The Minds Eye: A free ultra-lite-rules solo rpg

Sometimes it's just nice to daydream a bit.

Preface

When it comes to solo gaming, be it PC or tabletop, I generally prefer complex games with detailed rules that you can really dig your teeth into. I enjoy taking my time with everything and love the ability to play at my own pace.

Needlessly complicated flowcharts and tables are actually a selling point for me. Drown me in rules and make me struggle to reach the point of enjoyment. Make me dig for special rules and edge-cases. That might sound horrible, but I can't stress enough how satisfying it is when complex games finally click.

That being said, I also think that you should try a large variety of genres and regularly step out of your comfort zone. You never know what mechanics or games you end up liking. After all, tastes and preferences can change.

...and?

Why am I telling you all this? Because opinions, first impressions, and reviews only make sense if you know the context of the person writing it.

Someone who doesn't like dungeon crawlers might find mechanics like resource tracking frustrating and annoying, while these mechanics might be the exact reason why a fan of the genre loves the game.

Long story short: I enjoyed my time with The Minds Eye, but I don't play many rules-lite games, so keep that in mind while reading this post.

The Game

EDIT: The game has received a major update and a name change. I only played an older version that doesn't seem to be available anymore.

The Minds Eye is a free ultra-lite-rules solo RPG written by R.A. Rice.

It is designed as a theater-of-mind game with very simple mechanics that only require a single d6. Most of your character's descriptors are just that, descriptions that don't have any mechanical impact and are only used to flavor your story.

The main gameplay consists of spending your attributes and supplies to resolve any dangerous or challenging encounters. There isn't a list of possible actions or anything like that. You just make everything up according to the needs of your story. That being said, the Journey rules give you a basic encounter structure that you could use as your core gameplay loop.

The built-in Oracle is equally simple and more of a guideline to nudge you in certain directions. Yes/No questions are always 50/50 and more complex questions are answered by providing a degree of severity, depending on a high or low roll.

It's very much a loose structure that is completely adaptable to any genre you might want to play. That has always been a major advantage of narrative focused games like this. The options presented in the PDF are fantasy focused, but it is extremely easy to reskin them to anything you want. There are some basic suggestions for adventure hooks and a few example enemies but don't expect anything too fancy.

However you are going to play it, I highly recommend keeping it simple. Don't bother taking detailed notes or adding too many extra peripherals. Think of it as daydreaming with extra steps.

My Recent Adventure

With games like these, I always find it easier to stick to established settings that you are already familiar with. Creating something new on the spot is very difficult when the game doesn't provide you with any structure.

In this case, I chose to play in the Guild Wars 1 setting. Specifically, the area of Pre-Searing Ascalon. I have played thousands of hours of GW1, so I am very familiar with the setting and its major themes.

The music and ambience of that zone will forever be ingrained into my brain. The entire soundtrack is fantastic, and I can't recommend it enough. It's by Jeremy Soule, who also did many of the Elder Scrolls soundtracks.

The Quest

The PDF has a simple structure for 'Journeys' so I decided to do a straightforward delivery quest. Inspired by a quest in the game, I gave my PCs the mission to deliver an important message from Ascalon City to Fort Ranik. A relatively short journey that starts in the green hills of Lakeside County and ends in the thick forest of Regent Valley.

The Player Characters

Keeping with the GW1 theme, I chose to model the three PCs after henchmen you could hire in the game.

• Alesia Baptiste: Human Monk (a healing monk, not a punchy fist monk)
• Orion Elek: Human Elementalist (Fire)
• Stephan Baruch: Human Warrior (Sword/Shield)

I chose my Attributes and gear to fit the character archetypes and randomly rolled for supplies.

The Journey

The distance to Fort Ranik is fairly short in the videogame, but that is obviously abstracted and shrunk down quite a bit. It still didn't feel right to make it a journey that takes several days, so I picked hours for the roll interval. I rolled a 4, which meant a four-hour journey.

You can see my playsheet with all of my notes below. I wanted to embrace the whole rules-lite, theater of mind, narrative playstyle and decided to only write down the bare minimum. 90% of the session was played in my imagination, which is why I like to think of this style of play as "daydreaming with extra steps".

I'm not going to go through the entire story step-by-step because it was a fairly simple and generic fantasy quest. You can get the gist of it by looking at the encounters in the middle of the playsheet down below. It started quite eventful and then became a more mellow challenge down the line.

The biggest obstacle turned out to be the water and food supply. I ignored the bit where a four-hour journey really doesn't require much of anything. It's a game with barely any rules, so let's not remove any that are there.

Traditional combat didn't end up happening, but I reflavored some 'normal' obstacles to simulate a few quick narrative combat encounters.

Stephan was definitely the MVP of the adventure, as he saved the day several times. Alesia did more healing than she ever did in the videogame, and Orion was mostly a walking knowledge repertoire.

 

Closing Thoughts

A short and sweet oneshot. Sometimes that's all you need to get your gaming kick. Sometimes being the key word here. While I enjoyed my session with The Minds Eye, I probably won't be playing another adventure with it. It just doesn't have enough rules for my liking. The fact that two completely different characters have exactly the same mechanical options just rubs me the wrong way.

Ironically, the more freedom a ruleset gives me, the more restricted I feel. What's the point of anything if you can just handwave everything? Why bother even playing a game at that point?

That might sound harsh, which is exactly why I wrote the Preface to this post. Just because I don't like some of the mechanics doesn't mean that you won't. If you love rules-lite games, then this might be exactly what you're looking for. The conflict resolution of spending your character's stats is unusual enough that it is worth a try.

It's a free game, give it a shot.

EDIT: The game has received a major update and a name change. I only played an older version that doesn't seem to be available anymore.