Exercise your creativity whenever possible; dice and other mechanics should always come second to your imagination.
This post assumes that you have a system you’re using already for the basic structure of your adventure, i.e. a set of rules that help construct the world that you’ll create. That topic is too vast to cover this week, but some examples include, Ironsworn and Starforged, Scarlet Hero’s, Solitary Defilement (Solo MÖRK BORG engine) to name a few.
Some highlights, for lesser known systems would be 12 Years, which is an all in one system. As in it contains the rules and a game with a set goal. It’s highly replayable and quite fun. Another that seems to have flown under the radar if you’re into sci-fi style games would be Across a Thousand Dead Worlds, which is a self contained system with loads of tables, a GM emulator, monster, planet, and adventure creation that can be done on the fly, and a whole lot more packed into a single hardback. See my extensive review for more details.
My purpose here is not to reinvent those wheels, plenty of great systems already exist. My point here is more to assist with planting the seeds of adventure, and open the doors to amazing new worlds.
Yesterday, I got an email from Trever of Me Myself and Die about his up and coming, The Broken Empires. I’ve been keeping up with his various episodes introducing the mechanics and I’m quite excited to check it out.
Trever in his latest email has the following to say about how he learned to solo play, via his love of Axis and Allies:
“…one day, I set up the board for a new game, and just started playing by myself, one turn at a time, going from Russia, to Germany, to Britain, to Japan, and to the USA - playing what I would eventually call a “self game”. I found that when I would switch turns, my mind would immediately alter strategies, and I would act as though I had no idea what the “other players” were going to do. In other words, I played every country as honestly as I could, with no insider information about the other countries’ plans to bias my current choices.”
This is the same method that I employ when playing Wargames, RPG’s or any other type of board game as a solitaire player and I think it’s the best approach I’ve come across.
I am all the players and I work and plan diligently so that each other player (NPC) is as successful as possible in reaching their goals.
As some of you may know, my major influence for playing solo actually comes from the ‘priority list’ used in FIREPOWER (Avalon Hill 1984), I wrote about them in a previous blog post, Wargame mechanics and RPGs Part II. The seven priorities listed work really well for most wargames and even for combat in just about any RPG. Overall those ‘priorities’ all sort of say the same thing, ‘make the best possible choice’ for the NPC, and of course allowing the dice to make choices is just as important.
I like to use the NPC’s personality to influence my choices, be it a monster or a random NPC I just met in the forest, even a zombie has a sense of personality, or at least some form of expected behavior that can be interpreted as such.
As part of my Town Fabrication Machine, you can also roll up a personality if you don’t already have one in mind or one is not presented. Part two is in the works it’s, it’s almost done and will cover residential and areas and the people who live there.
It’s perfectly fine to go with whatever story you might be developing in your mind as well, in fact I’d suggest that over any table or existing mechanic. Exercise your creativity whenever possible; dice and other mechanics should always come second to your imagination. That’s rule number one and the only one that really matters. The more you allow your imagination to play the stronger your creative ability becomes, so even if you don’t think you’re creative, you can be. Trust in your self, let it happen, let the story fall out of you.
Go with all those crazy ideas and see where they lead.
Another big one that I find useful is some way of getting a simple yes no or maybe type of answers. This is already a part of many existing systems, but it’s worth mentioning anyway.
A really easy Yes or No Mechanic can be as simple as flipping a coin. I have a nickel (coin) that I’ve glued a piece of paper to, one side with a Yes, and No on the other. I find it quite handy for making quick choices.
“Does the ghost want me to follow it?” - No…
“Am I right in thinking that it wants me to retrieve something from the bottom of that well?” - Yes…
Another, slightly more complex method and my personal favorite is rolling a D20:
1-5: No, and…
6-10: No
11-15: Yes
16-20: Yes, and…
This gives a more varied result. Not only is it a Yes, but a Yes, and… Implying that not only is it affirmative there’s some additional unexpected detail(s). No longer is there just a standard No, but there’s the customizable No, and… which offers a twist to the story, good or bad.
And speaking of, where does one get these additional details when your creative muscle is having a cramp? There are various books filled with tables and plenty of websites with large lists and plenty of reviews and coverage about such things. However, I find Bibliomancy to be my go to more often than not. Bibliomancy, traditionally a form of divination and in its simplest form quite effective. One would ask a question, then open a book, in particular a sacred book, to a random page and read the first passage that their eyes fell upon. These words would then be interpreted in conjunction with the question.
While I’m not suggesting you use the divination aspects, rather, it’s quite useful for roleplaying, especially if you have some fantasy style fiction lying about. I’m a collector of interesting books and have quite large library of titles, but you don’t need a bunch of books, just about anything will do.
For example, let’s say you are in the basement of a haunted house, you’ve been wondering from room to room for about 20 minutes now, and getting no where. The rooms just repeat themselves over and over and you can’t seem to figure out how to continue. So you ask,
“How to I find my way out of this maze of rooms?”
Let’s consult Six of Swords by Carole Nelson Douglas, a book I just started reading. Keeping in mind my question, I open the book to a random page and begin reading from the first word that my eyes land on, start of a sentence or not.
“…possibilities, as do we."
"We? You forget, I am no ordinary Torloc. It was always held that I had access to the greatest powers of my kind—"
"And so you do." Kendric's mailed hand patted her white knuckles. "We'll go straight to the Circle of Rule and, between your witchery and my will, we'll delve to the bottom of this riddle." He spurred Willowisp into a burst of orange color and trotted ahead.
"And what of the riddle that has no bottom?" Irissa mused softly.”
How appropriate…
So what does all that mean? I’ll tell you what it means to me, but you really should try and figure out what it means to you first. Remember, practice using your creative muscle, here’s your chance… Not to put you on the spot of course, if nothing comes to mind, no big deal, simply try again with another passage.
For me personally, there are some key words or combinations of words that stood out as I read, and it’s those words that I rely on more than the actual context of what’s happening or being said in the book.
Possibilities
No ordinary
Straight to the circle
Bottom of this riddle
I take that the mean that there are many possibilities, and that they are not ordinary, so I should think outside the box. Straight to the circle to me means being inside a circle, in its center so I head to a corner that I think is the center where all the rooms connect. Bottom of this riddle to me sounds like I should check the floor in this location. I roll a d20 to see if I’m correct, if I tear up the carpet here, or peel away the floor boards, or maybe I feel some air or hear water running from under the bricks here in the corner.
D20 Result: 6 - No, there is nothing here.
This could be that I’m it the wrong corner, that my calculations are not correct, or maybe I’m in the wrong room. But it also said it was no ordinary answers and many possibilities, so instead I try to push my way into the corner, (d20: 19) and it gives, like a thick curtain it begins to give as I push my way through as if the room I was entering was giving birth to me, and I suddenly find myself in a tiny room that exists in the center of the other rooms, a circular staircase leads both upward and downward from here. The corner from which I came, gone.
I didn’t know there was gonna be stairs in there, or how large the room was until my creative muscle told me and you can of course use Bibliomancy to find that out also. Personally I’m dying to find out what’s beyond these stairs… I might just jump in at that point on my own later and find out. I do that a lot, I have many adventures that start somewhere in the middle quite often. I like it because it’s like a conversation that I just happened to hear in passing, or heard the very end of as I entered the room. Taken out of context, the imagination has lots of room to play with such things…
Seeding the start of an adventure using the same methods as above is simple as well. Open the a book and start reading at from the point at which your eyes fall upon the page, even if it’s in the middle of a sentence. Any book can be used and if you don’t believe me let’s try something random off my shelf…
This is from Volume Two (of three) of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. An ‘observers guide to the universe’, containing various data, locations, and maps of various types of space objects. Meant to assist amateur astronomers. I was once very into the night sky and spend many nights outdoors with a telescope or two.
Not the easiest book to use, I just happened to open to a page with notes, instead of a start chart or table of scientific jargon.
I don’t know about you, to me that entire passage was interesting. First off, there’s a Hydra, which is a multi headed dragon and or a genus of small freshwater hydrozoans, and is it’s also the the largest of the 88 modern constellations depending on the type of adventure you want to have. Not to mention, there appears to be groups of them in the SW, directly under a unique grouping of stars (asterism). May be the offspring of a larger beast.
A long lost symbol of the long forgotten people named after the Noctua, aka the ‘Night-Owl’ can be found there according to the maps you’ve acquired, which have star charts on the opposite sides. There are tiny holes in the map that when held up to the night sky, line up with certain major constellations. After combining all the maps together you can see the grand Owl Nebula in the center when they are aligned correctly. You should head to the the temple that is dedicated to the Owl Nebula first…
So there you have it, I picked a random title and was able to create a seed for an adventure, a good one at that. I’d like to see where that goes…
Speaking of divination, another tool is a set or sets of Tarot cards. You don’t have to know how to read them, although that does add to the experience. Many of are quite image heavy and shuffling them and laying out several in series can suggest a storyline quite easily. If not, try reading the traditional meanings and connect the dots. I do suggest avoiding some of the more traditional decks such as the Rider–Waite Tarot, as the symbolism is more geared towards beginning readers, and less flamboyant than some of the more modern designs. It’s still useable of course if that’s what you have on hand.
I think that’s it for this week. I hope everyone is having some amazing adventures and finding yourselves lost deep in dungeons, pockets filled with loot. Remember to take care of yourselves and be kind to one another.
…are you interested in ship combat mechanics? That’s all it took for me mark my calendar for 7.7.24. ‘Tephrotic Nightmares is an adventure campaign for MÖRK BORG written by Luke Gearing.’ - Distributed by Exalted Funeral. They had me at ship combat. Just a heads up in case that sort of thing does it for you.
Solitary Defilement should be compatible for solo players.
Appreciate you all and have an amazing week!