A Visit To San Sibilia

This was my second-ever solo RPG! It was delightful. The setting and game structure do so much; I love an elaborate prompt in other games I've played & browsed, but the smaller prompt table here has so much narrative support, especially in the evocative, concise introduction to the city itself.

I posted my playthrough here if you want a peek.

I picked this game up last night with the intention of spending a little time being creative before bed. Three hours and six thousand words later, I had lived a story of loneliness, love, self-discovery and acceptance that genuinely moved me.

The game is wonderfully conceived and beautifully set out, and I had an absolutely wonderful time with it. I'm hoping to record my game for our podcast Patreon extra content, but if you'd like to receive a copy of the audio for yourself, please just let me know where I can send it to you!

Thank you for such an imaginative, creative game.

Such a wonderful game! Played about three years ago and my character and the setting are still kicking around in my brain. Recently went back and wrote a story based on my playthrough, so thought I’d share! https://cohost.org/onionKnight/post/7043444-my-heavily-edited

This was really awesome. I bought a physical copy at Tanuki games in Austin, TX! Thank you so much! It was my second ever Solo RPG and I had a BLAST. I used a d20 to create days between some entries. My stay was over three months long. I saw the city shift, merchants uprising, and found love! Also part of the city burned down. It was a riot. This was so fun. 

Hi, I would like to translate it to Polish. Would it be ok with you?

Thank you for this. I am a fan of shifting cities as a genre, and I found San Sibilia fun for me if not for my Inquisitive Merchant Rigo Bevilaqua. Between the changing streets and the sudden coup in the palace, Rigo has vowed never to return.

I loved every minute of his 10-day stay!

Do you have any objection to my publicly posting a story that I wrote via “Visit”? It is of course 99% my own work but it does incorporate your place names and came from your prompts. 

I should clarify: I don’t mean posting it here. I mean posting it on a public social media account. 

We just picked up the physical copy at our FLGS.

Playing A Visit to San Sibilia was great! I think it was one of my favourite solo journaling games so far.

The rules are simple, you draw two cards and, based on their color, you receive prompts for the day: serendipitous + coffee in an open-air cafe, or fraught + gallery opening. I found the prompts very evocative and inspiring, open-ended while decisively setting the tone of the story.

Every time when you draw cards of the same color or number, the city changes, according to another set of prompts. After four changes, your visit to San Sibilia draws to a close. This added a very nice tension, as I had no idea how long my stay in the city would be.

The daily prompts and the unexpected changes proved to be the seeds of a story that gained its own momentum. Every day I was surprised by the turn of the events, and couldn't wait to see what direction the story would take.

The game opens and closes with a set of introspective questions you may answer in the diary, giving an emotional frame to the experience.

You can find my full playthrough here https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088610363213

Love the game! So easy to get along with but always makes such interesting stories!

I often use it as practice for my language study! (honestly journalling rpg games are underrated language study tools) Makes practicing my french or Dutch a lot more fun than using textbooks and really enjoy the extra level of otherness/foreignness sort of intrinsic to the game that is enhanced by writing in a language i'm not that familiar with!

Thank you for creating such a wonderful game and a portal to so many fascinating stories :)

Played this game for Episode 3 of my podcast, Alone at the Table!

I had a wonderful time with this game and my playthrough ended up a bit spooky. Definitely will be playing again!

Hey there! I've been playing this game for a couple of turns now, added a small house rule to make each passing turn be a little longer (due to the context of my events). My character is having an amazing and transformative journey in San Sibilia! Such a beautiful game, very well done!

He is character is a retired sailor, discovering his artistic side during his stay in the city. I used ChatGPT to help me write a poem that changed the city by creating a new group of poets that write/talk about all kinds of things and some of these are annoying the City Council. 

This is one of my favourites entries until now:

I ended up with a fairly long game of 31 days with 12 entries. I played over the course of a week. The prompts are wonderful, as they can provide a nice direction while keeping it vague! It forced me to pull my story in directions I'd never expect! It was really amazing, and a great experience in descriptive and creative writing.

I will absolutely be playing this again, and seeing where the story goes!

I had fun giving this a whirl over a couple days. My visit was short, fifteen days and five entries. Regarding the end of the game, are you meant to write your fourth double-card entry and then the epilogue, or does the epilogue replace the fourth entry?

I wound up wrapping up both the two-card prompt and the final questions prompt together, but maybe it could be clearer which is the intended way?

Loved hearing this played on Friends at the Table! Fantastic work. :)

I received this game as part of a bundle and decided to give it a try. The style of the rules document works very well with the content of the game and while I think I would have enjoyed some more setting information about the city itself (for example some descriptions of individual locations that you could include in your game if you wanted), you can certainly work with what has been provided. I found the prompts very evocative and they convey the feeling of this odd, mysterious, ever-changing city excellently.

As a journaling game, the rules are naturally very simple; no surprises on that front. I did think the mechanic that eventually also ends the game is quite nifty.

Overall, I enjoyed playing this game and would encourage you to check it out as well

Like many others I never played a journaling game before. This was really fun, and I've been using it as a way to practice writing (Since it generates really good prompts!) and as a way to relax. Thanks so much for giving me this.

Just finished playing this game and i must say i enjoyed it a lot. Never done a journaling game before, but i've been curious for quite a while. I think i made a good choice with this as my first game as i feel it strikes a perfect balance of huge creative potential and simplicity.

I postedthe notes from my game on my blog if anyone is intrested in reading them. 

never played a solo RPG style game before, but i'm very glad i did. i was sad when it ended, but i'll definitely be playing again this weekend. thank you for creating this.

I bought the bundle today and I have already spent about 7 hours or so with this game. I think this will easily become my favorite game of the bundle. I love the artwork and style of the zine so much and it leaves so much fun room for ideas. It reminds me very much of playing Fallen London, but journaling it and making up a city on the fly and I love it. This is also such a great activity for spending an hour or two if bored and if you like the story you can flesh it out into a whole narrative. Thank you so much for motivating me to finally do worldbuilding again and get myself to write! I already have two concepts that surprised me so much with where the story went and it's 23:30 right now and i should go to sleep but I really wanna play another round lmao. 

I'm in love with this game!! It's not the first solo rpg game I've tried, but it is the only one thus far that I've actually been able to play.
Like some other commenters, I've also been having trouble writing even though it's something I love to do, so I resolved to try these kind of games to see if they could help my creativity blockage, and this one really has! The simple rules and preparation required, as well as the flexibility it allows (even though any game can be as flexible as you want it to, but this one even encourages you to change anything that doesn't work for you) allowed me to get playing immediately, and hooked not long after.
It's meant to last around one or two hours, "depending on the cards you draw and the time you spend on each journal entry", but I've been playing for a couple of days now and I'm really enjoying it!
So thank you so much for such a wonderful game. Hope everyone else likes it as much as I do <3

Just wrote my first journal entry and I am in love with this game already!! It's also my first both solo and journaling rpg I chose to play. I'm happy with the choice! I'm surprised I had so many ideas from the simple prompts after a long creative dry spell. Will return back once I finish the game. Thanks so much for this  beautiful work of a ttrpg!!! <3

Hey all, I'll be doing a liveplay of the game Friday 17th at 15:00 UTC+2 if anyone wants to jump in and watch along :)

http://twitch.tv/chrischinchilla

EDIT - The creator put out new rules to help with the game's pacing, one of my biggest complaints with the game. I've had a chance to give them a go and found it helped with the experience of the game. As such I gave a higher rating. I appreciate the creator taking my feedback seriously too. You can still find my original comments unedited below for reference. I know a lot of people really like this title, so keep on enjoying :)

The creator of the game reached out to me and asked me to do a review for my website. You can read that in full here. For those who don't want to, let me give you the TL;DR.

I was really excited to give this game a go. The rulebook looks great, the rules are pretty clear (provided you read the whole 12 pages in advance), and I could feel it sparking my imagination even before play. However, once I actually played it...

I recognize in my review I made some "mistakes" in how I framed my story and character, not that I broke any rules, but seemed to play in a way the game didn't anticipate. Putting that aside, the game went on for a REALLY long time, to the point where I quit part way through. Now, this was also an anomaly which isn't reflective of an average experience either.

So I did the sensible thing and simulated a bunch of games. I took care to read every prompt, but didn't write them all out like I did for my first game. I also noted when the "bigger" events occurred and game length. A clear issue emerged in game pacing. Either games were outstaying their welcome or were comically short, both resulting in a lack of general direction. On average, the game felt mostly fine, but the randomness of how journal entries work really holds the game back.

It's a shame, but I couldn't like this one as much as everyone else seems to. I don't expect perfection out of a game, though I have to be honest when something just isn't working for me. As a result, I couldn't give it the 5 stars I wanted to, but I still think the game is interesting enough to check out if you are curious. Wishing the best for the creators, hope they see their goal through and maybe even improve the game a bit alongside a print release.

An excellent journaling game visiting the mysterious city of San Sibilia. While the theme is reminiscent of Alone in the Ancient City, San Sibilia is more specific and concrete yet still extremely flexible. Because you do a brief bit of character gen and set up, this helps guide your journal writing as you follow the prompts immensely and makes more apparent different ways you can take the story—and it is a story with the Change mechanism creating an implicit pacing. I like how the visit itself is structured a lot, with different yet just as self driven mechanics as Alone in the Ancient City—and the differences suit what this game is doing well. 

While I love Alone hacks, and this game is more a cousin than a close relation, I think this is one that belongs right next to my favorites on my virtual shelf.