Okay some quick questions.

I am assuming from the pronouns that you will be the questioner and she the storyteller? If not then your pronouns are the wrong way around :)

The intention, I assume, is that the first story is always happy in it's ending, since it can't match? If so it might stand to be said in the first section where you are explaining the outcomes of stories, just as a clarification.

Now ... a more general observation

The role of the Questioner seems amazingly passive, to the point that I suspect that it would annoy me if I were the Questioner, and probably the Storyteller too. I don't get to choose the type of story, I don't get to choose the initial question, I don't get to choose the happy or sad ending, indeed my only role is to roll some dice and read out a question. As the Storyteller I have to tell this whole story to someone who is basically just an audience, I'd rather have more co-operation involved.

Is this intentional? Do you think this will suit whoever you intend to be the questioner? Will it suit the Storyteller?

If not you might intend that the subsequent questions in each story, after the first one, are the questioner's opportunity to guide the story's direction? If so then that would be worth emphasizing?

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Yes, I'm the questioner and she's the storyteller.

Yes, the first ending is always happy and, in general, the endings in the first part of the game will usually be happy.

The Questioner is a facilitation role: you ask questions, as well as the scripted ones, to tease out the story. As the Storyteller, you're not just telling the story to an audience: you're being helped by the Questioner.

But I could offer more guidance on that. And give the option to swap the roles back and forth.

Thanks, David. More help welcome. Preferably before Thursday.

Graham

Okay I get that, but I'm not seeing the game aspect. It reads, to be blunt, like an excuse to get someone to either

(a) do something they like and would do anyway or

(b) do something they wouldn't like and probably won't do anyway

The first is a very worthy aim, the second is something I might try on my own wife, but which wouldn't work at all (and she would just get annoyed by it), and wouldn't be a good valentine's gift!

Maybe I am missing something, but it just doesn't seem like a game, because there are no goals, other than just getting through all the stories, no opposition, no deviation from just telling the stories and so on. Yes it has dice, but you could just tell the stories without them too and it would make little difference.

I like the concepts, the story threads, the evocative questions, there is a lot of good there, but I just don't see it as a game.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

David, come on, man. "I don't see it as a game" isn't helpful feedback.

Opposition isn't always necessary: there's no opposition in, say, Bacchanal, other than that dictated by the dice.

It's rather similar in structure to My Life With Master or Contenders. Play a scene, roll dice to determine outcome. Except the scenes are little stories.

Graham

Sorry Graham, I didn't mean to be unhelpful. Yes I can see how your mechanics might help facilitate the telling of a story. If that is what you want out of it then more power to you.

Personally I *do* think for something to be a game it needs some sort of opposition or interaction, a to and fro, a changing of ideas, a process whereby something is negotiated in the fiction with or without mechanics. It doesn't have to be one player against another, but it doesn't feel like a game unless there is some sort of process of working towards where you want to be, instead of just getting there instantly.

For example in Blackguard (you knew I'd mention it) I really felt that I (as the GM) was co-operatively telling a story with the thief, but we had mechanics, and to and fro, and obstacles, to help us do that, to shape the fiction. That doesn't make it oppositional between players (though there is opposition in the fiction), it just helps the co-operation.

Here I just think you need more structure to how the stories are told than just a happy or sad ending. Some sort of formalized process or resource associated with how the questioner asks clarifying questions within each story perhaps?