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.

Solo RPGs, Why am I writing this, and what do you get out of it?

I think most readers will agree that getting a new game in hand is exhilarating. Whether it is a variation on a game you already love, as you find in the B/X-OSR family of games, or it is something truly new to you, was Numenera when it first hit the book stores in 2013 (possibly showing my age here), there is a delightful opening of the imagination to new possibilities, new world of imagination, and new ways to interact with them. Even a game that treads over familiar ground in a new way offers a new experience to all but the most jaded of gamers.

But, frequently we can run into a few problems before we are able to play. First, we must digest the material, which will show us the optimal play format, then we have to arrange a group of people to indulge our early fumbling attempts to bring it to life, with all the slips and stutters that entails.

Now, setting aside the difficulties that maybe brought on by inexperience, we have already run into the crux of what is so often a problem for so many of us. Where are we going to find 3 to 7 interested souls who can commit the time to explore, and sometime expense to buy, into  this new world you are opening up for them. And if you are so fortunate, can you get them to engage with that promise of reward that will come from exploring something new. And finally, even assuming they can absorb the game, will they want the same thing from it that you do, as most games have many facets. 

Ok, you bought the book; you read the book, (and in this day and age both the money and the time are dear luxuries), but can you expect them to do the same. As a GM you were buoyed along by your excitement and investment. Do your players have that same drive? If they do not, which in my experience is the case, then they will naturally fall back on the habits and patterns in which are the most common in the games they have played in the past, whether that is kick in the door with weapon in hand (a common D&D disposition), or spend hours in "down time" researching every aspect of the problem the game confronts them with (a tendency Call of Cthulhu players naturally gravitate towards), which is perfectly natural and to be expected when wandering into semi familiar environment. Even if they can resist these impulses, then frequently the group will need to be spoon fed the lore and rules, frequently in the same meal to get them into the zeitgeist provided by the particular games experiences. 

Let me pause  here and reassure you, I am not downing a group play experience. I have spent hundred of happy hours running TTRPGs for friends and strangers. Whether through published adventures from the cleverest minds in the industry, or from my own brain, sharpened by habit if not any innate gift, it is well worth the time if you can get past the first hurdles and onto the second lap around the track. (Ok no more sports references that I am not qualified to make). 

But, let me propose a different rout. Even if you have a game group  available, there can be a great joy if you, by yourself, interacting with a game for your own pleasure. This has a two fold benefit. The first, is you can work out a little of that clumsiness and fumbling that happens with a new game. Secondly, and this is what took me by surprise, you can actually engage with the game and your own imagination to have a deep and meaningful imaginative experience.

Over the next few articles, I am going to, in my own fumbling way, try to make suggestions to make an introduction to a solo RPG experience by pointing out tools, exercises, and modifications that will assist you in this endeavor. At times I will refer to products I have that you may lack, but this is the 21 century and if you are reading this now you have computer access, and while I will be the first to agree that RPGs and paper books go hand in hand, I will focus on getting to you the most economically  feasible options available. After all, we all have an imagination, and all of our lives are enlarged by its engagement, and that shouldn't be hampered by a price tag.

I realize, as I draw to the end of this post, that I have been talking to people of the GMish persuasion, but there is absolutely no reason that someone who has a player first focus can't jump into this hobby as well; the basics are the same for everyone. Solo roleplaying requires two hats. One as a player guiding their alter ego, but another as GM spinning challenges out of the context of the game world, both as it is in the moment and how it has developed over time. An experience GM may have a little leg up, but if you relax into the process and let the prompts guide you, you will be doing a lot of what GMs do when they take an adventure hook and spin it out into a game.

Before I part, I would be remiss not to point out that in this wonderful digital age we live in, some forward thinking people have designed games that are, in fact, meant to be played solo. We will discuss those games as well and why they are so useful, but the majority of my efforts will be to bring those wonderful epic games with big glossy covers we all love so much into the solo sphere of play. 

W.D.

Re-introduction, by way of a few words

I love Role Playing Games. From my first game when I was 12, in the late 80, until now when I am 47 years old, I have loved RPGs. 

From the simple to the complex. From the well grounded to the absurd. All have given me shelter and comfort in times good and bad. I feel I owe something back to the hobby.

For the bulk of this time I was a perpetual GM, usually running some variation on Dungeons and Dragons, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, and more obscure games. I have no complaints about that time. It was very well spent. But, about 8 years ago my game group of nearly 15 years went its separate ways. I was part of that, when I moved about 1/3 way across the state. I may as well have moved to the moon.

Since that time, I have played in online groups, play by post, and found my way into the solo gaming community, which is a very giving and embracing sort of place.

It took a couple of years to find my feet as a solo gamer, but currently I have a couple of ambitious campaigns cooking along and enjoy the total freedom to play literally anything. By way of example my two current campaigns center around characters that would never fly in most conventional groups, and would probably make a GM pull their hair out at the off the wall ideas (though if they were experienced enough maybe not). 

One is a hacker mage in a classic fantasy setting, (the Forgotten Realms Grey box from 1987), and the other is a adolescent dragon. The first can't fight worth a damn and the second OP off the chart. Both would be poor choices for a group game but fit perfectly in the frame work of a solo player. 

So in this revived blog, I hope to give useful tidbits in the form of reviews, musings, and actual playable material. I will refer back to games I own, and tell you how i hacked them when hacking was necessary and, with upmost respect for the authors copyright, show you how to build games of your own using both solo rules and popular mechanics.

So welcome to Wizard Dad's work shop. Sort of a prose Santa Claus (Milk and Cookies appreciated).

W.D.

P.S. I have removed some old material that was never finished, but left up the post that explored various OSR content because, even after some years, it is pretty good. Though this blog is taking a turn away from that original exploration, I hope that the older content will still be of some use. 

W.D.