Playing any roleplaying game solo is always a challenge–there are a number of issues to overcome. These include all of the surprises and twists that a GM would provide. Solo from Zozer Games does a great job cracking that nut.
Made for Cepheus Engine
Solo was made to be played with Cepheus Engine, although it could be played with any 2d6 SF game, including Traveller. It is very tightly integrated with the mechanics of Cepheus, which makes play very clean.
Solo takes an interesting approach on solo play. It uses what it calls "fortune in the middle" to facilitate play. The basic idea is that a good deal of the action are bypassed by determining if the player’s actions succeed or fail. It is then up to the player to describe how that result came to be.
This is done with what Solo calls "the plan". The player decides on a discrete course of action–pilot his ship to the next star system, break into a dealer’s warehouse, etc. He then determines a reasonable degree of difficulty for his plan, then rolls to see if it succeeded. The player then has to go through the creative process of explaining what went right or what went wrong.
By doing things this way, the player is freed from coming up with a lot of the details of the surroundings and situation before anything takes place. The player explains how things ended up the way they did, good or bad. Some work still has to be done to determine enough information to make up the plan (whatever that is), but the player doesn’t have to go into detail about space station floor plans, NPC details, etc.
By doing things this way, the player is freed from coming up with a lot of the details of the surroundings and situation before anything takes place.
This works with Cepheus because it still has a lot of other rules that can be followed, without relying on the crunch of personal or space combat. Solo still follows the Cepheus process of character generation. It also provides a handful of different campaign themes that mesh with Cepheus’ careers. The player can still follow as much or as little of the details in Cepheus as they want.
Not For Everyone
Now, this may not be for everyone. If you are a player who wants that level of detail in playing out combats or other actions, you will probably not like Solo. Playing with the "fortune in the middle" take a conceptual change and a bit of getting used to.
For myself, I have to fight the habit to plan out everything in excruciating detail, from the setting to the ships to the characters and NPCs. Now, I still plan out the characters in a lot of detail, and the ship they crew, but not much else. I plan out an adventure until I feel it has enough detail to go through and create plans for, with room for randomness–but that’s it.
Great For Solo Play
All in all, Solo really is great for solo roleplaying. The mechanics do a great job of facilitating the action without the need for the constant question/answer of normal roleplaying, or the charts and dice rolls of other oracle-based systems.
It even has some mechanics for managing the relationships between party members, encouraging the player to have conflicts that can lead to story hooks in themselves. By not focusing on only one player, but a whole crew, Solo opens the player up to a number of options for story lines and adventures–not just one.
What I really like, though, is that it can be played just about anywhere. It really is more of a "theater of the mind" story-based system, as opposed to something you play with miniatures, etc. As long as you have notes with enough information about the adventure and a dice roller app on your phone, you can play the game. Come up with a plan, assigned difficulty–and see where the game takes you.
In the end, I really like Solo. It works with Cepheus and it solves a lot of the problems that occur when trying to play a roleplaying game solo. It’s worth checking out.
So–what are your experience with Solo? Do you have a better solution for solo gaming? Let me know!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on farjewel.com, on 4/1/2018.)
