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solo_knightPlaythrough/Review: The Disguised Frog
What is it?
A one page game - a true one-page game - about a disguised frog in a kinda fairytale setting. You pull a tarot card to decide what you encounter; you toss one or two coins to resolve encounters, you decide when your day is over.
Is it playable out of the box?
Absolutely. I mean, this is very very weird, and it went in a direction I could not have predicted, but that was another intense experience.
Amendments:
None. Well, I used 2d2 instead of two coins, but that’s convenience.
Tools
A Tarot deck, preferably with vivid imagery rather than minimalistic, and two coins.
Price:
Name your own Price.
Verdict
📓Journalling games are beginning to grow on me.
🎩 This was a fun prompt.
🪉 Pretty epic
That was unexpected. Wrote just under 1300 words, guided by the Tarot cards I pulled and the vague suggestions provided. My brain went down some very unexpected – but ultimately very hopeful – tracks.
There is, of course, a pattern to journalling games: I write out the beginning of a story, not its muddle or end (there’s always a muddle in the middle where you have to stop throwing new content into a story).
I have always struggled with writing exercises and find these games (as long as they provide enough substance and enough inspiration) extremely inspiring. Combined with the archetypes and meanings of the tarot, which I happen to know quite well by now, this was a blast.
The resulting story was weird and wonderful and I don’t know whether I shall ever write more of it and take it further, but this is the fourth game of this kind that gave me a meaningful experience.
I have not marked this as retired because I intend to play it again. Not any time soon, but this one will stay on my hard drive.
Short RPGs like this are a great way of unsticking creativity. I spend around two hours writing and rolling dice and pulling cards, there’s a definite end point, and the stakes are very low - you can’t really do this wrong.
What is it?
A one page game - a true one-page game - about a disguised frog in a kinda fairytale setting. You pull a tarot card to decide what you encounter; you toss one or two coins to resolve encounters, you decide when your day is over.
Is it playable out of the box?
Absolutely. I mean, this is very very weird, and it went in a direction I could not have predicted, but that was another intense experience.
Amendments:
None. Well, I used 2d2 instead of two coins, but that’s convenience.
Tools
A Tarot deck, preferably with vivid imagery rather than minimalistic, and two coins.
Price:
Name your own Price.
Verdict
📓Journalling games are beginning to grow on me.
🎩 This was a fun prompt.
🪉 Pretty epic
That was unexpected. Wrote just under 1300 words, guided by the Tarot cards I pulled and the vague suggestions provided. My brain went down some very unexpected – but ultimately very hopeful – tracks.
There is, of course, a pattern to journalling games: I write out the beginning of a story, not its muddle or end (there’s always a muddle in the middle where you have to stop throwing new content into a story).
I have always struggled with writing exercises and find these games (as long as they provide enough substance and enough inspiration) extremely inspiring. Combined with the archetypes and meanings of the tarot, which I happen to know quite well by now, this was a blast.
The resulting story was weird and wonderful and I don’t know whether I shall ever write more of it and take it further, but this is the fourth game of this kind that gave me a meaningful experience.
I have not marked this as retired because I intend to play it again. Not any time soon, but this one will stay on my hard drive.
Short RPGs like this are a great way of unsticking creativity. I spend around two hours writing and rolling dice and pulling cards, there’s a definite end point, and the stakes are very low - you can’t really do this wrong.
