Darksome Mirror, Randomness, Dice, and the Writing Process

Discussions of Dice and Randomness

    Reflections in the Darksome Mirror seeks to push a few boundaries, even in the very niche space of  hybrid storytelling and fantasy TTRPG-inspired "solo actual play" podcasts / media. One of the questions I've received from listeners and friends about the podcast is, essentially - "how scripted is Darksome Mirror?"

    As with many forms of media created in this genre, dice are rolled at certain intervals to influence or determine an outcome. In the effort to be as transparent as possible, the story of Reflections in the Darksome Mirror places a little more emphasis on long-form storytelling and strong prose than many other stories in this genre. Most of the world's countries, ancestries, history, and even some important characters were built years ago and are established. The first episode of the podcast especially is mostly exposition of the existing world.

    However, after this point (and in certain points during it), the writing process and influence of the dice has gone approximately like this:

1. Even before the narrative, I will often roll a few background rolls (off mic, though sometimes to be referenced later) to determine events that might have moved outside of the protagonist's or "camera's" point of view.
2. The beginning (or, next) part of the narrative will be written using direction from both the aforementioned background rolls.
3. When a scenario regarding a roll is encountered, "Behind the Dice" will be used to explain what is occurring, and the roll will happen. At this stage, everything that happened beforehand was written with the already mentioned caveats and influence. After a dice roll occurs, I'll pause and consider how it could influence the narrative before repeating steps 2 and 3 until reaching an ending point of the episode.
4. When an episode script ends, it'll contain session notes concerning the party and I'll try to include possible experience expenditures here as well, if possible. I attempt to make background or off mic rolls in step 1 instead of step 4, and thus the cycle repeats.

There is another aspect of randomness to discuss. In many (maybe most) other podcasts there is a lack of meta currency and an idea that all characters are, in a way, disposable. However, Reflections is decidedly not this way - the story is focused around Shinnareth, and without her it would cease to move on at all, or at least in any narratively cohesive way.

So, Reflections (and Darksome Mirror TTRPG) uses meta-currency, namely fate points and heroism, to allow a limited number of rerolls per session. For more transparency - fate points are derived from the amount of resolve a character has divided by two, and heroism is limited to one per character per campaign. Fate allows a reroll of any single roll the character makes (and so cannot effect rolls made by NPCs or other characters that target the character), while heroism can be used to allow the character to achieve anything narratively possible, once per campaign. Most commonly this could be used to not die, but technically it could be used in a broad variety of ways.

Nonetheless, I have thought of several ways to have Shinnareth, or other characters who join the party, suffer negative consequences under a variety of circumstances, if the narrative meanders against them.

Hopefully, this sheds some light upon the story creation process! I would love to discuss this in any comments below.