by lorddillon

I'm glad this part of the adventure is almost over! Thanks for keeping us posted.

by pahoota

All of my solo RPG endeavors eventually stall out, and my latest proves no exception. I'm not ready to call my latest solo RPG completely abandoned; let's just say I've been on an extended break from it since September last year. I am close to finishing it, and do intend to. Honest.

My solo RPG fell by the wayside mainly because other aspects of gaming and gaming-adjacent hobbies stole my attention. In autumn I resolved to play more boardgames and in the process ended up discovering some awesome solo boardgames, like Final Girl. I also participated in some crafting challenges in one of my Discord communities. As happy as I am to have discovered new games and crafted weird sculptures, none of these things could have distracted me from my solo RPG if I had maintained the initial enthusiasm and momentum.

Regardless of the eventual hiatus, my latest solo RPG experience was the best to date, keeping me totally immersed over two months and generating play records spanning thousands of words. I'm therefore writing this blog post for myself really (what blog post isn't?), in order to capture what made it so effortless in the beginning and so difficult to continue later.

[heading]It Started So Easy
[/heading]

My solo "campaign" started so easily because of three things:

A) I had a solid starting conceit
B) The starting location was easy to visualize
C) I had an inciting event I was working toward

Breaking these points down in more detail, I have to credit the system I chose, Retrostar, for prompting the campaign's conceit. Retrostar attempts to emulate late '70s/early '80s sci-fi TV shows, with campaigns set in the universes of fictional television series. The game features a wonderful chapter on Series creation, and by answering a few questions and creating an "elevator pitch" for one's show, a GM/solo player ends up with a firm foundation to adventure from.

I've already shared a couple pages of the series bible for my show, The War Inside, which pitches the series as

"Jules Vernes’ “A Journey to the Center of the Earth” during the Cold War. A mysterious whirlpool in the Indian Ocean leads to a subterranean realm, prompting a race between American and Soviet spies to secure the favor of the technologically advanced inhabitants. The underground dwellers may have their own plans…"

With just a little more detail for the pro- and antagonists, I had the starting location (an island in the Indian Ocean), and an inciting event (the mysterious whirlpool).

Regarding the starting location, an island turned out to be perfect. I rolled up the dimensions of the island randomly, and then found a real-world island of similar size to help me visualize the setting. Since the details of the island weren't worked out yet, I had a true sandbox to play in, but one with some fairly cozy walls to keep things from wandering off.

The inciting incident of the whirlpool kept the game in focus, even more so than the sandbox island. I intentionally left the when and where of the whirlpool's appearance vague, but just having it out there as a backstop provided focus without the feeling of railroading.

[heading]Things Got Hard
[/heading]

The whirlpool finally appeared (much later than I expected!) and the characters (many more than I expected!) found themselves in the Inner World. I played approximately five sessions after the story went full-bizarre and while they were fun, it felt like far more effort than the earlier sessions.

Why?

I think the fantastical nature of the Inner World setting or rather, the ill-defined nature of it, ground the campaign to a halt. The earlier sessions featured over the top cloak-and-dagger action but with clear touchstones to the real world. I could readily visualize the ocean, the island cliffs and vegetation, the mundane vehicles the characters operated and, thanks to copious consumption of media, even the slam-bang action.

I could not, however, visualize the Inner World. What did the land look like? What about the people, the technology level, the flora and fauna? I didn't know, and intentionally so.

As this was a solo RPG experience, I wanted to develop the Inner World setting through play, and emulate that feeling of discovery a player gets in a traditional multi-player RPG. My mistake there however was conflating solo RPGs with traditional RPGs; in my opinion they are two related but separate hobbies. Although I have been doing the solo thing for over 15 years, I forgot that in a traditional RPG the players enjoy that revelation of discovery only due to the hard work of the GM. The soloist however, is the GM, as well as the players, and necessarily has to find different ways to reach those "a-ha!" moments.

[heading]What I've Learned in the Interim
[/heading]

OK, so while it's been nearly nine months since I last visited that particular campaign, I have thought often about solo RPGs. I binged podcasts like Tale of the Manticore. I also broke out my copy of Twilight: 2000 (4th Edition) and revived a stagnant solo campaign in that world. All these experiences have suggested to me a fundamental "truth" for better solo play (for me at least): the hex-crawl is invaluable.

My revived T2K game still isn't past the first day (in-game), yet it consumed two evenings of leisure time and five pages of hand-written notes in my game journal! The PCs already have differing opinions on the party's goals, and have picked up two NPCs whose presence is generating most of the inter-PC tension. All of this from just three randomly drawn encounter cards.

The immediately emergent narrative I experienced with T2K, and that I hear on solo actual plays, make me realize just how powerful the hex-crawl is. Whether it's a where or a when, having something for the PCs to go towards (even unknowingly, like the whirlpool in my Retrostar campaign), answers a lot of the questions regarding motivation. And once you have motivation, you can put in obstacles to its fulfillment, i.e. conflict. Conflict that makes sense, rather than just wandering opponents. Hex-crawling lets one establish these broad narrative strokes, yet still do in-game world-building.

[heading]What Now?
[/heading]

Thinking about how much fun I had last summer with my solo RPG, I'd like to experience that again. I should dust off the old Retrostar adventure, and bring it to some sort of conclusion, even a cliffhanger. I'd like to start something fresh, however, and see if incorporating my new assumptions for easy (for me) solo play actually prove correct.

So, I know that my previous experiences flowed when I could readily visualize the setting and action. That tells me a notionally "real-world" setting. I'm a huge fan of the Weird Heroes of Public Access RPG, but I've never played it. Inspired by what WHPA's author calls "the magic in the mundane", I'm planning my next adventure in an imaginary small town. I want the town's details to emerge in play, but I need some hooks to start, so I've already generated some locations, NPCS, and links between everything, using my Town in a Pizza Box (Solo RPG) tool.

For system I've decided to use Fate Core, or as I like to call it, FATE. The RetroStar system uses a PbtA variant that I liked for solo. That system was a little squishy but what worked about it was the meta-currency that gave me license to fudge the dice rolls, but within some mechanical boundaries. The FATE system of course runs on meta-currency, but also has a more detailed engine to hopefully reduce the hand-waviness.

I'm not sure what this adventure will be about but, I've decided to just start it and go. I know this means I'm lacking two of the three things I identified above as leading to an effortless adventure. Still, I figure if I start in medias res, I can parse out who the likely protagonist is (at least of the starting scene), then figure out what their goal would be. Then, I'll slap a hex-grid over my bare-bones town map and have the notional PC(s) make their way toward the goal, filling in the details via hex-crawling. If the protagonists (and hence, the goals) change during the hex-crawl: perfect!

For the in medias res cold-open, I wanted something truly off the wall, so I'm using my world-building with letter tiles technique.

We'll see how this goes...

by Derang3d

TomTi89 wrote:

Accepted for buying 42 donuts for us all

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOC

Accepted for not eating all 42 of them.

by TomTi89

Accepted for buying 42 donuts for us all

by Derang3d

Accepted for opening page #42.

by Magicpepe

An item RPG Item: Achtung! Cthulhu Gamemaster's Guide has been added to the geeklist #60 Polski MatHandel (Polish Math Trade)

by GeoffreyB

I used to own GeoffreyB previously rolled d361 = 16 gold bars before I sold them.

by wifwendell

Good song choice MABBY!

by latindog

Everyone is John was very likely the silliest RPG that I have ever played. I enjoyed the first hour of the game but found that it was a little "one-note" and the second hour dragged for me although the rest of the table seemed to be having a great time throughout.

Eat the Reich is up there as well with its relentlessly over the top violence. It was novel and fun for about half the session but we played for several hours and it lost its shine quickly.

I guess I can enjoy silly RPGs in very small doses only.

by kldonnelly

Swaygodeus wrote:

crackbone wrote:

There's somebody selling on here this year that ditched me at last year's flea market - they didn't notify me they weren't coming, and never responded to any of my contact attempts. Left me hanging for a good 45m at the trade until I finally gave up. Not sure there's anything to be done but still sucks.

I BIN'ed a game on here almost a month ago and haven't heard a peep from the seller lol... in all seriousness I hope he's ok..

Send them a GM. They might have their default subscriptions set up to exclude trade lists. That happened to me for a couple years before I figured out what was going on. I thought being subscribed to the list and my items would override it but I didn't get notifications until I changed my setting.

by Gangof8

Related Item: Mothership

Thanks for sharing the Thousand Empty Light, I hadn't heard of that one yet. And I like the background that you put with the player pictures, nice little effect that I might steal. I've really enjoyed playing Mothership solo as the NPC/Monster creation can be a quick process.

by NormandyWept

An item RPG Item: The Climb has been added to the geeklist Cheat Your Own Adventure: 21st Century Vampire Hunter