I actually read it, and holy crap, it is the RPG with the least investment required ever. I’m going to read some of the other games in the bundle to see if they follow the same format, but here’s the deal.
It’s a solo tabletop RPG with ultra simple rules and it only requires one d6. However, in order to play, you need two volunteers. The entire game consists of the player asking questions to the two volunteers. The volunteers answer, but their answers only count if both volunteers agree.
The volunteers need no knowledge in advance. They just read a brief text and get going. The session can be ended by the player or by the volunteers at literally any moment, no matter how abrupt. As a player you just carry the game around with you, and you can play it at any time you can find two willing participants.
After spending two weekends in a row among nerds, I was able to play three sessions. It really is as easy as I imagined to get the game going. All the volunteers I have had were surprisingly willing to play, and also very good at answering.
However, despite playing three times, I didn’t make much progress on uncovering the secrets of The Signature of Aibesta of the Two Courts. In the first and third sessions I made no progress whatsoever. In the second session the volunteers generously allowed me to unlock the entire first section. The book has teens of sections to unlock. Thanks to adult levels of self control I have behaved and not read any sections that I have yet to unlock, but I really want to unlock them.
So yeah, if there are any times I can get two Internet volunteers to just get on Hangout/Discord and answer my questions for a non-determinate amount of time, that would be cool. Maybe can livestream or YouTube if it’s enertaining?
This sounds really interesting, and I wonder what the recording would sound like. Tempted to grab the book and see if there’s any of my local group interested in messing around with it too.
And yeah, might totally steal Rym’s idea since we’re already running an Actual Play podcast.
I had a lot of fun being one of the volunteers for the first game. It was actually hard to not jump in when I sat next to the second game. Scott kept having to shush me.
I was the second volunteer last night in a text-based session (at my insistence - didn’t feel like making mouthwords), and it was fucking awesome.
I stuck to reading just the volunteer pamphlet so I could focus on just that role. I think that my not knowing how Scott’s mechanics worked led to more genuinely challenging answers; if I know how you interact with the game I am more inclined to put a mechanical challenge in front of you, but without knowing it I push more towards things that feel like they could “break” the game.
I think that interaction creates the feel of the game - a wizard investigating a capricious magical world that seems to not make any sense, and trying to derive sense from it.
I would definitely do it as a voice chat though. Discord was handy for being able to search the ridiculous shit we came up with, but it was also slow.
For the first time in a long while I continued my quest to decipher the Grimoire. Two internet rando volunteers, and it actually went very well. If I get more volunteers I can make more progress.
