Cover art by Jason Stewart. Click the cover to buy a copy.

I was recently offered the opportunity to review a copy of Mythwoven, a new RPG supplement by Sphynx Tale Games, by the Author Brett Moore. His description sounded intriguing: a collaborative worldbuilding game designed to enhance session 0 and immerse players in the game world’s lore.

From the additional details that his email disclosed, I got the impression that it gave players greater input into the worldbuilding in the course of Session 0 than is usually the case, which I found intriguing.

And so, here we are…

As always, this review is predicated on the questions of ?”Would I use this?”? and “?How would I use it?”?. Other people may have different ideas and standards ? and that’s fine. But there’s an inherent bias in all reviews ? and this at least gets the perspective that biases this review out in the open, so that readers can take it into account. I should add that I have received no incentives or financial benefit from this review beyond the sample copy.

The Purpose Of A Session Zero

The purpose of a Session Zero, in my book, is to introduce the characters to the game world and the way it is actually going to operate in play. Characters in a session 0 are not set in stone; players are free to tweak elements of what they have created that don’t work as well as expected or intended, and the GM is able to make suggestions to better integrate them into the world.

Specific world-building content that impacts one or more PCs will be highlighted but not necessarily disclosed in detail in a session zero, giving the GM the chance to refine his ideas after exposing them to the ‘real world’ of actual play. In particular, he can get some idea of what sort of adventures the players want to get involved in, and tailor the planned campaign accordingly.

It’s important to separate overall design, concrete campaign elements, overarching campaign theme, and specific plans for implementation; these are all different parts of campaign design, and some of them should be essentially complete before a session 0 is even contemplated.

Overall Design relates to optional rules, mythology, and the fundamental flavor of the world; it is sometimes described as ‘the campaign setting’ because any number of different campaigns can be set against this backdrop.

Concrete Campaign Elements are things like what races there are (at least initially), how they are impacted by the overall design, what the major cities are, where most of the plot ‘action’ is to take place, and so on. The principle of sandboxing is also important: it means that only vague generalities need be in place until an adventure extends into contact with one of these elements.

The Overarching Campaign Themes are the broader overall story that the GM wants to set against the backdrop. It does NOT include how that theme will generate specific plotlines affecting one or more PCs; it’s more about how the previous two elements will evolve in the course of the campaign.

Specific Plans For Implementation deal with what adventures the PCs will have, how they will change over the course of the campaign in response to the Overarching Campaign Themes, how the PCs are going to interact with and change the game world – and how the Game World is going to try to force the PCs to change. It necessarily incorporates character-level creations – the ultimate Villain of the background (Sauron, if you will) might have little or nothing to do with the lives of the PCs, who have an entirely different enemy to overcome. The Villain of the campaign, in other words, doesn’t have to have anything to do with the Villain of the Background.

Click the image to buy a copy.

The Purpose Of Mythwoven

Mythwoven provides an opportunity and a process for the players to collaborate with the GM in developing the ‘sets’ that will be used as backdrops to Act I of the campaign (and possibly beyond). The players learn (in abbreviated thumbnail form) the things they need to know about the Overall Design, the Concrete Campaign Elements (in at least general terms) and the Overarching Campaign Themes and how those will impact PCs at least in the early part of the campaign.

There are all sorts of benefits to this – in particular, it’s a process of evolving a local setting that integrates the PCs and their immediate ambitions more integrally. This gives a slice of ownership of the setting to the players and makes them likely to be more interested in the campaign. It also gives players the opportunity to design characters that fit into the local world.

There is a ‘getting-to-know-you’ phase at the beginning of any romance. You want the players to have a romantic entanglement with your campaign and the world in which it is set; Mythwoven permits the players to contribute to the design of that campaign and its setting, so that it will be more attractive to them when they embark on the ‘getting to know you’ phase, and that – ultimately – is it’s true purpose.

A Session Minus-1, then

What it isn’t is a process for a Session 0 – more for a session “minus-one” that precedes the actual session 0, designing (some) of the key specifics of the Fourth Element Set of Campaign Design – the initial home base around which adventures will revolve.

Necessarily Sandboxed

This approach not only encourages sandboxing, it actively demands it. At some point, it is virtually certain the the adventuring ‘world’ will move beyond the initial seeds set up through Mythwoven, or that the outside world will impose itself upon that locality, or both. Mythwoven has little to say about that; it sets the initial stages of the campaign in a setting that is vibrant and ‘real’, with a history and a touchable foundation.

Mythwoven: The Digital / Physical Reality

Okay, so that’s a general overview of Mythwoven and how it will fit into the campaign creation process. There are lots of specific details about that integration that I haven’t covered, that will be discussed more specifically later in the review.

The Layout

Mythwoven is 29 pages, full color, including front and back covers. The last three pages are process elements that need to be printed and cut out, and possibly pasted on cardboard in between those two steps.

Most of the text is in two columns and just about readable when a digital full page is displayed. My review copy totals 18.3 Mb.



The front cover doesn’t really show itself off to best advantage when reduced to a Campaign-Mastery-Fitting 556 pixels wide. So, to the side, you can see an enlargement of the bottom right corner, giving a clearer idea of the detail provided.

Art

There’s a lot of spot art throughout, all by Jason Stewart. This is strongly fantasy / medieval in nature, even though – as the back cover text describes – the process of Mythwoven can be applied to many different genres, under the direction of the GM in his setting of the initial parameters.

It’s quite passably well-executed (I’ve seen a lot worse), but also has a slightly generic feeling to it that I think was probably inevitable, given the nature of the product. Still, one or two depictions of other genres would not have gone astray; there is a sense of paying only lip service to the applicability to other genres that I don’t think is entirely warranted and the art contributes to that impression.



Hopefully, this usage doesn’t count as “Distribution!” Click the image to buy a copy.

I also don’t think that this impression is entirely warranted – but it’s hard to shake. (There’s half-a-page of white space on page 24 – maybe something could be dropped in there, in a future edition).

The pages in the review copy are all splashed with an overlay that reads “Media Sample Not For Distribution”, and this mars the art that I can display for readers to look at. For the most part, I’ve ignored the problem and left it to readers to take it into account.

Next to this text is a thumbnail of Page 1 which illustrates the effect – chosen because it doesn’t give away any of the ‘trade secrets’ of the process; for those you will have to actually buy the product.

Make no mistake, the art is very well executed.




Art by Jason Stewart. Click the image to buy a copy.



An excerpt from the above at 100% scale.

Some of it could even be labeled ‘iconic’ – which, regular readers will know, is a big thing with me (see my recent post, Looking At A Bigger Picture, part 1 and part 2).

To the right of this text there is a full-sized rendering of part of the village scene above. The architecture, the fortifications that are clearly around the settlement, and the castle on a lofty peak in the distance, all have a definite cohesion.

Content

The GM sets out some guiding principles and initial elements. A deck of cards is broken up into three sub-decks: the four Aces, the number cards plus a Joker, and the remaining face cards and second joker. Each player (and possibly the GM, especially in games without a lot of players) then takes it in turns to develop the setting using these cards as prompts.

The initial phase is dealt with using the four aces. These establish “crucial aspects” of the settlement / community / space station / castle / city / whatever. Each of the four presents the player with a choice between two options, specified in the product.

A ‘turn’ consists of three stages:

1. Draw a card and act on it according to the instructions. This might involve adding elements to the community or making decisions that can alter its circumstances and direction. Decisions are to be made without consensus or discussion, the only exception to this being the four aces, which are specifically collaborative and necessarily consensus-oriented – in a very specific way.
2. Vote on an unresolved issue. Three votes for either of the alternatives (and there are only two for any issue) and the decision is made by the town; you get to outline the decision, how it’s implemented, and what the outcome / consequences are.
3. Take an Action (singular) – you have a choice of three alternatives:
   • Create introduces a new element to the settlement – it could be a location, group, event, whatever. You don’t get to specify any details – those get added later.
   • Detail adds information about something that has been previously created by yourself or someone else.
   • Choice raises a question to be voted on by the “community”. You get to set the question and outline (broadly) two alternatives. Others then cast votes in their turns in stage 2 of their turns.

Once all four aces are dealt with, the process moves on to the number cards. These are less fundamentally definitive than the aces but still significant. These happen in a random sequence, so you never know what is going to shape a given community next.

At some point in the number cards, someone will draw the first Joker. This is an instruction to the GM, not to the player; the GM then reveals “The Twist”, some discovery or event that introduces a significant change that disrupts established assumptions (there is an option for the GM to cede creative authority over The Twist to the player who drew the joker). This is the GM’s opportunity to introduce one or more of the overarching themes of the campaign, shaping the setting into one that is appropriately manifests that theme. Twists can be ad-hoc or carefully pre-planned – and the GM can change his mind at the last minute. If the GM doesn’t cede control of the twist to the player, the player draws another card when the GM is done revealing the twist, and progress resumes under the new set of circumstances. If the player was given control, after announcing the twist, he or she completes their turn as normal and play continues.

When you run out of numbered cards, players start using the face cards. These are geared towards resolving some of the issues raised while exacerbating or developing others, and as such, tend to be a bit more severe than the numbered cards.

At some point in the picture cards, the second Joker will appear, which ends the construction of the settlement. There is a mechanism for resolution of plot points and conflicts, but ultimately this will leave some plot threads hanging, and some decisions still undecided.

Flaws

The process seems well-developed, and the interpretations available for each of the cards sufficiently diverse as to create a number of different events. Some flexibility or creative interpretation of the instructions given is permitted (and necessary, if the process is to be applied to a non-fantasy genre) though a lot of the events should broadly apply anywhere.

There is an example offered (but not spelt out in full) to help give a handle on the process, and there is at least one grammatical error that seems to have escaped the attention of all three editors – “Amidst this eerie backdrop, the faint echoes impending war” – there should be an “of” before impending.

There is a slight predictability to the content that comes from all the numbered cards being used. I have two solutions for this:

1. Instead of using all the numbered cards, the GM should shuffle them and then remove four, eight, or twelve of them from the ‘deck’. Since no-one knows what’s not in the deck anymore, what predictability there is gets strongly eroded.
2. Each player has the option, once per ‘game’, of not drawing a card, but instead choosing a numbered card that has previously been played and returning it to some random position within the deck of unplayed numbered cards. Lightning can then strike twice (in general terms). This option is only available until play moves into the face-cards stage. It means that the predictability of something having already happened once, and therefore is not going to happen again, vanishes. The card that is chosen is secret – no-one else knows until that card again sees the light of day during play. The GM may exercise an option to shuffle the deck after a card is returned, so that the player who replaced it in the deck has no idea when it will come out.


The original map of Dunkland provided within Mythwoven.

While on the subject of flaws, something that did nag at me a bit (though it’s relatively trivial) – the example makes a point of mentioning “patches of wild forest”. To me, that implies that these patches are surrounded by less dense timber (though the trees could mostly have been removed for farming). But the map provided offers no indication of where those patches – or the less densely-wooded area around them – might be, as you can see. (I did my best to clean up the overlay, so that I could produce the map that follows).

The map on the right, below, is what I would have presented if I were the GM of the example offered. I’ve added a couple of extra mountains for two reasons: (1) just having them in the corners made the whole thing look too symmetric and artificial, and (2) it explains the northern part of the road and the way it deviates to one side. Around the mountain peaks are (presumably) lesser mountains, with scattered trees and a few thicker clumps – I’ve shown three but more could be added. These obscured the text, so I’ve copied that to the lower part of the circle.



My edited map of Dunkland.

It’s a small set of changes. Clearly, there are going to be streams and/or a river that feed into the lake, and a river that drains it; the first are presumably somewhere to the north of Dunkland, and the second either south or East – with the latter sounding more asymmetric and therefore more ‘natural’.

The same thing happens with numbers. If a list of numbers has too many fives and too many even numbers, it looks and feels ‘faked’ – but, paradoxically, when people make a fake list of numbers, they will overcompensate and include too many 1’s, 3’s, 9’s, and especially, 7’s, and not enough 0’s, 5’s, and even numbers. And it will look more believable to the lay eye!

In the digits 1 to 100, there will be:

• 10, 20,30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 = 9+2 = 11 zeros;
• 1, 10-19, an extra for 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 81, and 91, and 100 = 1+10+1+8+1 = 21 ones;
• 2, 20-29 and an extra in 22, 12, 32, 42, 52, 62, 72, 82, and 92 = 1+10+1+8 = 20 twos;
• 20 threes, 4’s, 5’s, 6’s, 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s.
• 11 + 21 + 8 x 20 = 192 digits.
• about 5.73% will be zeros; 10.94% will be 1’s; and the remaining 83.33% will be evenly divided between the other eight digits, about 10.42% each.

For numbers 1 to 1000:

• There will be 192 zeros;
• 301 ones;
• and each of the other digits will appear 300 times.
• That’s a total of 192 + 301 + 300 x 8 = 493 + 2400 = 2893 digits.
• 6.637% will be zeros. 10.404% will be 1’s. The other 8 digits will appear a combined 82.959% of the time, or 10.37% each.
• Notice that the percentage of zeros went up, the percentage of everything else went down, but 1’s didn’t go down as much – and there will be roughly 63 ones for every 100 zeros.

You can look up the digits in 1 to 10,000 or 100,000 if you like. The identified trends will continue.

There will be some natural variation. You can’t say definitively that a series of numbers has been ‘cooked’ unless they show a repeated pattern. As a rough rule of thumb, if there are supposed to be 192 zeros, anything more than 1.5 times this (or 288), or less than 0.5 times it (96) would be suspicious, and so on.

Availability & Price

Mythwoven was released on January 7 in both print and digital formats. You can buy Mythwoven from DriveThru RPG for AU $16.02 (PDF) or AU $32.05 (Softcover), with an option in the latter case for an additional free digital copy.

There is a SWADE edition specifically for Savage Worlds, same prices, at this link.

You can get a card deck with the various options in place for AU $1.60 (PDF) or AU $15.95 (embossed playing cards), again with the option of a free copy of the digital version, from this link – but you will need the supplement to use them.

I suspect that these prices are US$10, US$20, US$1, and US$9.90 or something along those lines. Drivethru will automatically display the prices in your local currency if you’ve told them where you live.

Limitations

There are some limitations imposed by the process. Complex designs may not render down sufficiently to be readily grasped within the scope provided; there’s very little room for historical backstory; and some players may have trouble coming up with ideas. There are solutions to all of these problems, which I will go into below.

A bigger problem is that campaign creation and world-building can take weeks or months, and not all of it can be carried out until the ‘session minus 1’ is complete. That is also manageable, but does require some advance planning by the GM.

There is no way to build the elements of a character background into the mix unless you have already decided what sort of character you want to play – and doing so without the information provided and developed in the course of the Mythwoven process defeats the purpose, at least to some extent. Again, there’s a solution to this problem outlined below.

None of these problems are really addressed within Mythwoven itself, and therefore, no solutions are offered, and that’s a bigger limitation. Other problems and potential limitations are addressed and resolved.

All content on Campaign Mastery is copyrighted, with a free license for gamers to use or adapt it for any gaming purpose so long as authorship is respected. So I’d like yo officially extend an invitation to Brett and Sphynx Tale Games to adapt any of the content in this review for use in any future second edition of the product- no charge, but acknowledgment of the contribution would be great!

Okay, so there are a few problems. Let’s deal with them them…

The Necessity of a Physical Copy

There are two ways of implementing a Mythwoven session: either the participant draws a card, and announces what it is, and the GM then looks it up and explains the meaning to the participant, or there is a physical copy of the book that gets passed around so that participants can look up the results for themselves.

I don’t much like the first option. It sounds slow, because it’s always faster to read something for yourself than it is to read it out loud (and not by a small margin).

There are times when digital copies are just as good as physical ones. This sourcebook is not one of them – not unless you intend to print and bind it yourself.

The Timing Of The Sessions

The GM should prepare 90-95% of the big-picture stuff in advance of prep for a session minus-1. And then ruthlessly sandbox 90-95% of that content because it won’t be relevant to session minus-1.

The trick is knowing which 5% will be relevant. Make your best guess – and if a player’s creation introduces another 5% to the mix, you’ll be ready to step in, though your pre-campaign work may have to evolve a little to incorporate other acts of player creativity.

For example, the GM may write up Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Halflings as part of his big-picture, with each being nuanced to make them just a little different from the stock-race versions in the rulebooks. He might anticipate that Humans and Elves will be part of the session minus-1 mix, and specifically rule out Gnomes and Half-breeds, but when a player adds a group of Halflings to the racial mix, they are not part of the 5% that he anticipated. Until it gets back to his turn, he has to live with whatever the players in between might specify about the Halflings (but if the GM is lucky, they will focus their details on other creations).

When it gets to his turn, he can throw a key detail about the Halflings that he wants to be in this campaign into the mix, establishing that part of the campaign concept. Simply repeating some basic fact about them from the source material is a wasted opportunity, because all that is implied simply by using the term, “Halflings” – so use the opportunity to flag one of the important differences between your Halflings and the standard ones.

It will be extremely advantageous for the GM to have boiled and compressed his concepts down into single-sentence summations that are ready for use in this way. That’s not an easy thing to do, so it, too, is best done in advance.

If many / most of the other differences are logical consequences of the major change, it’s reasonable to expect any other player contributions that are inspired by this change to dovetail with the broader concept, even though the players at this point don’t know fully what it is.

(For the record: Another 20-25% of the background will then be relevant to a real Session zero and the PCs that are generated prior to that session – and NO PCs should be generated prior to session minus-1. Conceptualized, maybe – with the caveat that these concepts will have to change if they conflict with the setting as it ends up being.

The rest can be introduced a little at a time as specific adventures bring the ‘facts’ to the PCs attention. I figure that by the time the PCs get to somewhere between levels 6 and 11, all should be known to them, so that the second half / three quarters of the campaign can deal with the major thematic elements and the overarching plot. There’s some latitude, so consider these guidelines, not rules to be followed religiously).

Next, the GM will need time to refine his background in light of the session minus-one results, and then distribute the selected 20-25% to the players so that they can make decisions about character construction, leading into a genuine session zero. Depending on the game system, it may be possible to generate the characters and have the session zero on the same playing day – that’s for the GM to decide.

The more work that has been in advance, the more likely it is that parts of it will need some revision or expansion – and the easier that revision / expansion will be. it might sound self-contradictory, but it’s true. But it does take time, and the scheduling of that session zero (or session one if there is to be no Session Zero) has to accommodate that.

As a rule of thumb, one ‘missed’ game session should provide enough time; in extreme cases, or when the GM is going to be unusually busy with the real world, this can be stretched to two missed sessions – but no further! If you are playing once a week (in theory), that gives 2-3 weeks to make the necessary changes and distribute them to players. If you play once a month, that’s 2-3 months, and I would try very hard to confine it to the first of those numbers.

If your ideas are too vague, your session minus one has jumped the gun and you won’t be fully prepped for a session zero in time, and probably perpetually behind from that point on. It takes 5-10 times as long to be creative as it does to simply edit and tweak material already created. Maybe more. So remember that, or it will come around to bite you – frequently.

Integrating a historical Backstory

If the GM decides that this is important, the best solution is to add a couple of actions to his turn, and an action to the turns of each of the other players.

In addition to everything else he gets to do in his turn, the GM gets to announce some event from the history of the game world or the location. No details, no outcomes, just the fact of the event. These should be events that have an impact far beyond the local region, but that will still be relevant, locally. It’s Major Backstory.

On their turns, each player then extends the story without bringing the event to a resolution. Again, no details outside of that one ‘plot development’.

When play again returns to the GM, he or she can either announce a resolution of the historical event or decide that it’s even more epic / sweeping and simply add to the story, in which case it continues developing until the GM again faces this choice.

Electring to enlarge an event in this way sacrificest the development of one other event, so it shouldn’t be done lightly.

At the end of the session, these stories have to be set in a logical chronological sequence and expanded into more substantial narratives.

Art by Jason Stewart. Click the image to buy a copy.

The GM can also choose to forego introducing a new piece of backstory, in which case the option to do so passes to the next player to act. The GM does not have any right of veto over this contribution, though he can twist the event massively in his contribution to the narrative; nor does he have the option of bringing it to a conclusiom, that’s now in the hands of the player who instigated it.

Suggestions For Slow Creators

Some of my players have trouble being spontaneously creative; they need a minute or two to think of something or whatever they create is going to be half-baked – and I have former players who were even worse. I also have some players who are really good at spontaneous creativity, and some who are great at throwing ideas out but lousy at examining those ideas for nuance, ramifications, and consequences.

I imagine that the above statement is true to at least some extent of almost every gaming group out there.

Mythwoven makes no allowances for this; it assumes that everyone is going to achieve a minimum standard of spontaneous creativity, and that assumption is a thorn in the side of the process. I have three suggestions that can alleviate the problems.

1. The discussion phase

Every time the ‘game play’ returns to whichever player went first, the game is halted for a set period of time – between 1 and 3 minutes – specifically to discuss possible concepts and ramifications. Not only will this help to spark ideas when players next get a turn, it gives the GM the chance to expound on any logic or confluences with other parts of his background prep.

Alternatively, this might happen each time play gets back to the GM.

The GM should also have the option to extend the discussion for another couple of minutes if the table’s creative juices are really flowing – and he needs to take careful notes of the ideas thrown out and generally accepted at the table.

2. Sneak Peeks with a second copy

I didn’t notice it actually saying so anywhere in the supplement, but there is a clear implication of the cards for each phase being stacked in single piles. There would be an advantage to actually dealing them out, face-down, to the participants, in advance.

When it gets to the turn of the player before you in the turn sequence, you are permitted to look at the top card in your stack and to look up its meaning in a copy of the rules. That copy should circulate from one player to the next as a signal that it’s time to prep for your turn.

This would be made far more convenient with a second copy – which is why the hardcopy plus digital bonus copy is such an attractive option to me. The GM uses the digital copy to manage and administrate the process, while the physical copy does the rounds of the table.

Players might have to hold onto the physical copy until they have actually fulfilled whatever creative act is required by their cards and then pass it along.

This offers one more advantage that’s worth bearing in mind – it obviates the need to read the card’s directions aloud. So long as the player obeys the instructions given (and the GM has his copy to ensure that happens), he need only announce his response to the instructions given, at least 99% of the time – on rare occasions, he may need help in interpreting those instructions, though they seemed pretty clear to me when reading through them.

3. Genre-relevant Resources

The third suggestion is to have a small stack of genre-relevant resources – sourcebooks – for players to thumb through looking for inspiration or the specific detail that will nail an act of creation. This – at least partially – solves the “silly names” / in-jokes problem that Mythwoven itself points out.

Need a name for an NPC? Don’t call him “Bob” (which happens all the time at my table with one particular player) – flick through something which contains inspiration for appropriate names and pick something.

Want to flesh out a fortress but are having trouble ‘seeing’ it in your minds’ eye? A quick browse through some relevant material and extract something that seems pertinent. Others can build upon that seed, so even if the basic concept can be traced back to its source, the final implementation will almost certainly be more original.

Between them, those three suggestions should accommodate just about every level of creativity.

Something like Mythwoven relies on the fluid and rapid exchange of ideas and leading suggestions; as a process, it can fall apart if it’s too stop-and-start. These suggestions should alleviate that.

The significance of the final Joker, and an alternative

The appearance of the final joker – it’s SOMEWHERE amongst the face cards – signals the end of ‘yesterday’ and the arrival of ‘now’ in the act of creation. Whatever face cards have not yet been played do not get to be played. This makes the makeup of the face-cards phase impossible to predict.

That’s all well and good if the position of the joker is in the second half of the face-cards somewhere. It doesn’t work so well if it can appear prematurely.

As an alternative, GMs might be able to declare that the Joker means that this round is the final one, not this turn. Instead of playing / interpreting a card, the player who drew the joker then gets to perform two actions instead of one, and play proceeds until it gets back to the first player to act.

I would suggest that this rule only be implemented if there are more unplayed cards than there are participants in the ‘game’. This preserves some of that unpredictability of the Joker without the abruptness of development ending that it can cause.

Keeping Some Cards Close To Your Chest – Editing the GM’s Concepts

The key to managing your concepts list and boiling the session minus-1 details down to the absolute bare minimum is a short series of simple questions:

Q1. Do the players really need to know about this before they can generate characters?
     — if no, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.
     — if yes, continue.

Q2. Is the answer conditional, i.e. only a yes for a character of specific race and/or class and/or background?
     — if yes, summarize the main concept(s) into single sentences & leave them out until a choice triggers their inclusion.
     — if no, continue.

Q3. Does the information relate specifically to the main campaign plot arc? If so, do you really need it to be known before that arc begins?
     — if no to the second half, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.
     — if yes to the second half, continue.

Anything that makes it this far needs to be known by Session zero. Now to prune even more for a session minus one.

Q4. Is the information intended to be definitive of the campaign, overall?
     — if yes, summarize it in a single sentence and include it.
     — if no, continue.

Q5. Is the information definitive of the initial adventuring location regardless of where that might be?
     — if yes, summarize it in a single sentence and include it.
     — if no, summarize it in a single sentence and leave it out.

That’s really all there is to it.

Let’s take an example concept and break it down and see how the key parts fall through that filter:

“Demons walk the earth, committing good deeds despite their inherent natures in a desperate bid to earn forgiveness for past transgressions, after the destruction of Hades and the Abyss in a final conflict. There are those who oppose these wannabe reformed characters because they can’t let go of their entrenched ideologies. Earth is now the arena where these conflicts play out.”

While it would be possible to include that whole blurb as the definitive information for session minus-1, it’s a little bit lengthy and there’s a lot going on. So let’s break it down:

1. There was an Armageddon and both Abyss and Hades were destroyed.
2. Those who survived now wander the earth, divided into three camps.
3. Some seek forgiveness and rehabilitation. They will aid the inhabitants and create adventurers to oppose those in 4 and 5.
4. Some cannot let go of the ideologies of Anarchy and Might Makes Right. They continue to fight for The Abyss under the flag of this former Demon Prince or that, oppose those in 3 and 5, and threaten the inhabitants. They will empower monsters.
5. Some cannot let go of the ideologies of Hate. They continue to fight for Hades in the name of this former Arch-Devil or that, oppose those in 3 and 4, and threaten the inhabitants. They will empower Undead and the corrupt, creating hidden monsters within the general population of civilization.
6. Implied by 3: All adventurers have a ‘guardian spirit’ that grants them powers and abilities beyond those of the normal population.
7. Implied by 4: While some creatures are inherently dangerous, selected individuals amongst them are heightened and given additional powers beyond those normal to their kind.
8. Implied by 5: Some corrupt individuals will have a ‘guardian spirit’ that drives them to commit foul deeds and rewards them with abilities beyond those of the normal population.
9. Implied by 3: Characters have only had access to class levels since 2 began. it’s possible this is the first generation of classed characters and they don’t know what makes them different.
10. Implied in general: The overall campaign arc describes the course of the three-sided conflict. It may or may not resolve it.

It’s possible to further break down 3, 4, and 5:

3. Some seek forgiveness and rehabilitation.
     3a. They will aid civilized inhabitants of the world.
     3b. They create and empower adventurers.
     3c. Adventurers oppose 4 and 5 and those that they empower.

4. Some (Demons) cannot let go of the Ideologies of Anarchy and Might Makes Right.
     4a. They empower selected individuals within the monster population.
     4b. These attempt to destroy civilization by force.
     4c. They fight under the banner of a specific (former) Demon Prince.
     4d. They despise and oppose both 3 and 5.

5. Some (Devils) cannot let go of the ideology of Hate.
     5a. They empower Undead and selected individuals within civilized population.
     5b. These attempt to destroy civilization by corruption and subversion.
     5c. They fight under the banner of a specific (former) Arch-devil.
     5d. They hate and oppose both 3 and 4.

Right away, I can see three possible pathways through this campaign.

Route 1 starts with the PCs dealing with 5. If 9 is the case, then they are also discovering the backstory and their own natures and capabilities. They then face menaces from 4, which leads into the overall three-way conflict (or two-way with the PCs caught in the middle).

Route 2 starts with the PCs dealing with 4. If 9 is the case then they are also discovering the backstory and their own natures and capabilities. Just when they think they are secure, they have to deal with 5. This leads eventually into the general war between 4 and 5 with 3 opposing both.

Route 3 starts with the PCs discovering that they are different (9) while dealing with ordinary monsters and threats and maybe some low-level Undead. The threats posed begin to escalate due to 4 and the backstory gets pieced together. They acquire allies from 5 only to discover that they are being manipulated into fighting 4 on 5’s behalf. They have to deal with both 4 and 5 because neither can be permitted to win.

I don’t much like Route 1. It under-powers 5 simply because that makes achievement by the PCs possible.

Route 2 is better; there is a clear progression and escalation. But 5 seems overly confrontational and not nearly subversive enough.

Route 3 would be my choice. It starts off with the focus on the PCs and is otherwise a fairly traditional D&D campaign. As the PCs start to learn what makes this setting unique and original, and has done so from the very beginning, there is an escalation as 4’s minions pose greater and greater threats. In response, 5 does what 5 does best, and with the aid of 3 (or vice-versa), the PCs hold off the initial threats. But they need to learn why 4a have become so dangerous, leading to an intelligence / scouting mission behind “enemy lines” which begins to reveal the truth – and that 5 has been consolidating its power and authority while using 3 and 4 to keep each other occupied and out of the way. Big finish is the ousting of 5 – at least for now.

On that basis, let’s run these 21 precepts through our filters. To avoid confusion, when I’m referring to one of the precepts from this point on, I’ll put it in brackets.

Q1. Do the players really need to know about this before they can generate characters?
     (1) no. (2) no. (3), (3a), (3b), (3c) – no. (4), (4a), (4b), (4c), (4d) – no. (5), (5a) (5b), (5c), (5d) – no. (6) – perhaps yes. (7), (8) – no. (9) yes. (10), no. Right away, we’re down to two items.

Q2. Is the answer conditional, i.e. only a yes for a character of specific race and/or class and/or background?
     (6) no, (9) no.

Q3. Does the information relate specifically to the main campaign plot arc? If so, do you really need it to be known before that arc begins?
     (6) yes and no, respectively. (9) no, so the second question doesn’t even apply. (6) is archived, (9) remains.

Q4. Is the information intended to be definitive of the campaign, overall?
     Arguably, (9) yes.

Q5. Is the information definitive of the initial adventuring location regardless of where that might be?
     Arguably, (9) no – not until session zero, when the PCs emerge as superior to the common townspeople in terms of being able to do things.

Wait, that was our last campaign precept? Where does that leave us?

Obviously, we’ve missed a precept or two! try these for size:

11. Pre-campaign, there are no characters with character levels or level abilities.
12. Characters will have to figure out in-game what their level abilities are, how best to use them, and why they are different from normal people.
13. The community where the campaign begins is in the fringes of civilization, with Monster threats on all sides. Orcs, Bugbears, etc, specifics unknown.
14. A community of Elves lies somewhere to the North.
15. A community of Dwarves lives in mountains to the West.
16. Between this community and 15 are hills where Halflings abide.
17. To the East lies the Kingdom of which this is an outpost.
18. To get to any of these places, you have to run the gauntlet of 13. This is a besieged outpost.
19. Nevertheless, there is trade and the occasional contact with 14, 15, 16, and 17.
20. News of the world outside the locality is sporadic, often vague, and usually months out of date.

Now, we’re talking! These are all about the population where the game begins, and deliberately implants potential for Elves, Halfling, Dwarf and Human PCs, as well as the seeds that will sprout into the campaign. Arguably, (12) is what the whole campaign is about, with (1) through (10) being backstory and ramifications. I would probably bundle (14), (15), and (16) into a single item. (12) doesn’t make sense without (11), so I would package them together, too. (13) and (18) also marry up, as do (19) and (20).

I end up with:

(11)+(12);
(14)+(15)+(16);
(17)
(13)+(18);
(19)+(20).

There are additional ideas that haven’t even gotten a mention. Dungeons, for example, might be lairs for (4) and (5), protected by monsters when the owners aren’t around. That can be discovered in-game and tease at the broader picture, but it wouldn’t make the cut into session minus 1, and maybe not even session 0.

Making room for characters

I’ve already covered this to some extent in discussing the implanting of ‘seeds’ that open the door to various PC races. Seeds can also be contributed by players to ‘make room’ in the setting for the foundations of a specific class – “a mighty wizard builds a tower in the town” is a legitimate act of Creation. Others get to add their 2-cents worth and eventually the focus will move on to other items – but this means that there is the potential for a Wizard PC to be apprenticed to this ‘mighty wizard’. Without that, the player has to create both Wizard and character and the DM to integrate the wizard into the location, just to permit the player to have the class he has chosen.

For this reason, the GM gets to specify certain races and / or classes that are off-limits; it may not mean that there are none of them in the game world, but it probably does.

Did someone say, “Session Minus Two”?

As I was reading Mythwoven, the thought of a sequel product that made initial PC creation collaborative kept recurring to me. Obviously, it would proceed a little differently – each player would start by defining some initial trait of the PC that they were going to play, and there would have to be a limited option for a player to veto something someone else had ‘imposed’ on their character as one of the options within their turn.

Aces – define race, class, social class, and a key personality trait. If any of these are vetoed by the owning player, they have to replace the factoid with something else immediately.

Numbered cards: Ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and sixes: player generates a stat value and places it somewhere on a set of six lists. A veto means that the player demands a re-roll – because this is a significant investment by them, the re-roll is on 1 extra dice, keep the best 3. When all six have one entry per PC, this phase ends and an auction phase begins. The lists are reordered high to low and labeled by stat in the usual sequence. Each player has a budget of so many construction points which they use to bid for ownership of that stat value for their character. Unused construction points can then be used to ‘buff’ one or more of the resulting stats, before any racial modifiers are applied.

Sevens, Eights, Nines, and Tens: deal with character backstory and personality and special possessions. When the numbered cards phase ends, social class for a PC can be used to buff one item one plus and acquire additional (normal) equipment and cash.

Face cards: these deal with circumstances surrounding the character just prior to and as play begins.

Vetoes: Each player should have ten chits. Each veto costs them one of these. With 4 aces, 6 stats, up to 4 details from other numbered cards, and 5+ details from face cards, that’s 19 specifics – so almost half of the character comes from group input / group ideas. The player gets to reject things that don’t fit the character concept that emerges to ensure that it is coherent and something they want to play.

The Limitations Of The Sandbox

There’s one specific type of campaign structure in which I don’t see Mythwoven working all that well without some additional creative input from the GM, and that’s one where the campaign opens with one or more PCs en route to what will be their initial base of operations – something like an apprenticeship scheme for adventurers. I employed this very structure in Fumanor: The Last Deity, because it phases campaign background into smaller bites. It also let me add PCs to the mix a few at a time, as the party naturally grew – it started with two, added a third, fourth, and a fifth (an NPC) – and then took one of the five away as he was transformed (naturally) into a draconic state. But the players had been developing their characters to mesh into a five-part team – and suddenly they were bereft of their ranger / scout, in the middle of nowhere, a long way from any help. By the time they had returned, they had found ways to cope with the loss and continued as a foursome, but it made the beginning a greater (and different) challenge to what they were expecting. They also had the option to replace that fifth member if they found they really couldn’t cope.

To make it work, this has to develop not the location where the adventures begins, but that eventual home base. Make that change, and Mythwoven fits right in.

Similarly, I’m not sure how well it would have fitted into my Dr Who campaigns, which are inherently about traveling from place to place while a broader story shapes individual episodic adventures; the initial settings for those were always carefully chosen to establish the foundations of the campaign while avoiding campaign elements that I wanted to save for inclusion in later adventures. So it’s not going to be a universal tool that I reach for, each and every time.

Take the two Zenith-3 campaigns – in the first one, several adventures were driven by the need to find and establish a suitable home base, in the second, one was provided for them as is and they had to adjust to it and to its requirements of them, and in the sub-campaign that’s been running lately, it’s once again been all about the journey to the approximate site of their new home base and then finding something they wanted to adapt into becoming that home base – and the compromises and activities needed to make it work. One of the key characteristics was selecting the size and type of community around it, with many options offered for them to contemplate. I have the feeling that using Mythwoven to create that base would have made my job easier (I wouldn’t have had to come up with all those alternatives) but would have both sucked a lot of credibility out of the plotline and had a sense of railroading the players to the destination they had chosen, at the same time. Restoring the first and avoiding the second would mean incorporating a lot of possibilities that I knew were not what the players had decided on – and would have led to frustration. Again, Mythwoven would not have been the right answer.

But other times, and other campaigns? Absolutely yes.

Summing Up

So that’s Mythwoven. The heart of what you are paying for is the process, the conflict heighten / resolution mechanism, and the integrated card interpretations. I’ve summarized parts of the first (but left out key details), and only mentioned the other two without getting into specifics. If you want more, you’ll have to buy a copy.

I think it’s a clever idea with definite potential to be useful. There may be future iterations that are more campaign-specific, with the overall one providing a template; that’s up to the publishers / author. I recommend you buy either the hardcopy with free digital bonus copy or the digital copy and then print a hardcopy and bind / collate it. I’ve offered a few tweaks and suggestions that I think improve it’s utility, identified a few limitations and (potential) flaws, and found ways around them.

It’s definitely worth the consideration of every GM out there.

I want to end this review with an invitation to Brett, the author, to comment on the various findings of this review and the contributions / suggestions that I have offered, in the comments below. I hope that he finds them to be enhancements that are worth considering into the future.