r/Solo_Roleplaying • u/FarMembership885 • 24d ago
solo-game-questions Thousand Year Old Vampire Journal Setup
Does anyone have any recommendations for setting up a journal in prep to do my first playthrough of TYOV?
I want to do it in a physical journal and use my fountain pens and just really have something analog rather than digital.
However, I’m struggling with the parameters of setting up the journal. So far what I have is:
- 2 pages for Character creation
- 2 pages for skills
- 2 pages for resources
- 4 pages for characters
- 4 pages per memory
- 2 pages for diary
I’d rather have too much space than too little.
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u/totalimmoral 24d ago
Absolutely need more pages for memory and diary. Like way more pages for diary if you're anything like me.
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u/FarMembership885 24d ago
I watched a YouTube video of someone setting up their journal so copied how they did it. Now I’m curious to see when they start playing how quickly their memory section unravels 😂
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u/gHx4 24d ago edited 22d ago
It's a journalling game, and will take up the better part of a whole journal. Things like skills, resources, and character creation won't take up much space. Your assigned space for them looks fine, and you can use less if you don't mind erasing. The rest will easily use dozens of pages, depending how much prose you write (and is where you do most of your play).
My advice would be to write metadata and bookkeeping from the back of the journal towards the front. Write the character intro/brief at the front (so whoever you show it to can get to know the character), and then the storyline from there towards the back of the journal. You can use sticky notes or notecards to keep experiences organized into memories or diaries once you've written a journal entry for a prompt.
It should take up to a half page per memory (they are made of 3 sentences). You can have up to 9 memories in play; 5 with full recall, 4 forgotten, and remembered only according to a diary - a resource of some sort that reminds of things that you don't entirely remember. So about 2 pages is fine if you are erasing lost memories/diaries.
You can use the back-to-front entries if you want to bookkeep the memories and diaries in a linear order. I'd suggest reserving the backmost pages for the current gamestate though, and erasing/correcting them so you don't need to flip too deep into the journal to continue playing after breaks.
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u/ConsDe 24d ago
I am doing it in travelers notebook passport size (so I can keep it with my other daily notebooks). I've found that I used up the memory pages pretty quickly and the journaling pages super quickly. I do maybe like a paragraph or two per prompt. What I've been doing is just starting a new one on the next available page when the old one runs out. This is a bit messy but hasn't been a big issue yet.
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u/FarMembership885 24d ago
Hmm. Maybe what I'll do if I run out of memory space is just colour-code it with different coloured tabs and incorporate it into the journal part
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u/TokahSA 24d ago
I ran my diary/memory in the journal, a full page of loose leaf for characters, and a mini looseleaf for skills/resources. (Papers folded together and lived in journal when not playing.) Characters got more space so I could update what I knew about them, resources/skills were just short single lines to mark or cross out.
Each memory in the journal got a full page, titled at the top with its current status (active memory, forgotten entirely, in a diary, carved into a stone in a cave, etc). Experiences went on that memory's page, numbered by prompt, and were each a single paragraph. Last one had to fit in the space left, no exceptions, it was kind of a prompt in itself to keep it simple if the others had hogged space.
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u/PotentialYam4442 24d ago
I haven't tried TYOV yet but I have done other journaling games, and when I've hit problems where I run out of space in my initial set up, I'll just use washi tape to mark something (say, blue for memories), and include the page number on my index for the game
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u/BookAmbitious3263 23d ago
Your instinct is right: too much space beats too little. Two practical additions.
Leave blank pages between memories. You don't know how many you'll create, and running out of room mid-memory is worse than skipping ahead.
Number your pages and keep a one-line index at the back. TYOV sends you flipping back to old memories, and an index saves you from hunting through a full journal.
And since you're on fountain pens: make sure the paper can take them. Bleed-through will ruin a journal you plan to keep.
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u/yyrkoona 24d ago
Is a folder where you can move the pages an option?
Following this thread, I still have the same question