Journal RPGs?

[NichG]

I hadn't heard of these until recently, but it seems like a neat category of thing. As I understand it, these are RPGs that are more like structured writing exercises, where the RPG prompts you, provides sources of inspiration, ways to measure and change tension and narrative tempo, etc, but the 'play' of it is writing out the journal of your character, deciding for yourself what happens. I guess its also sort of related to CYOA/Jumpchain sorts of things?

Anyone play these? Any recommendations or ideas? What sorts of things factor into how these are designed, what makes a good one versus a bad one?

[Quertus]

Never heard of such a thing. I can say that, from a writing perspective, this sounds like what I prefer to write, so I eagerly await responses to this topic in this thread.

[Razade]

I hadn't heard of these until recently, but it seems like a neat category of thing. As I understand it, these are RPGs that are more like structured writing exercises, where the RPG prompts you, provides sources of inspiration, ways to measure and change tension and narrative tempo, etc, but the 'play' of it is writing out the journal of your character, deciding for yourself what happens. I guess its also sort of related to CYOA/Jumpchain sorts of things?

Anyone play these? Any recommendations or ideas? What sorts of things factor into how these are designed, what makes a good one versus a bad one?

Firelights (https://fari-rpgs.itch.io/firelights) is a really good one, and they've had a game jam (https://itch.io/jam/firelights-jam) I've submitted a few games to. They're not really my bag but they were a fun exercise on game design. They are incredibly popular in the Indie scene at the moment, lots of good examples. I'd suggest looking on Itch for them as a search field and pick any that grab your attention.

[solidork]

Thousand Year Old Vampire (https://timhutchings.itch.io/tyov) is the first of these I played and also the best. It might be the first of its kind? (the whole mechanic of rolling some dice to advance randomly down a prompt list) The experience was tragic and truly fascinating, my only caveat is that you might need to do a little historical research while playing; I enjoyed the excuse to look into the various parts of Russian history that my vampire intersected with, but that might not be true for everyone.