Progress Journal, March 2026

Hi KJ :) That one is new to Micro Mythic, along with a couple of other new ones. The Conversation Crafter is derived from the conversation rules in issue #44's "Slice Of Life Adventures".

Yay, thank you :) I've longed for a game like this for a while. It bothers me that lots of video games will have some story to them, but it's often kind of weak. Either way, good or thin story, they never think to offer a mechanism where we can insert our own stories. And yet, lots of people do this! Almost everyone develops head canon as they play, and their are entire communities online spinning their own stories from the environments that open world games offer. I really like open world survival games, but the ultimate version of such a game has not come along yet. I got tired of waiting, so I decided to make my own, and this is the perfect opportunity to blend in concepts from the "Solo Play In Video Games" article. Here's a rough sketch of what I'm trying to achieve here: • The game is open world survival. However, I hate some of the conventions of this genre, for instance grind. I think games often toss in a lot of grindy elements just to create a play loop that eats up a lot of time and thus makes the game longer lasting. Instead of making the Player spend time picking up sticks to make fires, etc., I'm abstracting all of that into a mechanic where you spend time. Like, literally. Time is kind of the coin you spend to get grindy stuff done. I don't mean player time, but the in-game clock moves forward and boom you're done. • The game will have story elements similar to Kozen Crest or Moonlight radio. The start of the game will feature an internal table that splices together a random "why you're there" + "something interesting" + "something strange". This will create a random scenario for the game and also adjust internal factors so the game is different and unexpected each time. • The landscape is randomized. So no two games will be the same this way either. There are two major biomes, you will either show up on an island or a remote mountain valley. Both biomes are pieced together randomly from hand made terrain elements that are randomly chosen and placed together. Other random elements are dropped into it to increase variety, like mountains, cliffs, lakes, rivers, etc. • The reason for much of the above stuff is to offer just enough story elements and content that the player can build their own meaning on top of this. This is all meant to inspire roleplaying. There will be a journal you keep where you can write down your thoughts and interpretations. This will also include Mythic tools like Fate Questions and Discovering Meaning so you can do some real solo roleplaying in your journal. • Combat will be very downplayed. I don't want this to be a big button-mashing blood fest. I'm going to use the combat rules from Micro Mythic, which are derived from One-Page Success Check. Basically, you're going to want to avoid combat, but if you do get into one the outcome will likely either be something like you win, or you lose and you get knocked out and wake up somewhere else. Or something like that. • The game focuses on exploration. I want the environment to be beautiful so just walking around is fun. There will also be lots of little things to find, like statues and temples, odd buildings, and other things. There's also a cave system to find more stuff. This is all meant as inspiration for the roleplaying aspects, as the game's internal story will be as light of a touch as possible.

Thanks Stark :)

Super Powers will not be denied! If it never happens in the magazine, it will happen in Mythic RPG 2e. I have a section in there on powers that can be geared toward magic spells, super powers, psionics, etc. I want each to have their own flavor, so there will likely be a dedicated powers section alongside a magic section.