Dear Diary (Journalling Games)
Oct. 16th, 2025 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solo_knightWhen I started soloing, I thought that I would not like journalling games much.
I thought this would be the type of game with the highest mental load; I was mostly wrong.
What you need as a player is to shed all inhibitions. The game says you’re a vampire in 1950s Glasgow? You’re a vampire in 1950s Glasgow. The game says you’re a frog in human disguise? You're now a frog. And so on.
The amount of handholding journalling games do varies; but most of them will guide you towards a certain story shape, and give you prompts enough to – at least for me – spark ideas. The dice or cards do the rest.
So far, the journalling games I’ve tried have told me what kind of story I’m telling, and while instructions to ‘keep writing until you’ve reached an end’ can sound weird to non-writers, they make sense in the moment.
Right now, I don’t have a major writing project I am working on, and everything is new and shiny, so I am playing a fair few of these – they’re low-hanging fruit. (As is this journal entry; it’s possible I’ll change my verdict on journalling games.)
Recommended if you don’t want to wrestle mechanics, if you’re looking for a single session (so far, all of mine have been <2h), and if you’re willing to delve into a story and ham it up and write with wild abandon on the first thing that comes to mind.
I thought this would be the type of game with the highest mental load; I was mostly wrong.
What you need as a player is to shed all inhibitions. The game says you’re a vampire in 1950s Glasgow? You’re a vampire in 1950s Glasgow. The game says you’re a frog in human disguise? You're now a frog. And so on.
The amount of handholding journalling games do varies; but most of them will guide you towards a certain story shape, and give you prompts enough to – at least for me – spark ideas. The dice or cards do the rest.
So far, the journalling games I’ve tried have told me what kind of story I’m telling, and while instructions to ‘keep writing until you’ve reached an end’ can sound weird to non-writers, they make sense in the moment.
Right now, I don’t have a major writing project I am working on, and everything is new and shiny, so I am playing a fair few of these – they’re low-hanging fruit. (As is this journal entry; it’s possible I’ll change my verdict on journalling games.)
Recommended if you don’t want to wrestle mechanics, if you’re looking for a single session (so far, all of mine have been <2h), and if you’re willing to delve into a story and ham it up and write with wild abandon on the first thing that comes to mind.
