Wanderer – a solo journalling & worldbuilding game/RPG by Mateusz Czapliński

This game helps you invent and record stories, The motifs will become your adventure’s build-
persons, and landmarks encountered by a wan- ing blocks and “secret sauce”. If you feel like
derer traveling through your imagined world. having trouble to fill even the first 9 motifs,
don’t worry – there’s a number of tricks and
questions that can be very helpful in sparking
Things you will need
your imagination:
• one or more six-sided dice (four of them are
recommended) – later referenced as “d6”; • Take a look back at the theme/atmosphere
hooks/keywords you noted at the top of
• two or more sheets of paper (one for a motif
your journal. Imagine a scene somewhere in
table, the rest for your stories journal);
the world they evoke. What do you see in it?
• something to write with on the paper.
• What would you like to encounter in your
Note: whenever you see a “d2” or “d3” men- world? What would you like to explore
tioned, this really more, or deeper? Visions, scenes, inspira-
means just rolling a d6 1 2 3 4 5 6
tions, motifs, atmosphere.
d6, but then translat- d3 1 2 3 • Imagine a movie or book that you like with a
ing the result using d2 1 2 similar atmosphere: what do you remember
the following table:
from it? – would you like to add that to the
motif table? What motifs, scenes, atmos-
Start: a theme & a motif table phere, inspirations from books, movies,
The game can be played in any kind of imagi- games, known worlds would you be happy
nary world or theme. What will it be this time? to “steal” into your game? Don’t worry
As the first action, I recommend to note 1-3 about “copyrights” here – firstly, “best artists
general theme/atmosphere hooks/keywords imitate”; secondly, this will be just your pri-
at the top of your journal, to help guide and fo- vate game; thirdly, in your actual journal,
cus your imagination. Would you like to travel the motifs will get remixed beyond recogni-
in a world of Star Wars + Cthulhu + cyberpunk? tion. Remember: the whole point here is just
or, maybe Lord of the Rings but no elves + earth is to have some relaxing fun, help yourself get
flooded? Sherlock Holmes + romance? You decide, it with no harm to anyone!
and how loosely you interpret it is totally up to • What inspirations can you get from the com-
you. mon card color symbols: ♥♦♠♣? It’s a good
idea to add pairs of “opposites” or comple-
Next, put a sheet of paper
mentary keywords as separate motifs – e.g.:
horizontally and split it a
heart + mind, chaos + order, nature + technol-
few times by folding (or
ogy, growth + shrinking, raise + fall, life +
drawing lines), to get 2
death, aggression + defense, …
columns and 4 rows.
• A name or topic that suggest something, but
Near the vertical line, number each of the 8 cre- is not completely clear and you’re not really
ated fields for reference. Then, try to fill as many sure what it means yet – e.g.: “Blue Trail”,
as you like (but at least one) of those fields with “Tremodians”, “Planet 4”…
3 by 3 arrays of • Remember, that each motif can be of a very
starship planet fear
motif words. The different category – it can be e.g. some mate-
more you fill, the mystery corporation unlawful rial thing, an idea, emotion, mood, atmos-
more varied your phere, weather, scenery, name, riddle, ques-
jungle city monster
stories will get. tion, ambiguity, trope, activity, attribute…
Turns: story episodes
Summary:
{adventure} = 5 or more {episodes}.
{episode} = 3 {inspirations} (place + character +
story).
{inspiration} = 2 {motifs} (path + object).
{motif} = 3 dice rolls (d6th table + d3th column in
table + d3th row in table).
Story details:
{questions} = ordinary? from far away? with
happy ending? about recent events?
{yes/no} = roll d6:
1 2 3 4 5 6
no and… no no but… yes but… yes yes and...
On each turn of the game you roll for an episode.
This means rolling 3 inspirations, and based on
them, filling the following prompt:
Then the wanderer got to... {inspiration: place}
where he/she met… {inspiration: character}
and thus heard a story… {inspiration: story}.
To roll an inspiration you should roll two motifs
and interpret them as a path + object. The path
can mean a way, an activity, an attribute. The ob-
ject can mean a goal, a thing, a resource, a final
idea. The helper prompt here is: “Through {path}
to {object}”. Or (as always) you can treat them
loosely and change in any way at any moment!
To roll a motif you use your motif tables. To do
this, roll 3 dice. Then, interpret their results, de-
pending on the number of 3-by-3 “fields” you
have filled in your motif tables:
• 1 field filled – ignore the 1st die; interpret
the remaining 2 dice as d3 each, representing
the column and row in your 3-by-3 field.
• 2 (or 3) fields – treat the 1st die as a d2 (or
d3) informing you which of the 2 (or 3) fields
to choose; the remaining dice represent the
column and row in that field.
• 4 or more fields – each four neighboring
fields can be “glued” together to be treated as
one big 6-by-6 “megafield”. Then, use the
methods as above, but take the full result of
the d6 when selecting row and column. If
you encounter a hole with no motif in the
table, roll 3 dice again, until successful.
If you want to learn more details about the
story, to help you flesh it out, it’s recommended
that you roll the answers to four extra questions:
1. Is it an ordinary, everyday story? (or maybe
extraordinary, hard to believe?)
2. Is it a story from afar? (or maybe from a
nearby place?)
3. Does it have a happy ending? (or maybe a
sad one?)
4. Does it tell about recent events? (or maybe
about old ones?)
To get a “yes/no” answer to each of those ques-
tions, roll a d6. The results 1-3 mean “no”, and 4-
6 mean “yes”. However, the extreme results
(1 or 6) represent “no and…” & “yes and…” – this
means a strengthened outcome, something extra,
an unexpected intensification of the response or
consequences. Whereas the transitional results
(4-5) are “no but…” & “yes but…” – a weakened
outcome, something borderline, a response flirt-
ing with the opposite one.
Story-writing guidelines
You can flesh out your story – however deep you
like – or keep it a barebones, minimal keyword
or name, without explanation. Remember, that
this is hearsay – literally a story the wanderer
heard from someone – it needn’t be actually
truthful or completely credible. It may well be a
gossip, a legend, or a story of unknown authen-
ticity. It may be exaggerated, colorized, and it
may have holes left by the storyteller due to
their lack of knowledge; it may contain acciden-
tal or purposeful misrepresentations; or just to
make a good impression, the narrator may have
filled some holes with their presumptions or fa-
bles made up on the spot.
GOLDEN RULE: You can change everything!
Wanderer v1 CC-BY-SA-4.0 © 2023 Mateusz Czapliński
<czapkofan@gmail.com>. Text under a Creative Com-
mons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License).
Inspirations & Thanks: The Calypso Compendium (Tam
H. of katamoiran games); 24XX (Jason Tocci); The Adven-
turer (James Chip); Dungeons of the Dungeons (Devin
White); FUDGE & FATE; & many others. +AMDG+