Back in my GMing days this was the bread and butter of my gaming life. Mind I loved running for my game group, and letting them add their own little details from character history, mentors, or just suggesting what would make a cool addition to the game. Sans game group now, as a solo player, I still reach out to gaming friends for suggestions and advice. In fact, me and three other friends have been tinkering around with an OSR setting, mostly written by me, but with a lot of input from them, for over 5 years. We rarely play it, we just love the act of setting building.
But, it is as an individual solo gamer I want to talk right now.
In most solo games from scratch you start with a nearly blank slate. A cool idea seed and a character, and you let it take off from there. That is a great way to start, and I have done it dozens of times. In fact for the techniques I am going to discuss below that is exactly how I would suggest starting. The only drawback is the world comes to you through one set of eyes. Which isn't necessarily a problem, and for many players it is definitely feature not flaw, but for me that doesn't truly satisfy that world building itch.
In a prior article, "West Marches on one character a day, or a Crosshatch Campaign", game suggestions for running a stable of characters over the same geographic and chronological areas so that the events of one character would cause ripples that other characters would have to deal with. I still use that method with nearly every full campaign I run. It builds up a series of events an rumors that effect every character that comes after it.
Another method I use is borrowed, and slightly altered, from the Mythic Magazine article "Deconstructing Prepared Adventures For Solo Play" (found in MM vol. 50, pg. 3), but instead of applying it simply to adventures (which it does exceptionally well), I apply it to whole setting books, novels, and lately an entire 11 book novel series. (All you need to make this work is a random number generator that you can easily access from any search engine.)
Using both of these together has given me an exceptionally rich game world, where I can start a character from rat catching newbie to visiting lord and have not trouble having piles of context to run my game from.
For the last month, I have been doing something a bit different. The background scenario I am using, and you could use any variation on this you like, is that I have a cozy mystery solving character (a librarian in fact) in a fantasy setting (though this would work for any setting that allows for action adventures), who has her own daily affairs and small, relatively safe adventures where she solves crimes and tends her library, but she is also surrounded by many unread and un catalogued books. Now, this is a private library with a taste towards the exotic, so it wasn't unusual that it acquired a set of diaries from a former treasure hunter, discussing his travels and the many strange and frequently unsolved mysteries he found along the way. This is a high fantasy setting, so the journals of a the treasure hunter are full of close calls with monsters, strange societies, and magic.
Rather than simply roll a few random plot hooks from the themes of the journals (which would be a perfectly reasonable option), instead I am playing out the treasure hunters adventures using the techniques found in the article "Mythic As A Solo Journaling Game" (found in MM Vol. 30, pg. 10). To actually play out the treasure hunt in Journal style. When the treasure hunter finds his treasure he moves on, leaving in his wake several unsolved mysteries, and a lot of game details about the setting.
Now, my cozy librarian, while she wields a little magic, doesn't have a single skill that lends itself towards life as an adventurer, so she takes all the little mystery strands and finds people who do, leading to the third level of layering: one shots.
Acting now as the quest giver, she finds an adventurer whose skills and style would mesh with the needs of the mystery (" “Gather A Crew” Mythic Adventures", MM Vol. 32, pg. 3), and they go forth and untangle the mystery. The advantage to the one shot approach is that you get to play over the course of several mysteries, many character types, and even drift from your normal RPG to something you have been wanting to try out. It won't tangle with the rules from your primary game because it is encapsulated, and along the way you add yet another layer of word building to the setting (and probably create yet more adventure hooks for your primary game along the way).
A solo game can be a fun one off, or a long campaign, but it also can be a creative opportunity to make a vibrant and uniquely personal world for your imagination to wander, and for me that is the biggest pay off of all.
But, it is as an individual solo gamer I want to talk right now.
In most solo games from scratch you start with a nearly blank slate. A cool idea seed and a character, and you let it take off from there. That is a great way to start, and I have done it dozens of times. In fact for the techniques I am going to discuss below that is exactly how I would suggest starting. The only drawback is the world comes to you through one set of eyes. Which isn't necessarily a problem, and for many players it is definitely feature not flaw, but for me that doesn't truly satisfy that world building itch.
In a prior article, "West Marches on one character a day, or a Crosshatch Campaign", game suggestions for running a stable of characters over the same geographic and chronological areas so that the events of one character would cause ripples that other characters would have to deal with. I still use that method with nearly every full campaign I run. It builds up a series of events an rumors that effect every character that comes after it.
Another method I use is borrowed, and slightly altered, from the Mythic Magazine article "Deconstructing Prepared Adventures For Solo Play" (found in MM vol. 50, pg. 3), but instead of applying it simply to adventures (which it does exceptionally well), I apply it to whole setting books, novels, and lately an entire 11 book novel series. (All you need to make this work is a random number generator that you can easily access from any search engine.)
Using both of these together has given me an exceptionally rich game world, where I can start a character from rat catching newbie to visiting lord and have not trouble having piles of context to run my game from.
For the last month, I have been doing something a bit different. The background scenario I am using, and you could use any variation on this you like, is that I have a cozy mystery solving character (a librarian in fact) in a fantasy setting (though this would work for any setting that allows for action adventures), who has her own daily affairs and small, relatively safe adventures where she solves crimes and tends her library, but she is also surrounded by many unread and un catalogued books. Now, this is a private library with a taste towards the exotic, so it wasn't unusual that it acquired a set of diaries from a former treasure hunter, discussing his travels and the many strange and frequently unsolved mysteries he found along the way. This is a high fantasy setting, so the journals of a the treasure hunter are full of close calls with monsters, strange societies, and magic.
Rather than simply roll a few random plot hooks from the themes of the journals (which would be a perfectly reasonable option), instead I am playing out the treasure hunters adventures using the techniques found in the article "Mythic As A Solo Journaling Game" (found in MM Vol. 30, pg. 10). To actually play out the treasure hunt in Journal style. When the treasure hunter finds his treasure he moves on, leaving in his wake several unsolved mysteries, and a lot of game details about the setting.
Now, my cozy librarian, while she wields a little magic, doesn't have a single skill that lends itself towards life as an adventurer, so she takes all the little mystery strands and finds people who do, leading to the third level of layering: one shots.
Acting now as the quest giver, she finds an adventurer whose skills and style would mesh with the needs of the mystery (" “Gather A Crew” Mythic Adventures", MM Vol. 32, pg. 3), and they go forth and untangle the mystery. The advantage to the one shot approach is that you get to play over the course of several mysteries, many character types, and even drift from your normal RPG to something you have been wanting to try out. It won't tangle with the rules from your primary game because it is encapsulated, and along the way you add yet another layer of word building to the setting (and probably create yet more adventure hooks for your primary game along the way).
A solo game can be a fun one off, or a long campaign, but it also can be a creative opportunity to make a vibrant and uniquely personal world for your imagination to wander, and for me that is the biggest pay off of all.
(If you enjoyed this article, check out the Blog Index for more content that may entertain or inspire)
No comments:
Post a Comment