Hands-Free RPG

I never got around to detailing my actual thoughts about this game in my other comment, and I'm very sorry for that. Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to it, but I wanted to be sure I had enough experience with it before reviewing it.

The mechanics are wonderfully designed. I found them easy to pick up and use, and found they gave actual structure to my theater of the mind experience, which has been a long-term struggle for me (I'm even bad at daydreaming). I love the inclusion of generation acronyms at the end and I've had a lot of fun creating a game solely using them and going from there. The idea of using an acronym is so clever, and I spent a week or so with flash cards of them to make sure I had them down for good, and now I don't have to reference anything physical to play from scratch. That's opened up an entire new medium of gaming for me, and gotten me invested in creating hands-free versions of my own games; more or less custom settings using your rules here, with some tweaks depending on the game. I had already wanted to create disability-friendly versions of my games and this gave me great direction use for them. Sometimes I use mechanics from Die Dream or make my own, but I always find I'm on the line of what's too much for the average player to remember, whereas I simply can't find a fault in your game - the balance is just right. I especially love your effectiveness rating system; how well you perform or to what degree you fail at an action. It helps detail my storytelling without needing any tables, which has also been a long-term struggle for me.

I'm someone who loves crunchy games, but due to chronic illness, my mental fortitude for them drains quickly. Somehow, I find this game satisfies my desire for crunch, and given I don't have to do anything physically to play it, it's great even on a bad day.

I would argue your real talent here is in how you explain the rules. You've explained what is essentially the basics to most RPGs in a way that I've never seen before, in a way that reworked the way I view games and write my own games. It's given me a deeper understanding of why RPGs are the way they are, and how they work on the most fundamental level. That's much harder to do than most people might think. I've played a fair number of games at this point, but I've never seen any explain the core of it like you do. Maybe it's because making a thought-only game requires boiling it down to the absolute essentials, but I've seen similar games that don't pull this off like you do. Personally I think anyone getting into RPG design should give these rules a read. I have a drive full of RPGs, all in giant folders of genres. Your game, and Die Dream, are the only ones that get their own folders. It's the core of my game philosophy. Your ability to explain and teach is extremely impressive, and works even for my broken brain. And, as you can tell, you are much better at being concise than I am, hahah. I've taken a note from your design to reduce the length of my own rules.

If there is anything I could think of to add, it would be suggestions for helping difficulties with attention and focus. It's not really your responsibility to do that, though, and I'm sure those who have difficulties have their own resources. Admittedly I did find myself struggling a little at first, given my own neurospicy traits. But maybe a little addendum with ideas on how to get used to this mode of play would be good? It feels like a complete game even without it, though. Maybe other methods of memorization would also be helpful, such as color coding? You could group certain ideas under types of colors, like hot and cold, or red, yellow, blue, maybe black and white. Though I still find your methods very useful and well designed.

As for what I've tried to do with it for my own games. I've been testing out different ways to have a very, very simple stat or attribute system. Personally that isn't hard for me to memorize, but I understand it might not work for everyone. Right now I use a simple system, the attributes are Power, Skill and Mind, with character builds involving one being a negative, one neutral, and one positive. (Usually adding or subtracting 3 to the roll). Stats like health or stamina are harder, and to be honest, at this point I usually use a wound system instead; kind of common sense vibes on when a character should or shouldn't be able to do something. And maps. Map generation... is rough, but currently my biggest goal. One idea was to use my palm as a map. But this is Hands-Free RPG, not just paper free. Another thought was to have a small map on a mental grid, with labeled squares (A1, A2, B1, B2, and so on), and just review it at the start and end of every session to be sure it's memorized. I also find mental color coding of it helps me (the desert tile is yellow, the jungle is green, etc). But I'm not sure how well other people would like that. I'm also pretty lost on how to handle dungeon maps - right now I don't map them at all, but go by a series of events taking place in them to remember important points in it instead. Do you have any thoughts or advice on that? I'd love to have a discussion with you about all of it.

Again I'm very sorry if my previous comment came off as overly negative (it wasn't at all my intention, but I can see how it would come off that way), I kept it to only what I needed to ask right away because I wanted to be a little more collected on my opinion before posting. And time just kind of got away from me. Sorry for the word wall.

I would really love if you added the option for PWYW. I can tell you've worked very hard on this, and I appreciate it. Or I can pay in art if you'd like (I'm an artist).

This is fantastic, but on the last page, what does this mean? "See TIMERS in a section that comes later" Does that mean an update is coming, or am I confused? Also, as good as it is you did some detail work on the AI art instead of just using it straight, and I understand you probably needed art quickly, I think most people would rather there be no art at all than seeing someone use AI.

The game itself is good. I was initially bristly on the reddit, but the game itself is very, very good. It's innovative and full of fun ideas, and the system itself obviously took immense creativity and effort. I am however highly, hightly critical of the AI ""art"". I would honest to God take RISUS stick figures over that. Please hire an actual artist who puts real effort into their actual human art, use public domain non-AI artwork(there's plenty), or learn to draw. I'm learning to draw. It's doable for anyone with hands and eyes. Yes it's difficult, but it's doable. Seriously, please support actual human creativity, it's all we have left.

From the tiny bit I've managed to parce from the PDF I think this is going to be awesome. I love seeing the story someone else has ctreated with this. I'm always looking for things like this to do when out and about especially because I am blind. That said, I wound like to pretty please request a Word Doc or Google Doc version of this? I think there are tables in here that would not translate to epub orp lain text files well. I ask because the PDF does not read well at all my with screen reader. I can't OCR it to pull the text either, it is fairly jumbled and unfortunately I have no one who would be able to read it or shorthand it all to me in a more accessible format. I love what you have planned here and want to be able to share it with others. Thanks for your consideration!

hello there! I really enjoy your game, its very easy to play. I've been looking for a game that's solo, gmless, diceless,  and unpredictable (to an extent), and it looks like I've found it! I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to play in their own solo game world that keeps growing, where things don't always go as you'd expect! (thanks goodness for Events!)

The rules are only 10 pages long and it says at the bottom that you don't have to learn all the rules at once, which is a good message for people like me. 

The only thing I changed for my game is that I use Odd for nO and Even for yEs, cause that's easier to remember (for me, at least).  I've only played one session (day) and I already love it! 

In short, I love it, and if you want to see my adventure so far, you can reply and I'll write it here.  Thank you for making this game, scriptorum!