Roles and Play

 

The Players and the Director

In order to play Mythmaster, you need a minimum of two players, but preferably four or more. One player takes on the role of Director. The job of the Director is to conduct the game, unfold the story, take on the role of all the characters except those of the players, uphold the rules, and determine how actions will be resolved. Being a Director is a big responsibility, and it can be a lot of work. The Director needs to develop the universe well enough to support the players making their own decisions about where to go, who to talk to, and what quests to undertake. The Director also needs to move the story forward, and role play the other characters and monsters sensibly, so their responses to the players’ actions are coherent. A good Director will have prepared maps and encounters in advance, but a great Director is able to think, and create, on their feet. Players will go off script, or a lucky die roll will bring a sudden end to a battle that was planned to last a couple of hours. When that happens, the Director is the one who keeps things moving even when all their plans have fallen by the wayside. The show must go on.

Aside from their imaginations and enthusiasm, the other players need only three things: their character sheet, a pencil and a set of gaming dice. Making your character in Mythmaster should be done in advance, and with the Director present. Character Creation is a somewhat involved process where players roll dice and make decisions about how their character’s life unfolds over the years before the adventuring begins. This allows players to flesh out their characters in detail and to understand how they came to be who they are.

Mythmaster is a platform for shared, collaborative problem solving and story play. These Core Rules exist to provide a fair framework for resolving action in order to enable that play. The rules are intentionally flexible and generalized, and the players and the Director are free to decide together the extent to which the rules should govern the experience. During play, the Director is the final arbiter of when rules come into play, which rules apply to a given situation, and when rules should be ignored in favour of a more enjoyable experience. The Director must have, and must continually work to maintain, the trust of the players - it is critical to everyone’s enjoyment that, even though the Director plays the role of the enemy, they are not perceived as an enemy. The Director is, in fact, just another player - here to have fun along with everyone else.

 

Ordinary Heroes

Many RPGs focus heavily on characters who are adventurers first - armed and armoured heroes who hunt monsters and seek treasure for fortune and glory. Mythmaster certainly allows for such characters, but the simulation focused rules of Mythmaster make it just as fun to play a character who is a baker, or a sailor, or a school teacher. In Mythmaster, a timid halfling farmer is just as valid a character as a fearless ranger. The halfling farmer has all the same Stats, Attributes and Derivates as the ranger (with lower values in most cases), and likely has just as many skills. While the ranger may be more powerful in many situations, the ranger is not a ‘better’ character - they are just different.

Furthermore, the unique character creation process of Mythmaster takes your character on a journey from childhood until the time they become an adventurer. The system tends to develop characters with a backstory and a history. While you may come out of character generation with a great adventurer, your character is far more likely to be ‘a warrior who used to be a farmer’ or ‘a mage who used to be an actress’. This is intentional. The robust and extensible systems discussed above make characters with histories and diverse backgrounds much more interesting. Being lost in the feared mines of Golmorag with a bunch of warriors and mages is fine, but being lost in the feared mines of Golmorag with a warrior who used to be a miner, and a mage who used to be an archaeologist is a lot more interesting.