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“here, there, be monsters!” by Wendi Yu
Posted: Sun, 31 May 17:09:17
Posted: Sun, 31 May 17:09:17
A new episode has been added to the database:
“here, there, be monsters!” by Wendi Yu
Fate Accelerated – Star Wars – Redblades – Cestus Calling – Session 1
Posted: Sun, 31 May 17:04:49
Posted: Sun, 31 May 17:04:49
A new episode has been added to the database:
Fate Accelerated – Star Wars – Redblades – Cestus Calling – Session 1
Solo RPG Adventure Post-Mortem
Posted: Sun, 31 May 14:21:27
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
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...
Posted: Sun, 31 May 14:21:27
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...
S14E13 - Beast Rider
Posted: Sun, 31 May 11:07:42
Posted: Sun, 31 May 11:07:42
A new episode has been added to the database:
S14E13 - Beast Rider
Favor, Episode 68: Devil's Advocate (Part 2)
Posted: Sun, 31 May 11:05:20
Posted: Sun, 31 May 11:05:20
A new episode has been added to the database:
Favor, Episode 68: Devil's Advocate (Part 2)
This Week in Geek History May 31 - June 6
Posted: Sun, 31 May 05:05:02
/pic6325365.png)
May 31
June 1
June 2
June 3
June 4
June 5
June 6
I'm sure this list can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions for this and upcoming weeks. If you want your birthday included just add it to this geeklist: RPG Geek Birthday List
Posted: Sun, 31 May 05:05:02
by Steve
May 31
1819- American poet Walt Whitman [microbadge=9597]
1884- Dr Kellogg patents "flaked cereal" [microbadge=32452]
1930- American actor Clint Eastwood [microbadge=3930]
1990- Seinfeld premieres on NBC [microbadge=8327]
June 1
1495- First written record of Scotch Whisky appears in Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, Friar John Cor is the distiller [microbadge=4533]
1905- English actor Robert Newton, the first to "Arrrh" as a pirate (Long John Silver) [microbadge=848]
1937- American actor Morgan Freeman [microbadge=26455] (He really needs his own microbadge)
June 2
455- The Vandals sack Rome - Rome looted for 14 days (the genesis of the roleplaying game) [microbadge=31447]
1740- French 'philosopher' Marquis de Sade [microbadge=7799]
1904- Olympic swimmer and "Tarzan" movie star Johnny Weissmuller [microbadge=23776]
1953- Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II [microbadge=6638]
2004- Ken Jennings begins his 74-game winning streak on Jeopardy! [microbadge=283]
June 3
1926- American beat poet Allen Ginsberg [microbadge=17268]
1930- American fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley [microbadge=9421]
1961- American lawyer/activist Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons [microbadge=15023]
June 4
1940- Churchill delivers "We shall fight on the seas and oceans" speech [microbadge=23183]
1944- Liberation of Rome from Axis troops by 5th Army [microbadge=6923]
1971- American actor Noah Wyle [microbadge=3055]
1982- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan released [microbadge=4265]
????- ShawnMcCarthy
June 5
1953- Film producer/Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy [microbadge=3938][microbadge=35597][microbadge=1939][microbadge=39372][microbadge=21083][microbadge=16169][microbadge=13848]
1971- Rapper to Actor Mark Wahlberg [microbadge=3919][microbadge=10792][microbadge=4386]
1975- Sadat reopens Suez Canal after 8 years [microbadge=12490]
June 6
1944- Operation Overlord: D-Day [microbadge=39392][microbadge=39393][microbadge=39394][microbadge=39395][microbadge=39396]
1947- American actor Robert Englund [microbadge=4238]
1973- American author Patrick Rothfuss [microbadge=22932] [microbadge=31097]
1984- Tetris released in USSR [microbadge=3477]
2005- D&D Artist David C. Sutherland, III passes.
2008- Player's Handbook (D&D 4e) published.
I'm sure this list can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions for this and upcoming weeks. If you want your birthday included just add it to this geeklist: RPG Geek Birthday List
Crew Gunk: Part 20 - Colonel Creepy (S12 Post-Mortem)
Posted: Sun, 31 May 05:04:33
Posted: Sun, 31 May 05:04:33
A new episode has been added to the database:
Crew Gunk: Part 20 - Colonel Creepy (S12 Post-Mortem)
Out of office
Posted: Sun, 31 May 03:49:37
Posted: Sun, 31 May 03:49:37
Life-y things today. Busy. Back tomorrow!
Happy Saturday and happy playing!
-Rachel
Thank you for reading my blog. If you liked it; then please click the green thumb [microbadge=23724] at the top of the page. If you really liked it; then please subscribe. And follow me across social media with my Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/rachelncarpenter
Happy Saturday and happy playing!
-Rachel
Thank you for reading my blog. If you liked it; then please click the green thumb [microbadge=23724] at the top of the page. If you really liked it; then please subscribe. And follow me across social media with my Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/rachelncarpenter
Product For Sale: The North Sea Epilogues
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:55:29
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:55:29
The 4th Action - Episodes #97-100
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:09:06
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:09:06
A new episode has been added to the database:
The 4th Action - Episodes #97-100
Off-World Offcuts (Bonus Blade Runner Chat) (E323)
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:08:09
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:08:09
A new episode has been added to the database:
Off-World Offcuts (Bonus Blade Runner Chat) (E323)
Audio EXP #335: Winning, City of the Espers variety, Witcher, crows, sex and death
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:07:28
Posted: Sat, 30 May 23:07:28
A new episode has been added to the database:
Audio EXP #335: Winning, City of the Espers variety, Witcher, crows, sex and death
