Back in my day, we had to walk up hill, both ways, in the snow, to play solo ...
I have posted this before, I think, but it's been awhile and I just go to thinking of it and I thought it would be fun to look at the earliest printed version of Mythic :)
This is the earliest earliest. Like, this is when it first flopped out of the sea and hadn't even evolved legs yet, let alone grew enough to run wild.
Here is the cover of my first draft. I planned to produce this through Lulu (POD was new back then, and Lulu was the place to go for it) having it comb bound. My idea was to make it and try and get it into game stores. This is a draft version I produced in 2001 to see how it would look.
I meant this to be a markup copy for improvements. You can see my chicken scratches on the cover. "More Sat" ... I felt the cover color was too washed out and should be more saturated and vibrant.
You can see from my markings here that this is when I realized this thing really needs lots of examples! lol The phrase "example" with an arrow pointing to a spot is there three times on these two pages, and scribbled on lots more pages throughout this copy. I remember when it smacked me in the face that examples would be essential for understanding Mythic.
The Fate Chart didn't change much (or maybe at all) from this draft to the version that was finally published in 2003, two years later. The Fate Chart was the first thing I made for Mythic. I had that done when that's all Mythic was, a single Fate Chart for me to roll probabilities on. So in my mind, back then, the chart itself was complete.
I really went to town marking this draft up. I'd never made a game book before, so to me this looked a lot different in print than it did on the screen. I found so much wrong with it. I originally thought the book was mostly done, but I kept finding things I wanted to fix or change.
This version of it is only 34 pages long, on what looks to be an 8x10 size page. I continued to tinker with it for two more years, with the book coming out in 2003 at 145 pages long on 8.5x11 paper.
I hope you enjoyed this little journey down Memory Lane :)
Happy saturated adventuring!
Comments (14)
Love stuff like this, thanks for sharing. Will look great one day in the International Museum of Mythic. :)
Hah, I like that :)
Great post, but because of the photo, my first thought after seeing it was “Wow, the 2nd Edition is already here!” 🥲
Aww, I'm sorry :) That would be kind of interesting though if the second edition was made to look like a retro version of the first draft!
The one thing that stands out to me is the observation that the Fate Chart was the first thing you wrote. It seems that's one of the ideas from the book that gained the most traction early on, along with the GME concept that surrounds it, and to this day the Fate Chart and Fate Questions feel central to my experience of Mythic and solo RPGs. It's fascinating that such a foundational idea was also the first.
That's a good point. For a while, the Fate Chart was the only part of Mythic that existed. I played games only using Yes/No questions, and nothing else. The Meaning tables came later to add more variety, then other bits were added like scene structure, random events, and so on. But as you say, Fate Questions were always the heart of the system and still are.
Honestly, I wish more game books were comb or spiral bound. That ability to lay them flat without fear of breaking the spine is nice.
I agree, I love spiral binding.
this is precious.
My favorite part of the Mythic rules and articles are the example stories. So I couldn’t agree more with past you about that.
I'm glad you like them :) I hear so much feedback about the examples. That's wonderful because I really like making them! It's like I'm writing and playing at the same time.
Have you scan / photographed it all? It feels like it's important to preserve, especially with Mythic being of the first of its kind.
I haven't, but that's a good idea. I have only one copy of the original printed version, of course, and it would break my heart if it were to be lost. I'll make a project of digitizing it.
Love this look into Mythic's history!