It occurs me to I've overlooked that mole.mole's Extended Challenges can be "nested" - that is:

1. Make an Extended Challenge check that represents how many "acts" you need to complete a Mission. Follow the steps on "playing" to get the Mission's Danger & theme (Oracles 3 & 4.)
2. Within an Act, make an Extended Challenge check that represents how many Scenes you need to complete that Act. Remember to use the guidance for determining the where, what, why, who, and how of a scene.
3. Of course if within a Scene you determine you need another Extended Challenge you make another a check.

I found I needed a little more structure than just a single level of "Scenes" though to really resolve a Mission - Missions have "investigative phases", "conflict phases" as the sides start to come into opposition, and then "action phases" as the various threads start to resolve themselves. (Sometimes one might even flashback to the investigative stage to pick up more clues or information...)

Anyway, this was helpful for me to put a little more story structure over my sessions, hope it sparks some ideas with others as well.

I was randomly browsing my RPG collection and thought “well, what about re-reading this one?”. I’m very impressed by the high simplicity and cleanness of the game, and it feels like you could run a session anywhere, and that’s great!

It took me some time to get that the Disruption rule was not meant to penalize the higher check rolls, but yes, now I get it (except that may be it’d be a bit sad to have no chance to get a double if I only have one dice for a roll).

But never mind, I think I need to play at least once to make sense about it.

Keep up the good work!

If you had a game where vehicles were important (equally as important as characters) thoughts on how'd you work them into the mechanics? Feels off to just shoe-horn them into Backpack/Equipment. It is tempting to elevate them up as a full "character" but then co-mingling their attributes feels wonky (e.g. piloting check - factoring in both the pilot occupation and a fast (talent) vehicle in a chase sequence.)

I had read good things about this game system a while ago, and it's true that it has something to reconcile me with Blades in the Dark, with its impeccable mechanics but with its deceptively heroic and really gnarly narrative. Here it's a version of the thing that is both simplified and transformed like modeling clay that is offered to us: a flexible and inventive system, allowing probably quite a few styles of games without too much effort. I read all this with a purely theoretical interest, but if I were a fan of systems to keep on hand for improvised games, mole.mole would certainly be on my list.

Hi! This game sounds really neat but I must admit I find it strange that it's sold at 5 US $ here and only 4 R$ on dungeonist.com… Is the difference in price due to the different languages?

If you were unsure of the starting Posture (Position in Blades) would you use the Engagement Roll from Blades or perhaps make do with the Oracle 2 "how strong?" check? Some guidance on this in the tips & options section would be good I think.

Early review thoughts: This is based on an initial read-through and some very light playtesting.

This is a thoughtful take on Forged in the Dark genre-less style gaming for the solo player. I've played Scum and Villany (and read Blades in the Dark) solo and while it works remarkable well "out of the box" there are some challenges that can be difficult to hack around with the assumptions built into those two games. The Crew (Blades) or Ship (Scum) "playbooks" are mechanically intertwined in the game - they add flavor for sure but they also will really hamper your efforts as a solo player if you don't leverage and honor the mechanics that are embedded into the systems in on those playbooks. If you want to hack them (alter the setting, try new genres, etc) it can take some work to untangle the effects of the Crew/Ship sheets on the game. What Cezar has done is give you a clean base to start from for your solo game. If you are playing a game where you still have a fictional crew, party, or team working together then you can slowly add back on the pieces you need for your game - if you are not using these component Cezar has saved you a world of time spent hacking/editing that you can instead spend playing! I always believe that starting light and through play, building up your game/table specific modifications is a much smarter way to go that to start with something else and have to strip away what is not needed.

Any chance you could make a version of the mobile variant that is monochrome as well? I often read PDFs in night mode and the colors are throwing things off a bit in my phone.

Looks great otherwise! Thanks for putting this together.