acts in a very risky way"), it's up to you to determine who that is. You could make the decision without rolling dice, but the character list is there if you want some randomness. At first, the entries are a mix of "New character" or "Choose most logical character." You overwrite entries with characters who are likely to be involved - the PCs and key NPCs. As you roll up plot points, you'll also start adding characters to the list. This is how Adventure Crafter adds continuity from one Turning Point to the next, by involving characters that appeared earlier. Adventure Crafter provides general-purpose Descriptor and Identity tables to help you make up new characters, but you could easily use your own methods for creating new characters.

Similarly, you can keep a list of plotlines. For a one-shot or a tightly focused session, you might not want multiple plotlines, but if you're willing to let plotlines accumulate, you can keep a list and roll against it every time you create a Turning Point. Like the character list, the plotline list is a mix of "New plotline" and "Choose the most logical plotline," and you add to it as new plotlines arise.

A possible shortcoming (depending on your expectations) is that Adventure Crafter doesn't produce anything like a goal, logline, or elevator pitch for the adventure, or even for an individual scene. Most of the plot points don't give anyone a goal. It's up to you to come up with these things, whether you decide them before you roll up plot points to guide your interpretation, or whether you use the plot points as inspiration to see what emerges.

Another possible shortcoming (again depending on your expectations) is the lack of plot structure. It does indeed discuss making an adventure outline, and it achieves that up to a point by having you string together a series of Turning Points. You could, for example, make an action opening by emphasizing that theme for the inciting incident. You could throw a mystery into the middle. You could have a big action scene saved up for the end. That's fine as far as it goes, but the tool makes no distinctions between the different stages of a story arc. If you want your Turning Points to follow the Magnificent Seven Plot Points, the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet, the Lester Dent Pulp Master Fiction Plot, or the Spirit of the Century Pulp Plot Framework, it's up to you to impose that on the Turning Points you create.

Adventure Crafter is written clearly (aside from the terminology quibbles I mentioned above). There are good explanations for each plot point. There are a good number of useful examples. The PDF includes a few pages ready for you to print out so you can write on them and have them at your fingertips during play.

Adventure Crafter is a nicely done tool. I recommend it.

This product's contents is very different than Mythic and the related Creature and Adventure crafters. The other books provide you with large, imaginative charts that fuel your games. They are very helpful, and save time.

The Location Crafter provides you with the process to make your own. As far as concept and methodology goes, the product is as good as the others, but it stops short! Instead of providing you with pre-made sets for you to use/modify like battlefield, castle, alien base, office building, fairy forest, modern day slum, and such, it just shows you the process. It seems like the whole book should be the last chapter of a much larger product.

I would wait for the full release, and make do with the other excellent products until then.

This book does exactly what it claims to do. it will create adventures for you with as much or as little detail as you require.

If you use Mythic GME it is an essential addition. It truly is an amazing add on for anyone who roleplays solo or a group without a GM.

Truly, I believe this is a stroke of genius. I reckon it's worth an Ennie. Also it is a shining example of technical authoring. It's easy to unserstand its moving parts because it's explained so logically with numerous examples.

Awesome.

An interesting read, but man that art is distracting and out of date.

There are free systems avalible that are much better at giving relivent information for GM emulation.

Ran a solo game of 1st edition AD&D using Mythic. Game went like this:

1. Party enters dungeon, they're supposed to locate a bad villain and distract him long enough for the town militia to thwart his forces.
2. Party encounters a heavy wooden door that's stuck (not locked just stuck). Dwarven fighter steps up and kicks down the door.
3. Giant centipedes behind the door surprise the party and promptly swarm them, killing the party off with their venomous bite attacks within just 2 rounds.
4. ??? TPK ???

Honestly, even though my entire party literally died within the first 20 minutes of playing, I still had a blast and am gearing up to run more games. Mythic is system agnostic but I like old school D&D which is why I chose to run it. This book is an absolute must-have for anyone serious about running solo games or GM-less games.

This is the review you're looking for down here.

Okay, so. If you're primarily interested in the GM emulation rules, but you're looking at this and thinking to yourself 'hmm, well, why not just get the full rules for the like 2 more dollars it costs?' then I strongly suggest you STOP and go buy the standalone GM emulation rules. I own both, and I purchased the GM emulation PDF second, despite the fact that this book contains all the information in that book, and to be honest, I somewhat wish I had purchased that first.

The issue is in presentation.

I'm going to state right now that there is nothing wrong with the Mythic RPG rules. It is a perfectly servicable (if not particularly interesting) low-crunch generic system. It looks like it works. I can't particularly think of any specific type of game I'd choose it over a more specialized system for, though. I suppose it might work for a simple generic system in the case of wanting to run something I already knew and didn't want to learn a new system for. I'd need to get my group familiar with Mythic RPG first, but after that I suppose it could serve well for something like that.

The issue I have is that I was more interested in the GMless rules which are the major selling point of the system. In the way the book is written, the rules you would need to know to use Mythic's GMless rules to run it with another game's ruleset (another selling point) are spread throughout the book and intermixed with the Mythic RPG rules. Reading this book and trying to determine which rules you would need to keep and which to discard in order to run this with, say, 5E D&D, becomes a bit of a chore.

I suppose it might be easier to do if I played Mythic first, but I've got a current D&D game going that I was wanting to try running this a bit with which I don't want to halt to play a few sessions of Mythic first, and I DEFINITELY don't want to try to convert D&D over to the Mythic system. Both my and my players' free time is limited and it's hard enough for us to get together on a weekly basis, wasting time goofing around with a new system is simply not really what I had in mind.

If you're wondering if there's anything else in the book that could be interesting (say, a unique setting, or anything that could be interesting for use standalone from the RPG rules) there kind of isn't. It's just the game rules, there is a bit of artwork interspersed in the pages that gives the impression this is more of a fantasy system, but it really is generic in the functional term of that word- it could be used for any sort of game whatsoever, and doesn't have any rules that are specifically built towards being a particular genre. I suppose that could be considered a feature but there can be such a thing as being TOO universal. The main RPG rules simply don't seem to have much flavor at all in my opinion.

I suppose if you're looking specifically for a DMless generic rules-light system and not interested (at least not immediately) in pulling out the GMless rules and using them with another system, this might be the version for you. If you're more likely to want to do that than to drop whatever you're currently running and playing Mythic as a complete package, though, I'd suggest grabbing the GMless rules package instead.

PS: I sort of wish there wasn't a requirement to rate it out of five stars on DriveThruRPG in order to review it. I think this system looks well done and my problems with it mostly have to do with it not being super easy to pull apart, when the description made me believe otherwise. There is another version of this that is already pulled apart, and if you want it pulled apart, you want that one instead. That's all I'm trying to say.

When it said Emulator I expected it to be paired with a program that did the randomized set up. Considering there are free programs that will give you a random set up like Rpgsolo.com I was expecting if I was paying money I would have gotten a higher quality program component but this is only a book with some charts and storyboarding sheets. I would ask for a refund but there was obvious thought and care put into the system.

I bought this product years ago along with "Mythic Variations." I've read through it several times and it has some great advice for creative stories, running your game and keeping track of things whether you're using it as your game engine or just the GM Emulator part. Although I find the Mythic system intriguing I have never used it. I'm sure it would work perfectly well for running a game with. The main selling feature for me was the Game Master Emulator. I'm almost always the GM for the games I play, and the idea of being able to get a group together and join them as a player was very appealing. I've used it a few times with Mutants and Masterminds 3e and Savage Worlds and can say it works great. You need to know how your chosen gaming system works, and the GME does the rest of the work for you. I'd recommend Mythic for that alone! If you do want a generic system, you get that too...so it's a great purchase for folks looking for one or both of those things.

Summary : a very interesting product, perhaps more on the story game side than some other RPG. As a generic RPG system, 4 stars, the fifth because it contains a great deal of advice on how to actually use the system for many things AND for the potential as a GM tool.

I reviewed the pdf, which I bought. I played solo games only.

Content description : The system description starts with character creation, probably to allow reader to figure the new system more quickly. Everything is described with on a ladder, compared to an "average", decided by the players. Then you have the Fate Chart, which is quite central to the system (percentage of success or getting a "yes" to a question, based on the ranks defined before), followed by task resolution, fighting rules, how to generate more randomness in your adventure, how to generate an adventure with and without GM, and advices on converting other games to the Mythic system. There is a complete play exemple, on about 15 pages. It is ended by various reference tables and sheets.

Layout is clear, but internal links are lacking.

I do not like the art. I feel it is cheesy, almost unprofessional.

How it works ? Basically, the GM and/or the players asks questions, and the answer is provided by a roll on the Fate chart (answer is pass / fail or yes / no). Hence, if the GM allows it, you may actually err quickly on the story game side. Though, it is pretty interesting to make a call on many situations.

What I liked :

• system is easy to grasp and covers a lot of ground, though a bit of work during game may be needed (taking notes for further reference)
• still there are many examples and advices provided, which illustrates clearly the system, making even easier to understand it
• the solo GMing part actually works, and I guess it also would as no GMing system
• the work is modular, you can use a part of it, or as a whole
• many references sheets. Print them, stick them together, and you have your GM playmat withing minutes

Could have been even better with :

• better art. The product seems to be a Platinium seller on OBS, so it could make sense to give a few hundred of bucks to an(other) artist to improve it. It is almost disheartening, with many half naked women, one naked mer-dude taking a shower, and a few bad designed monsters… It does not convey the sense of "Mythic" by any way and could maybe even be removed without loss
• the fight rules are more complicated than the rest of the system, which is a bit surprising, and would slow down everything. The author gives only a few lines of advice on how to get ride of it, a simplified version of fighting rules could have been useful, with examples
• internal links. We are in 2018, even a pdf bought for a handful of bucks should have them
• no SRD or CC licence, which I think is a bad point for a generic system nowadays

I've been using the Mythic:RPG system for years. After having a family it showed me that I could still enjoy all of the role playing games that I had been missing. After reading this book I've used it in several games and found that it is a fantastic update for the Mythic:RPG system! The author has expanded on the system to provide better support for NPC interactions and introduced checks that have more direction on how to interpret their meanings. This has improved the quality of my lone wolf gaming.

Any of the new things introduced in this book are optional. You can mix and match these new checks in to your games on demand. So far I believe that all of them add much to the play experience. There is a bit of a learning curve to the new NPC checks, but I've been very happy with the results from my games.

Bottom line, if you like the Mythic:RPG series and use them this would be a solid update to the system. If you've never tried to use the Mythic GM Emulator you would want to get that book along with this.

Fantastic system - obviously a lot of thought has gone into it. I like the emphasis on creativity on the part of the players. From my point of view, this is a great resource for DMs, as you can create your own adventure by actually PLAYING THROUGH IT and creating it as you go!!!

The open nature of the system really appeals to me, and it works incredibly well with D&D 5e. Amazing work :)