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.
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