This is the second session of my Mythic Ynn Soloplay!
Last time, we met our character Lady Hartgrieve as she began her delve into the Gardens of Ynn in order to find a method of resurrecting her lost husband. Along the way, she rescued a blue fox and had to run away from a walking people-eating cheesecake.
This time around, I’m adding that 2d20 mechanic that I saw in other soloplay games and wrote a post about using them for group play. The game right now is just a bit too all or nothing for what I’m going for, so this should help that.
We’ll also have Lady Hartgrieve and her fox friend rest. I’ll set their HP back to full, but this comes at the cost of 12 hours. Remember, her way back home is lost after 24 hours…
Lastly, some basic bookkeeping. The Chaos factor is currently 5 and each of our lists have a couple of entries which I’m interesting in pursuing! Most notably, the battle motif that’s been coming up in play. Without further ado, lets play!
Expected Scene check: 6, our scene is as normal.
Hartgrieve lifts her head off the fur of the blue fox. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the nights of Ynn, lit by its perpetual full moon. She barely remembers the time between running from danger and closing her eyes. The fox begins to stir, announced by its grumbling belly.
Hartgrieve: I’m running out of time, fox, so we have to move on. Here… I wanted to find something more natural for your diet, but this will have to do for now.
She uses one of her Schrodinger’s items as a package of biscuits to feed the fox. I like to use these as placeholder items, rather than spending time deciding exactly what every character has. She only has two left after this.
The fox takes the meal, grateful to put anything into its stomach after all this time. After a few moments, it begins walking away. Hartgrieve follows, not having any other way of becoming unlost.
Ynn Roll: Ice Rink + Dead Explorers Expected Scene Roll: I don’t really feel like dealing with an interrupt scene yet, so I’m just going to call this a pass.
The fox begins to slow its pace with a cautious gait. The gardens around are dying as the Lady feels the bite of the cold for the first time. She smells something on the air, but doesn’t know what it is. All she knows is that it’s not quite right…
There’s nowhere to hide in a garden caught by the death of winter, so she continues on with the same caution as the fox. Finally, she sees the source of the smell.
before her, 5 wooden spikes jut from the center of a white marble ice rink. On them are 5 bodies. Lady Hartgrieve draws her pistol and approaches, cautiously.
She scans the environment as she does so. All she sees are statues. I’m going to give her a flat willpower roll, to see if she catches onto anything out of place: 10 against her willpower of 16.
Before she gets too close, she notices a statue that isn’t quite still. It moves not by breath, but of a strange, almost manic jittering.
She knows that the danger of interacting with another in this garden is high, but her eye also catches the gear spread about under the dead bodies. There could be something useful…
I’ll leave it to Mythic to tell me what she does. I think it’s equally likely that she either confronts this potential threat or simply avoids the area.
Will she confront the potential foe? I roll a 46, which is a yes.
Hartgrieve(aiming her gun at the statue): Is this your doing, whatever you are?
The statue makes a horrible grating sound as it turns around. It has the features of a rotund man, carved from white marble. It has a beard and wears a smile on its face.
Going to make a monster reaction roll to see where we start: 9, indifferent but may negotiate. Now, do I think the statue caused this? No, probably not. Spikes implies to me that it was some more intelligent creature performing an execution. Actually, let’s figure out what happened there! I’ll put it into a separate block to not interrupt the scene.
I’m looking at my threads list and I think the one that most obviously fits is the one about the battle from way back in scene 2. I’ll roll on the meaning tables and try to figure something out. I got Trap and intellect. Oh, I think I understand what’s going on here. These explorers were probably spies of one of the warring forces, who were caught in a trap. This explains the brutal way in which they were dispatched.
Why are the Corpses here?
Jolly Statue: Me? No, no of course not! I was simply already here as those cloaked folk met up with a group of outsiders, and then… that happened.
Hartgrieve: Cloaked folk? What else do you know of these people?
Jolly Statue: Hmmm… I think I saw that a few of them had quite sharp ears.
These people are elves, though I don’t think Hartgrieve comes from a world which has them.
Hartgrieve: Then you wouldn’t mind if I poked around through their goods, would you?
Jolly Statue: You would rob the the dead? That doesn’t sound very normal to me.
The statue seems to have some sort of honor. I don’t think it would sit back and let Hartgrieve riffle through their things, but perhaps she can talk the statue down. I’ll make one of those 2d20 rolls against her charisma of 7. The chances aren’t great… 15 and 6, which means that his is a “weak hit”. She will succeed, but at some cost. This is a strange statue guy in a strange garden world, so I think he’ll have some strange idea of “fairness.”
Statue: Alright, but you know the rules.
Hartgrieve: What rules?
Statue: You can only take 2 things off them. After all, they’ll need that stuff when they wake back up, or whatever fleshies do. Them’s the rules.
Hartgrieve: …fine, I won’t argue with you.
Hartgrieve knows that there’s no sense in risking the ire of this creature, so she’ll play by its rules. She approaches the bodies and searches them.
Ynn has a table for what sorts of classes these dead explorers are, and I rolled earlier: ranger, knight, exorcist, soldier, and alchemist. They also come with items that you can check out in the book. After searching the bodies, I think she’s going to take the ranger’s grappling hook and rope, and the exorcist’s holy water. She can’t used most of the arms and armours on these people, and she has all the tools needed to make anything the alchemist has.
Hartgrieve: Alright, I’ve taken my pick. Do you know which direction those cloaked figures went?
Statue: Uhm… that way!
It points into a direction. Really, the direction doesn’t matter: she doesn’t know where she is anyway. If she’s lucky, she won’t come across them. If she’s even luckier, she’ll find a way back to her door.
Either way, it’s time to go deeper.
End of Scene Bookkeeping: She did pretty well and had control of the scene, so I’ll lower the CF to 4. I’m adding ‘cloaked figures’ to my characters list. I’m also changing ‘battle?’ to ‘war’. Even if I don’t have details, I think from here it’s very likely that there’s some bigger events happening than the battle we saw in the kennels.
She goes deeper.
Ynn Roll: Rumbling fountain court Scene Test: 5, altered scene. Gonna roll on the random event focus table to figure out my alterations, and I got NPC Action. I rolled the Blue Fox on my character list, oh no. Rolling twice on the meaning tables gives me Hinder and Prison. I’ll keep this in mind as the scene plays out.
The pair comes across another fountain court in a new garden. This one is different, though. Hartgrieve notices a faint rumbling under her feet. As she looks into the fountain pool, she sees the water tremble. Then, she hears a whistle
Hartgrieve: A trolley!
A white and purple trolley follows a set of tracks and stops just before the fountain court. It is unmanned.
I rolled this trolley on my random event. It will take her to a location which she’s already been at, which is perfect (though she doesn’t know that). But first, she’ll toss another coin into the fountain! Rolling a d10: 2, plus 1 to hit permanently! She feels her martial prowess increase as her AV rises by 1.
Hartgrieve approaches the trolley. Behind her, the fox growls in fear.
Hartgrieve: You won’t ride this thing, will you? But this trolley might take us to somewhere people are!
Decisions, decisions. I think Hartgrieve is interested in riding the trolley in hopes of meeting somebody that can point her in the right direction. But also… the Fox has been a loyal ally so far, and her only one. If she goes on this trolley, she might never see it again. I’ll let Mythic make this decision for me.
Will she abandon the fox? I think it’s another 50/50, which isn’t a 50/50 with a chaos factor of 4. In fact, it’s a 35/65. Rolling… 3! Not only is it a yes, but it’s an exceptional yes!
Hartgrieve: Well then, be off with you! You’ve done nothing for me anyway!
Lady Hartgrieve waves her arms to shoo the blue fox away. As it runs into the gardens, it looks back at her one final time before dashing away. A pang of guit hits Hartgrieve’s heart.
Hartgrieve: Now, Trolley, take me somewhere useful!
With that, she gets on the trolley and it pulls off. Like I said before, the trolley takes one back to somewhere they’ve already explored. I think it takes her back to that original fountain court, with the cheesecake… hopefully it’s gone. We’ll pick back up on that in the next scene, during the next session.
End of Scene Bookkeeping: I don’t think she either lost control or gained control in this scene: she made a decision that lost an ally. Despite that, I’ll keep the blue fox on the character list, just in case it turns into a useful event somewhere down the road. For fun, I’ll also add the trolley to the threads list. If it comes back up, that’ll be a new place that this trolley comes up at. It could be quite useful!
The Lady hangs her head outside the trolley, looking out at the night sky of Ynn. As her hair blazes from the wind, she hopes that this trolley will either lead her back to whence she came… or forward, to her husband.
# EndIt took me a while to get back to this, but alas we’re here. I might try to set some time to do a scene a day, here or there, or set a day of the week to be the solo play day.
I had quite a lot of fun this session, but there’s something about the Chaos Factor that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t know how much I like its impacts on the fate chart and on the answer to questions. Should a 50/50 really become 35% chance of a yes because of it? It makes the odds a little fiddly to me. I’ll keep up with mythic as is for at least the next session, though, as this game is a test of it. After this, there’s another GME that I want to check out called Omen, which handles it a bit differently. I quite like the structure that the emulator gives me to create scenes on top of outside the game loop, though.