Hi and welcome to my blog! Today I wanted to discuss in detail the games I’ve released that use the MMUGS engine. I’ve published 5 MMUGS games and one System Reference Document for MMUGS so far. While they all use the same rules system, each game is different in what its goals are and the gameplay procedures. However, they all focus heavily on journaling and on solo play.
Mighty Marvelous
Mighty Marvelous was the first MMUGS game, though I didn’t quite know it at the time that I was designing it. I had so much fun defining this game’s systems and play-testing it. I created some characters that I really enjoy and would love to use in one of my fiction novels someday. And that’s pretty much what MMUGS is all about: creative journaling. It’s made for you to create a cohesive narrative full of interesting characters, all while playing a fun game that utilizes Skills, challenge and action dice, and twists. And lots of tables.
Mighty Marvelous is about creating your own superheroes and villains in a unique world. It has generators for both heroes and villains in it if you have trouble devising your own characters. It’s a city hex-crawl full of locations for you to mark down and villain’s lairs for you to explore.
The cover art is made by the amazing Miguelangel Bastidas, who also illustrated the cover for Rift Town MMUGS Edition. The hero on the cover I named Glamour Girl, who I play-tested Mighty Marvelous as and I had a ton of fun playing as her and would love to write some more stories about her adventures someday.
Mighty Marvelous really brought me back into publishing TTRPGs. It reignited my passion for creative writing and gave me the motivation to see my new ideas through to completion. I now have a huge backlog of concepts, projects in the works, and new ideas, and I love that because it means my creativity is in overdrive right now.
The inspiration for Mighty Marvelous and for the MMUGS engine are Ironsworn, Loner, and Kal-Arath. I loved playing Ironsworn and journaling my adventures, and that was the main inspiration for wanting to create a superhero game that one could journal while still enjoying simple but effective mechanics. I really liked the narrative-first system with Loner and the minimalist approach to creating a narrative, and I also liked the Twist system it uses. As for Kal-Arath, it’s one of my favorite games to play solo. It’s tough but fair. I also like the dungeon generation system and hex-crawling aspects of it.
Mighty Marvelous has a supplement out for it that introduces sidekicks, superhero teams, and super pets. While Mighty Marvelous is $4.99, the supplement is free and can be downloaded here on itchio or here on drivethrurpg.
Mighty Marvelous is available on itchio here and on drivethrurpg here. It’s one of my more popular games that gets downloaded rather frequently and I feel I have the amazing cover art to thank for that. If you are interested in more of Miguelangel Bastidas’s work, you can find him here on Fiverr.
MMUGS High Fantasy
MMUGS High Fantasy is the second MMUGS game I published. It features an open-ended system for creating your own fantasy characters and unique fantasy world. I highly recommend using the prompts from my Cosmic Creator Games to help you out if you’re stuck during worldbuilding. They are free and the first one is available here on itchio and here on drivethrurpg.
MMUGS High Fantasy has most of the same rules as Mighty Marvelous, but with a high fantasy flavor to it. It introduces using magic in more direct ways than magic was used in Mighty Marvelous. It introduces Weapon Skills instead of using the General Skills like Melee Weapons and Projectiles. It also introduces Rations as something you should keep an eye on while playing.
The cover illustration features an elf woman with a sword making her way through a dark forest. It’s a beautiful piece of art. My inspiration for the art was to evoke some of the feel of old-school illustrations you may find in D&D game books from the 80’s and 90’s. The artist was the amazing Magi Purnomo and if you would like to see more of his fantastic work you can find him here on Fiverr.
I love high fantasy stories, and I wanted to make a game that I could have fun playing as I developed a consistent tale. MMUGS was the perfect choice for that. I had so much fun developing a unique fantasy world populated by many different species of peoples and different cultures. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing TTRPGs has been the worldbuilding part.
Again, this game features lots of tables to help you create your own high fantasy setting and characters. You can purchase MMUGS High Fantasy on itchio here and on drivethrurpg here for $4.99.
Cozy MMUGS
I love cozy video games! Don’t get me wrong, I like role-playing video games and high-octane action, too. But there’s something about cozy games that just makes me happy to my core. I wanted to evoke that feeling that cozy video games give me with a TTRPG, so I created Cozy MMUGS.
I think Cozy MMUGS uses the MMUGS engine the best out of all the MMUGS games. Cozy games and journaling seem to go hand-in-hand, at least for me. I loved play-testing this game so much. The game really wants you to create your own cozy town and people to populate it and then just LIVE in that world. I loved chronicling my cozy adventures, finding romance, and tending to my farm and livestock. There are some combat elements to the game, but they are completely optional. I know some people like combat in their cozy games and other people do not, so I made it a choice as to whether you fight enemies or whether enemies don’t exist at all.
The cover for Cozy MMUGS completely evokes the vibes that I wanted for this game. It was illustrated by the talented children’s storybook illustrator Yulia Vole, who you can find here on Fiverr.
The video games that inspired Cozy MMUGS are: Stardew Valley, the Story Of Seasons series, Kynseed, and My Time At Sandrock. I would recommend these cozy games to anyone looking to be introduced to the genre.
Cozy MMUGS is available on itchio here and drivethrurpg here for $4.99.
Rift Town MMUGS Edition
Let’s start with this: What is a rift town? A rift town is a small town centered around a scar in the fabric of reality called a rift. Chaotic entities and supernatural creatures tend to crawl out of the rift. In Rift Town MMUGS Edition, it’s up to you as the town’s recently-hired protector to defend your new home.
Rift Town was originally a free game I created that was a journaling/action game where you defend the rift town on weekends and live your normal life during the week. If you are curious about it, it is available as PWYW on itchio here and drivethrurpg here.
Rift Town MMUGS Edition is the evolution of the original Rift Town game. It has been improved in every way and more lore has been added. You create your own rift town full of secrets and strange people. You create a map for your town. You experience strange events and encounters in your town. Then, when monsters or other supernatural creatures show up, you defend your town.
Rift Town is inspired by a series of books I wrote when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I plan to publish these books someday after a few updates and many rounds of editing. The story is close to my heart and I had a lot of fun basing a TTRPG off of the world I had created.
The cover art is once again made by the talented artist Miguelangel Bastidas, who you can find here on Fiverr. The cover features a tough woman relaxing after a night of killing zombies, drinking a warm cup of coffee in a cemetery. I like the juxtaposition that she’s wielding a sword that’s got blood specks on it but she’s just relaxing next to a decapitated zombie head with a cup of coffee. That juxtaposition of intense action with small moments of just sitting and relaxing with a cup of coffee is what I feel the Rift Town games are really about.
You can find Rift Town MMUGS Edition here on itchio and here on drivethrurpg for $4.99.
Brightnight Academy
Brightnight Academy is my most recently published game at the time of this writing. It’s a fun TTRPG that features beautiful artwork both on the cover and inside. Not to mention the awesome map my professional cartographer husband made for it.
In Brightnight Academy you are a student in a college that trains monsters to become heroic mercenaries called Revenants. You can choose from 12 different monstrous ancestries that each have their own lore. Like other MMUGS games, mechanically the ancestry you choose doesn’t make much difference, but it makes a huge difference in the narrative.
Brightnight Academy is based off of my Monster Heroes games, available as PWYW on itchio here and drivethrurpg here. It is set in the same world. But Monster Heroes does NOT use MMUGS. Instead, I decided Brightnight Academy should use the MMUGS system as I wanted this to be a game reliant upon journaling. I also wanted this game to be easily understood and accessible to a younger audience who may have never played a solo TTRPG before, and MMUGS is easy to learn and perfect for beginners.
The beautiful cover art was illustrated by a talented young artist named Flavia Mikaella. You can see more of her work on Fiverr here. The interior artwork was designed and created by an awesome artist named Undead Puppet, also on Fiverr and you can see more of her work here. I love the art for this game. It’s perfect for what I had in mind when I first decided to make an academy-based game.
Awesome news about Brightnight Academy: Abraham Zetina from the Talking About Games reviews channel on youtube is going to do a review of Brightnight Academy. It should be ready in about 7 days. I’m excited as this will be the first time one of my games has been reviewed! I hope you’ll check it out!
Brightnight Academy is $4.99 on itchio here and drivethrurpg here. I’m currently working on some supplements for it and I’ll keep you all updated on how that’s going.
MMUGS SRD
The MMUGS SRD (System Reference Document) was made for a game jam on itchio called Celebrating SRDs. The MMUGS SRD is a small document that contains the basic rules of the MMUGS engine as well as a license for you to use MMUGS for your own games as long as these games do not promote hatred or bigotry and you offer credit to Sarah Solo for the use of the MMUGS engine.
I designed the cover using my logo and Canva. I’m not the best designer, but it’s cute enough, I think.
MMUGS SRD is only available on itchio here and is PWYW.
That’s all of the MMUGS games I’ve created so far. I have plans for future MMUGS games and I’ll keep you all updated on their progress as I begin to work on them a little more. I love making supplements so keep an eye out for any MMUGS supplements, too.
On another note, I recently began a weekly newsletter using Substack. It goes out every Wednesday and keeps you updated on all of my current projects and articles and new game releases. It’s free to subscribe and my Substack handle is @sarahsoloadventures
One more thing! On April 4th at 1 pm EDT I will be doing a Q&A with Dan Davenport of the Randomworlds Discord. I’ll be answering questions about Colossus Complete Edition. I hope to see you all there!
Have a great weekend, everybody!
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