One of the things I have been really trying to find over the years is a good way to do solo roleplaying. I have some ideas, but I need to work the details out.
The Problem I Have With Current Methods
Right now I have two main methods for solo roleplaying: the oracle method, such as that used by Mythic, and the fortune in the middle method, used by Zozer’s Solo. Both have good and bad parts, but I’m vaguely dissatisfied with them both.
The problem I have with the oracle approach is that it seems a little artificial. You ask questions like you would ask a Referee at the table, but it still requires interpretation and some amount of improvisation to move forward. The question/answer part does maintain some surprise, but it just feels like it takes too long and is just plain cumbersome.
The other end of the spectrum is the Solo method. That method cuts out a lot of the dice rolling, and has an entire scene or section boil down to a couple dice rolls–were you successful or did you fail, and how successful or how much did you fail. Once you know that, the player then makes up the story to explain the results.
The problem with the Solo method is that it bypasses all combat and other situations that require crunch. It’s great in storytelling, and is very fast playing–and sometimes that is all you want or need. But sometimes I want the crunch of spellcasting or combat.
What I Want
And that leads me to the fact that I still want a system that handles combat, but is also faster moving than the yes/no oracle question method. I also really like the fortune in the middle system with Solo. It fits with how I want to do solo roleplaying, and is quick and really intuitive to me.
What I am missing is to be able to play out the combats and other situations that may require more dice rolls than Solo would provide. What also I want on top of all that is a way to solo play that supports mysteries and unknown protagonists. I have been working on a way to do that, but am not completely satisfied with it just yet.
What I Am Trying
So what I am trying to do is use Solo for the majority of the process, then cut over to Blades & Black Magic for situations that require crunch. For SF gaming, I will probably just keep using Solo for personal combat, but switch over to Full Thrust for ship to ship combat.
For mysteries or situations where I want an unknown antagonist, I will use my own method for determining the bad guy. I need to keep working on that method to make it simpler and less intrusive.
All this requires me to sit down and just do some more gaming. I’ll end up doing a blend of fantasy and SF/modern/horror gaming in the next couple months, so we’ll see. But if I figure anything better out, I will definitely be posting it here!
Marko ∞
