Soloplay - CotMa IV - Now Hiring

Cast

Myrphines - scion of the Heraclidae

Midymnoios Moncheri - Paladin of Athena, called One Hand after losing his left to a carnivorous fly

Thekitor - dwarven delver

Segestes One-Eye - Barbarian warrior of the Harii.  Came south along the Amber Road.  Lost an eye fighting kobolds.

NPCs

The Egyptian - Landlord of the 'Old Fish', cheapest lodgings in Scodra

Ikexanlas - The town physician

Scene:  Hiring extra muscle while the barbarian recuperates and another descent into the dungeon.  Chaos 4, rolled a 6.  Scene goes as planned.

After settling into rooms at the Unhappy Banker, they sent out for the town physician, Ikexanlas, a middle aged man with thin black hair and a large mole on his left cheek.   He appeared wearing a costly tunic, disfigured with blood, wine and other impolite stains from his rounds.  He examined and cleaned Segestes' wounds, and told them he would return daily to check on him.

The other three met to discuss their next move. Midymnoios and Thekitor pushed to hire more fighting men and attack the kobolds.  It turned out Midymnoios's oath to Athena required him to hunt down and wipe out kobolds and their ilk [Goblin Slayer Proficiency].  Thekitor considered them racial enemies, no better than the other vermin occasionally found in mines.  Myrphines was undecided, but had not yet shared his vision of a restored Corinth and a humbled barbarian Rome with his new companions.  He decided to say nothing of his own goals until he knew they wouldn't betray him and acquiesced to their plan.

Soloplay CotMA III - Of Ghosts and Vision

Cast
Myrphines - scion of the Heraclidae
Midymnoios Moncheri - Paladin of Athena, called One Hand after losing his left to a carnivorous fly
Thekitor - dwarven delver
Segestes - Barbarian warrior of the Harii.  Came south along the Amber Road.

NPCs
The Egyptian - Landlord of the 'Old Fish', cheapest lodgings in Scodra

They remained in the noisome inn while the paladin recovered from his maiming and while they considered their options.  Myrphines decided to sell the ring they had discovered in the dungeon in order to finance a move to more salubrious quarters and to purchase a weapon Midmymnoios could wield one handed.  Afterwards they would enter the dungeon following Myrphine's map.

Chaos 5.  Rolled a 1 Altered scene - the party goes to sell the ring and re-equip as originally planned but they encounter a pickpocket along the way.  the first level thief rolled an 18 on the pickpocket check and the target was randomly determined to be Segestes the barbarian.  He never felt it as the Silver Wrist band was slipped from his arm.

 Thekitor took them to a jeweler in Fire Beetle Lane, who he said his cousin had recommended.  Selling the ring put 67 gold in Myrphine's purse (Thekitor lost his Bargain roll resulting in a 10% loss in value).  Then they went to the smithies by Bridgegate to purchase a spear and shield for the paladin.  When they returned Segestes gave an oath - one of the silver bracelets he had won on his journey had been stolen from his arm.  Perhaps it had been the Epriot barmaid while they were listening to the Scordisci tell the tale of the Grand Druid in Gaul whose daughter is a tree, or man who had tripped and bumped into him outside the jewelers.

Soloplay - Castle of the Mad Archmage II - Flies by Night

   Myrphines lay on the pallet and thought about failure, his failure.  His companions had been killed and he had run.  Gontus had been a family retainer since he was a lad and had been sent to Alexandria with him as a servant and bodyguard.  He'd met Trinor in the library there, researching the beliefs of an obscure Coele-Syrian cult, they'd been friend for years.  Altites, of course, troubled him not at all.  Merely a local thief he had hired as a guide and probably a spy to boot.
     At least he could sell the ring they'd found and find better quarters than the 'Old Fish'.  The price had been right for a near penniless exile, one gold stater bought the cramped room for a month; but the smell from Senedj's real business of buying up the last of the day's catch and selling it to farmers as fertilizer - and unsuspecting travelers as fish stew, permeated the neighborhood.
[Chaos factor = 6, rolled a 4.  Interrupt scene.  I had been planning on just going into the dungeon with the new characters, but decided this would be the meet and greet scene.  I rolled story cubes and didn't get any ideas, so I checked the background event table and rolled 59 - Monster Appears.]
     A droning in the background grew in volume until it filled his ears, as a strong breeze began blowing through the myriad cracks in the old door.  He heard cursing and the sound of doors opening in the hallway.  Grabbing his ave, he swung open the door to find the other occupants of the short hall doing the same.

Soloplaly Game Report - Teuta Act II, Scene II

The next day , they awoke to to find their host Eucheron pensive and worried.  He informed them that his son Petoai had been hunting in the mountains to the east with some companions and they were over due in returning.  He offered them two weeks rations to search for the hunters. ¹ The party quickly agreed, as they wanted to search the mountains in any case.

Eucheron pointed them down the trail the hunters had taken, it skirted the mountains for several miles before turning left and plunging into them.  As they walked along they heard a sudden crashing and cry of a deer in pain.  Rushing forward, a troglodyte had just brought down a small doe.  Sumakos cast entangle on the creature to slow it as the others rushed in to attack.  They faltered as the creatures stench thickened and swirled about them.  It clawed  Lucius, the pain and the unfamiliar weapon making him miss his return strike as the troglodyte pulled him into it's embrace biting at him until he fell.

Throwing Lucius at the Teuta and Sumakos, making them dodge away, it lunged at Maedus but the tall grass entangling stopped it short.  Maedus' return stroke went awry.

It swiped again at Maedus, the claws whistleing past his face, but Sumakos thrust his spear into it's side and Maedus gave it a mighty buffet that stretched it on the forest floor.  Maedus and Teuta attended to Lucius, while Sumakos butchered the deer.  Lucius's wounds were too serious for him to continue, so they returned to hamlet to let him rest and have Eucheron smoke the deer meat for them.

The second day, Teuta, Maedus and Sumakos set out again, searching the mountains for  two days without finding any sign of the hunters.  They decided to head back to pick up Lucius at that point.  On the way home, during Sumakos' watch,  he saw a bear coming into camp, attracted no doubt by their careless leaving of food and garbage within the campsite. Yelling at it roused the others, but did not scare away the animal.  Sumakos cast Entangle, but the bear's great strength didn't notice.

Sumakos closed with the bear to give the others a chance to snatch up their arms; his thrust missed as the bear's claws pulled him into where it could bite his shoulder.  Sumakos fell as Maedus and Teuta ran up with flaming brands to drive the beast away.

They rigged a stretcher out their cloaks and carried Sumakos back to the hamlet of Clausura where Lucius awaited them.²

The sixth day, Lucius, Maedus and Teuta resumed the search, turning into a different mountain valley. They found a campsite where the ashes were still barely warm and made camp there.³ Pushing hard the next day further into the mountains, after noon they heard the sounds of combat and rushed forward to see the last of the hunters fall in battle with four of the foul troglodytes.  Lucius cast Dancing Lights and the troglodytes stood dazed, one swaying from it's wounds.⁴  Maedus and Teuta shot arrows and slung stones, but none of them hit the trogs, thus wasting the advantage Lucius had provided.  Shaking off their daze, the monsters closed in.  Maedus and Teuta managed to land solid, but not mortal blows.  Lucius's opponent clawed him, knocking him to the ground.  Maedus absorbed a similar attack, unfazed.  Teuta endured a savage clawing and biting but remained defiant.  The damage slowed her and the creature easily evaded her next attack, while Maedus killed his opponent.  The troglodyte that had dropped Lucius turned and clawed at Maedus.  Teuta's opponent tore into her again, dropping her to the ground.  Finally, Maedus was overwhelmed, leaving the remaining troglodytes to enjoy their grisly feast.


[TPK,is just desserts for a small party without healing on a hexcrawl]

New Campaign and Mini-Recap

     We started a new campaign this month, and for my sins, I'm back behind the screen. I've taken advantage of my time off to look at how I run the games and decided to make some major changes. Previously I've tried to ensure I had all of the answers to any question my players might ask - down to writing a door generator that told me which side had the hinges. Perhaps my wife is right and I am a bit of a control freak - just a little.

     The campaign concept has been influenced by the soloplay I did (much) earlier this year, using the Mythic game system.  I liked the directed randomness, an odd term but the best way I have to describe it. I also realized that I never have time to do all the preparation I would like before its time to run the adventure, so I need to use modules in addition to anything I create.  Thirdly, I'd like to bring in things from different systems. Many of the bloggers did a post on their gaming bookshelves, showing them overloaded with systems. I'm no different, other than many of mine residing in electronic  format rather than paper.  And the last constraint is that the group is using Pathfinder, so all the mechanics would need to be D20.

     I decided, since I have most of the Warhammer Death on the Reik adventures,  I would use the WFRP setting.  It's much different from the group's standard fantasy setting, in that it has elements of horror and firearms. I'm using the Mythic Fate Chart and Chaos Factor make the setting more 'alive', instead of my usual pre-scripted effort.  And as time goes on I'll bring in monsters and artifacts from other settings.

    I'll do a full recap of the initial session and some lessons learned, but here's the short form.  I found what may be the most awesome published adventure ever in The Nine Virtues of Magnus the Pious, (WFRP 2?) where the characters start in a city in the middle of being sacked - and the situation goes downhill from there.  After taking damage from friendly cannon fire and being chased through town by mutant Mongels, they reached the climactic fight scene on the roof of the City Hall between the thief who had suckered them into helping retrieve the MacGuffin for her and her partner who was double crossing her.  All was going well, too well, they had taken out the doublecrosser who ordered the crew of the balloon to leave as he sank back dying.  The Dwarven Magus decided those guys weren't going to get away and jumped a Flaming Sphere into the basket of the balloon. Neatly destroying the only way for the party to get out of town.

     My initial reaction was to declare a TPK, as I had previously decided that the balloon was filled with hydrogen. However the players convinced me that the Hindenburg would be a better model of the physics of a hydrogen fire than David Weber.  They then chased the survivors into a Chaos Zone, eventually into the local Cathedral of Sigfreid (patron deity of the Empire).  Now at this point, they were so far off the map and out of the adventure script that I had no idea of what they would find or how I would get them out of the city. Especially as the mutants were starting their final assault on the defenders.

  I used the concepts of Mythic and crowd sourced it.  I asked the players what they thought they'd find when they opened the door of the Cathedral.  They decided that they would find the balloonists stuck right at the door.  That was a bit self-serving of them, so I altered the scene to they found the balloonists whirling around and slowly rising out of sight in the middle of the dome.

Soloplay Game Report - Teuta Act II, Scene 1

As they walked down the road towards Oricum, Lucius told them of the bandit lords who had aided the Macedonians in their fight against the Romans twenty years before.  He described the battle at the gorge of the Aoos that had crushed the Macedonian army and how all of their allies had been cut down or captured and sold as slaves.
   "According to the scrolls that old Lysixenos has, they joined the Macedonians after a two day march.  In that sort of terrain it means that they were within twenty miles of the gorge."
  "So you're proposing we tramp down the Ceraunian road to Chaonia?", asked Sumakos.  "If the the Toad is after Teuta, it will be easy for him to send the Phrygian down the road on a horse and overtake us."
  "Possible", admitted Lusicus, "but unless you think we could take ship at Oricum and sail down the coast, which I can't afford, how else can we get there?"
  "I grew up in the Byllian Hills, we just cut through the fields to the East Road to Dimale and then pick up the course of the Apsus, we can follow it through the mountains and come out in Chaonia east of the gorge."¹
  With that they swung east and passed through Dimale as the afternoon faded they decided to press on into the Byllion Hills until the light faded.²  The next day they reached the mountains at the head of the valley, Lucius wanted to push on, but Sumakos and Teuta were adamant they they should camp then and start the ardouous trek in the morning.^3,4  The next day they began their trip through the mountains, Sumakos estimated that they should reach the valley of eastern Chaonia in no more than a week. 

Red indicates the group's path.  Green is the trail they meant to take.

The following morning the path forked, Sumakos confidently led them up the left hand path into the shadow of the peaks.  Three days Sumakos announced that they had reached the Candovian trail and Clausura was only a few miles to the right.  As the miles walked by and there was no sign of the valley of eastern Chaoinia, much less Clausura, they became less and less certain that they knew where they were.  Sumakos remained confident that they were on the Candovian trail, but did not try to pretend that he knew wher they might be on that trail.  One midnight Lucius arwoke the others at the sound of horses approaching.  Two riders on shaggy beasts rode into the light of the campfire, armed with scimtars.  They gave a loud whistle and the party realized that there were over a dozen of them.  The leader, wearing padded armor, cantered forward and smiled sardonically, "You shouldn't camp right on the trail, you never know who you will meet."
"We're simply travelers, on our way to Clausura.  We have nothing of value."
"Clausura?  You're on the right trail, but you're a week away."
  "A week, that's lnger than our provisions will last, can we purchase some from you?"
"See, you do have something of value, let's see what you have besides your gold.  Unfortunately, we won't be selling."
Later, as the bandit chieftain rode away in Maedus' scale armor, Teuta remarked "I see his point on who you meet on the road."

  Three days later, Maedus woke them up before dawn, saying there's something out there.  They're mvoing pretty stealthily."  Suddinely, the party was rushed by three goblins, who closed into attack.  Maedus, Teuta and Lucius all missed their attacks.  Sumakos cast Entangle and trapped all the goblins.  After dispatching the evil humanoids, they counted up what they had gained, three morning stars and shields and a handful of silver.  "At least we'll have money to buy food, if we find anyone who has any extra."
Two days later, they camped overlooking the valley and ate the last of their provisions.  The next day the marched hungry into the little hamlet of Clausura.  As the sun approached the zenith, they came up the cluster of buildings, the farmer's wife bustled up from where she was working in the garden.
"You lot look footsore and tired."
"Yes, m'am, hungry too.  Our provisions gave out last night.  Could we purchase some food from you?"
"We can talk about that later, I have some beans in a pot.  You can join us, then we'll talk about what you need to go on."
The farmer, Eucheron and his workers soon came in for the meal.  In the discussion over the food, he mentioned that he had seen Bardyllis and his gang riding north the previous week, so he wasn't surprised that they had run afoul of them.  He wasn't aware of any ruins near the farm, but had rarely ventured into the mountains east of the valley.  He did offer to sell Maedus a set of old studded leather, which he claimed he had recovered from a casualty of the battle years before.  In response to a question from Teuta, he replied that there were no healers in the valley, the closest temple being to the west south of the gorge.⁵
Game notes below the jump.

Soloplay Game Report: Teuta - Act I, Scene 2

Phrygian Cap

  The throbbing behind her ear brought Teuta back to consciousness.  Opening her eyes, she saw she was in a small room, dimly lit by the lit coming through cracks in the shutters.  She could hear muted voices in the next room, but no one was watching her.  She fumbled at the cord binding her hands, found and end and quietly freed herself.  Looking aruond, she spotted her belt with it's daggers and pouch tossed in a corner.  Buckling it on she went to the door and listened. She recognized the Toad's harsh voice, saying something about the assassination.  

  She moved to the window and eased the bar out of the shutters, peering through the slits, she saw that she was on the ground floor of a building in one of the little alleys near the Dockside gate.  She couldn't tell if the Toad had left someone on guard out in the alley or not.  Speed, she decided, would be better than stealth in this situation.   

  She threw the shutters back with a clatter, just as Alkemachos entered the room.  Judging from the bellow behind him, the Toad had followed him in.  She used the window sill to give herself a boost up the wall and quickly reached the roof.  Looking down she saw Alkemachos slowly climbing after her.  As she turned away, she notcied a glint of metal in a shadow down the alley, was that a figured in a cloak and Phyrgian cap?  Teuta sprinted to the far edge of the roof and launched herself across the gap to the next building as she heard  the older thief gain the rooftop behind her.  She stumbled as she landed, but quickly ran to the opposite side.  She heard a thump and a scream, looking back the roof tops were empty.  She whisked away into the shadows towards the Laughing Eel. 

As she approached the Eel, light spilled out with Lucius and his friends as they tumbled out the door. Maedus was in full armor. She straightened and came up to him, say "You can't wear that in the walls, someone will call out the Families. 

In a slightly distance voice, Maedus responded "The Proskyntos are already out and when we find out who tried to have Epiphroditus killed, we'll destroy them to the last."

"Epiphroditus? But the Phrygian killed Klephtis tonight. Why would he agree to two jobs in one night? It would be so much harder to pull off."

"More than one man can kill,." Lucius interjected ,"Why in Rome there's a dozen assassinations a night. Compared to that this is a trifle."

"If the families have been raised, we'll never get out the gates tonight, and I'll need a new place to lie low." Tueta launched into a brief explanation of her night.

"Come up to my tutor's, old Lysixenos won't be bothered by Traodinus and his gang. They'd be afraid he'd really turn them all into toads! We'll all escort you up there. Maedus and Sumakos can meet us there in the morning."

Agreeing they turned down the street and walked to the Stoa.

A crowd was waiting in the square by the Oricum gate the next morning. Looking, they saw that each group leaving was being questioned by the guard and the contents of carts were being prodded with spears.

"They won't let us out" Maedus said, as he rested the sack containing his armor, shield and sword to the ground. "We're not farmers or traders, we don't have a reason to be leaving today. Not after the attack on Epaphroditus last night."

"Nonsense," Sumakos responded "I'm traveling to the oracle at Dodona to have my dream concerning the two goats and the lyre interpreted, and you're accompanying me."

Teuta smiled, "It's my father's friend, Demetrios, in charge, he may not let us through, but we won't be reported." and gestured to the armored man leaning against the wall out of the sun, within the shadow of the gate.

The crowd shuffled forward, picking it's way around the the steaming remains of the draft animals' breakfasts, until they were at the front of the queue.

Demetrios straightened up and strode out to them, waving his subordinates over. "You lot send someone to get us a jar of wine, it's going to be a hot day.", as be passed them a few coppers. "I'll take this bunch."

He walked up until his feet were almost touching Sumakos' sandals. "What's your excuse for a sudden trip into the countryside, armed to the teeth?"

Ignoring Sumakos' mumbled explanation of his desire to see the oracle, Demetrios said quietly to Teuta, "Your father hunted me up last night, after he heard about Klephtis' murder. He was worried about you, I'll tell him I saw you safely out of town. When you get settled, send me a message, I'll make sure it gets to him without Troadinus hearing about it."

"But the gates are shut, won't you be questioned about letting us through?"

"If the council bothers to ask, I'll mention that I passed a party that included a young Proskyntos lad", nodding at Maedus; "a most devout holy man and a Roman twerp from the Stoa." he finished sarcastically. "You'll just be some pretty lass I've seen around town."

With that he turned and started yelling at his men for the wine as they passed through the gate.

See the Epirus Nova page for previous scenes.

 

[How the story played out in Mythic below the jump]

Game Review - Mythic Part II

Adventuring   

Mythic encourages using a movie paradigm for setting up adventures, where you define the set up for a 'scene' and it's conclusion, the run what's in between.  Travel or time between scenes is ignored as there is little to no action happening with the characters.  This is extremely different from the way I've been gaming since 1977, to the point where it qualifies as a new and exciting idea.

Inside of the scene you can resolve the action with Mythic another system or a combination of both systems.

Chaos

Mythic defines the Chaos Factor as a mechanism to add randomness to a scene or to the action.  By default the Chaos Factor starts at five on a scale of 1-9.  Mythic Variations provides suggested starting Chaos Factors by the genre that you are playing.  The Chaos Factor may come into play at the beginning of a scene or whenever you ask a question on the Fate Chart and roll doubles.

Mythic in Action  (with apologies to Robert Asprin)

The setup:  As I said in my previous post I had wanted to do some solo play to flesh out my campaign setting.  I had already started this from a literary perspective with Teuta - Honor among Thieves, now I'll do it with Mythic.

Lists
There are three main lists to maintain in the game, PCs, NPCs and Threads.  Threads are the goals of the characters, they may be individual or group.  And you track the Chaos Factor, increasing it as things spin out of the PCs control and decreasing it as they get a handle on the situation.

For PCs I have a standard adventuring party of four, and I'm using 1e for the game system.

Tueta Restio – (f) Thief Level I. Daughter of a rope maker and a low level member of a thieves guild, whose head has just been assassinated

Lucius Octavius Rufus – Magic User level 1. Son of a prominent Roman plebian family, he is a student at the Stoa [The academy at Apollonia].

Maedus – Fighter I. Barroom brawler and a known associate of Lucius Rufus.

Sumakos – Druid 1. Aspirant of Pan. Another hades-raising associate of Lucius Rufus, delights in urinating on the temple of Apollo.

For NPCs, besides those mentioned in the Teuta prelude linked above, I included almost everyone I mentioned in Who's got their back?  Most of those don't have any relation with this party - yet.  But as I said I want to develop the gae background.

I also came up with four Threads.
(1) Teuta wants to get out of town rather than work for the new Guildmaster
(2) She would like revenge on her old master's killers
(3) Lucius has found directions to an old, theoretically abandoned keep (B1. In Search of the Unknown)
(4) The priests of the temple of Apollo want to find the guy who's pissing on the walls at night


Action!
Scene 1 - Get out of town.
  Starting right after the prelude, Teuta needs to get her friends and leave town.  The action will start with her going to an inn to meet them and ends when they get out the gate.That's it, that's all the planning a scene needs.  Now we use the Fate Chart to ask questions and determine the details of the action.

Whoops, first we roll against the Chaos Factor.  I rolled a 10, the CF is 5 - no effect.

Q. Is the new guild master looking for her?  This is an 'Odds' question and it's 'Likely' that he is, so we'll roll against the right hand column of the Fate Chart.  Setting the Difficulty Rank, well it's an unopposed action, so it's 'Average'.  Cross referencing it on the chart it's 85% likely that he is looking for her.  I rolled a 31, yes he is.

Q. Does he find her?  Another odds question, it's unlikely that a small band can find any particular individual in a small city at night.  However this is an opposed check, against her 'Hide in Shadows' skill, which I'm using as a proxy for her ability to skulk about town.  A first level thief has only 10% in Hide in Shadows, that's 'Weak'.  The cross reference this time is 75% chance that she's found.  I rolled a 33 - that's a double and it's below the Chaos Factor.  A Random Event has occurred.

On the Event Focus table it comes up as a Remote Event, not something directly concerning the action in this scene.  I decide that it effects one of the NPCs and randomly selected one of the town councilors.  The first thing that comes to mind is that there's been an assassination attempt and the alarm is beginning to sound.

Back to the action.  The roll wasn't an Exceptional Yes, so I decided that she's been found by a low level member of the rival gang.  (Imitating Batman) To the NPC Generator!  It's Alkemachos, with his white hair and pock marked face.

Flight is better than fight in some cases, she'll try climbing a wall to escape.  With an 85% chance, she rolls a 3, let's see how he does chasing her.  He rolls a 2, even better since I'm treating him as a zero level man at arms, so I'm using the Fate Chart instead of a skill check.  It's a critical success for him, so he didn't just climb up after her, he caught by the ankle halfway up the wall and pulled her down into the alley before she got away.

Fight time, he wins initiative and hits with his club for five points.  Lights out and this scene is over!
Instead of meeting at the tavern, she'll start the next scene as a captive.

And Cut!

The last part of the scene is updating lists and the Chaos Factor.  I have a new NPC, Alkemachos, and I think everyone would agree that this scene ended up way out of control, so the Chaos Factor is going up to six.

 

After running through that, I like it.  I like it so much I'm going to use it in conjunction with whatever rules I'm DMing under.  It provides a flexible structure and surprising twists that give me just enough detail to run with.

Game Review - Mythic Part I

Well half of a review.  I'm going to look at Mythic as a tool for solo play.  I really hadn't heard about Mythic as a system until I ran into an intriguing post over at Tabletop Diversions.  Where he his playing out a solo game.  My interest in solo gaming is based on my once a month or less group's schedule (I'll be the one missing this month, so no Alesmiter Expedition writeup) and as I'm scheduled to take over as DM, I wanted to try solo questing as a means to flesh out the NPCs and the campaign setting.

Blue River, Costa Rica

  As I had some vacation coming up, I picked up the PDF bundle over at RPG Drivethru put it on my tablet and headed for the tropics.  Intending to read that and Clark Ashton Smith during the course of a week of sun, beach and jungle and do a lot of cribbage playing and a little blogging.  Everything but the blogging happened, although I did make lots of notes that are showing up as short Beastiary blogs.

Enough preamble, on to the review!

 Mythic, by Tim Pigeon, is a self contained system advertising the ability to be used for any genre, stand alone or with any other RPG or combination of RPGs.  It's a reasonably slim 146 pages, including covers.  But that's a bit misleading, after taking out charts, examples of play and the copious illustrations, the rules only comprise about half it's length.  And two thirds of those deal with character creation and advancement.

Character creation, which I admit to only skimming, is a point buy system, with the players adding arbitrary strengths and weaknesses as they seem appropriate.  To me, that seems easy to use for power gaming, only give your character strengths.  But I really have no intention of using the character rules.

I have to say that it's a very sparse system, the basic concept is that everything can be given relative ranks.  Relative to what, well Tim says relative to 'average' - which to someone with a background in Six Sigma and a lot of experience in computers doesn't really define it.  Essentially the ranks are an dimensionless scale distributed around a point.  If the scale is distributed symmetrically around the point, then it can be said to be relative to the average. However there is no hard and fast requirement to have a scale distributed evenly around a point - in fact most measurement scaless in RPGs start from 0 or 1, even those such as character abilities which we roll up on a 3d6 bell curve are really open ended linear scales.

That's all a bit of a quibble, as it doesn't affect gameplay.  In fact, Mythic's scales allow you to compare  percentile and 3d6 distributions head to head by using the conversions that have been helpfully provided.  These impose a dimension on each rank in the scale.   Now these aren't mathematically accurate comparisons as a Mythic score of 'Awesome' equates to a 3d6 score of 18 or a percentile score of 96-100,  while in reality you have a not quite one half of one percent chance of rolling an 18 (1 in 216).  Fudging the numbers this way doesn't bother me, it's a game mechanic and it's internally consistent .

Mythic also ranks the odds of an event occurring on a similar scale, this time ranging from 'Impossible' to 'Has to be'

When you really need them the most, million-to-one chances ALWAYS crop up.  Well known fact. - Sgt Colon.  Guards! Guards! , Terry Pratchett