Peter Rudin-Burgess CREDITS

Easier Solo Play

Written By: Peter Rudin-Burgess

Parts Per Million Limited International House, 12 Constance Street, Constance Street, London, England, E16 2DQ

1 Contents 1. Introduction 2.Roll as many questions as you like 5 3.Mind maps for investigations 8 4.Start with a One-Shot 12 5.Cover your bases 14 6.Training Wheels 17 7.Don’t Judge yourself against professionals 20 8.Don’t play the boring stuff 23 9.combats can be oracled away 25 10.First Level Again? 28 11.A short History of Time 31 12.What works for you? 34 13.Character weaknesses 38 14.Improv vs. Prep 42 15.Rogue Oracle 46 16.Safety Tools 49 17.Stickies vs. Cards 52 18.Power Hooks 54 19.The Importance of NPCs 57 20.The Importance of Places 61 21.Building Villains I 63 22.Building Villains II 67 23.Building Villains III 69 24.Short is Sweet 71 25.Oracle World Building 75 26.Oracle Mashups 79 27.Oracles & Muses 83 28. The Adjective Ladder 85 29. Random Generators 88 30. Organise your Tools 91

2 1. Introduction he tips and advice I share in this book come from my own experiences of solo Trole-playing many different games. I started seriously solo playing while I was writing role-playing game reviews. Many of the reviews on blogs are based only on reading through the PDF version of the game. This sounds a bit shallow, but the prevailing view was that you could get a good impression just from a read-through if you had seen enough games. This attitude still exists today for games, adventures, and just about everything else in the RPG industry. I tended to disagree but getting to play all the games I was sent was impossible. When I first

3 discovered AD&D™, that had solo playing rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. They mainly consisted of some random dungeon rooms and random encounters. My role-playing social group was very much into wargaming. Wargames at the time arrived with solo rules as part of the main rules. I eventually put two and two together and went looking for the more recent solo rules. That is when I discovered a simple system called Tiny Solitary Soldiers. From there, I discovered Mythic GME. Neither really did exactly what I wanted. If I played a dice pool system, I wanted the solo rules to work the same way. I didn’t want to have to flip between how the solo rules worked and how the game worked. It didn’t take long before I was receiving a review copy of a game, and I was reading it through and then creating a solo tool that used the same ideas and game mechanics. Then I could play the game and write an honest review. I have lost count of how many different games I have played, but it is well over a hundred different systems. Some of the advice in this book relates to the physical playing of the game, some of it is more about expectations. The tips and advice is presented in no particular order. They are simply in the order that I first started making the preparatory notes. 4 2. Roll as many questions as you like caught myself doing this the first time during a game of Stars Without Number. My character I was snooping around an old factory, where he had been a security guard before it shut down. He headed up to the admin offices, and all the computers had been ripped out, wandered into where they used to do the payroll, and there was the safe, still locked, as it was left. The manager’s office was also locked, and that struck me as unusual. Why lock an office you are never coming back to? After a bit more of a walk around, I left the factory, and that locked office really bugged me. I was coming back with a big hammer to open the door, but that was for the next session.

5 I played those scenes on video. When I watched it back, I noticed that I was almost constantly rolling yes/no questions. Nearly every roll was a straight 50/50, drop the dice, glance at the result and move on. It was almost subconscious. Where the computers still there? Was the payroll office door locked? Was the safe open? Was the manager’s office locked? So it went on. The next time was in a Delta Green game. My character left his partner in the car on the street, as look out, I entered an apartment block, rode the escalator to the right floor, and then searched the apartment. This was not a big scene. This time, I wrote up the scene using Word, writing the descriptive text in the body and inserted a footnote with my questions, rolls, and answers. Alt+F is a very easy key combination to insert the footnote, and it gives a nice separation. When I looked back over my game, the footnotes were as big or bigger than the narrative! It is generally accepted advice to not ask too many questions. That advice is based upon the idea that the questions should just set the scene, They should fire your imagination, and you improvise off them. If I played in a group game, the GM would

6 not describe the factory or apartment down to the minutest detail and expect us to remember and visualize it perfectly. Instead, what would happen is the GM would give you a broad-stroke description of the location, and as you interact with it, they would fill in more detail in a back and forth exchange. That is what I find myself emulating, and it works for me. I have seen and heard people saying that they struggle with making up everything from their own imaginations, but I find the simple question allays that issue as it is easier to pick one of two options. The simple questions become supports. I did not have to imagine the entire apartment when I opened the door; I could explore it and learn as my character learned. The advice to not ask too many questions was such an accepted truth that I have often repeated it myself and written it in getting started advice in early solo books that I published. Unfortunately, it was the wrong advice for me, and I don’t think I was unique.

7 3. Mind maps for investigations magine a police incident room with pictures of suspects pinned to a board and key facts Ithat have been discovered about them jotted around each image. Then lines connecting fact to fact. I did this in a cyberpunk game using Cepheus System. As I learned facts about my game world, set in the subway rail network, I added these to a mind map. As I played, the more facts I added to the map, I found myself using the oracle less and less. Finally, the map gave me an overall picture of what was going on. The need to generate random answers was diminished because I already knew what was happening or what a place was like.

8 Normally, I would keep a journal and lists of places and NPCs I had visited or met. These are perfectly good ways of recording one’s games. Still, when looking for a particular fact or reference, they are not ideal. They are very linear, and when looking for information, you have to work from one end to the other. Mind maps are far from linear. If you are not familiar with mind maps, they are quite a good method of recording ideas. You start with a single idea or fact written in the center of the page. Then as you learn new facts, you add them to the sheet and draw connections between them. For example, if you create an NPC as a witness, you can interview them, and as they give their account, you can add what you learn to the mind map. It doesn’t matter who they are talking about, every character is present on the map, and you can fill in the facts in the right places. There are some great mind mapping tools, but I think that pencil and paper are hard to beat. The example below started with a John Doe victim of a car crash. As I investigated, I discovered that there was a gun and bullet casings in the footwell of the car. The victim had no ID on him but did have animal bite marks on his forearms. The crashed car was a Tesla, and I discovered that it was registered to a Miss Grey, who was a Drug Enforcement Officer. Unfortunately, it also

9 happened that Miss Grey had not turned up to work and was unreachable.

As I discovered more about Miss Grey, I could add it straight onto her ‘bubble’ on the mind map. If I discovered more about the victim, I could add it to his ‘bubble’. My next move would have been to try and trace the weapon, to see who owned it. At this stage, I could even start speculating about what happened. Is Miss Grey a werewolf? The John Doe was a meal she picked up, and she removed the ID intentionally. As it happened,

10 the dinner date went wrong, and the vehicle was wrecked. Or, is Miss Grey in mortal danger and needs rescuing? This visual representation of your investigation invites you to try and create theories about what happened and fit the facts. In addition, you can see areas that you can investigate further, unlike scattered notes where something could easily be missed. You can introduce color coding if that works for you. You can also take a single bubble and make that the center of its own mind map if it requires more investigation. There are countless mind mapping tools available online. One tool that is highly recommended is LucidSpark [https://lucidspark. com/], and they have a free version that allows up to 300 bubbles or objects to be added to a single mind map. These mind maps can be downloaded to keep. If you haven’t tried mind mapping as a way of recording game facts, give it a go.

11 4. Start with a One-Shot was playing Alien RPG recently. The game has two modes, cinematic, which leans into I the movie franchise, and you are unlikely to get out alive. The second mode is campaign style, and you more likely to get caught up in corporate shenanigans than caught by a xenomorph. My character joined a crew shipping compressed gas tanks to a military facility on a colony world. That was about the last thing that worked out right. I had an instant personality clash with another member of the crew; loading the cargo had me fail my skill checks back to back, and then we were pulled out of cryosleep because my shoddy loading had shifted and damaged the hold to the point where we wouldn’t be able to land until repairs had been made. 12 I affected the repairs, and we finished the journey. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the colony, it was in distress. There was an out-of- control fire in the terminal building. A colleague and I donned mech suits to help fight the fire, and the first thing that came out of the smoke was a neomorph that promptly ripped my head off. Game over. What I was hoping for was the start of a campaign. One of my crewmates was under suspicion by his company rep. I was an undercover man for the company to catch him red-handed. The campaign I was working towards was about inter-crew tensions and the company being involved with shady military operations. This time it just didn’t work out. If I had started with a published one-shot adventure, and there was one in the back of the core rules, there would have been no pressure to survive the adventure. Instead, you could see it as a learning exercise to get the hang of the system and learn how competent my starting character was. A one-shot adventure normally has a well- defined start, middle, and end. It is easy toget your character involved and what needs doing is normally obvious. Published one-shots are also normally of very high quality. They are built to showcase the best a system offers, set the game’s tone, and use most of the game’s core mechanics.

13 5. Cover your bases was in a desert oasis, there were tents all around, and the moon cast everything into I monochrome. The camp was an ousted vizier and his mercenary force the night before they attacked the sultan’s palace. I wondered if the sultan was aware, and if so, in what form. I started with a simple question and followed up with a couple more. The result of the questions was that yes, the sultan was aware and, yes, was ready to act. But, at this point, I had a mind blank. What could the sultan do in the middle of the desert? What I actually did was take a break, but the lesson I learned was to imagine what both sides of your yes-no questions will mean before you roll

14 the dice. You can always shift your ideas if you get some variation of an emphatic or modified answer, such as the ‘yes, and…’ or ‘no, but…’ variations. Sometimes the options will be obvious. If the question is about whether a corridor is deserted or not, then there are people there or not. In my case, I couldn’t think how the sultan’s men could get to us in the middle of a desert without them being seen long in advance. If I had thought about it more, that would be my answer, the sultan’s men could have been spotted and the alarm raised, and that was my entry point into the next scene. What I actually got was a brick wall of no inspiration. Now, I am more inclined to ask a question along the lines of ‘Is this situation true, or is this second situation true?’, then the oracle can say either the first is correct, the yes answer, or no, it is the second, or ‘Heck no, here is a complication and think of something else!”. There is a slight side benefit to this. I am normally creating minor details about the world constantly. For example, I may never write down that the vizier’s tent is red, or the mercenaries have long black beards, but I can see these details in my imagined scenes. When it comes to forming my questions and alternative answers, these details creep into my questions. “Does the mercenary

15 sentry notice my lack of beard, or is he too bored to pay attention?” That gives me my options and rolls a minor detail into the narrative. I am not limited to these two versions of reality. Depending on what the oracle says, I can riff off them to find something satisfying.

16 6. Training Wheels may well have played over a hundred different role-playing games. I don’t know the exact figure, but if I had to say the one I know best, I nd it would be Rolemaster 2 edition. That is a game that is often derided as Rulesmaster or Chartmaster. The creators of Rolemaster built it as a modular system. You could swap out individual rules with an optional rule, and nothing would break. I have a background in computer programming and coding. What Rolemaster was doing in the early 1980s would be recognized as Object-Oriented Programming today. It was at least a decade ahead of its time. To capitalize on this modular system, the publishers, Iron Crown Enterprises, created

17 companion books full of optional rules. These could be snapped in to replace a core rule, and everything would work as intended. So if you wanted a dark and gritty low magic fantasy world, snap in the rules that fitted. If you want high fantasy, replace the rules with the high fantasy options, and you are ready to go. Each companion listed all of the optional rules from the core books and all the companions that went before in a tickbox checklist. A GM could fill out the checklist and copy it, and pass it to their players to create characters to the same standards. Things went wrong when new players came to the system and discovered book upon book of optional rules in seemingly no organized order. Somewhere, the idea of selectively picking rules to customize the game got lost. For me, I can play Rolemaster for hours at a stretch without having to reference a single rulebook. The only time I do access the rules is to use the combat tables. The net result is that I can solo play what is considered one of the most complicated games from the 1980s just as easily as a one-page micro RPG. Thus, Rolemaster is one of the good games for me. If you have been playing D&D or Pathfinder for years, they are probably a good fit for you. If you are new to solo play, that will be enough

18 to occupy your brain without having to struggle with a brand new rules system on top. If you know how your chosen rules work, it enables you to ‘eyeball’ an encounter, trap, or challenge and have an idea of whether your character should be able to cope. Then you can ask informed questions of your oracle. If you are trying to learn a game and learn how to solo play simultaneously, that is a recipe for a frustrating time. Many solo play forums carry discussions about what is a good system for x, y, or z. I think the answer most often should be the game you are most comfortable playing.

19 7. Don’t Judge yourself against professionals ith the rise of live streaming on twitch and youtube, we have seen the rise of Wthe professional roleplayer. The biggest player in this space is Critical Role, and in solo playing, there is Me, Myself, and Die. While it is great to see high production value videos on youtube, you must be careful to not mistake them for real life. The cast of Critical Role and Me, Myself and Die are professional actors, and especially in Me, Myself and Die, they are heavily edited. If you or I roll an oracle result and it stops us dead while we think of what it could mean, then

20 our game stops. If we get the same result again and struggle to get a nice meaning for the prompt, we may get locked into just a basic idea. When that happens, and you have the option to pause the recording, go and access any random table or reference and build your response, then you will look like a giant of improvisation. I tend to play in a sort of stream of consciousness, not worrying too much about recording my sessions. Maybe bullet points or footnotes, but these can be very terse and would only have any meaning to me. There are almost certainly no do-overs if I rolled an answer I found difficult to interpret in the present scene. I wholeheartedly think we should always strive to be the best we can be, but my life doesn’t come with an ‘undo’ button every time I get something wrong, and I certainly don’t get to edit out bits that didn’t go so well. Comparing yourself to professional production crews can lead to unrealistic expectations. I have tried making actual play videos. You can find them on my youtube channel, and I am sure that you will agree with me when I say that I am obviously uncomfortable playing in front of a camera. I don’t edit my videos. I hit record and then

21 play until I stop. I can become so nervous that I start to forget some of the solo rules, which may not sound bad, but I play the rules I wrote. It is not too far removed from forgetting your own name. If you are a natural storyteller or improvisational actor, I am sure you could make a fine video actual play or have great fun at home solo playing, a game that would make my jaw drop in admiration. If that is not you, then don’t feel that that is how it has to be done. I once ran a group role-playing session in a pub in Bristol, England. We didn’t have a table, so were stood around a pillar holding up the ceiling that had a kind of shelf around it to hold the drinks. We were playing AD&D, and these were the days of THAC0. We had the books with us, but mostly it was all running from memorized rules and spell descriptions. That was one of the best role-playing sessions I ever saw. The reason was that because we were not sitting down at a table, we were free to move, and every player started ‘acting out’ how their character acted. Would we have made it on the stage? I think not. Was it good? By our usual standards, it was exceptional, and that was good enough for me.

22 8. Don’t play the boring stuff or a while, I was almost obsessed with interrupted scenes. When I transitioned Ffrom one scene to the next, I would ask, “Is the next scene as I expected?”, When I got a no answer, I would create an unexpected complication that upset the course of the action. I could go from interrupted scene to interrupted scene, getting ever more sidetracked away from what I thought was the main plot. I eventually realized that my main plot was in a place where not a great deal was happening. When I fast-forwarded the plot to where I was about to set out on the main quest, that was when my attention became focused again. The desire for something

23 interesting to happen was already satisfied. When we are playing group game sessions, it is really common to skip boring passages of time. A journey into town can be handwaved away, as can a sea journey of several months. In a fantasy game, a sea journey could be a perilous thing. However, in a modern-day setting, they are generally quite safe and somewhat uneventful. If nothing much is happening, we don’t think twice about skipping it. In a solo game, you can even skip over things that could well be mysterious or dangerous if you just are not into that. Suppose you are looking for a Mummy’s Curse adventure in a newly unearthed pyramid. Why risk dying in a random encounter with desert raiders at an oasis stopover?

24 9. Combats can be oracled away played a 5e game, and I had to follow a rough mountain track that snaked and climbed I around the mountain towards the summit and the Phoenix Lord’s temple. As I climbed, I ran into the first of her sentries, a pair of Kenku guards. Further up, I surprised a Kenku officer. I still had ninety percent of the mountain path to climb, and I was fairly certain I would meet a fair few sentries and checkpoints. The first encounter told me what I was going to face on my climb to the top. The second told me a bit about their organization. The officer was a different kind of

25 threat to the two lowly sentries. As I climbed up the path, I had a random encounter table that was throwing different Kenku encounters at me, guards, pilgrims, priests, and so on. After a while, it was obvious that the goal was to wear down the character’s resources to make the final chapter more knife edge. If I enjoyed these sorts of combats, they were rather one-sided in my favor; all would have been good. But, as it was, they bored me. I felt that all these random encounters were getting between me and the exciting confrontation that awaited me at the top of the mountain. I noticed that I was losing at most 1d8 hit points per encounter, often nothing at all. The adventure suggested six to eight encounters, so I split the difference and rolled 7d4, and took the damage, and moved myself to the top of the mountain. I learned from this that many minor encounters exist only to burn your character’s resources. That could be hit points, spell slots, ammunition, or any other game resource or meta currency. I now play the first couple of minor encounters to get a feel for what is being thrown at me. Then, I let them foreshadow what is to come and set the feel of the adventure.

26 After that, I use the oracle to speed things up. I start with a question like, “Does the fight go my way?” I can set the odds based on how the first two encounters went. If it is a yes, then I can deduct a few resources based on how those first two encounters played out. If I get a strong yes, then I may have got away with not taking any damage, or they may have been defeated and had some loot. If I roll a no result or a strong no, I try to imagine what situation I am in. I then set up that situation and play out the battle. These are then more exciting as the stakes are higher. Sometimes I double the number of foes encountered, imagining that I had been surprised by more defenders than I had expected. Sometimes I imagine that I had been disarmed, possibly by a skillful opponent or simple fumbled attack. Now play out battle as I try and recover from the disadvantage. Most of the time, if these are minor skirmishes, the odds are in my favor, and the oracle goes my way, so I pay a small tax in resources and move on to more exciting things to come. If you find your game becoming bogged down by minor combats or wandering monsters, there is no reason not to turn to your oracle and let the dice decide. Ultimately, that is all a combat filled with “roll to hit, roll damage” comes down to anyway, letting the dice decide the outcome.

27 10. fIRST Level Again? here is frequently a sliding scale; games that are extremely lethal lean towards have fast Tand simple character creation rules. On the other hand, games, where you are unlikely to die in your first session, tend to be more involved. This makes sense as you don’t want to spend hours making a character only to die five minutes into your first session. Basic D&D is a good example of the first; it was literally, roll your characteristics, pick your class (race and class were one and the same), then roll hit points and starting money. Boom, you are ready to play. Hero System and Champions are at the opposite end of the spectrum. I could spend a week crafting my hero for a Champions game. The math could

28 get a bit involved as well. Having that fast and dirty character creation is an advantage in solo playing. What is good for your player character is equally good for all those NPCs you will end up making along the way. If you have your heart set on playing an adventure for half a dozen 6th to 8th level characters, the chances of you getting your brand new 1st level elf to 6th level is slim. Even then, one 6th level character is going to have a tough time completing an adventure designed for an entire party, so now you are looking at getting your elf to 8th, 9th or 10th level just to have a chance of making it. That is a lot of adventuring just to play an adventure you bought last week. I suggest that you create the character you want to play at the level you want to play them. Then, you can always create a version of your character at each level to keep on file for future reference. You can always go back and play lower-level adventures afterward and use those intermediate character sheets. If your character dies in an earlier adventure, you can make a choice. If you are playing standalone adventures, then does it matter? If you are playing a campaign, you can choose between not being dead, being captured or robbed and

29 left for dead, or using failing forward, letting your character survive, or even winning the fight, but make sure you pay the price later. Or introduce an NPC or organization that needs your character alive or under obligation and have them bring you back. There is always a way! I talk about levels, but the same thing holds true for any system. For example, a Champions hero is normally built from about 100 points; a mega villain could be 600 points! You could build your hero at 100 points, 125, 150, and so on to represent their progress over time. I just would not give myself any experience points from the individual adventures. [Champions gives character points as experience, so if you have a 150 point character, you have already ‘spent’ fifty experience points].

30 11. a short History of Time n the previous tip [First Level Again?] I suggested having character sheets at all the intermediate levels if you start at higher than Ist 1 level. What you are really doing there is playing an adventure that happens in your character’s future. We can take that a step further and hop about in your timeline inside an adventure. This works exceptionally well in solo play but is really difficult with a group of players. However, I think it is where solo play can really shine! I was setting up a game, and I wanted to play out a proper medieval trial by combat. So I wanted

31 to start with the joust, and then when one of us was unhorsed, go to greatswords to the death. Setting up the situation was going to be easy enough. All I would need was for an innocent to name me as their champion, and the trial would be my responsibility. In this game, the “why” was far less important than the result. I played out the trial combat for the first few passes with lances in the lists. Then I stopped play. I jumped back in time and played a scene or two about who I was championing and what they were accused of. It was, of course, witchcraft. I jumped forward to the combat and played another three rounds. Unfortunately, things were not going well for me, and the injuries were racking up. I then went back in time and played a few more scenes with my witch. As it turned out, she wasn’t all that innocent after all, and she gave me a charm to call upon if the trial was going against me. Jump forward again, and I think now would be a good time to hold that lucky rabbit’s foot [not so lucky for the poor rabbit] and utter a little prayer. I was using FATE points in this game, so I gave myself a FATE point, which I spent on my next attack. So that gave me an advantage.

32 At the end of the battle, I stood over the fallen body of my opponent. It was one of the battles where I was down to about my last hit point and bleeding profusely. From this point on, I could stay with the current timeline and play the scenes in the more traditional sequence. Trying to combine out-of-time scenes and flashbacks in a traditional game is difficult. I was playing this game while I was traveling. When I had time to kill in airports, I could run the combat rounds. When I was in the air, I didn’t really want to get the dice out. The social scenes fitting in perfectly for these interludes. Did I know she was a witch beforehand? No, I didn’t. Would I have survived without that charm? No, I probably wouldn’t. have done.

33 12. what works for you? he primary tool in solo play is the oracle. TBut which oracle? I tend to group oracles into four camps. Generic, System Specific, Non-Authoring, and Situation Specific. Generic oracles are standalone tools. The biggest name in solo is Mythic GME and definitely falls into this group. You also find some of the oldest names in solo here, CGRE, FU (Freeform Universal), and MUNE. The advantage of the generic oracle is that you can use the same oracle for any game once you know how it works.

34 The disadvantage of generic oracles is that they can shatter your suspension of disbelief or immersion in the game. If your favorite game is all d6s and counting successes, then having to roll d100s and reference tables can jar. System Specific oracles are keyed to a particular game or rules system. This addresses the immersion issue. For example, using your oracle to decide if a jewelry box is locked typically uses the same kind of roll as your skill test to pick the same lock. It is this unified approach that is the system-specific oracle’s biggest advantage. The disadvantage of the system-specific oracle is that you need a different oracle for each game if you play many different games. As most of us tend to stick to games, we know well. So this often isn’t a real problem. This is my favorite approach, and I create system-specific tools. Increasingly games are being published with solo rules built-in as well. Non-Authoring tools are often very different from the other kinds of oracles. Any oracle that gives you an answer that you need to interpret is considered an authoring oracle. We call it that because the meaning comes from within you, just as a novelist has to create all the details of their own fantasy worlds.

35 Non-authoring oracles do not require interpretation or much less interpretation than a traditional oracle. The facts are not being created by you. They are being provided by the oracle. The oracle is the author, not you. This is an area where AI is gaining popularity; AI Dungeon is the market leader. However, there are also pen, paper, and dice tools that create similar results in a ‘fake AI’ version. Other low-tech versions of non-authoring oracles include blackout poetry and cut-up texts. Blackout poetry using a sheet with slots cut into it. You place it over a page of text and take the words that appear in the slots or windows. If you have chosen a text in the same genre as the game you play, you tend to get words that fit well with your game. You then take the words that you revealed and use them to form the answer to your questions. You will not get a simple yes/no answer; you will get a dozen words or so from which you try and shape an answer. Cut-up solo takes a text, preferably in the same genre as your game, and the entire text is cut into snippets of three to eight words. You then draw random snippets and try and form them into sentences and paragraphs to form what your DM or GM said to you, and you then react to it, then return to the random snippets.

36 Cut-up play is much slower at the table than traditional oracles, but its results are much more detailed. Typically, you do not interpret cut-up results, although you may edit them slightly for readability. Situation Specific oracles are special random tables. Where your rules may suggest something like a wandering monster and then send you to a table of monsters. Then you need to imaging how this plays out for your character; the situation-specific oracle will give you a very detailed alternative answer that takes a lot of the creative pressure off your shoulders. There are more situation-specific oracles than I could possibly list. Many solo players have folders full of special random tables. So which oracle is right for you? Unfortunately, I cannot answer that. AI Dungeon is popular, but I cannot get on with it, but I like cut-ups. I create many system-specific oracles, but I find Mythic cumbersome and slow. I would suggest trying out as many different tools as possible and seeing what you like and what you don’t.

37 13. Character weaknesses hen I talk about character weaknesses, I mean game mechanics or elements Wbaked into the game system. For example, 5e has a random personality flaw as part of character creation, my Cleric [Wesley, the war domain cleric] has an obsessive personality, but these are for flavor only or as a role-playing guide. The Year Zero Engine games use various alternatives, such as giving your character a dark secret or a bond between characters or a rival character. These then become experience point toggles, play into your flaw, and you gain experience, ignore them, and you don’t. Rolemaster has Talents that give your character-

38 specific advantages and Flaws that build in penalties to simulate the named flaw. These may be a penalty for a particular kind of action or for a specific skill. Hero System and Champions build characters out of points. You start with a pool of about 100 points, and you can add to your pool for buying skills and powers by taking Disadvantages. Some of the most fun Disadvantages have an activation roll. If you had an NPC attached to you, there would be a chance of them being caught up in your adventure. The same game mechanic controls if an organization that is hunting you shows up. The GM can roll these activation rolls when planning a session and work the disadvantage into the play. Essentially they are really specific oracles. “Is my dependent NPC caught up in this adventure?” yes/no, “Does the criminal gang find out where I am staying?” yes/no. Solo tools like Mythic GME deal with story arcs or threads. These character weaknesses or flaws are their own story arcs. There is a story behind why you are attached to that NPC. There is a story to explain your dark secret. Games that have these flaws and weaknesses give tools like Mythic GME something to work with that will weave your character even more tightly into the story. Of course, in solo play, you are always the star of the show, but there is

39 a difference between the story happening to you and your story. There is a trend towards using very rules-light games for solo play. I can see the logic. If you only have three pages of rules to learn, you can probably run the game from memory and not have to page flip looking for the exact ruling. These simpler games often lack these character flaw options. They can be easily stripped out when the designer looks for what can be removed to make the rules lighter. Things that are easily stripped out are easily put back. The most elegant solution I have seen is the buddy/rival system. When you create your character, you define an NPC that they have a very positive relationship with, the buddy. You also define an NPC that they have a negative relationship with. This is your rival. If you resolve a rivalry, you try to create a new one in the next ‘session’. If you lose your buddy, you try and build a new relationship as the game carries on. These could be NPCs that take a liking to you or take offense at something you do or say. As long as you know the relationship exists, it is valid. Now you can use these to shape NPC reactions and social scenes and work them into your oracle results.

40 These relationships can be added to any game and do not add any complexity, but they will anchor your character into the game world.

41 14. Improv vs. Prep repared games are the bugbear of solo players everywhere. I mean, of course, the Ppublished module. If you don’t know the module well, you cannot answer the questions that arise. If you do know it, you lose the surprises. If you want to lean into your oracle, it could tell you something that directly contradicts the published material. There are several ways to address this. One is to favor the GMing role and ‘run the adventure’ for a virtual character. If you enjoy GMing, this can be a good game. You can play the social elements ‘in character’ but the exploration or investigation as the GM.

42 There is another option that can be a lot of fun but requires even more preparation. You can scour your module for each encounter. You can group them by different stages if you want. Write out the details of each one, such as numbers encountered and combat stats on a slip of paper. If you have the matching miniatures but them with the slip of paper as well. Now put each encounter into a matchbox [the little capsules inside a kinder egg also work well]. When you explore the adventure site and the key indicates an encounter, you grab a matchbox at random and open it. That is what you are now facing! If you don’t have matchboxes or cannot eat enough chocolate eggs, you can put each encounter slip into an envelope and pull them out at random. This does mean that the module may say that there are 1d4 goblins, but you pull out two ogres and an Owlbear, but that’s the breaks, and I suggest running away. Another option also involves more prep, which is to reduce the module down to “intentions”. Many modules tell you what the NPCs’ intentions or plans are; you can extract these. It is often obvious what different encounters are for. Once you have identified everything that has to happen, should happen, and the NPCs want to happen, you can turn this into a spontaneous

43 adventure but making it your goal to cross off everything that is on your extracted list. For example, suppose a villain intends to frame you for a crime you didn’t commit. In that case, that becomes a scene, or you introduce the town guard to make the arrest, and that is how your character learns of the situation. The adventure may end up radically different from the book you purchased, more ‘inspired by’ than played through. If you are not playing a published adventure, then improvising your adventures is the way forward. Two of the best improv GMs are Jason Cordova and Mike Shea (also known as Sly Flourish). Both Jason and Mike advocate minimal prep, not no prep. This is about distilling the key facts needed to start an adventure. As a result, their adventures feel like a moment frozen and just waiting for the characters to arrive on the scene. The facts that need to be prepared are generally very few, the current situation, the primary NPCs (allies and villains), and the most important locations. If you know who is doing what and where you can improvise everything else.You do not need to prepare any more than that because the goal is to find out what happens. Mike Shea tends to suggest working in threes.

44 First, one plot hook to engage the character, three potentially helpful NPCs, Three villainous NPCs, three schemes or goals, and three locations or avenues to explore. Jason Cordova has a 7-3-1 system. Seven key locations, encounters, or events, each with a reason for existing. Three pieces of sensory information to help you imagine the scene, and one thing to convey ‘at the table’. This could be a combat strategy, or a tone of voice, or a first impression. The idea of the 7-3-1 is that the seven elements are few enough to hold them all in memory. The three sensory pieces of information aid in visualizing the scene, and one ‘at the table’ fact tells you how to play the scene. What is absent is how the adventure should be run because this is unique to every GM or, in our case, solo player. When I think of an adventure I would like to play through, I use the 7-3-1 method. It prompts me to create the key NPCs, usually the villain and possibly the quest giver. It also helps me visualize the locations. I can file these, and they contain enough detail to get one out and play it when I am in the mood and have the time. If I don’t want to play one of these adventure outlines. In that case, I can go for an entirely improvised game and just rely on the oracle and random tables to create my adventures.

45 15. Rogue Oracle ometimes I like to start a game with just my oracle, play a few scenes and jot down Sanything I learn about my character, locations, and setting in that first sitting. Only after that do I roll up a character. I had created a new cut-up solo book and wanted to take it for a test drive. So I played a couple of scenes, and I was getting into the story, so I played a few more scenes, and the plot started to emerge. Then I hit a ‘snag’, not a problem, just a bit of a snag. I had bought Free League’s Coriolis and had the rules and character sheet all ready, but this game didn’t feel like a Coriolis game; it felt more like Aladdin or Alibaba and the Forty Thieves.

46 Do I start again and try and create a ‘real’ Coriolis story, or do I put the Coriolis character sheet away and get out a more fitting game system? I chose neither. I carried on playing with just the oracle. I wasn’t in danger of getting into combat; it wasn’t that sort of game yet. I wasn’t using skills, just exploring the world, talking to people, and looking for clues about what was really going on. I thought I could create a character when the fighting started. It didn’t take long before the oracle started to suggest that the ‘villain’ was actually a hero, the princess who had been abducted was really being freed, and that I was not on a mercy mission at all, just a search and destroy set up by a villain to hunt down the hero. This was not what I had in mind at all when I set out to play this game. Coriolis is supposedly the most Firefly of all the Firefly wannabee games out there. This was not Firefly! Was it fun? Definitely. Was it what I had set out to play? Definitely not. The oracle was rolling like it had its own agenda. If things are not playing the way you expected, this is not a problem. It is an intentional, built- in feature of the oracle system. If our oracles did not throw up unexpected results, then solo games

47 would become a procession of preordained scenes. The only game elements would be rolling for skills tests and combats. This is how gamebooks work, but gamebooks are not RPGs. Gamebooks are often a gateway drug into RPGs because RPGs are limitless in scope. You are not confined to the three paragraphs that the author offers you. So, what is the right response when the oracle throws up an unexpected result, and it is really out of your wheelhouse? Do you go with it and have a game going in a direction that you don’t really want to play? Or, do you overrule the oracle? I think there are two answers to this. First, earlier I suggested picturing both positive and negative results before you ask the oracle; if you use this, you have two options that lead to branches you want to explore and do not break the neutrality of the oracle roll. The second answer is permission to overrule the oracle. Overruling the oracle feeds into my next chapter, safety tools in solo play.

48 16. Safety Tools afety tools in mainstream RPGs are becoming standard content. I think this is Sa good thing. When I was still at school, I played D&D. I had been introduced to Traveler, Champions, Boothill, Tunnels & Trolls, and Rolemaster. Then I met the first player who had an entire shelf of RPGs with names I had never heard of. I got to play Chivalry & Sorcery, Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Paranoia, Bushido, Star Trek, and many more. This player also introduced me to the Bristol Student Union gaming club. I first started gaming with strangers rather than school friends that I had known for many years. This person also suffered from severe depression and struggled with suicidal thoughts.

49 As a peer group, we largely went our separate ways, going off to college and starting careers and then getting married and kids and all the normal stuff that a peer group does. But not Player 1. He struggled with completing a college course. He tried to join the armed forces but was back squadded a couple of times and then dropped out. He couldn’t maintain relationships, and the last time I spoke to him, he was still living with his mother, who was now rather elderly. Player 1 had his driving license rescinded because he tried to use the car as a way of taking his own life without the shame of being labelled a suicide. I don’t know what will become of him. I now live nearly a thousand miles away and don’t have any contact details. He is not on any social media that I can find, which is probably a good thing. The point is that if you met Player 1, you would never know he struggled with his mental health. I talked to a mutual friend some years ago and enquired if he had had any contact with Player 1. This mutual friend had not the slightest idea about his depression. If people we think we know well and gamed with for over a decade, maybe successfully hiding problems, then I can never honestly say that my group games do not need safety tools. In solo play, I read a message once about someone who struggled with solo playing as their games always went to very dark places, so they had stopped solo 50 playing. With these experiences, I felt it was necessary to touch upon safety tools in solo play. The tool that works the best, in my experience, is called the veil. Veils refer to the phrase “to draw a veil over a scene,” meaning to end the scene and not show what happened next. In solo play, you can arbitrarily throw in an event that changes your narrative to deflect the course and prevent the scene you want to avoid from happening. This could be as simple as interrupting an NPC with something that they suddenly have to take care of and is more important/urgent than you. You can pause one thread of an adventure and pick up with a different character, maybe with the intention of the two characters intersecting at that precise moment and changing the story. Possibly, the most important safety tool is knowing that just about every solo player I have ever spoken to is perfectly comfortable with simply changing something in their game if it is not fun. This is not cheating; it is perfectly acceptable. Games are designed from the ground up to be fun to play, and in RPGs, rule zero is that all other rules are simply guidelines. You have permission to change your story. 51 17. Stickies vs. Cards nyone who has followed my writing will know that I am a huge fan of the Asticky note or post-it™ notes. These are improvisational gold. I can think of ten cool things that may happen in my adventure, put each one on its own note and save them for later. Then, as I play, when an opportunity arises for one of these to come into play, I can grab the note and insert it into the game. I like notes for NPCs, locations, and events. I don’t need to decide where and when these will come into play. Instead, they turn up as they naturally fit into the story. A second cool thing about the sticky is that it is limited in size, stopping me from over-preparing

52 something. I should never need to write more than fits on a single note. Mike Shea [Sly Flourish] has a similar relationship to 3x5 index cards. He can create the plot hook, and detail six NPCs and three locations on a single 3x5 index card. As NPCs or locations take on greater importance, they may deserve their own card. In this way, a single card is enough to start Session 1 of a game, and other cards are really just recording things that you improvised during session one. Another system that is in the same vein is used by Index Card RPG. Each index card contains an image of a location or challenge. The adventure is then ‘dealt out’ by laying cards to construct what is, in essence, a 5-Room Dungeon. The thinking behind all these systems is that preparation is the enemy of improvisation. The more you write down and commit to being a fact, the less tolerance you have to things changing on the fly. It also makes it harder to keep track of game elements. If you have an NPC defined somewhere in twenty pages of game notes, it will be harder to find than on an individual sticky or card. We all need to do some preparation, but these small format techniques are there to serve as a check on over preparation. I recommend giving them a go and seeing which one works best for you. 53 18. power Hooks power hook will kickstart your solo game by throwing you into the action but at the A same time leaving you will unanswered questions. In a traditional RPG session, it is a cliché to have the characters meeting in a tavern, giving the players some time to get into character and the characters time to get to know each other, then something happens, and the adventure starts. In a solo game, you don’t need to do that warming up process; you can leap straight into the ‘then something happens” stage. Or better still, “something has already happened”. As you see the event from your character’s point of view, you do not need to know many details. Things your54 character couldn’t know, you don’t need to know. I recently started a game with my character on a runaway train, approaching a bridge on a bend. The train was picking up speed. The threat was that the train and all the passengers would be going over the edge of the bridge and down into a gorge below. Looking around, there was no guard/ticket collector on the train, so I pulled the emergency cord, and nothing happened. Then, the other passengers started to notice what was happening, and some started to panic. This first scene draws me straight into the action; inaction is simply not an option. It also has so many unanswered questions that I haven’t ruled anything out. I make my way forward in the next scene, looking for a train company employee, but don’t find anyone until I reach the engine. In real life, I know nothing about trains except that they are normally late. So I assume that the engine and driver compartment is probably locked to stop drunken passengers wandering in and demanding that they turn this train around. An oracle question tells me that the lock is smashed, and I head forward to the driver’s compartment. Now I ask a few more questions, is the driver here? Yes. Are they OK? No. Were they murdered? Yes. Is the train guard here? Yes. Are they alive? No.

55 So this flurry of scene-setting questions has set up an interesting situation, but I haven’t even begun to touch on what is really going on. The power hook of the runaway train has launched the game but has not ruled anything in or ruled anything out. If you set up a game where the story arc is explicitly to prevent the gates of hell from opening and saving all life on the planet, that is quite a big goal to aim for. Unfortunately, there is a lot that can get between you and the campaign goal. A GM may well try and bend and twist events to make sure you stay on track and fudge a few rolls here and there to make sure their story plays out how they wanted. Your oracle has no agenda and doesn’t care about your story arc. Sometimes the big sweeping campaign goal can store up problems. Can you keep up the solo playing to see the campaign to the end? Can your character achieve the goal? If the answers are yes and yes, then great, go for it. However, if either answer is a no, then you may find it becomes frustrating to set up campaigns that you feel somehow failed to deliver.

56 19. The Importance of NPCs ithout NPCs, there is no role-playing. You don’t have other players to bounce Wideas off of, so without NPCs, your solo games become some kind of board game, moving pieces around and rolling dice, or a wargame with pieces on a map. NPCs are key to role-playing, but they are also more than that. They are the great villains of your stories, the innocents that need protecting, and the quest givers that show you the way to the next adventure. They also get to showcase the world in a way that a room description never could. The way they speak and what they speak about will tell you

57 volumes about the world they inhabit. This tip is about limiting their numbers. One of the superpowers of NPCs is being a recurring NPC. For example, if you need a fence to offload some loot, finding a fence the first time is a challenge, the second time, it is interacting with an NPC you already know. Not only do you know who to find, but you also know where they hang out, and that ties you into the setting. In some games, the first encounter may be a simple Streetwise skill test; the second time is pure role- playing. Above, I talked about mind maps. If you like mind maps, you can use them with your NPCs. Put their name in the center of the page and where they hang out, then everything they have told you and their known associates become nodes or bubbles attached to the NPC. When you talk to them the second time, you can bring out the mind map, and you can instantly see what the NPC knows. They help keep the NPCs memory straight, and these can hint at things that the NPC may have been working on or towards in the meantime while you were not around. The smaller your cast of characters, the more often you will interact with them, and the richer the history that will grow up between you and them.

58 If you visit six different fences to offload your dodgy gear and five different guard sergeants, and three different butlers, you are starting from scratch every time. Having a smaller cast of supporting characters makes the shock when you elevate one to the role of the villain even more shocking. This is not something I recommend for every game. Still, sometimes all the evidence will point to someone close to the action, a trusted courtier, a bodyguard, or someone operating from the shadows. Maybe your fence turns out to be a shadowy kingpin, and the fence role was just their way of keeping their finger on the pulse? I was playing Eldritch Tales, a D&D/Cthulhu mashup. I had an NPC who worked for the London Times and another local vicar in one of London’s suburbs. When I needed information that may be in the newspaper’s archives, I could telephone my contact at the paper and ask them for help. Sometimes we would meet up, and they would ask me for help. I was a private detective by profession. I would wait for my vicar friend at the back of the church at the end of a service and ask his advice. When I inevitably disappeared, I elevated the vicar to full player character rather than ending the game and started investigating my own

59 disappearance. I had kept lists of things that we had talked about, and those became my clues to find what had happened to me. Would I have had the same attachment to the NPC if I had bounced from one contact to another? I don’t think so. Eventually, the vicar discovered enough about my private detective to know about the reporter at the Times, and they could pool information. I still only played one character, now the vicar, but the strong bonds between the NPCs enabled me to carry on the game.

60 20. The Importance of Places want to add the same advice as I give for NPCs but for places. Fewer locations that you I have experienced multiple times will give you a richer experience than whistling through a dozen locations. If the action moves, then you must inevitably move with it. But if there is an option to reuse a location, I would always take it. For example, you could have a palace of a thousand rooms, but all you really need to know is the courtyard, the entrance to the grand hall, and possibly a private audience chamber. Just this limited snapshot of palace life is enough to convey what the entire palace is like.

61 Still, it is easier to build up a detailed picture of these few locations and populate them with NPCs more than cardboard cutout placeholders. This is a technique often used by Film and TV directors. In essence, the Starship Enterprised could be commanded from anywhere on the ship. They had near-perfect comms onboard and voice- activated computers, but most of the action takes place on the bridge, transporter room, sickbay, or one or two generic private quarters. Entire planets are reduced to maybe two locations, summarised as inside and outside. One scene shows off the landscape and then gets the away team inside to talk to the much more interesting NPCs. This is harder to do on a dungeon crawl or a hex crawl, but outside of those situations, if it is plausible to revisit the same inns, taverns, markets, and merchants, I recommend it. You can refresh your memory of what you know and add more details to what has already been established at each return.

62 21. building Villains I o you really want to know who is the big bad in your game? Does your character Dknow? If you think that the answers are probably a no to these questions, you could consider an ‘over the hill’ method of villain building. I had a character that looked around a village tavern, and a grizzled, one-eyed mountain trapper caught my eye. He looked at me as if I had offended him, but I am sure I had never seen him before. I went to the bar to arrange a room for the night, and this mountain man came up behind me and tried to slit my throat by grabbing me from behind. The fight was short and violent. His bulk and hunting

63 knife versus my martial arts and magic. Three days later, different village, a similar inn, two women clad in leather armor with swords at their hip tried to block the exit and drawing their swords, they tried to kill me. The end result was the same. I was starting to think that something was up! Roll on a few more encounters, and I managed to get one of my would-be killers to talk. They had been hired by a wealthy merchant in the previous city to stop me from getting to the port town, which was my next destination. I had a name, but unless I turned around and went back, there was not much I could do about it. I did know that these people had been paid to kill me. How did I know, because the oracle had given me a cryptic clue like “wealth increases peril”. So my interpretation said that wealth was the merchant, and increases peril meant that the merchant was using their money to make life more dangerous for me. So that was where the hired killers came from. How did I decide there were killers in which inns? A simple reaction roll, One on a d6 said they were hostile, Six said they were friendly, and shades of reaction in between. I would ask if there

64 was anyone that looked out of place, and on a yes, I would get some inspiration and then roll a reaction roll. Later, when I was in the port, I researched the merchant and discovered that they were a minor member of a powerful alliance, one that was rumored to be involved in smuggling. And so this game went on from the immediate problem being the hired thugs to the merchant to the criminal gang, to a crime boss. As I crested each hill, I could see the next hill to climb, the next, bigger villain by identifying who my immediate adversary was. In effect, I was moving up the chain of command to get to the head of the criminal organization. The chain of command ended when it felt like I had reached the top. Of course, that was a subjective decision, but when it felt like I had solved the problem, the problem was solved. This method is great for sandbox-style games. There was no connection between the one-eyed mountain man and the assassin sisters until I created it. I thought there was a connection, so I tested it using the oracle. I didn’t even do it directly. It was several encounters later that I asked a surviving attacker and discovered the merchant. Then I could retrospectively fit the encounters into the new idea. What had, in essence, been random

65 encounters then became events in a bigger plot. The sandbox style of play is one where you can go anywhere and do anything and find adventures along the way. There is often an overarching plot, but you can choose to ignore it or engage with it. Sometimes the plot will sweep you up as events come to a head; other times, it becomes little more than a backdrop. Retrofitting villainous plans to fit what are really random events is a way of making sense of the world and giving you the freedom to take on the villain or evade. You are under no obligation to follow any set path.

66 22. Building Villains II s part of your prep, come up with two or three potential villains. All you need is Awho and why; the how will come out in play if it is not obvious. As you play, you may find that the evolving facts you have established rule out one or more of the ‘prime suspects’. You can actively try to eliminate suspects until all you are left with is the last one. That must be your villain, or you can use a process of villainous promotion. In a villainous promotion, if you solve the mystery too soon, or what you think will be the final confrontation turns out to be a bit disappointing, to demote the character that you just defeated to minion or lieutenant. One of the others is then promoted to the real villain.

67 You can keep this up until you have a satisfying ending to your adventure/campaign, or you cannot think of a suitable replacement villain that could possibly have means, motive, and opportunity. I think these for ‘power behind the throne’ style intrigues. Is it the sultan that is attempting to manipulate events, or the vizier whispering poison in the sultan’s ear, or is the vizier the agent of the sultana’s mother? Maybe the sultana’s mother is being deceived by an evil djinn? This method works best in games with an investigative style, and where the potential villains can be identified early, even if you do go on to add more suspects through play. It can feel like a little manipulated if the technique is used to extend a game just because the boss fight was disappointing. In a political or crime based game, it can feel brilliant threading the evidence all the way back to the very last possible suspect.

68 23. Building Villains III his tip is about building satisfying villains. It has been said that the best villains are Tdoing bad things for the right reasons. Very few villains consider themselves to be evil. They may consider themselves to be more intelligent than everyone else or more entitled. They may believe in the rule of the strongest, but that is nearly always tempered with the idea that the weak being ruled over is in their best interests. Having a really great motivation for your villains make them easier to play and easier to decide what they would do in a given situation. In essence, villains have a very clear morality. They believe they are right, and what they are doing is ‘the only way’. Not only are they right, but they are morally in the right. They can rationalize killing millions of people if the world is overpopulated, or they would have spent their lives in poverty or misery.

69 I also like to have a clear connection between my villains and my heroes. Of course, we all know who Luke’s father was; that may be a cliché, but it works. Your villain maybe your greatest rival, one who sees you as out to destroy their reputation or as a misguided soul who needs to be shown the error of your ways. I find that my villains often end up being the person I believed was my helper, mentor, or quest- giver. I suspect that this says more about me than it does about my villains, but this revelation is never overtly intentional; it is just what the oracle answers seem to suggest. This could be a consequence of playing many modern and near-future games. I get fewer dragons and demons to play with. I was playing Ashen Stars, a sci-fi investigative game. I wanted a complete sandbox and had no preconceived ideas about what I wanted to do with the game. I just let the oracle make the choices. What started as a missing person became politically motivated, and that became a conspiracy, and when the finger started to point to the colonies mayor, their prime accomplice was the liaison officer who I had been dealing with all along. So there again was my recurring treacherous NPC close to my character.

70 24. Short is Sweet arlier I talked about one-shot adventures. I often start with a new game with a one- Eshot adventure to get a feel for how the game plays. Once I get a grip on the system, I may carry on with my first character, building off the one-shot game, or start with a new character now I have a better grasp of the game. Most of my campaigns are rather short. In my group games, we tend to run multiple year-long campaigns. The longest ran from 1985 to 2004 with the same characters and group of players. My current Rolemaster campaign has been running for seven years.

71 Compare that to my solo games, and they seem extremely short. Some come down to five or six sessions; others may stretch out to three months, but rarely any longer. This is not because of character death, or not every time, and I pick up some of these games again. Short campaigns that reach a satisfying ending are easier to achieve with a shorter campaign. If you had a central theme, it is easier to stay focused on that theme. If you are pursuing a single supervillain, it is easier to maintain the sense of momentum for weeks than it is over a period of years. Ultimately, running a successful game and having the closure of defeating the villain or dying heroically in a final showdown is more satisfying than having a year-long game that leaves you feeling burned out or simply not caring if your character lives or dies. Some longer games get hit by interruptions because of real-life getting in the way, becoming harder to pick up again, and just fizzling out. If you haven’t played a character for months, and your notes suddenly don’t make as much sense as you thought they did, then it is easier to start again than to pick up the pieces. I find it a more positive experience to play six or eight shorter campaigns in a year than one that

72 may never get finished. Different games lend themselves to different lengths of campaign. I find games with levels, like D&D and Rolemaster, fit neatly into a series of shorter mini-campaigns that have the character come back for different adventures. The levels and leveling up become natural bookends to mark convenient places to finish a mini-game. Progress between levels is easily marked off in terms of experience points. Games with incremental character progression and very crunchy rules, like Hero System or GURPs, suit campaigns that are one adventure long. That puts all the bookkeeping beyond the end of the game, and you can play an entire campaign without worrying about it. Then you can decide if you want to bring that character back for a second or third outing. This could be just my personal preference, but I rarely ever reuse characters from horror games. I quite enjoy Delta Green, Alien RPG, and Eldritch Tales, but it feels a little odd to have staved off multiple apocalypses. So for me, it is new horror, new character. Tales from the Loop, by Free League, is naturally set up this way. Your character starts as a young teenager, and each adventure takes place during the summer vacation. One adventure means you

73 are one year older, and you retire your character when they are no longer a teenager. The short campaign is a natural progression from the one-shot. If you find short campaigns feel limiting, you can always expand the scope until you find your happy place.

74 25. Oracle World Building efore I discovered solo oracles, I used to fail at world-building on a grand scale. I Bused to think you needed a world history that fitted into the lifespans of elves and went back to the creation. I would get maybe two thousand words into the world lore and then dry up. My worlds were ghastly and probably boring. Post solo, and I can create a world I want to play in, in a matter of minutes. The process is rather simple. Start with a really top-level yes-no question. This should be something that will literally change the world. Does magic exist? That is a good one. Now, ask your

75 oracle. Tossing a coin is adequate for this exercise, but your favorite oracle is the best option. Having asked the oracle, interpret the answer. Some may be blindingly obvious, some may require a bit of explanation. Now you ask a second question as a follow-up to the first. The objective is to drill down to the details of your new setting to a level where you can picture it and play in it. The list will be short and to the point and easy to recap each time you pick up your game. If you have a question that should really be a three-way choice, such as historical, modern, or future setting, you can split that in two, choosing between historical or modern and the winner of that contest and future. Or you can just roll a dice, which is probably easier. Here are some example questions. 1. Is there magic in the world? No 2. Is this a fantasy world? Yes 3. Are there monsters? Yes 4. Do people know there are monsters? No 5. Is religion important? No 6. Is the country at peace? No 7. Is the foe human? No 8. Is the foe elven? Yes 9. Are elves civilized? No

76 10. Do dwarves exist? Yes 11. Is the government a monarchy? Yes 12. Is it ruled by a king? No 13. Is the ruler a warrior queen? Yes 14. Is the country winning the war? No 15. Is the capital a city? No 16. Is the capital a castle? Yes 17. Is it under siege? No 18. Is disease rife? Yes 19. Is surrender likely? No 20. Are knights noble? Yes The intention is to drill down but only asking questions that are important to me. So, as I went down the list, I asked a question, considered the answer, then formulated the next question. Your list of questions will be unique to you. For example, if the very first answer had been a yes, I would have asked more questions about the nature of magic. By the time I reached the end of the list, I had pictured an Arthurian Guineveve leading an army of knights against a horde of barbaric elves. You do not have to start from a blank slate. For example, if I wanted to play a WWII occult horror game, I could take all of that as assumed and then asked questions about finer details. I could even imagine it as a briefing given to the character, as an officer detailed exactly what the situation was.

77 This world-building exercise builds the world around you and your character. You only get answers and clarification on things that you care about. I stopped at 20 questions but I could have carried on until I had constructed the first scene and was ready to play.

78 26. Oracle Mashups racle mashups are a variation on oracle world-building. You take two ideas, ideas Othat are not normally associated together and try and combine them. An example would be goblin hordes mashed up with Sherlock Holmes. Now you can use the yes-no approach but rather than starting with a blank canvas, you have two topics that you can ask about. You can ask specific questions about each individually or how they interact. We are still world-building but now with preconceptions. You are asking questions in an attempt to define your place in this new world.

79 You are adding details to your very broad concept. I find it works best if you alternate which idea you are asking about at first, but as soon as you get something that interests you, dive into it and follow where the thread leads. Keep going for as long as you feel you need, or until you have a clear idea of the game you will play and how your character sees the world. In my Goblin-Holmes mashup, there are some things that I just know that I want to have in it. I want this to be 19th Century London and Holmes to live at 221B Baker Street. Beyond that, most things are up for grabs. Here is my mashup. Again your questions and answers would be different, and as soon as you get a different answer to me, the follow-up questions would start to diverge. 1. Were the Goblins Summoned magically? No 2. Were they discovered? Yes 3. Underground? No 4. In a jungle? Yes 5. Are they technologically advanced? Yes 6. More advanced than the 19th Century? Yes 7. Do they have magic? Yes 8. Is their technology magical? No 9. Is their magic shamen-based? Yes 10. Are they war-like? Yes 11. Are they winning? Yes

80 12. Have humans learned magic? No 13. Have we adopted goblin technology? No 14. Do we know how it [tech] works? Yes 15. Is it [tech] demonic? Yes 16. Is England under threat? No 17. Is Europe under threat? Yes 18. Have the goblin hordes reached Paris? No 19. Have I ever seen a goblin? No 20. Have I met Holmes? Yes As the world’s Jungles are in South and Central America, West Africa, and South East Asia, given the time period, it would make the most sense to place the goblins in America. In addition, there would have been regular transatlantic crossings at the time. I could have rolled for this, but as I know very little about 18th Century West Africa or Asia. I don’t want to be researching everything as I play. It makes the game more viable to place the origins of the goblins in South America and the European threat as coming from Portugal and Spain. I have been to Spain many times, so I can now draw on my own experiences when picturing locations. I can start the yes-no process again to build an opening scene and a mystery, but I would also bring in my other oracles to get ideas from outside my own inspiration. Finally, once I have created a mashup setting, I like to look back over it and decide which game system is best suited for this world. In this case,

81 I would want a 19th Century setting, modern or future technology, and magic all in one coherent system. The one game that immediately stands out would be Call of Cthulhu in this case, as it has settings for the 1880s, right up to the modern-day. Alternatives could possibly be Space 1889, D&D plus d20 Modern, or D&D plus Gamma World, just to name a few.

82 27. Oracles & Muses ntil recently, I referred to the tools that give you the yes-no answer as an oracle Uand the tools that give you more long- form answers as inspiration prompts. They are, after all, intended to inspire your imagination. A solo game designer used the term Muse for this second category, and I think it fits rather well. The problem is that other game designers use different names for the same things. Probably the most popular solo game to date is called Ironsworn. In that game, every random table is called an oracle. The logic is that each table is intended to answer a specific question. Oracles answer questions, and therefore they are oracles.

83 Solo players also call themed tables generators. If you want a quick tavern name, then you would roll on a tavern name generator. I tend to think of generators as having multiple columns rolled on individually to create parts of an answer. If taverns are typically two words like the King’s Head or Talking Lion, you can have a two-column table, as long as all the combinations give you a viable tavern name. The oracle was originally called an oracle because although it gives you an answer, it requires interpretation, much like the oracle at Delphi. So, a random table of wandering monsters could be an oracle, a muse, a generator, or a random table. I rather like the name muse as it is in keeping with the greek inspiration of the oracle. It doesn’t really matter what name is used as long as you understand that they are all the same thing, ways to give you an answer to your question.

84 28. The Adjective Ladder his idea comes from a game, or more accurately a game engine, called FUDGE, Tthe Freeform Universal Do-it-Yourself Gaming Engine. The ladder was later incorporated into FATE, which became much more successful. More people seem to know what FATE dice are than FUDGE dice. FUDGE uses adjectives to describe both skill levels and difficulties. To shoot a cigarette from between a bandits lips may require a GREAT shot, to hit a barn door from the same distance would succeed even on a POOR roll. Your skills are described in the same way, using these adjectives. You could be a GREAT marksman or a POOR negotiator. FUDGE dice are marked with three faces, pluses move your result up the adjective ladder, minuses move your result down the adjective ladder and blank faces mean no change. You roll the four dice and see what your performance was like. Here is the ladder. SUPERB GREAT GOOD FAIR MEDIOCRE POOR TERRIBLE 85 A POOR negotiator could roll four pluses and make a GOOD argument, or maybe a net result of one minus would have them make a TERRIBLE hash of the negotiations. As long as all skills, abilities, and challenges are described on the same ladder, you don’t actually need numbers. There is a lot more to FUDGE, but the ladder is a very good world-building and NPC-building tool. Suppose you created a game world using some of the techniques above. In that case, you may not know what game system you will be using when you create the key NPCs or legendary weapons, or iconic monsters. Most role-playing games use numbers to define strengths, weaknesses, and abilities. However, until you decide what game you are playing, you cannot add those numbers to your world-building. If we take FAIR to be perfectly average, you can now easily assign values to the adjectives to match just about any game. In D&D terms, SUPERB may be +3, Great +2, and Good +1. In Call of Cthulhu, each level may be +10 to a skill or -10 for the lower end of the ladder. The numbers only matter when you need to make a roll. When you are world-building, you can

86 simply use adjectives to keep all aspects in relative proportion. I always capitalize the adjectives to differentiate between a POOR blacksmith who isn’t very skillful and a poor blacksmith, one with very little money. The adjective ladder is a system-neutral shorthand for any bundle of skills and abilities. For example, a GREAT swordsman could be a 9th level fighter, meaning that every aspect of that NPC is elevated, rather than simply increasing a single proficiency bonus or skill. You can pack a lot of meaning in just one word. I often use two statements for an NPC, one for their strongest trait and one for a weakness or character flaw, but that is because I like flawed characters and NPCs.

87 29. Random Generators hen I am talking about random generators, I am referring to the multi- Wstage tables where you roll once for each part, and all the rolls build a ‘thing’. Creating generators can be pretty quick and easy. Easy enough to do during the middle of your game if you think you will use it a second or third time. My favourite dice is the d6, so my default is nearly alwasy a d6 table. If I wanted to create a random swamp encounter generator, I could start with six swampy monsters. 1. Bullywug 2. Crocodile 3. Lizardfolk 4. Giant Frog 5. Poisonous Snakes 6. Yuan-Ti This table is little more than a wandering monster table, so we need to add a second aspect. 88 Assuming that all monsters are not spending their lives lying in wait for characters to attack, we can give them an activity option. 1. Hunting 2. Basking/relaxing 3. Building/nesting 4. Fleeing 5. Arguing/fighting 6. Mating Now, two d6 rolls give us something for the creatures to be doing, andthis could impact their perception checks or reaction rolls. But where do we meet these creatures? We can add a third layer for the environment. 1. Pool of water 2. A bare tree trunk 3. A stand of reeds 4. A water channel 5. A dry mound 6. A rock Our swamp is now not just a bland mono- terrain. It has features. As a test drive I rolled 6, 3, and 1. That gives me a Yuan-Ti, building a shelter next to a pool of water. A second attempt, and I roll 5, 4, and 6. This gives me poisonous snakes fleeing behind a rock. This is quite interesting. What do snakes flee from? Is this encounter a foreshadowing of a bigger threat? Seeing as that is the far more interesting answer, that is what I would choose. 89 Another interpretation could be that I simply see the tail of a big snake disappearing behind a big rock. That doesn’t sound so exciting, but if I was desperate for somewhere to take a short rest, then the rock may have been a good place to get some shelter from the wind or get out of the water. But, unfortunately, having a snake nearby is not that relaxing! These tables and aggregated generators are quick enough to make that once you are into the flow, you can create them on the fly. You can have a generator for when you are in the swamp, then make something for when you are in the fringes of the swamp, then another one for along the river that feeds into the swamp, and so on. In a game I played recently, I was sneaking around a castle. First, I created generators for around the courtyards at night, then for the night inside the keep in the servant areas, then at night in the public halls and spaces. The nature of what I encountered changes as I moved from area to area. I saved each generator with my notes for each area, and I could reuse them. In this case, it was while I was sneaking in and then when I was sneaking out. If you think you will reuse a location, and I have recommended reusing locations, you will get to use your generators again and again.

90 30. Organise your Tools n theory, you can solo play with your dice and a game so simple that it fits on a page or even Iintegrated into the character sheet. In reality, in my experience, we end up using many different resources. We have our character sheet, sheets for NPCs, game notes, rulebooks, your oracle, and then various random tables and muses. You can then add the dice, maybe a GM screen, and a notebook, tablet, or PC to keep notes. I also like card decks as tools. You can easily create as much paper and mess on a table as a group game with six players. It will pay you back many times over to organize your game notes and assets. If you have a book of