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solo_knightPlaythrough/Review: Scroll of Changes
What is it?
This is a game system/oracle, a way to give your story a shape by employing 2d6 in a unique system, creating Yin/Yang balance.
This has not much to do with the iChing itself, but itās clearly inspired, uses trigrams, and the system itself is far too complex for me to explain in simple words.
The short form is āyou throw dice and determine what kind of event the character is facing, resolve it through the system of your choice (eg Dnd d20 tests, or Tiny Dungeon 3d6 tests) and then you roll again to determine what impact the events had on the characters and the world.
Is it playable out of the box?
I donāt think I will ever be able to play this by memory. Too many things to remember.
I did a speed run where I did not actually invent events and āresolvedā them with a single dice roll, because I wanted to see how the system worked for me.
Amendments:
The instruction for determining challenges are broken; the categories are 1-4, 4-5, and 7+, and you roll 2x d6 and add between 0 and 3.
Which means you cannot ever reach 1 if you follow the āuse the number you rolledā instruction, and will almost inevitably choose from the 7+ (most extreme events) more often than not. If you use one die, this would be more balanced.
The other missing instruction is how to construct a trigram. Iām going with what seems to be the most common, from the bottom up, but my āWindā may well have been supposed to be a āLakeā.
Tools
2d6
Price:
Pay what you want
Verdict
š„¾ I did an abbreviated run; I will not do another.
šDefinitely a unique system, it just doesnāt come together for me.
š Not a game, more of a framework for gaming (āsolo engineā seems to be a common term; itās not detailed enough to be a āGM emulatorā)
Iām happy this thing exists but it didnāt work for me at all. Part of it is that itās just so fussy, and I had to constantly look things up. Part of it is that the instructions about what kind of event the characters meet are just a bit too vague.
A giant turn-off, the thing that made me want to not use this at all, is that it encouraged me to think about success/failure (you have to use a binary result as part of the system), and that I was rushing through the gameplay/story creation to reach the next step in the gamified system. Thatās partly my fault ā I wanted to simulate the use of this tool and did not want to spend days or weeks playing, one event at a time. At the same time, āthe characters will encounter an event of this magnitudeā ruined the discovery for me, and I found myself un-inspired.
The longer I engaged, the less I liked it.
I need to go back and think about whether this type of mental oracle ā what *type* of challenge am I facing ā is useful and/or fun, and how this list compares to other GMing tools.
With the DM in the driving seat, I can see how determining āthis is a skirmishā vs āthis is the Big Badā and āthis encounter is about the party growing togetherā or āthis is about discovering a truth about the worldā. (I _think_ Ironsworn works a bit like that? Iām just leaving this as a note to self). Coming at it from a player perspective, you obviously have an idea about where in a storyline you are ā at the beginning, near the resolution ā but emergent gameplay and unexpected complications are a big part of the fun, as are ambiguous results (you killed the Big Bad, but you lost something important, and discovered a third thing. Is this a success or a failure?
Having thought more about the process itās entirely possible that this type of oracle ā an oracle shaping the mood/theme of an encounter ā would work for me; this particular resource definitely doesnāt.
Here, the Marie Kondo lens is definitely an asset. I was quite excited to try this out, but found the actual gameplay uninspiring; this does not spark joy for me.
What is it?
This is a game system/oracle, a way to give your story a shape by employing 2d6 in a unique system, creating Yin/Yang balance.
This has not much to do with the iChing itself, but itās clearly inspired, uses trigrams, and the system itself is far too complex for me to explain in simple words.
The short form is āyou throw dice and determine what kind of event the character is facing, resolve it through the system of your choice (eg Dnd d20 tests, or Tiny Dungeon 3d6 tests) and then you roll again to determine what impact the events had on the characters and the world.
Is it playable out of the box?
I donāt think I will ever be able to play this by memory. Too many things to remember.
I did a speed run where I did not actually invent events and āresolvedā them with a single dice roll, because I wanted to see how the system worked for me.
Amendments:
The instruction for determining challenges are broken; the categories are 1-4, 4-5, and 7+, and you roll 2x d6 and add between 0 and 3.
Which means you cannot ever reach 1 if you follow the āuse the number you rolledā instruction, and will almost inevitably choose from the 7+ (most extreme events) more often than not. If you use one die, this would be more balanced.
The other missing instruction is how to construct a trigram. Iām going with what seems to be the most common, from the bottom up, but my āWindā may well have been supposed to be a āLakeā.
Tools
2d6
Price:
Pay what you want
Verdict
š„¾ I did an abbreviated run; I will not do another.
šDefinitely a unique system, it just doesnāt come together for me.
š Not a game, more of a framework for gaming (āsolo engineā seems to be a common term; itās not detailed enough to be a āGM emulatorā)
Iām happy this thing exists but it didnāt work for me at all. Part of it is that itās just so fussy, and I had to constantly look things up. Part of it is that the instructions about what kind of event the characters meet are just a bit too vague.
A giant turn-off, the thing that made me want to not use this at all, is that it encouraged me to think about success/failure (you have to use a binary result as part of the system), and that I was rushing through the gameplay/story creation to reach the next step in the gamified system. Thatās partly my fault ā I wanted to simulate the use of this tool and did not want to spend days or weeks playing, one event at a time. At the same time, āthe characters will encounter an event of this magnitudeā ruined the discovery for me, and I found myself un-inspired.
The longer I engaged, the less I liked it.
I need to go back and think about whether this type of mental oracle ā what *type* of challenge am I facing ā is useful and/or fun, and how this list compares to other GMing tools.
With the DM in the driving seat, I can see how determining āthis is a skirmishā vs āthis is the Big Badā and āthis encounter is about the party growing togetherā or āthis is about discovering a truth about the worldā. (I _think_ Ironsworn works a bit like that? Iām just leaving this as a note to self). Coming at it from a player perspective, you obviously have an idea about where in a storyline you are ā at the beginning, near the resolution ā but emergent gameplay and unexpected complications are a big part of the fun, as are ambiguous results (you killed the Big Bad, but you lost something important, and discovered a third thing. Is this a success or a failure?
Having thought more about the process itās entirely possible that this type of oracle ā an oracle shaping the mood/theme of an encounter ā would work for me; this particular resource definitely doesnāt.
Here, the Marie Kondo lens is definitely an asset. I was quite excited to try this out, but found the actual gameplay uninspiring; this does not spark joy for me.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-30 05:01 pm (UTC)That seems very odd -- do you think it was just an editing error, or what?
[ETA] I had a look at it! I find the instructions *very* confusing.
I think maybe you only take the value of the D6 that wins polarity and add the Balance to that? That would give you a range from 1 to 9. But the only reason I think this might be the case is because you pointed out in advance that the other reading doesn't work.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-30 09:05 pm (UTC)As for what might work as a story-shaping oracle: this is a question I will keep in mind as I play more and more things, but I have absolutely no idea what I will like. I don't think I have played enough systems, enough stories, to even guess.
I have yet to play a longer campaign, or anything using a GME for more than the briefest of scenes; I want to see what happens over a proper adventure spanning several sessions. (Right now I'm too impatient to even think about a campaign; I have all these games I want to try, I don't want to lock myself into one system, one set of characters, however fun they are.)