The World We Left Behind, a Solo TTRPG First Playthrough

After my unfortunately underwhelming first paythrough of Cartograph, I have begun writing up my own ruleset and tables for the game, which I may publish publicly at some point. For now, I have decided to move on while I work on it in the background, and wanted to try the other physical book I purchased from Tabletop Bookshelf.

The World We Left Behind is another journaling-style game about exploration. You will journal as a member of a crew of space explorers, cargo haulers, planetary scientists, space pirates, or whatever tickles your space fantasy fancy. It's entirely up to you - what planet you are exploring and why you are there. As you explore, you will use provided prompts to unravel a mystery, solve a puzzle, get what you came for, or leave empty handed. But, leaving the planet behind doesn't have to be forever, and your crew can go on new missions through new or continued playthrough sessions.

It uses a standard deck of playing cards, some dice, and your journal. Throughout the game, you are meant to write on the playing cards with a permanent marker, so you'd want to use a cheap deck. I still don't like the idea of marking up cards, so I instead found Post-It Note Tape. It's tape that's a Post-it, so it can be easily removed. Solid-colored or white Washi tape would also work. It does add a 'feel' to the card when you are dealing them, but that didn't bother me. Better than ruining a perfectly good deck of cards.

The game play is straight forward -- Draw 15 cards, add one Ace into your drawn cards, shuffle, deal them out in a grid, land your spaceship on a card, explore and flip the card over to discover what is there, journal about it. There aren't a lot of tables or or concrete oracles. There is a lot of imagination and interpretation involved, but I found this open ended journaling enjoyable. I've only completed one journey of four (one for each ace) for this 'campaign', and it was a quick, lovely little session. I'll update my full thoughts on the game after a full four-ace playthrough.

Although it's open-ended style may not be for deep oracle table enthusiasts, I rather enjoy how it gives tiny interpretive nudges and lets you explore a story of your own making. I'm not sure why Cartograph didn't scratch this same itch for me when my main complaint about Cartograph was its lacking tables and underwhelming repetitiveness. Perhaps The World We Left Behind offers just the right amount of direction while letting its own open-ended nature keep it from feeling repetitive and lacking, while Cartograph landed somewhere awkwardly in a place where there was too much direction without taking you anywhere.