After consulting with other gamers, both very creative: one an award winning writer and the other the single most dynamic solo player I have had the pleasure to talk to, this project is getting a pretty big overhaul to be written more in line with my talents as well as more in line with what soloist can get the most use from.
Essentially the Steampunk/Magi-tech guide book portion is being reduced to a set of genre traditions (though there will still be a lot of tropes, a ton of tech, and the game will certainly be centered in that genre). The second is very exciting. Turning the whole book (out side of the introduction) into a single in game artifact.
This meta-frame will revolve around the leather attaché that has come into the Player Character's hands, through a number of possible avenues (with both random rolls or chart selectins or just to use as inspiration for how YOUR character found it). Each document inside will both describe the setting from the POV of an actual person, but not in so many details that the soloist can't make it their own, (thus making the content just as reliable as the narrator) and have some notes from they mysterious original owner of the attaché about follow ups that perhaps never happened. These marginalia will hint at, without defining, a larger mystery, which the PC has been pulled into by way of having the attaché. As some of these documents are of a very sensitive nature, someone will have went through a lot of trouble to put it together and any number of someone's may be willing to go through a lot of effort to get it back.
Neither this meta-frame, nor the interior document, are from a God's eye view, thus everything in it is only as certain as your choices or Oracle rolls indicate, but collectively they will give a view of the setting and peeks at what is over the next hill, because this city, though important, doesn't exist in a vacuum.
Included with the document will be marginalia, that could be investigated and/or used as inspirations for spinning the game into a direction the soloist finds more entertaining. Once the PDF is downloaded it is yours and you can use it as you please.
And for the players use is a future timeline of situations that happen at certain calendar dates that can be use to show some activity of a living setting, or ignored if you have enough going down the line. These will just be straight plot hooks that can be used when the time is right. They are more in the background things unless the player take a special interest, but will effect dynamics set up in the city (accessible to the player as information in the attaché).
The idea of this project is to give a lot of starting points, but the destinations will solidly be up to the soloist to hash out.
I am very excited for the direction this is taking and I am very grateful for readers and commenters with both questions and encouragements, here or directly.
That's all for now.
Wizard Dad.
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