Interesting system, with absolutely abysmal art that makes it an embarrassment to bring to a group of players.

Would pay double / give 4 stars for a version with no pictures at all..

An excellent addition and update. It's clearly written and it hangs together nicely.

The Fate Check (for yes/no questions) is cleaner and easier than the earlier Fate Chart. You don't have a table of 297 numbers to look up (198 of which were in a microscopic font size).

The Detail Check (for open-ended questions) is also good. I like the mix of possible outcomes that inspire a direction to take: some that focus on particular characters, some that focus on particular threads, and some that stir emotional reactions. The table of examples ("Victor Milgrew Detail Check Question Examples") is helpful.

The meaning tables for descriptions and actions don't do much for me. Neither did the previous Action/Subject tables. They're too generic and they don't always match up well with each other. Results like "Helplessly Healthy" and "Imitate Portals" are more likely to slow me down than to help me. My preference would be to see something like a "Meaning Table Crafter." Instead of handing you two prefab d100 tables that are supposed to accommodate every genre and every tone, it would guide you in creating your own d20, d10, or even d6 pairs of tables, for themes that suit you. You might use the Adventure Crafter themes (Action, Tension, Mystery, Social, and Personal), or just Combat and Conversation themes. You might also prefer tables that suit your game's tone, such as light entertainment, noir, or whatever. I'd get a lot more out of something like that than I do from universal tables. Granted, the meaning tables are completely optional, so I can skip them and no harm done.

The Event Check is nicely done.

I like the Behavior Check. In a sense, it's the Chekhov's Gun principle, applied to character descriptions. (One version of Chekhov's Gun: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.") In other words, the Behavior Check is a way to make character descriptions directly relevant. If you say a character is cheerful or gloomy or whatever, the Behavior Check gives you a way to use it.

The Behavior Check also exemplifies the "Focus on the Critical Few" principle. Some game systems would have you roll up bunches of traits for characters -- traits that you might mention once and then forget about. In the Behavior Check, no more than three traits are going to matter, so indirectly it encourages you to use restraint when cranking out traits.

As much as I like the other chapters, I don't see the point of the Statistic Check. It's six pages on rolling up character stats (or other stats) into a generic form, and then you have to convert the generic results to the game system of your choice. In most RPG systems, stat generation is already pretty straightforward ("Assign these values to these stats" or "Roll these dice and assign them to these stats"). Even if I played a super-crunchy system with character creation that involves hours of dice rolling and lookups in tables and flowcharts, I'm not seeing how the Statistic Check would help. It seems to me that the Statistic Check complicates the process without enhancing it. In addition, I've stopped feeling the need to randomize every creature's stats. If you're facing an ogre, here are the ogre's stats. Period. Every time. Is the game really enhanced if Ogre 1's strength is a smidgen higher than Ogre 2's? Not for me. The more interesting situation for me would be that Ogre 1 is power-hungry and Ogre 2 is lazy, or that Ogre 1 is the chieftain and Ogre 2 is a hunter, or that Ogre 1 is known as The Mighty while Ogre 2 is known as The Sly; those traits will manifest when you do a Behavior Check. I don't need to randomize their stats to make them interesting.

Finally, kudos to the writer (and any editors) for the good, clear writing. So often, RPG writing makes me think, "For crying out loud, use a spelling checker, learn what apostrophes are for, and study grammar!" Not here. Nicely done.

Great material however was delivered bent and torn towards the bottom of the pages. Looks like it has been damaged by water.. pages are bubbled up. For the amount of money, wish it was in better condition.

These cards are based off the original book, but are far superior. The original book was a great tool, but one of the big problems was that it was too slow to use the table system. Great for prep, but horrible for on the fly building of stories. With the card system, it is a lot faster to make stories on the fly.

I strongly suggest that instead of using the small theme deck. Just to write out numbers and pick the themes you want. This way you can remove themes or even have double/triple themed adventures.

Pros:

• Quickly build stories and plot points
• Easier to user than the book
• Compact
• Allows you to generate characters

Cons:

• Instructions do a bad job of explaining how to integrate with the Mythic Deck and basically tell you to read the book
• You still need the PDF instructions to explain more details from the short event/plot description
• The PDF instructions are missing many of the details the Adventure Crafter book has
• Character generation is missing some details that can be found with GameMaster's Apprentice

Overall, this is a must buy for GMs and story writers. However, I am not sure you can understand this and how it works with the Mythic Deck without the Adventure Crafter book. I strongly suggest the author let you buy these cards and the Adventuer Craft book with a slight discount to the book.

I owned the book already and thought the cards might be a good way to speed up prep and play and boy was I right. They are a fantastic resource for GMs and Solo players. As both (I GM for my kids and soemtimes play solo, or with them as well), these cards are great for creating dynamic stories on the fly or with short preparation. I highly recommend!

The actual content of the book is good, but the art (full of nearly-naked women with strange anatomy and waists as small as their heads) is distracting and actually detracted from the experience of reading the book for me.

Thoroughly enjoy the GM Emulator system though! If you ever re-release, please please comission better art.

These second set of extensions to the Mythic rules streamlines a lot of the process.

• The biggest and most noticeable difference is the Fate Check replacing the Fate Chart. In the original rules, you would refer to a chart, comparing the odds of succeeding with possible influence from the Chaos Factor. I personally found it daunting. Instead, the Fate Check forgoes the chart and simplifies the process so you could easily manage it in your head.
• The Detail Check is an alternative means of getting details on an entity, or rather, it's a random word generator to inspire your imagination. I've personally found its selection of words satisfactory.
• The Event Check is more or less the same as the Random Event from the original. Aside from how it's triggered (from the Fate Check), I can't see a difference.
• The Behaviour check is fascinating, if a little fiddly with the numbers. With it, you determine the intensity that an NPC acts and can randomly pull out unexpected actions. It has a particular consistency that helps it along in comparison to simply making a Fate Check asking something like "did the guy cower in fear?"
• I confess to not using the Statistics Check, as the games I play using Mythic were devoid of crunch.

I personally found these variations to be my favourite as they get the job done quickly and with minimum fuss.

The main mythic system is excellent and highly recommended. It got me back into tabletop RPGs by eliminating prep. It is not perfect but well worth the money and very useful. In addition it teaches scene-framing techniques that are useful for all GMs and for anyone playing storygames or more narritive games that use this technique.

This supplimenis interesting but not essential. I think the key ideas are in the base Mythic GME.

I've been trying to fit this into a game for years, but never quite got around to it. I think I like the IDEA of the Mythic GME, but when it comes to making literary decisions in my game worlds, I simply want to control all of that myself. One thing I did really like is the "chaos meter", which I'm using a highly stripped down version of in my current game. It's a nice way to escalate events in a game along a reasonable curve.

originally posted here: https://farooqsgaming.blogspot.com/2019/08/mythic-game-master-emulator-review.html

The Mythic Game Master Emulator provides three powerful tools that allow you to play tabletop roleplaying games without a GM: The Fate Chart, the Random Event tables, and the Adventure Sheet.

The Fate Chart is the core of the Mythic GME system and provides the basic foundation for play. It is a complicated yes/no system, a so-called "oracle", that is meant to handle any random question with an unexpected result that would normally be asked of a DM. The Fate chart provides the entirety of Mythic's task resolution system, and the outcome of every action should be posed as a yes/no question to be rolled for on the chart. The Fate chart also acts as the main content generator for the system, and it is implied that worldbuilding tasks such as setting up the features of a setting, NPC encounters, and social situations can all be handled through it, though there is an admonishment in the book not to go overboard with dice rolls but use logic instead.

The Random Event Focus and Event Meaning tables are the only concrete tables in the book. They present a list of items that, when combined, must be interpreted to create a new event occurance in your game. The GME says to use these tables only on a double number dice roll, but they're also useful at any point when you're unsure of what to do next in game. The Event Meaning tables are essentially just tools for guided inspiration in story telling, much the same as Rory's Story Cubes, or a Tarot Deck, or any other such tool that invites creative interpretation. The Event Focus chart is meant to give the Event Meanings a concrete effect in your game.

The Adventure Sheet is the framing device that holds the rest of the game together. Every game session, or every adventure, is meant to be a collection of scenes in which a dramatic conflict is posed and resolved. The worksheet itself contains entries for scene setups and resolutions, as well as places to list NPC actors and story threads. The story threads are also a unique idea that provide guidance to the flow and purpose of the game, as well as adding another element of unpredictability.

I found the Mythic GME to be more useful as a creative writing tool rather than a fun game to play solo. In fact, when it comes to specifically playing solo, I found the experience of using the Mythic GME to be more akin to doing English Literature homework with dice or doing my taxes instead of actually playing a game.

The greatest weakness of the Mythic RPG is that it tries to be completely generic. I understand that the goal is to allow the players to fit it into whatever setting or type of story they want, but as a result it loses concrete mechanics to actually support an individual fantasy. In fact, for any type of game you want to play, it is better to use a system with concrete mechanics and only use the Mythic GME to fill in the missing "gaps".

The traditional role of a Game Master is to describe the environment to the players, and to narrate the results of their actions. Or, to restate in technical jargon, the GM provides content generation and action resolution.

The sea-change, breakthrough moment of the Mythic GME is in using the Fate chart for action resolution. Every action can be posed as a yes/no question and rolled for a result on the Fate chart. Every scene should begin with a question describing the dramatic conflict ("how do my player characters overcome this immediate challenge") and a series of answers rolled on the Fate chart can provide the resolution ("are they successful"). Once you separate the distinct tasks of content generation and action resolution from one another, the use of the Fate chart, Adventure Sheet and Event tables become more clear, but the book itself does not do this.

Instead, it confuses the issue by using the Fate chart for content generation and action resolution, and then admonishing the player not to go overboard with content focused questions. A better solution would be to use the many random charts, terrain, events, and encounters that can be found in an RPG such as D&D or on online blogs for content generation.

In my own games, I found the Mythic GME of limited use. I could create a game world straight out of the random tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide and adventure through it, and I could use all the rest of that game's mechanics to resolve my successes. I only needed the Mythic GME to fill in the gaps of certain elements that weren't immediately obvious. The Mythic system might have changed the way we see RPGs, and probably kicked off the whole solo RPG community, and its definitely worth the read to understand how, at a fundamental level, the tasks of a GM work and how they can be represented mechanically through dice rolls.

However, I will complain that this book is presented backwards. It shows you its most important mechanic first, the Fate Chart, followed by everything that's connected to it. This leaves you to puzzle out for yourself how to actually use all its mechanics. Instead, it should have presented the Adventure Sheet first, as its the first thing that you'd pull out for your game session, and explained it first before moving through the Randomness chapter, Event Tables and then Fate Chart, as that's generally how you would use them during actual play.

Just echoing the other reviews which say that if you're only interested in the solo system, then its better to buy the Mythic GM Emulator instead and save yourself the $2.

I found the Mythic RPG to be more useful as a creative writing tool rather than a fun game to play solo. In fact, when it comes to specifically playing solo, I found the experience of using the Mythic RPG to be more akin to doing English Literature homework with dice or doing my taxes instead of actually playing a game.

The greatest weakness of the Mythic RPG is that it tries to be completely generic. I understand that the goal is to allow the players to fit it into whatever setting or type of story they want, but as a result it loses concrete mechanics to actually support an individual fantasy. In fact, for any type of game you want to play, it is better to use a system with concrete mechanics and only use the Mythic GME to fill in the missing "gaps".

Its clear that the main appeal of the Mythic system is the GM Emulator. The instincts of the author were correct in first creating an RPG to show off the Emulation system, but then separating the Emulator out to be its own standalone system. The Mythic system is too abstract and generic to support actual play, unless layered on top of another RPG system.

more in depth review on my blog: https://farooqsgaming.blogspot.com/2019/08/mythic-game-master-emulator-review.html

I have tried this product for two months now, after an initial period to adapt to the new game style, I have found it useful, fast to play and rules are easy to remeber

Production: This is a good product. I'm satisfied with the card and print quality. It's POD quality for sure, but it does the job as others have said.

Content: I'm a fan of the Mythic system. I love my solo RPG and tabletop game play, so Mythic was a welcome addition when I picked it up years ago. But taking that system and putting it into a deck of cards made me love it even more. I've used the deck for solo RPG and boardgame play. My favorite way to use the deck these days is for RPG game prep. I'll use it to come up with NPC personalities and plot hooks. It's a wonderful tool for all of that.

The GM E is the heart of the game. I've used it for Solo play of RPGs and table top games. Highly recommend it.

There are a lot of gret ideas in the Variations Module and add a lot of fun to the game.