Potential

I played this game few times already and as the rules are quite clear, I loaded them into LLMs to generate short stories for me. The results were as I expected and it was fun to read through them. The prompts give enough dynamics that can be interpreted in a positive and negative way and story progression keeps the player in a mood where they tend to continue building the story on the prompts previously given. That means the journal entries are not separated micro stories rather they are parts of a single journey. I really like the way the game works like now.

If only there was something… more.

Too little content

For now, there can be exactly 216 prompts generated via dice rolls. Their impact can be affected by the time that passes among them (which is another roll), but that’s rather soft impact on the story.

Having a game that consists out of 36 words total and still be able to generate 216 unique story prompts amazes me, but It is more than clear that the options could be much more wider. That leads me to thoughts of making an extended version of this generator, but still keep the format that got me here. Basically the changes I will be playing with are as follows:

• 2d6 roll for subject
• d12 roll for events
• d12 roll for target

Reasoning

Extending the subjects to 11 records (remember, 2d6 roll generates only 11 values) basically doubles the amount of subjects that can affect the story. Moreover, Bell’s curve can be used to distribute more important subjects (people of the story) in a way they will come up more often than rare subjects.

Twelve events allow me much more variety of what happens in the story. The only issue will be to choose the right words so they all work well with subjects. My initial thought is to make the list more specific so the player won’t be forced to push their creativity so high and rely on the results more directly.

Lastly, the roll to define the target of the event will still point at the first table. I like the idea of reusing the content, but for this part of the prompt generator I prefer to use linear chance of getting the result.

An observant reader noticed that d12 roll can bring 1 as the result, which is not possible to get with 2d6 roll. This can be used to provide the prompt that can never be the subject of the story, but still can be that the subjects relate to. First thing that comes up to my mind is a goal of the journey, but I am too early in the process of expanding the original idea to think this through.

Other mechanics

It is only natural for the extended version to work-in some mechanics that would support the overall feeling of a journey more. Rations, weather, resources, distances measurement, main characters, resolution mechanics, the options are vast. But so is human’s imagination. I wrote the Passage to be a prompt generator rather than a full-fledged system, because that’s the way I think about solo RPGs - to give me some push when I have a story in my mind. Crunchy mechanics tend to provide lots of inputs that are quite straightforward which on one side is quite beneficial - player can take the input and build upon it pretty much directly. However, if the system crosses the imaginary boundary, the prompts of such system become too limiting.

The absolute no-no approach (for me) is to provide a specific sentence with events that cannot be negated in any way and player is only tasked to deal with it. This approach is highly evocative as it replaces the role of a Game Master rather effectively, but the replay value is pushed down rapidly. The game was experienced, and there are usually only few prompts left to discover. A Fall of Magic, or A Thousand Years Old Vampire are great examples of such approach.

Personally, I want to create the tool (or game) with a bit higher replay value in mind. That forces me to think about soft inputs rather than hard ones. To provide the circumstances, the surroundigs, the mood, which do not affect the story directly, but if they are combined, the player’s perception of the story progression will change. Player comes up with a different outcome if their character is on a cliff during a sandstorm in comparison to, like, cold winter morning.

For now I like the idea of expanding the possible prompts from 216 to 1 584 which is a HUGE boost for the options in Passage (more than 700 %). The choice of the right words to fill up the tables is my next challenge.