(Read the final part here.)
With this short side adventure/experiment now complete, I can reveal some of the behind-the-scenes decisions that I made and give you my impressions of the Bivius system.
As briefly mentioned during the story, the one-page adventure that I used, “There Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens” by Alex and Chris Stoesz, is written for a fantasy setting. I decided to use this adventure even though my story was based in modern-day because finding a contemporary one-page adventure is a bit challenging. I felt I could easily change the fantasy elements into more modern counterparts. This led to some fun names (Big Jim Orcus [Orc] and the Goblinski [Goblin] brothers) and descriptions (Ode’s image was influenced by the fact that hermit was supposed to be a dwarf).
One such metamorphosis was the original character Benhen the Wizard. He is the man Jingles and Francois meet on the edge of the forest, Benjamin the Biologist. While interacting with Benjamin, I ran into a possible pitfall of working with a published adventure and my “reveal as you go” system. That is there is always the danger you will at some point reveal information that conflicts or breaks continuity with a previous event or description. When this happens, the solo roleplayer has a few options: treat it as a twist in the story (if possible), re-write earlier events (difficult if they are way back in the past), change the information to fit the current story, or just ignore it completely.
In the case of Benjamin, I originally revealed just enough of his description to learn that he wanted the PC’s to capture the chicken-horse and bring it back. Great. That’s when I decided to make him a biologist and the chicken-horse an experiment that might hold the solution to reversing the chicken plague. I wrote the conversation with Benjamin and got to a point where I felt I needed a little more information to move forward, so I revealed more of Benjamin’s story.
That’s when I learned the real truth!
The Wizard in the original adventure was actually attempting to send the adventurers to their doom, hoping the horse would kill them. The reason was that he wanted to keep them from finding out that he poisoned the waters in the stream and anything that drank of it turned into a chicken. It was all part of the wizard’s ultimate goal to rule the region. This new information really derailed the direction I had planned on taking this NPC and his mission and, to a certain extent, the entire adventure.
At this point, I hadn’t progressed too far and could revise the encounter to fit with this new information. However, the Bivius rules already had a mechanic for dealing with pre-written adventures: treat what is written as Option A and something different as Option B. Since I already had another option I felt this was a good time to use this rule. In the posted story I didn’t reveal the result of the roll, but now it should be obvious that the result was “Option B” and I continued with my own ideas for Benjamin’s honesty and motivation. However, I liked the idea that poisoned water was causing the mutations so I let that inform the events of the Epilogue.
My Thoughts on Bivius:
I ran across Bivius while perusing the various solo rpg resources on Sophia Brandt’s blog Die Heart. This solo engine was developed by Riccardo Fregi as a simple alternative to more complex solo engines, such as Mythic. At first, I wasn’t very impressed with the system as I felt it was too simplistic. Everything was resolved with a random determination of only two options: Yes or No, A or B, High or Low. It seemed there was nothing to account for varying degrees of likelihood or difficulty. A small farmboy could potentially kill a fire-breathing dragon with one or two rolls of the die. Or conversely, your character could just as easily meet his or her doom at the hands of a single goblin.
Then I read Fregi’s solo playthrough of a Pirate Adventure using Bivius. That helped me better understand and appreciate how the system worked.
The most important take away for me was that Bivius is primarily intended to direct the narrative and not necessarily manage the finer details. It can indicate how difficult a task is, or how well or poorly your character is doing, but it’s up to you and your imagination to come up with specific details to explain why a challenge is as difficult as it is or how a challenge goes good or bad for your character. While technically you can pair Bivius with another RPG system (like you would use Mythic along with D&D), the system was designed to be all-inclusive, especially if you utilize the Tunnels & Dragons supplement.
Another important thing I realized is that success or failure doesn’t necessarily mean the death of a character or monster. For instance, the farmboy winning a challenge against the dragon might mean he was successful in stealing the beast’s treasure undetected. Or, knowing he’s a potential snack, the boy’s challenge might be to escape and winning the challenge means he gets away. In the case of the lone goblin, losing the challenge may not mean you are killed, but were simply unable to kill the goblin and he is able to get away and alert his friends. The key is to come up with success or failure options that are appropriate for the situation.
Now that I have actually run an adventure with Bivius I consider it a nice little system. I still wouldn’t use it for a big epic. However, for a quick story, especially one with low stakes (such as a clown investigating chicken mutants), it works just fine. I can see myself using it in the future to tell side stories or backstories involving characters from my epic adventures. For example, I can use it to tell the story of how Kelseen and Tozhug the Urook met, or why Bhartram Rosemight is distrustful of Harper Wyghtwing. Additionally, I feel Bivius pairs well with the One-Page Adventure format and will probably do more of those in the future as a break from my longer tales.
Looking forward, I’ll be continuing up my Kage Gordain campaign soon. Look for that to be continued in December. As always, thanks for reading and any feedback is welcomed.
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