The Tockley Manor Campaign! Session 1 - Road Rage
Hail, and well met!
I use this space to document my solitary travels through the infinite worlds of tabletop roleplaying games. This blog captures session one of The Tockley Manor Campaign, where I’m using Mythic Roleplaying to run the solo adventure module The Secret of Tockley Manor as first published in the Mythic Magazine article Solo Adventure Modules!
This is a fairly detailed actual play. If you’re new to the hobby, I want you to know that this level of detail is far from the typical notetaking that occurs during a solo roleplaying session. These actual plays are recorded in this format for entertainment purposes only. Please don’t feel compelled to spell everything out like I have, or even to take notes at all while playing!
I sincerely hope you enjoy this pairing of the original solo roleplaying system with its first official solo adventure module. Now, let’s dive into the actual play! Happy delving, and fight on!!
~ The Lonely Dungeoneer
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Table of Contents
Session 0
I’m so beyond excited to play through the very first official Solo Adventure Module published for Mythic!
Recently I’ve been finding myself drawn to films and literature of the murder mystery variety. Inspired by Riley Sager’s Home Before Dark and Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious, it’s feeling like the perfect time to get emotionally invested into a strange small town crime. This is exactly the experience offered by The Secret of Tockley Manor!
When murder strikes the small coastal New England town of Closport, the player character must take on the role of an investigator attempting to unravel the mystery behind the murder. As the player searches Closport for clues, suspects, connections, and motives, they will eventually learn about Tockley Manor, a looming nearby haunt.
The legend of Tockley Manor builds throughout the rest of the adventure before culminating in some shocking climax, but the very best part is that neither the victim, their murderer, nor the secret of Tockley Manor are defined in advance! We’ll discover all of these details and more as we play using Mythic Roleplaying’s core gameplay loop of discovery, which means that we could play this adventure again and again with a different outcome each time!
The Secret of Tockley Manor adventure module provides everything we could need to dive straight into the action. It comes with a fully developed First Scene for tossing us into the deep end of the setting, an Adventure sheet with pre-populated Characters to meet and Threads to follow, Location Crafter sheets for randomly generating key adventure locations, and a string of Keyed Scenes for keeping the adventure on track, always spiraling forward towards the climax!
This module is system agnostic, and could be ran effectively using any rule system that covers contemporary mystery. In anticipation of the upcoming release of Mythic Roleplaying 2e, I’m going to get old school here by breaking out the original “Red Book”, Mythic Roleplaying 1e!
Mythic Roleplaying is a universal roleplaying game that includes the critically acclaimed and original Mythic Game Master Emulator, which would later be separated from the roleplaying game to form its own independent product. Mythic Roleplaying can serve either as a standalone roleplaying system or rather as an overlay on top of any other roleplaying game. This made Mythic Roleplaying an invaluable resource, allowing anyone to play any roleplaying game completely solo!
In this campaign I’ll use Mythic Roleplaying as both the primary roleplaying system and as our solo roleplaying Oracle. I’ll use The Secrets of Tockley Manor as our adventure module and include only the Mythic resources that it depends on, namely the original Location Crafter and the concept of Keyed Scenes, as first introduced in the article Control Your Adventure With Keyed Scenes.
And that’s it! The adventure module, The Secret of Tockley Manor, and the article on Keyed Scenes are both included in Mythic Magazine Compilation #2, so I can limit my resources for this entire campaign to just three books:
Discovering The Secret of Tockley Manor together is going to be an absolute blast. I have my dice beside me, pdfs of The Location Crafter and Mythic Magazine pulled up, and my physical copy of the Red Book sitting on my desk. Let’s now dive into the actual play and character creation!
Session 1
Character Creation
Characters in Mythic Roleplaying can be as varied and unique as you can imagine. I really would feel equally confident running a campaign of superheroes, ants trying to survive on a lawn, gods and demigods, pirates, pulp era archaeologists, corporate spies, or even just everyday people using Mythic Roleplaying. I could consider any other system to be a bonus sitting atop the framework provided by Mythic Roleplaying.
Mythic Characters are described as a collection of Details. When creating a Mythic Character, the first Detail to add is a Summary. This is a paragraph that describes the essence of who your character is and forms the foundation for the rest of character building.
I want to play this adventure in the recommended way, as a solo player character that is an outsider to Closport drawn in by the murder. I think it would be fun to play as an FBI agent that’s not quite sure why they were given such a low-profile case in what seems like just a random small town. I’ll craft a cool sounding Summary now that might suggest both strengths and weaknesses for our character in future steps.
Alan Hexley is an up-and-coming and incredibly capable agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he aspires to become one of the best of the best at investigating and solving complex crimes. Feeling a continuous need to prove himself, Alan always dresses to impress. While he has been known to act impatiently at times, Alan works to overcome this flaw with sharp intuition and a logical approach to crime scene analysis.
I think this Summary will work out well! I’ve added it as a Detail to my Character Sheet.
New Mythic Roleplaying Character!
Name: Alan Hexley
Summary: Alan Hexley is an up-and-coming and incredibly capable agent at the...
In the following steps we’ll determine our character’s Attributes, Abilities, Strengths, and Weaknesses.
Attributes are Details that represent a character’s fundamental traits, such as their physical strength or intelligence. Attributes in Mythic Roleplaying are customizable for particular campaign settings, but the default attributes given should cover most situations. These are Strength, Agility, Reflex, IQ, Intuition, Willpower, and Toughness. Each of these attributes come into play in particular situations, and we’ll cover them as they become relevant. All Attributes, like many Details, are assigned Ranks.
A Rank is a descriptive word such as Average, Below Average, Exceptional, Miniscule, etc. that describes the potency of a Detail. For example, a player character with a Strength of Below Average is roughly half as strong as the average denizen of a campaign setting, while a player character with an IQ of High can process information roughly four times as quickly as an average person.
Ranks always need to be relative to some base measurement that defines the average. An example given in the book is that a character of Average Strength might be able to bench press 100 lbs. This would make it easy to assign a Strength of Above Average to someone that could bench press closer to 200 lbs.
Beyond a character’s innate characteristics, Abilities are talents or skills that a character has developed over time. Abilities aren’t predefined and can be as varied as horseback riding, knowledge of ancient Egyptian history, or telekinesis. Characters can use Abilities instead of Attributes when they are applicable, and often to their advantage. It’s important to note here that the average denizen of a campaign setting won’t have the special knowledge or skills to perform well in relation to an Ability that they haven’t personally developed.
To account for this, when assigning Ranks to an Ability rather than an Attribute, we consider the Average rank to represent the average professional at an Ability rather than just the average denizen. As an example, if I were an aspiring computer programmer but not as skilled as a professional, I might assign myself a Rank of Low or Below Average in a computer programming Ability.
Finally, Strengths and Weaknesses are situational Rank Shifts representing a character being good or bad at something in particular. These also are not predefined, rather being generated by the player during character creation. An example of a Strength given in the book is Quick Draw, a strength for a character who is skilled at drawing their gun quickly.
The Quick Draw Strength would provide a +2 Rank Shift to any actions performed that involve drawing a gun quickly. For example, if a character were Average at an ability called Gunfighting and wanted to try drawing their gun more quickly than an opponent, they could shift their Average rank up by two tiers to High for that action only, representing that character’s known strength at drawing their gun quickly.
The next step for us, then, is to determine our character’s Attributes, Abilities, Strengths, and Weaknesses, which is a point at which the Mythic Roleplaying character creation process diverges. Mythic Roleplaying supports two different kinds of characters, known as either Freeform Characters or Point-Based Characters.
Freeform Characters have no restrictions. The player is free to assign any Ranks, Abilities, Strengths, and Weaknesses that make sense for that character. This practice works out well because no matter how powerful your character is, there’s always the possibility of a bigger fish in the sea existing to challenge their abilities. This is why campaigns with gods or superheroes are so compatible with Mythic Roleplaying.
Point-Based Characters are slightly more structured. Rather than assigning Ranks, Abilities, and Strengths freely, we are given a balance of Points to spend on these things, with higher Ranks costing more points to assign. As an example, assigning a Strength of Average would cost 5 points, Above Average would cost 10, and Below Average only 4.
The total balance of Points available to spend on your character depends on the kind of campaign setting feel you’re going for. Mythic Roleplaying provides a variety of Worlds, each with a different balance of Points to spend on Attributes and Abilities, and each with a different maximum assignable Rank. These Worlds range from Gritty Real World and Action/Adventure to Super Hero Low Powered, Medium Powered, or High Powered.
I really like to use Point-Based Characters when I already know what to expect from a campaign setting and have a good feel for its power level. Given that Closport is a contemporary New England town, I’ll go with the World recommended for roleplaying investigations: Gritty Real World!
World Type: Gritty Real World
Attribute Point Balance: 35
Ability Point Balance: 20
Max Rank: Incredible
The next step, then, is to spend Attribute Points on Alan’s Attribute Ranks. Note that the Toughness Attribute is actually the average of a character’s Strength and Willpower, meaning that we won’t need to spend any Points on its Rank. With 35 Points to spend across six Attributes, and with a price of 5 Points for an Average Rank and 10 Points for an Above Average Rank, we could assign Alan at least an Average Rank across every Attribute, with an Above Average Rank assigned to one Attribute. However we end up flexing his Attribute Ranks, Alan will be end up as a fairly balanced character.
Let’s imagine a starting point where we’ve spent 5 points per Attribute to assign Average Ranks across the board.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: 35 - 5 Points * 6 Attributes = 35 - 30 = 5 Points
Ability Point Balance: 20 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Strength: Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Average
Intuition: Average
Willpower: Average
Toughness: Average
Above Average Attributes cost 10 Points, or 5 Points more than Average Attributes. We can spend our last five points to increase a single attribute to Above Average. I think it would be fitting to improve Alan’s Intuition so that he can have an improved chance at perceiving clues and motives while investigating. Let’s spend those Points now.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: 5 - 5 = 0 Points
Ability Point Balance: 20 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Strength: Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Average
Intuition: Above Average
Willpower: Average
Toughness: Average
From this point on we can increase an Attribute’s Rank either by reducing another Attribute’s Rank and reclaiming its Points to spend elsewhere, or by taking on Weaknesses later. Any Weaknesses we assign to Alan will give him extra points to spend on Attributes, Abilities, or Strengths. Furthermore, any leftover Attribute Points we don’t spend in this step could flow forward to the Strengths and Weaknesses step, but I don’t envision having that problem here.
Alan’s Summary describes him as impatient. This makes me think that we can count on at least one Weakness cropping up later, and it also could suggest that Alan’s Willpower isn’t quite as strong as his other Attributes. A Below Average Rank only costs 4 points, while a Low Rank costs 3. Let’s take back 2 points now by reducing Alan’s Willpower from Average to Low for now.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: 0 + 2 = 2 Points
Ability Point Balance: 20 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Strength: Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Average
Intuition: Above Average
Willpower: Low
Toughness: Below Average
Note that reducing Alan’s Willpower has also reduced his Toughness.
Next, I think it’s important that we find a way to increase Alan’s IQ. Based on his Summary, Alan should be capable of quickly processing information he comes across. Let’s spend 5 Points and dip into the negative for now to raise Alan’s IQ from Average to Above Average. We’ll have to reconcile our negative balance by taking on Weaknesses later.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: 2 - 5 = -3 Points
Ability Point Balance: 20 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Strength: Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Above Average
Intuition: Above Average
Willpower: Low
Toughness: Below Average
This is beginning to look more representative of Alan as a Mythic Character! We may revisit these values, but for now we can move forward to Alan’s Abilities.
Alan is, first and foremost, an FBI agent. This is what he’s dedicating most of his life towards, and as such Alan’s investigative skill should be captured by a representative Ability. Let’s give Alan an Investigation ability that covers searching for clues and weighing evidence. I’ll spend 15 Ability Points to give this Ability a rank of High, making him one of the very best among professionals at Investigation.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: -3 Points
Ability Point Balance: 20 - 15 = 5 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Investigation: High
Next, I think that Alan is very likely to have received a professional level of training in Interrogation. We can spend the final 5 points on an Interrogation Ability that would cover attempts at eliciting important information from someone else.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: -3 Points
Ability Point Balance: 5 - 5 = 0 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Investigation: High
Interrogation: Average
This is also looking good! Let’s move on now to the Strengths and Weaknesses step.
As we discussed earlier, Strengths and Weaknesses apply situational Rank Shifts to a character’s actions. The price in Points that you spend for a Strength or earn for a Weakness is determined by both the size of the shift and by the frequency at which we can loosely expect it to be activated.
As an example, the Bad Knee weakness indicates an old injury that causes a -1 Rank Shift penalty to occur any time a character action would use that leg. You would earn 5 Points for taking on a -1 Rank Shift Weakness, but this amount is multiplied by 2 to 10 Points earned because its frequency is Always On. As another example, the Panics Weakness causes a -2 Rank Shift penalty that can occur when a character encounters a panic-inducing situation. At 5 Points per level of Rank Shift, this Weakness would earn 10 Points, but if our campaign setting very rarely produces these situations (say, once per month or so), then that value would be cut in half to 5 Points.
Fortunately, the book gives a lot of great examples that help to make coming up with Strengths and Weaknesses easier. I think it’s clear from Alan’s Summary that we need a Weakness related to patience. Maybe any time Alan’s patience could be tested, he’ll need to succeed at a check or else suffer a Rank Shift penalty to Willpower. If this is a pretty common occurrence, and I assume it must be, then this would net us 5 Points towards balancing the books.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: -3 + 5 = 2 Points
Ability Point Balance: 0 Points
Lack of Patience (Weakness)
When Alan's patience is tested in any way, he must succeed at a
Willpower Feat of DR Average or suffer a -1 RS penalty
for the next hour or until his patience is no longer being
tested, whichever duration is longer
In this Weakness I mentioned Feats and DRs, or Difficulty Ranks. Any time our character would attempt an action that tests one of his Attributes or Abilities, we call this a Feat and make a d100 roll to resolve that action’s outcome. The Difficulty Rank of a task is compared with the Rank of the relevant Attribute or Ability to calculate a percentile chance of success. You’ll see this happening a lot as the campaign gets underway.
We’re left with 2 Attribute Points to spend, which could be used to raise Alan’s Willpower back to Average from Low, but I don’t think that would fit his Character very well. Instead, I’d love to earn another Point to buy a Strength with! Let’s assume that Alan isn’t the strongest of individuals, and earn a 3rd Point by reducing his Strength Rank from Average to Below Average.
Alan Hexley
Attribute Point Balance: 2 + 1 = 3 Points
Ability Point Balance: 0 Points
Max Rank: Incredible
Strength: Below Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Above Average
Intuition: Above Average
Willpower: Low
Toughness: Below Average
Now, if we can come up with a Strength for Alan that provides a +1 Rank Shift bonus very infrequently, we’ll be able to afford it! I’m not sure yet what random thing he’s good at, but for some reason I get the feeling that it has to do with social situations. Maybe it has to do with card games? I think perhaps we can discover it through roleplay. Mythic Roleplaying allows for Hidden Strengths & Weaknesses. If we come across a situation that reveals a possible Strength or Weakness, then we can ask the Oracle whether it really is a Strength or Weakness of Alan’s.
And with that, we have a Character Sheet!
Alan Hexley
Summary: Alan Hexley is an up-and-coming and incredibly capable agent at the...
Attributes (3 Points Remaining)
Strength: Below Average
Agility: Average
Reflex: Average
IQ: Above Average
Intuition: Above Average
Willpower: Low
Toughness: Below Average
Abilities
Investigation: High
Interrogation: Average
Strengths
TBD
Weaknesses
Lack of Patience
When Alan's patience is tested in any way, he must succeed at a
Willpower Feat of DR Average or suffer a -1 RS penalty
for the next hour or until his patience is no longer being
tested, whichever duration is longer
Now that we’ve finished creating Alan Hexley, let’s set the stage for adventure with the First Scene!
Scene 1 - First Scene, Solo Adventure Module, CF 5
Our First Scene in this adventure is special for having been described in advance by the Solo Adventure Module. The Chaos Factor, a value between 1 and 9 that Mythic Roleplaying uses to control the pacing of our adventure, gets initialized in the First Scene with a middle-of-the-road value of 5. This indicates that Chaos won’t influence the adventure too heavily quite yet.
The Secret of Tockley Manor
Chaos Factor: 5
We’ll begin the adventure with Alan making the drive to Closport.
Alan Hexley is driving a-
This is already a great place to stop and ask a question! Any time we find ourselves feeling curious about something while playing, we can stop to ask the Oracle a Fate Question. These questions are resolved using the Fate Chart.
The Fate Chart is a table of percentile chance values for our Fate Questions. Cross referencing the current Chaos Factor with a question’s Odds on the Fate Chart will give us a percentage chance of the answer to our question being a Yes. We roll a d100 and compare the result with the corresponding entry on the Fate Chart. Odds are assigned by the player based on gut feeling, with the default choice of 50/50 always being available for situations where you aren’t sure of the Odds.
Rolling at our under the given Target Number results in a Yes, otherwise the answer is a No. If we roll for a low enough or high enough number we can even get an Exceptional Yes or an Exceptional No, respectively. We’ll break this down the first time that it happens.
In this case, I want to know if Alan is driving an FBI issued vehicle, so I’ll ask the Oracle that question using the Fate Chart.
Is Alan driving an FBI issued vehicle to Closport?
Fate Question
Odds: Near sure thing
CF: 5
Roll under: 90
d100 = 17, Exceptional Yes!
Right off the bat, we already have an exceptional result! I’ll take this to mean that Alan always drive his company car, even when he shouldn’t be. I imagine him rolling up to family functions in his work vehicle, or even taking it on vacation.
This begs the question, though. Is Alan here in an official capacity? I’d say that, given Alan’s desire to prove himself worthy to his colleagues at the FBI, this basically has to be the case. Regardless, the implication of the answer being a No would be interesting, so I have to put it to the Oracle.
Is Alan visiting Closport within his official capacity?
Fate Question
Odds: Has to be
CF: 5
Roll under: 95
d100 = 83, Yes
Wow, that was a fairly high roll, but still the answer is a Yes!
Alan Hexley is driving a black four-door sedan on a winding one-lane road to Closport.
The adventure module describes Closport as a sleepy town with the coast on one side and a vast forest pressing in on the other.
Are the trees mostly evergreens?
Fate Question
Odds: Very likely
CF: 5
Roll under: 85
d100 = 47, Yes
The sedan streaks through a thick forest of evergreens on its way to Closport. The drive from the nearest city is just over an hour. Alan is frustrated. Why is he stuck investigating small-time murder in middle-of-nowhere New England?
I really think that this warrants triggering Alan’s Lack of Patience weakness right away. If he’s annoyed, it will likely affect his job until his interest is somehow piqued. In Mythic Roleplaying terms, Alan needs to perform a Willpower Feat to fight back against his impatience, or he’ll suffer a penalty to Willpower.
Feats are performed in a very similar manner to asking a Fate Question, in fact using the very same Fate Chart. Rather than comparing the Chaos Factor with a question’s Odds, we instead compare the Acting Rank with a given task’s Difficulty Rank. In this case, Alan’s Acting Willpower Rank is Low, and the Difficulty Rank is Average, making a two Rank difference!
Willpower Feat, Alan
Acting Rank: Low
Difficulty Rank: Average
Roll under: 25
d100 = 99!! Exceptional No
Alan absolutely does not have time for this in his mind. He might even be stressing about some other agent doing well on another assignment and showing him up! Alan has now triggered the Lack of Patience Weakness, and will suffer a -1 Rank Shift penalty to further Willpower Feats in the short term.
Alan Hexley
Willpower: Low - 1 RS = Weak!
I’ll interpret this currently as having an affect on his driving.
Alan, clearly impatient, is significantly speeding and passing cars recklessly on this one-lane road.
This could actually get Alan in some early trouble. What are the odds that there are any law enforcement patrolling this road? It surely can’t be very high?
Are there any police officers patrolling the road Alan is driving on?
Fate Question
Odds: No way
CF: 5
Roll under: 15
d100 = 58, No
Phew! Potentially, anyway. I still think we need to confirm that Alan doesn’t cause an accident before he’s really in the clear. Let’s have Alan perform a Feat of Reflex to avoid causing a minor accident, like a side swipe or a rear-end.
I don’t think this will be very challenging. I’ll assume that the average New Englander could fairly easily weave in and out of traffic, especially on a one-lane road. I don’t event think this is half as challenging as an Average Feat of Reflex, and so I’ll set the Difficulty Rank at Low rather than Below Average, but there could be serious consequences if Alan fails at this Feat.
Reflex Feat, Alan
Acting Rank: Average
Difficulty Rank: Low
Roll under: 75
d100 = 54, No
It may seem silly, but I felt fairly tense making that roll. This really would have put a dent in our early plans!
With no one available to patrol the road between the City and Closport, Alan’s reckless driving goes unnoticed. He deftly passes anyone slowing him down by jumping into the left lane, even ahead of oncoming traffic, and quickly steering the vehicle around and back to the right each time without issue. After another half hour or so of this, the trees finally break away on either side to reveal a small New England town, pressed tightly between a vast forest on one side and the coast on the other.
Now that we’ve made it safely to Closport, we need to choose Alan’s destination. We could head straight to the Police Station, or we could get settled in at the Inn. I think Alan would want to get right to business, so we’ll shoot for the Police Station first, where, according to the adventure module, Alan has already been in contact with Closport’s Chief of Police.
It’s overcast and drizzling as the road into Closport takes Alan past great, aging houses and small shops, some boarded up and abandoned. It’s a short drive from the edge of town to a circular road surrounding a park and lined with important looking buildings. This must be the town square!
Alan circles until he finds a building that looks very much like a small shop, but reads ‘Closport Police Station’ on a wooden sign hanging from a metal post. Alan pulls the car into a space in front of the station and steps out into the cold afternoon air.
This feels like a great stopping point for the session. I like to choose stopping points where I’ll know exactly how to keep going when I come back to the game. This practice helps me to keep a game’s momentum always moving forward. In the next session I’m excited to talk with the Chief of Police and learn more about the circumstances of murder here in Closport!
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I’d love to hear any thoughts you might have about the campaign! Please feel free to reach out at any time using thelonelydungeoneer@proton.me.
Until we meet again, happy delving, and fight on!!
~ The Lonely Dungeoneer