A Simple d6 GME Table of Content

Listed below are links to the 5 essays that make up my simple and inexpensive GME.
For one die you can pull from any boardgame, a handful of index cards, a simple notebook, you can GM yourself in any system you prefer.

Other writers have systems that are more dynamic and fleshed out. This is just the simplest of frameworks, but it plays quick and can fulfill all of the roles a live GM, excepting imagination, which you are quite capable of providing yourself.

Do You Want to Play a Solo Game?

Digging a Little Deeper. Weighted Oracle Results and Generating Roleplaying Encounters

Questions and Context: Extreme Yes and Extreme No Answers

Campaign Organization: Lists and Cards

Scenes and Adding a Touch of Randomness to Your Adventure

Scenes and Adding a Touch of Randomness to Your Adventure

link to part 4

Time keeping in different RPGs vary wildly, but in a solo game it is best to think of time passing in scenes. Scenes begin when decide what you want your character to do and then add the details of the current context. To borrow a term from the Mythic GME this is the Expected Scene. Scenes end when either you resolve what you are trying to accomplish, chose to stop striving for it, and go into a new direction, or when a new dramatic situation arises to change the focus of the scene. If you resolve your current goal, or there is an unexpected intrusion that makes the scene context change dramatically, move on to the next scene, as guided by your characters new or current goals and the context of the situation. 

For example, lets say you are playing an old school dungeon delving game. You start at the known entrance to the dungeon. The games time keeping may be spans of 10 minutes at a go, but the scene will remain the same until something happens. If you walk around a corner and there are several armed undead skeletons, it is a good time to break into a new scene. You can follow the written rules of your game engine and treat this as you would any encounter, but much like with a live GM, you may want to insert something seemingly random to boost up the dramatic potential. 

Fortunately we already have the tools at hand to create wonderful random events to keep the game spicy: your trusty d6, your Random Words Generator, and your Yes/No Oracle. 

At the beginning of any scene, and at any point the tension suddenly mounts for the your character or any NPC, roll your d6 twice. If both numbers match a Random Occurrence happens. Consult your Random Word Generator, then use your oracle to refine the results within the context of the scene at hand. If both come up 1s or both come up 6s, introduce something from outside the scene. A whole new element intrudes. Just roll on your Random Word Generator and refine it with Oracle questions, but let it come from outside. 

(If you are playing a game with a morale system, like many OSR games have, you  may want to consider the halfway point in a combat, no matter who is winning, as a good time to check for a Random Occurrence, especially if the combat has been unusually tense, or you feel it is too one sided to be fun. Clearly you wouldn't do this every single battle, but it is a good way to spice up one you feel maybe lagging or conversely one that is very important. This could cause a half beaten enemy to surge forward with unexpected reserves, or to reveal an unexpected magic item, or try to flee or call for a surrender. You just don't know till you roll.)

When something random erupts on the scene, don't hold back. This is a good chance to raise the stakes and the drama. It could mean a fight, and in many RPGs that is reasonable, but it could go the other way all together and turn an otherwise violent mess into an opportunity for role playing. The interpretation is in your hands, so make sure you use it for all it is worth.

Let's look at a few examples of Random Occurrences, to get a feel for how they add drama to a scene.

You are the leader of a band of modern monster hunters, you have traveled many miles and your investigation has taken many twists and turns, but now you are at the mansion of the terrible beast you have been seeking to thwart. Up until this point it you have matched wits and firepower with its minions, but now you are at the heart of the dark web. When you enter the mansion here is a good time to test for a Random Occurrence. So you roll and get a 2. The second roll is a 2 as well. Your current context is entering a cursed beast ridden mansion. You generate some random words to give texture to the Occurrence and get (Release/Despondent/Trial) I immediately imagine some raving captive rushing at the open door (Release), wailing (Despondent). They have clearly suffered privation and violence (Trial). A bruised and battered man, with long unkempt hair and tattered clothing rushes at your party, weeping piteously. Is this a threat or is it just another cruelly used person, and yet more cause to see this monster never enjoys again the light of day.

A young yet capable wizard is exploring the ruins of an old mages tower, when she finally reaches the top floor beyond the libraries and laboratories, dangerous traps and frightening monster. There on the pedestal is the prize she seeks: The Codex of Misharam. With trembling hands she lifts the book off its centuries long place of rest. Here we have a the final moment of a quest, a moment of great tension, which seems a good time to check for a Random Occurrence. The player rolls 4 followed by 4. This triggers the Random Occurrence. The random words are Pacify, Immaculate, Freedom. Instead of some dreadful magical trap going off, as has happened so many times before, a spirit of the long dead and lost Misharam appears and imparts to her the magical words to subdue the traps in the book (Pacify) and with this good deed done a shower of golden light appears briefly and he is gone (Freedom), save for a lingering feeling of peace. In the silence that follows the Wizard realizes that she is with out wound and is unsoiled despite the difficult road it took to get here (Immaculate).

So lets now examine an extreme case. A classic cyberpunk hacker is trying to bust some ICE to get access to a rich data pool. If they accomplish it they will make more than enough credits to pay some very important outstanding debts and live fat for a few months. They are in the midst of battling a black ICE security DEMON, which if  gets through our hackers defenses, will do a lot worse than throw them out. In meat space their fingers fly over their console executing programs they are hacking on the fly. The stress is high, the stakes are high. Which makes it a perfect time to test for a Random Occurrence. The player rolls a 1 followed by another 1, triggering a Random Occurrence with an external source. The player then makes a random word selection which comes up (Fix Widespread Pandemic). Suddenly, the whole system glows red and a countdown timer appears in the upper field of the Scan programs output window. They realizes that the security team back in meat space has seen all the glitches left by their struggle to get this far (Widespread Pandemic) and is about to reboot the system (Fix), which will forcibly eject them. They have 10 seconds to deal with this DEMON and grab some pay data before they end up back in their secure flat with a very nasty headache. Time to pull out the big guns.

At each of these occurrences the addition of a Random Occurrence built the scene up beyond its initial expectations. In the first result there is neutral situation that could go any number of ways, but could include a chance to get some good intelligence on the monsters mansion, if they can communicate with the mad man. In the second occurrence the wizard is rewarded beyond her expectations for winning through to her prize.

In the third occurrence, it could go either way. The security team back in meat space doesn't know what is wrong. We don't even know if they are suspicious, we just know they are rebooting the system in 10 seconds. Should our hacker beat the DEMON in 5 seconds, which can be a long time in cyberspace, they will make it out more than a little richer, if in need of a very long nap, but if the DEMON bests them chances of walking away, are worse than zero.  Now, with the count down, there is a time pressure and an escape hatch all wrapped up in the same package. 

A last word on Random Occurrences. You can opt not to roll for them. If the current scene is too much fun to tamper with, don't tamper with it. Have your fun. Also  if you are in the midst of a clearly one sided challenge, like a legendary hero facing a single Ogre, and just want to get past it into a meatier part of the game, don't feel like you have to complicate it. The point of randomness is to shake you out of the expected, but there are times when the expected is what makes more sense and is more fun. 

W.D.

P.S.
This is the last rules article for my very simple GME. I wrote it to personally explore the concepts and to offer a free entry point into the hobby for the curious. I am going to type up an example using all the principles from each article as a whole rather than piecemeal, but first I am going pull the articles out onto my word processor and work on the flow, interconnectivity, and of course editing for grammar and misused words. These won't change the meat of the article, but will probably help with the seasoning. I won't be pulling anything down while I do this, and all the rules will remain the same, so if it will be useful to you before then, please take it and run with it.  

And if you have read down this far, thank you for your interest and happy gaming.

W.D.

Campaign Organization: Lists and Cards

link to part 3

Before John goes and performs grand larceny, lets pause for a moment and consider our context elements.

Context elements could be considered granular setting elements that come together to make the whole body of the campaign, but just as you recognized you have an arm or a pair of eyes, so each element in the setting is its own thing. Still the totality of the elements comes together to make the setting.

But enough theorizing and double speak, lets jump in to the gameable "bones" that will actually be of use at the game table. 

(As an aside, I am strong proponent of gameable elements, or practical gaming. If it is just theory, as much as I love theory, but adds little or nothing to the game, it probably can be left out of the body of a essays like these, and be covered in the comments. Not that I am against game theory. I love it, but this document is about something you can pick up right now and play.)

When it comes to organizing campaign content, there are nearly an endless variety of possibilities at hand: an indexed journal, for instance, or a piece of organizational software. Both of these work do a great job, but both have an investment in time and effort. If an index journal isn't upkept regularly, and it is a just a list of things that occur in chronological order then you end up spending as much time flipping through the index as you would searching back through game notes. As for organizational software, even the free ones have a learning curve that requires more than the most basic "look it up in a web browser" level of computer savvy. If you are like me, a word processor is about the limit of your software skills. 

What we need is a simple system that both organizes and hold content notes. Thus, we come to Lists and Cards.

The list is the first step. In fact it maybe the only one if you have a sharp memory. As I creep towards the middle of middle aged I don't quite trust that memory as much as I used to, so cards that contain the details that are important to continuity are essential as well.

You can divide your lists as finely as you like. Some people, places, things, or events may fit into more than one list, but I believe that there are 4 essential lists: Characters, Locations, Events, and Goals.

These can be put in a pretty notebook, or kept on your character sheet, or give their own little word processor file. They can be subdivided, arranged by importance, and numbered to use as random elements when you need a bit of context to pop up in game (more on that at the page bottom and in the next article). Two important points to keep in mind are that the lists should be easy to read and don't become too crowded to use quickly.

You will want separate list for each type of broad element described below. Also, instead of a list starting at 1 and going on into infinity, group them in clusters of 6. The first element in the micro list would be 11 and finish at 16, then start a new micro list with 21 followed by 22 and finishing with 26. Keep adding elements in this pattern until you reach 66 (which would be 36 active elements). If you get more elements on your table than that, consider pruning, but if that is not an option restart the numbering process from the first entry with 111 followed by 112 and so forth. Besides keeping list short and easy to scan, setting the lists up this way you can randomly pick an element from a list with a couple of d6 rolls. If you roll an impossible number (maybe micro list 5 has only 2 elements in it), just pick from the list the element that looks the most fun (not that you can't do that anytime you want).

Now, lets go through and discuss what goes into the four essential lists.

Characters

• Player Characters include the single PC or cast of characters you play. 
• If it is a single character put it down as such. If it is part of a troupe of characters note every character in the troupe and the troupe itself as a character
• Named NPC go on the list. 
• Not necessarily every character with a name. If you decide the barman in a one horse town that you are is named Billy, there is no reason to add him UNLESS you think he will play a part in future adventures. 
• Unnamed NPCs that really should have a name. 
• Let's be honest. We  all sometime fly through a scene and never consider the names of the characters we interact with, so when you book keep jot down who that character is, and if you feel like generating a name then, or maybe after wrap up for the day it is now a named character, and you can imagine the happy glow they get from it.
• Important off screen characters.
• This could be the local baron or maybe the common name of the dragon that terrorizes a local trade route. 
• Important groups.
• This should include the background folk that could at any point come to the foreground (local citizens, or the baronial court). It could be large groups active groups that you have not yet encountered (maybe wandering knights errant that serve out the baron's justice on the road, or a whispered about thieves guild who's actions are known, but their personage is not). Finally and most importantly, it should include groups with which you have some favor (a large influential family you saved from a curse) or enmity (a local goblin tribe you have clashed with but not destroyed). 

Locations

After characters, you will want a list of locations of importance. This could also be varied into sub lists depending on your style of play. Some important places to consider are:

• The PC's home. The building he lives in.
• The PC's home town
• The current location of the PC
• The largest city or village near the current location or home town (adventurers end up drawn to big urban areas in my experience)
• Famous or infamous ruins
• Famous or infamous natural features
• The seat of the local government and if applicable the national government (this depends on your game scale)
• and any other place the character visits or hears of that could impact their lives. (Even if you never go to the capitol city, finding out that it is suffering from food riots, may be a grim portent for the rest of the kingdom)

Events

Events are things that are:

• happening (like a rebellion), 
• have happened (like a past adventure),
• or happen regularly (like a town fair). 

I realize that is vague, but this is one of the two most subjective lists. Over time and through inspirations and oracles, you can get a very hefty list of the past and the present event, but I suggest that if the event is flavor of the moment, and not useful as an adventure hook, don't bother with recording it. Certainly, play out the scene of passing through a small town fair, but if you will never see that town again then it is just a back drop for a scene, and ultimately not important enough to go on the list. 

Lists are your working tools. They do a job. Remove any useless events as they are just clutter in the list, but more on that in a moment.

Goals

The last, and probably shortest list is Goals. What do the characters whish to accomplish on the long medium and short term. I will jot down some examples below, but this is purely a subjective category.

• A short term goal could be Get to the Cave of Wonders, Survive the Cave of Wonders, or Escape the Cave of Wonders.
• A medium term goal could be pay back the loan shark who financed your dungeon dive.
• A long term goal could be, to unseat the usurper ruler and install yourself as monarch.

What goes on a goals list is anything you want to accomplish. It is that simple. It is also that malleable.

Actually, all the lists are quite malleable. After every adventure or maybe short campaign go through the lists and prune them. If the bar and barman that used to give you rumors is now part of a chard collapsed building, sad as that may be, he doesn't really need to stay on the list. Likewise if you leave a kingdom or a continent or planet or dimension, with no intent to return, then there is little reason to keep most locations and people in your prior lists. Like your campaign, your lists are living things, like a many branched bush. You will occasionally need to trim them.

(What I just said above is excellent advice and the simplest advice, but you may also want a separate list for retired game element that could boomerang back as rumors, undead, bounties, trial evidence, or any similar event.. That adds one more level of complexity, but it is one that I find useful)

Ok, I have gone over lists, now how about cards? Well if you divided your lists into manageable chunks and numbered them, those numbers can be used as tags for index cards (or digital equivalents). If a setting element has details besides a name and brief description, label an index card with its list number and name and fill it with the details. I highly suggest you hold the details to the front of the card. That keeps the reference brief enough that you can access it in game play, and its main purpose is to jog your memory about details. If you also record your games in print some where (I use Google Docs), then the back of the cards are useful for leaving notes referencing which adventure or adventures that the tagged element played an important part.

We keep lists as setting element reminders. We use cards for those that deserve a bit more attention, now we can bring in the dice. Now suppose you are in a location of some type and feel stumped on what to do next. Pick and element list that you would like to explore, and roll your d6 twice. The first roll will tell you which micro list you are rolling in, and the second roll will tell you the particular element or that list comes into play.

Lets say your character is in the capitol city trying to sell loot from your last profitable adventure. You have hit the merchants, are carrying some cash, but have to wait a while while your plate armor is being repaired. You decide not to skip time until the repair is done, but instead to explore the city. Then you draw a blank on what to do or what is going on. You could use some Yes/No questions, or random word generation, and/or you can roll on your character, locations, events, or goals tables, and work its findings into current scene. Thus immediately finding something of interest to your character into the current scene. 

This will also come in handy in our penultimate article on adding a touch of the random to your game. After all a physical GM will toss you a curveball, why shouldn't your emulator do the same. 

Attached below is a link to John Everyman's lists for an example of how to organize them.

W.D.

John's Lists and Cards

link to part 5

John Everyman's Lists and Cards

This is naturally incomplete. There is a huge amount more that could be said for the village (a name would be nice), the pub, the ranch, and especially the North Country Forest, but right now we are doing emergant game play. That is as style in which the characteristics of a setting emerge as we play them. We could just as easily predefine some characters and locations, but in some ways this can be more fun, as everything that comes up is a surprise.

Characters

11 John

12 Village citizens

13 Pub Owner

14 Terrence

15 *Morgan

16 *Ann 

21 Baron

22 Baron’s wastrel brother

23 *Ian (Deceased)

24 Foresters

25 Militia 

26 Shire reeve

31 Village Elders

32

33

34

35

36

Locations

11 Home Village

12 Plagued Village

13 *Pub

14 Morgan’s Farm

15 Ann’s Ranch

16 North Country Forest

21 Baron’s Keep

22 *Forsaken Tower

23

24

25

26

Events

11 *Ian’s Death

12 *Plague in near by village

13 *Secret Warrior Training 

14 

15 

16 

Goals

11 *Travel to the Forsaken Tower

12 *Retrieve armor and weapons from ranch

13 Lift the curse on the village of xxx if there is such a curse

14 

15 

16 

Cards

Character Cards

15 Morgan: Morgan is a retired man at arms, who was in the employ of the Baron. For reasons of his own he moved to this more remote village to start a farm. Ann knows and trusts him, but despite this trust he has trained John in the arts of combat and defense, though he knows Ann is strongly against it.

16 Ann: John's mother. A strong willed and independent woman who owns a cattle ranch near the village. After the death of her husband, Ian, she took the Baron's gift of gold and started a cattle ranch. Through her shrewd business savvy she turned the baron's sympathy and gold into a thriving business. She supplies much meat to the baronial castle and its very small standing army, composed of knights and paid soldiers.

23 Ian (deceased). Ian was a soldier turned mercenary after his 6 years in service, who was employed by the current Baron's father to protect his wastrel second son. He died in a successful attempt to protect the youths life.

Location Cards

13 The Pub. A small cramped room in which mediocre beer is sold.

22 Forsaken Tower. Rumored to be occupied by occult forces steeped in Necromancy

Event Cards

11 Ian's Death. We know that Ian met his end acting as a bodyguard for an ill favored brother to the local Baron. He was returned to his home to be buried with honors, and his sacrifice left both his arms and armor and an endowment to his widow.

12 Plague in near by village. Not the next village over but close enough to travel in a day is a village suffering from a medicine resistant pox. Everyone is afraid that those fleeing the disease will bring it to the home village.

13 Secret Warrior Training. Ian was well loved by Morgan the elderly man at arms that trained him from a simple soldier to something special. When he retired to an old abandoned farm near the village he kept a close eye on John and Ann and started training John as soon as he was able to play with sticks. He fears the day when Ann finds out and he loses a near sisterly relationship.

Goals Cards

11 Travel to the Forsaken Tower. This is a goal in which John, partially steeped in wood lore and given expert directions can attempt at a +2 roll.

12 Recover his fathers armor and weapons. These are in a large, but poorly locked, glass and wood case in the parlor of the ranch house. This parlor is very close to where his mother and their house keeper travel daily, so any absence will be immediately noted. 

Questions and Context: Extreme Yes and Extreme No Answers

link to part 1

link to part 2

In the last two articles in this series (links above) we discussed the basic Yes/No oracle (part 1), random word prompts (part 1), how to modify the Yes/No oracle based on context (part 2), and some elementary roleplaying techniques, which also worked with context (part 2). Today we soar to new heights or hit rock bottom with Extreme Yes and Extreme No answers.

Do you need Extreme Yes/Extreme No content in your solo game. Absolutely not. It adds a level of complexity and requires more work from that Game Master side of your brain. What is more, even if you embrace the concept fully, there are situations in which the Extreme answer adds little to nothing to the scene. Take the coin toss example from the last article. The outcome of a coin toss is a simple binary answer. It is heads, or it is tails. For another example, if your oracle says there is no secret panel in the desk you are searching, an Extreme No isn't any different than No would be. 

That being said, the Extreme answers can boost the tension and expand the context of game, whether or not the outcome is ideal for the character. Let's see how it could work. 

Your character crawls up to the edge of a ridge, so you ask the oracle if there are any creatures on the other side. A Yes answer could tell you that there is an appropriate number of, oh lets say goblins. By this we mean appropriate to your context expectation. If goblins are pretty rare for this area (maybe due to the efforts of the militia), then a hunting party of around half a dozen could be considered a reasonable Yes reply. An Extreme Yes could indicate there are a dozen or even two dozen goblins, which is too many goblins for a hunting party. Now the context of the adventure has been altered by this dangerous number of goblins being where you wouldn't expect them to be.

Taking the same question, a No answer is pretty simple. There are no creatures worth noting on the other side of the ridge. If there answer was an Extreme No, this could mean you see a dozen dead goblins on the other side of the ridge, or that the landscape on the other side of the ridge is far too difficult for any creatures to be present. The simple No answer fits in with the context of the adventure so far. The Extreme No answer changes the context. Why are there a dozen dead goblins? Now you have a mystery. If the other side of the ridge is very difficult terrain, perhaps you need to skirt the area to make headway in your endeavor. All the answers drive the game forward, but the Extreme answers can frequently alter the game context. 

Still using the same d6 lets change things a little more. On a 1 or lower the answer is Extreme No. On a 6 or higher the answer is an Extreme Yes.  

Now lets get back to John and see how he is doing.

After receiving the necessary land marks to the valley containing the forsaken tower, John heads back to his mother's ranch to get his adventuring gear.

Lets take a few moments to fill in some blanks that John will need when he reaches the ranch. 

As the member of a rural militia, he would have inexpensive and easy to use gear like leather armor, slings, and spears. Yet, we know, from the context of the character that he is trained in many different armor and weapon styles. Searching about for an answer to this query we pose the question to the oracle, "Was John's father a warrior?" There is no reason to think he was or that he wasn't, so this is simple unmodified roll; the outcome of which is a 6, an Extreme Yes.

Now we know that John's father was not just a warrior, but he was a warrior of high renown. That could mean many things. So going back to our random word generator we get the results "Exchange, Disappointing, Ward" This says to me that John's father, lets call him Ian, was a mercenary (fighting for an exchange of work for money), who was the body guard (thus he had a Ward), of a ill favored (Disappointing) brother of the Baron. 

A logical next question would be, considering that his mother is a widow, "Did Ian die in service as a bodyguard". There are a lot of ways for a man to die, but as is said, "live by the sword die by the sword". We will roll this at a +1. Another 6 raised to 7. With an Extreme Yes not only did he die to protect the ill favored noble, but in the process was given a hero's burial,  and his tools of trade (armor, weapons, etc.) would have been given to the family as keep sakes, probably along with enough cash to see they could live off of, if used wisely. 

Did Ian live long enough to train his son? With such a dangerous job it is quite possible he didn't, so the next roll is made at a -1. This comes up a 3, which is reduced to 2. Not an Extreme No, but then again would an Extreme No have changed the context here? Probably not. 

We are left with a conundrum. Who did train John? Even if there were a lot of weapons and armor in his home, he would still need instruction in their use. Going back to our random word generator we get Reward, Metaphorical, Parent. This sounds like another warrior, that is near enough to the family to be like an uncle (Metaphorical Parent) to John, settled in the area with honors (Reward), and when John came of age this warrior oversaw John's training in arms. 

A couple final questions before we make it to the ranch, does John's mother, Ann, approve of John's choice of vocations? We have no direct context that suggest one way or another, but having lost her husband to warriors work, I feel she would be strongly against it. So let call this a -2. A roll of 3, brought down to 1, indicates that not only is she against it, she is vehemently against it. 

Did John's "uncle" (lets call him Morgan) train him in secret? I would say probably, so this is rolled at a +1. We get a 5 so the the total is 6, an Extreme Yes. This once again changes the context, such that Ann doesn't know her son has been trained to be a warrior. Thus, our protagonist is going to have to sneak out with his fathers armor and weapons, and failing to sneak well he will have to face the wraith of Ann. We know she is an independent rancher, and thus probably a very strong willed woman to deal with. 

Lastly, is there a special place the armor and weapons are kept? I would argue yes for three reasons. One they are a very important keep sakes of her dead husband, of whom she is proud. Secondly they are highly valuable, and theft does sometimes happen even in the most tight knit of villages. Finally, they would be located in such a way that she can keep an eye out that John, which we established was a mischievous lad, doesn't wander off to play hero; just like he plans to do. 

Given the context, we need not roll to find out that the arms are kept in a special place, but perhaps some random words will give us an idea where they are supposed to be. We get the results, Remember, Repulsive, Merchant. I wrack my brain for a minute, before I realize that the gear is probably kept in a locked glass case (Remember) that she purchased from an unscrupulous merchant (repulsive here is being stretched, but I think will work). We can infer, thus, that the case is badly made and has a lock that can be opened with a butter knife. 

Looking back over these last three articles, we can see the details are piling up. Perhaps before John continues his adventure we will need a bit of book keeping about the campaign. This is so characters, like Terrance Forester (whom expects a bit of a tip for the knowledge he shared) don't get buried under new details as they come in. 

We can tackle that in the next article with Lists and Cards.

W.D.

link to part 4

Digging a Little Deeper. Weighted Oracle Results and Generating Roleplaying Encounters

Link to Part 1

In the last post we discussed the four basic tools of most solo GM emulators. We will definitely check out other systems in the future, but lets stick with this for a little while. To recap, you need a Yes/No oracle (for which we used a 6 sided die or to slip into gamer speak a d6), a random word generator (which we borrowed from https://jamesturneronline.net/game-masters-apprentice/), context (in the form of the character concept and the setting), and your imagination (where all the parts come together into an image or idea). We are going to stick to those tools today, but we are going to add a little spice.

As in life in game, very few things come down to a simple Yes/No with equal odds. In many cases things aren't a 50/50 split. So ,we are going to make a simple change to our binary oracle.  If the odds favor the the outcome of question being Yes, add a +1 to the die roll result. If the odds are strongly favor the outcome of the question being Yes, add a +2. Likewise, if the odds favor No, subtract by -1, and if they strongly favor No use a -2. We are still going to use the same dividing line between Yes and No. If you roll 3 or under your answer is No. If you roll  4 or over your answer is Yes. 

Not all things require a roll. Many things will be obviously Yes or No. If we established the game takes place in a thick forest, there will be poor line of sight, no need to ask. If the merchant you are dealing with is especially known for his hard bargaining, you don't need to ask if he will cut you a deal. If you are approached by soldiers in the field, there is no need to ask if they are armed. You can ask other questions about these circumstances, but then you are expanding on a baseline. You get that baseline by leaning into the context. 

Some things, though, will still be a 50/50 split, if you can't think of a single reason that would act in favor of Yes or No. A literal coin toss by an average person may come up heads or tails, so asking does it come up heads would be a 50/50 split. If the person doing the flipping is a con artist, a juggler, or some other sort of cheater then the odds may favor one over the other. If the coin is a trick coin with two heads or two tails there is no reason to ask at all. It will always be heads or tails. 

Let's go back to John Everyman, humble fighter. Through use of your base game engine, you probably have the tools on hand for doing some research, but then again every system is a little lacking, so lets say your current system doesn't. This tower is known to the population and John was once a mischievous child, so you can ask if John knows the way to the tower already. As the North Country Forest is a dark and dangerous place you decide the odds are poor that he has, but maybe in the company of older boys he tagged along. So you roll your d6 and modify it with a -1. The roll comes up a 4 but because it is unlikely it is reduced down to 3 an answer of No. Thus, John now has to find someone who has been to the tower , and then get the directions off of them. 

Knowing the town pretty well, he decides, based on context of a woodland barony, that one of the foresters surely knows the path. Another question is , does he know a forester he is friendly enough with to ask. After all foresters are busy people. John has some military service and the militia and the foresters have a good relationship (here we are spinning some context, we could have asked, but as it is reasonable they are friendly, we are just running with it). Is there anyone forester that would know the location still in the village of this time of day (lets say it is noonish)? Sounds like a Yes/No question that could go either way, so we go back to our reliable d6 and again get a 4. Yes, he knows of a semi retired forester that works closer in to town. He needs a name, so we pick a name out of the hat and get Terrance. 

John heads off to Terrance's cottage. As we are still in town there is no reason to check for finding it or getting interrupted. Everyone is busy at midday. We could ask if Terrance is in his cottage, but that would just keep us from getting the the adventure a bit longer. So instead we decide John can head straight there and engage with him. 

We now have our first solid opportunity for Role Playing rather Roll Playing. Start with the details you know about Terrance. He is an older man, he is friendly towards your character, he is a forester in a dangerous land, so he is probably tough and brave. That could be enough details, but if you want a little extra, go to your random word generator and see what it adds. We get "Hide Temporary Treasure". This could be interpreted many different ways, but to me it sounds like a rumor. Terrance is rumored to have a little side job of hiding things in the forest for people until they need them again. That gives him a bit of a roguish touch. It also implies he knows secret places. The encounter could go as such...

John makes his way across the village. Though he is eager to begin his adventure, he knows the North Country Forest area is dangerous, and that it's easy to get lost. Growing up in the middle of the Great Forest gives John some basic skills in out door survival. John has hunted near the village, and he has been on several bandit patrols. Even so, John is aware he needs the assistance of a real expert. 

Terrance Forester is a (is Terrance a bachelor? 6. Yes) an old bachelor who never quite settled down. His small cottage is at the village edge, and though kept in good repair, it wouldn't impress anyone. Despite his age and his semi retired status Terrance seems to be doing well for himself. When his cottage needs thatch or his sheds need shingles he never lacks for coin or assistance. That is probably gave rise to the rumors that he is "a man to know", but not only are those accusations never proven, they are never even raised to the Baron's Shire Reeve. It is Terrance, everyone's friend after all, and even a retired forester is still held in high respect.

After a brief knock T- answers and invites J- in for a pint, and to find out what he has on his mind. The two reminisce a bit about bandits and tax men until J- finally gets to the point. (Terrance, being an old and experienced Forester probably knows the land within 20 miles of the village very well. So we ask the Oracle if he can give directions. Taking all the considerations together we ask the question "Can Terrance direct John to the Tower?" is rolled at a +2. With a base roll of 5 that +2 gives us a 7. So the answer is Yes, but I think a rogue like Terrance would want a little something for his help) Terrance nods and says he knows the place, but he is a little worried about the lad. Maybe, he could stop in on his way home before seeing any of the elders, and let old T- know he survived and is doing well for himself. J- get the hint and smiles and winks. Now that both of them are on the same page, T- gives J- a set of land marks and directions that will get him to the foreboding tower. 

You will note, that I didn't do many oracle rolls or roll up many random words in the example above. Instead, I extrapolated from the context at hand. If you drew a blank on the RP scene you could have cut it short to the Yes/No question, or you could have had more random word selections. Either or would have been right. There in fact is no wrong way to handle a scene, as long as you feel you are being fair to the context and (most importantly) having fun.

Also, in the RP example above the roll for "Can Terrance direct John to the Tower?" wasn't just a Yes, but was nearly has high as the roll could go. In the next section we will discuss when exceptionally high and exceptionally low have deeper consequences.  

W.D.

link to part 3

Do you want to play a solo game?

If you are reading this you have a browser, and fortunately that will give you all you need to dip your toe into the wide wild wonderful worlds of solo gaming. Because of the rise in popularity of solo gaming (and by solo I mean one player and no GM) there are a great number of online tools available to give you the basics you need to play. Of course there are plenty of product I could recommend, but lets save you a few bucks while you try it out.

Here is first thing you need to keep in mind about the solo gaming experience. The sky is the limit. Want to play a dragon, an ancient artificial intelligence, a humble moistier farmer's nephew destined for greater things, or just a bloke at a tavern who has decided he wants more out of life than tending cattle for his widowed mother? Those are all great places to start. You are doing this for you. So there is no concept too low or too high to build a game around. 

With that said, most published RPGs have certain parameters or expectations, just like they have different levels of complexity. I suggest, for the sake of this demo, grab the first game book that comes to mind, and pick a starting character concept from it. Don't bother building the character, after all this is a demo. Instead, just pin down who this character would be. I would go so far as to suggest for this demo don't even bother to give the character a name, but if one springs to mind jot it down.

Now that you have a character concept, lets get down to business. There are a couple of tools that MOST solo games use. One is the Yes/No oracle. The other is the random words generator. Both are used to answer questions. The sorts of questions you would ask a GM about, if you were playing a standard group session RPG. One for simple Yes/No questions, and the other for descriptive questions. 

The oracle can be made quite nuanced, but most of us like a simple start and to grow into complexity, so I am going to give you the very simplest one I can find: a single 6 sided die. Because people like high numbers lets assume that any roll of 4, 5, or 6 is a Yes answer and any roll of 1, 2, or 3 is a No answer.  Don't worry about nuance right now. Nuance can come later. Right now you just need to know if the door is unlocked, if the wallet you stole has money in it, or if that ogre staring you down is also has a club. The binary oracle will tell you just that. 

Don't have a die at hand? There are plenty of dice emulators you can use online. If you are on Chrome just type in "roll a d6" into the search bar.

When do you roll it? Any time you would be unsure of the answer to a yes or no question.

The next tool you need is a random word generator, which could also be called a prompt generator. This is simply something that will give you a couple or few words to help jump start the imagination. This could be as easily done as typing "random word generator" into your browser and you will get plenty to choose from, but now is a time for a little bit of nuance so I suggest you go to the link below, which has options that focus on random word groups for adventure RPGs.

https://jamesturneronline.net/game-masters-apprentice/

Don't be overwhelmed by the many options this page provides. Just look under the top section and you will see a collection of three words, which you can use as prompts for your imagination. There is nothing wrong with the rest of the prompts on the page, but lets stick with the basics for now. 

Still have your character concept. Excellent. Now Just pick where you want to play it. You don't need a detailed background, just a few words or images in your mind to tell you where you are and what the world is like. Between the character and the setting you get the context necessary for the random words to percolate in your brain. Context plus prompts can inspire an image or idea of what you are asking about. Go with what comes to mind first. If nothing does, add more words randomly until it tips off your imagination. 

Between your yes/no oracle, your context (character and setting), your word groupings, and most importantly your imagination, you have all the necessary basic elements to emulate a game master content. 

So lets spin out an example to get you started. 

John Everyman is a humble human fighter who is sick of tending his widowed mothers cattle. He is well trained in the use of weapons and armor; perhaps he is a veteran of a recent war or a highly talented member of the local home guard. He lives in a barony that is frequently beset by wild beasts, which has ancient and foreboding ruins in every deep and dark valley and atop of many a craggy hill. Thick forest with many cart paths to places of interest border the village on all sides. (This is the context I will be working from.)

John is sitting at his local pub nursing a pint of  cheap dark beer and keeping his ear cocked for rumors. What is this pub like? (Delay, Minor, Font) I know John is in a pub and we want to learn about the pub (context) so I interpret the three words to mean this is a small pub (Minor) with a limited selection (Minor Font) and it take forever to get service (Delay), probably because only the barman is working there. 
In between grumbles about the service and the beer, the locals talk amid themselves. The cramped quarters make it impossible not to hear what other people are saying. Does John hear any juicy rumors that could spark an adventure? Here we roll our 6 sided die and come up with... 4, yes people are talking about something a penniless adventure would be interested in. What is the rumor? (Judge Impending Illness) Mostly the talk is of an out break of pox a couple of villages over and how the town elders should handle this news. This isn't very actionable so lets get more words (Defeat Arcane Tool). Some people whisper that the disease isn't natural, but probably springs forth from a curse (Arcane Tool). What is more, everyone knows that tower out in the North Country Forest isn't empty (something to Defeat). John considers the the honor and acclaim that could come his way if he found and stopped the source of the illness, so he settles his bar tab, gathers his gear, and strikes out for the North Forest.

So with a single die roll and a few prompts we have the bones of John's first adventure. 
It really is that simple.

Try it out with the character you made. What does it predict its first (or maybe next, if it an experienced adventurer) will be? Let me know if the comments. 

In the next article we can get a bit into that nuance and maybe see if John actually makes it to the ancient tower safely. 

Link to part 2


W.D. 

P.S.
(This is the work of an amateur writer. It is done as a labor of love, and it is far from perfect. I will keep going over it to work on the language and punctuation, but I feel the ideas are solid and easy to follow. As I mentioned above, it is just a little way to give back to the games and community that has come to mean so much to me) 

P.S.S.
(To give credit where credit is due, to the best of my research, this technique was pioneered by Tana Pigeon in 2003 with her Mythic Roleplaying Game (still available on DrivethruRPG.com, but slated for a second edition some time in the next year or two). While this is a full RPG, just the Game Master Emulator portion is available in a first and second edition. The first edition is more bare bones, but it still is extremely useful for organizing and playing solo RPG sessions with any rules engine you like. The second edition has a polished version of the first GM Emulator along with a wide variety of "Variations" turning the book into a very nuanced tool kit for the solo player to get as close as possible to the exact experience they are looking for. All three product are choked full of well detailed examples that make it very easy to understand, and are well worth the cost.) W.D.