The Mythic Game Master Emulator is a well-known system for running solo tabletop role-playing games. Volume 38 of the Mythic Magazine supplement (available from DriveThruRPG as a single issue or as part of the Mythic Magazine Compilation 7) contains a Solo Setting & World Creation System, which is designed to be an easy way to generate a setting to begin adventuring in.
In this post, I’m writing up an example of what the system can produce.
What’s need to create a setting: dice, some tables from the magazine and the main Mythic Game Master Emulator book, and a copy of the world creation sheet from the magazine article.
The first step: roll between 1 to 3 times on the Adventure Genre table. I decided to roll three times, and the results were: Escape, Doomed and Nautical. This suggests a seafaring adventure, in which the known lands consist of islands that are sinking one by one. The protagonists will be trying to find a way to safety.
The second step: roll between 1 to 3 times on the Adventure Tone table. I decide to roll twice, and the results were: Random and Action. This could be a story in which the protagonists are travelling from island to island in search of clues and encountering unexpected obstacles and threats along the way.
The third step: set context rules. These guide how the player interprets the prompts that the Mythic Game Master Emulator offers during the game. For this setting, perhaps something like “The protagonists can never stay in one place for long”.
The fourth step: create world history paths. This is the most complex part of the process (although still not particularly complex). There are boxes on the world creation sheet that we fill in with events suggested by rolls on the Action Meaning table from the Mythic Game Master Emulator. These events form sequences that are interpreted as important events in the world’s past. For the first history path, I rolled: Imitate Illness, Inform Representative, Bargain Vehicle, Celebrate Trial and Return Adversity. This could mean: a magical curse made some islanders appear feverish and confused – they would wander away from care and a few would disappear. Leaders of the islands contacted an inhuman being and signed a contract for a way to get to the hidden realm where people had disappeared to. The first test of this was successful, and there were widespread celebrations. But eventually the contract was broken. Now, not only people but whole islands are disappearing, and the way to the hidden realm has been lost. For the second history path, I rolled: Repulse Personal and Move Expectation. This could mean: the breaking of the contract has been blamed on a selfish individual, and the islands have imposed strict rules on their inhabitants (but these rules vary a lot from island to island). Anyone who dislikes any of these rules is told to abandon their life on land and become a seafaring merchant or explorer.
The final step: name the world. The islands that lost a door?
Reflections
Obviously this relatively quick system doesn’t create a highly detailed world. But this seems like a good starting point for the sort of adventure that can be run with the Mythic Game Master Emulator. Further details will be established if someone begins playing a game in the setting.
Related posts
If you’re wondering what I mean by “Solo Gaming”, see my introductory post for this category: About the “Solo Gaming” category