May 28, 2025 • 37 mins
Bonus Episode - Solo Podsters Roundtable 2: Tale of the Manticore is a hybrid solo-actualplay D&D game and full production audiodrama. I use Dungeons & Dragons B/X (OSR). This is a dark fantasy tale made for a mature audience.
Want to listen without the ads while helping the show? Join the Supporters' Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tale-of-the-manticore-a-dark-fantasy-dungeons-dragons-audiodrama--6276878/support
Featured in this Roundtable:
Carl White of The Lone Adventurer:
https://theloneadventurer.podbean.com/
PJ of The SoloRolePlayers Podcast & A Wasteland Story:
https://open.spotify.com/show/27e2k5RsmLLmB3BD0WPUTq
https://awastelandstory.podbean.com/
Robin of Stories From the First Watch:
https://firstwatchstories.podbean.com/
**And please check out our new network website: https://soloroleplayersnetwork.com/
Want to listen without the ads while helping the show? Join the Supporters' Club: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tale-of-the-manticore-a-dark-fantasy-dungeons-dragons-audiodrama--6276878/support
Featured in this Roundtable:
Carl White of The Lone Adventurer:
https://theloneadventurer.podbean.com/
PJ of The SoloRolePlayers Podcast & A Wasteland Story:
https://open.spotify.com/show/27e2k5RsmLLmB3BD0WPUTq
https://awastelandstory.podbean.com/
Robin of Stories From the First Watch:
https://firstwatchstories.podbean.com/
**And please check out our new network website: https://soloroleplayersnetwork.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Today we are back with another in this series of
special bonus episodes where we hold a roundtable discussion with
some of the best players in solo RPG podcasts. Today,
I've got three more of my fellow podsters here to
discuss solo RPGs. They all have different approaches and styles,
so it's sure to be a good talk with me.
Are Carl, Robin and PJ. But I'll let them introduce themselves.
(00:40):
Let's dive in. Okay, we have our round table number
two in progress right now, and let's meet the people
at the table. Carl, want to tell us about yourself
and your show?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Sure? Hi John, Hi folks, my name's Carl White. I
record a podcast sono podcast called The Lone Adventurer. I'm
doing that for just over sixty episodes now, kind of
on the narrative audiobook style for half of it, and
then the other half is an explanation of how those
events came about by going through the rules and the
(01:16):
sort of solo RPG mechanisms.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, thank you, Carol, PG over to you.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I'm PJ. I'm an Ozzie stuck in Germany and I
do the Wasteland Story podcast and the Solo role Players podcast,
the former of which is also a narrative based thing
with some behind the scenes play of how I actually
get to the story. And the Solo role Players podcast,
I interview people in the community. A lot of people
(01:41):
who are on this call right now have been on
my show, and all of the others will be one
day soon. And I get books off my shelf and
play them without knowing the rules. Is kind of the
gimmick for that one.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Fantastic And finally, Robin, tell us about yourself and your show.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hi, I'm Robin. I'm also from the UK. My show
is called Stories from the First Watch. It's a pretty
traditional sword and saucery type old score revival audio drama
with game elements, so much familiar to people who have
listened to your own podcast and Legend of the Bones
as well. Again, a mixture of kind of creative writing,
(02:20):
audio storytelling and game mechanics kind of underpinning that as well,
so familiar to people who enjoy your own podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Jump awesome, So let's move on. I'm going to start
with one of the same questions from round table one,
which is the question that I see most on solo
player Reddit, and that is how do you actually start?
Let's maybe take it from a perspective less of making
a show and rather playing a game. It's going to
(02:48):
be easier for some of us than others, maybe, but
I think a lot of people would like to know
how do you actually start a game? You know, if
you're not going to make content, fine, but how do
I actually start? So let's begin with PGA maybe for
this one, PGA, what does it look like when you're
just going to start a game for your own pleasure,
not necessarily to record.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So for me, I think I've sort of refined a
bit of a technique over the last little while, purely
because I'm getting so many games off my shelves and
playing new games all the time, which is really exciting.
It's also a challenge obviously you're sort of learning new
rules and getting things mixed up. But for me, something
I found that really really helps is to pick up
the book maybe do so whatever the system is. For example,
(03:30):
the last thing I did was Shadow Dark. Have enough
of a go over the rules so you know the
kind of field you're working in, right, But then what
I want to do before I even create a character?
And a lot of this was heavily influenced slash stolen
from Debora, from Geek Gamers, and from her fantastic book
Solo game Master's Guide. And I will just flick through,
and I will just stop at pages that looks like
(03:51):
there's something interesting there, so whether that's some cool item
or weapon, or whether that's some god or some area,
some city like that, and then anything that catches my eye,
I will stop and I'll read a little bit about
that and let these sort of the image of that
whatever it is, form in my head, and then keep
sort of flicking until I have an idea for a
(04:12):
character type that fits in that world that I'm building
in my head, and a little loose setup of what
an opening scene or opening story might be. Now, often
that goes off the rails then and we end up
doing something completely different. But I feel like doing it
that way really grounds me, feeling like I'm already in
the world that makes sense and my character makes sense
(04:33):
in that world, rather than creating a character, which a
lot of people I think, I mean, that's the natural
way to do it, especially the way IRPG books are
laid out.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
The character creation.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Is there, and then you can create a character and
not have that make sense in the world, you know,
So for me that's it seems counterintuitive, but that has
been a really fantastic method that I use slash stole,
and I really recommend that you try it.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Really good advice.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
PG.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We're going to go to Robyn next Robin. If you're
starting a game, where do you begin?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So in my case, I came into this kind of
aspect of the hobby from the kind of Choose your
Own adventurer books which were really popular in the early
eighties onwards. So I had that was kind of my
only real experience of sort of solo roleplays, as it were.
(05:24):
So my own game came around sort of as a
development from that. In the during the pandemic, I started
to write to Choose your Own Adventure and eventually got
myself into such a model with plot lines and so
on that I've kind of temporarily put it on ice.
But what I did do was take a lot of
the elements I created from that as starting points for
locations and potential starting plot lines, and when I came
(05:49):
to deciding to record the show, I had these kind
of this this bank of kind of information like of
that I'd already kind of created, which gave me a
nice resource to begin with. I found mythic GM emulator
really helpful once I'd created the characters in a standard way.
So I would create the characters by the usual method
(06:10):
of rolling the stats and then working out which race
and class they would most fit into, and then I
would have to work out, you know, what, what are
these characters' motives? Why are they in this world? And
that's where the event meaning elements of mythic would come in,
sort of giving me a sort of starting motivation, and
that was really helpful in creating backstories for them and
(06:31):
also sort of feeding the subsequent storylines as they went along.
I would also say that, you know, with this kind
of bank of information I'd already got in mind, that
kind of gives me us something to aim for within
the general thread of the stories, so I don't feel
like I'm completely wandering in the dark. I feel like
(06:51):
there's something I want my characters to ultimately get to.
But the obviously the journey on the way is the
bit where the fun is, where their actions of the
GM or myself in this case, can can sort of
throw curve balls in and make new quests, admissions, and
so on. So I think it's a combination really of
that kind of existing creative writing that I've been working
(07:13):
on and the gameplay elements.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Really thanks Rowan Carl. Finally, how do you start a
solo game?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's one of two options, right, it's character first or
it's setting first. You know, just like PG mentioned, that
whole setting first approach can be really effective if you're
not quite sure what you're going to play, just pulling
down a setting book. I listened to a podcast episode
that PG you recorded with Tana Pigeon, a creator of
Mythic recently the Mythic magazine fifty, which was wonderful for this. Basically,
(07:44):
you take an existing adventure, you roll an adventure seat,
you roll a page in that book, you ort a
location on that page, You take that little snippet, and
then you do it again, maybe do it a third time.
Combine those things together. That gives you your starting set
up for the adventure, and then you build your characters
to fit whatever you've rolled. Really nice way of doing it,
and a really effective method I've found across many games
(08:08):
is start where the action is. Don't start having people
with people having a chat in a tavern. Make sure
that you're in the middle of a combat. You've got
a protagonist and antagonist that's going to throw up ideas
for you that you can hook into as you play.
So it's a really good idea to start in media
ass However, I have played character first as well, where
(08:29):
I've come to a game where I've got a really
clear idea of somebody that i want to play rather
than the setting, and that can equally work. You can
use tools like the Tome of Adventure Design. There's a
bunch of these sorts of tools. There's stuff in the
back of some of the the D and D books.
There's plenty of tools that you can use to roll
up sort of random encounters and again, you take that
(08:51):
current you've created, you roll up at some sort of combat,
some sort of location, throw them into it, and a
where you go.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I love that starting on action, I think is fantastic advice. Okay,
let's get to some of the questions that are going
to be new for this roundtable. And I should say
that the questions are supplied by PJ from conversations you've
had on Reddit. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So I put out a call just out on Reddit
to say if people had questions, because I'm constantly getting
emails with questions, and so I put out a call
on Reddit, thinking that one day we could do a
podcast about it and answer these questions. I got a
bunch of responses, and also a few from the patrons
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for collecting
These are really good questions. Let's get into them. And
I'm going to start this round of questions with Robin,
and the question will be when you're playing solo, do
you record yourself with pen, paper, voice recorder, word processor?
And is that even important? Robin, any thoughts on this?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I think it is important. So how I go about
it is I generally start my first draft the game
itself in a a for gridded notebook which I can
use to make sketches of locations. I use it to
bullet point events. I use it for dice roll so
(10:11):
I have my own kind of personal system of kind
of symbols for the dice rolls or for actions, that
kind of thing. I tend to write out my gaming
sessions by hand and play along as I go, making
notes in the margins and so on. Once it gets
to the second draft, which is kind of writing the
more of the script element I tied it up. I
(10:31):
tend to have to do that quite quickly because my
handwriting is really bad, so I have to try and
do it before my memory goes. So that's when I
will sort of write out a flesh out of the
story and then realize, all there's gaps here, or maybe
that could have been done a bit differently. Well about
if I tried that instead, So I would then perhaps
redo a couple of things and see where that takes me.
So my setup would be the notebook. I'd have my
(10:53):
laptop as well. I'd have my dice. Unfortunately, I don't
have miniatures at the moment, so I have to use
various coins, which can be irritating. But I yeah, I
have my various resources, so I use physical copies of
my books just so I don't have to, you know,
faff around with various pds and so on. So I
have my GM emulator, which is why I use quite frequently.
(11:13):
I have some various kind of generation kind of books,
so things like Roll and Play, which is a really
good resource, and obviously I have that I use. My
system is basic fantasy role playing, so I use that
book as well, so that's what my gaming session looks like.
And then obviously once that's recorded, I will then take
that jumple of notes and start writing the script element.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Tell us a little bit about role and play, because
that's one that I haven't heard of.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
So it's a fairly abstract one. So it has lovely
kind of it's basically a book of kind of random tables,
but it goes into huge granular detail so you can
sort of it has random tables for particular terrain, so
you've got things like swamping counters, jungle encounters, desert encounters,
et cetera. It has PC name generators and motivation generators.
(12:05):
It has random events that you can kind of roll up.
Some of them are quite kind of I would say,
a little bit twee and aimed at more of a
fivey crowd perhaps, but I can use them and sort
of adjust them to my needs if necessary, and I
find that's really useful. Rather than sometimes having quite a
dry list of random encounters whatever in some of the
(12:26):
rule books, it's quite nice to have these kind of
sight more thought out encounters to look through.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Very cool. Yea, I haven't heard of that one, I
think we will ask Carl that same question, what do
you use, if anything, to record your sessions? And let's
add that secondary part of are there any materials that
you would particularly like to highlight that maybe people haven't
heard of?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Sure, so I'm perhaps a bit of an outlier with this.
Everything I do is digital. So from the moment I
start to well, when I start a game session, I've
got a batch file on my desktop which I hit
and that launches I think eight chrome tabs. It opens
my characters in notion, it opens my rule book PDFs,
(13:09):
everything just sort of opens up. I spread them across
three screens, and I work almost exclusively from that. Obviously
I use physical dice. I'm not a complete sociopath. But
everything else is digital.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I was gonna say anything.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
So I tend to launch everything, start with the mechanics,
do a scene with mythic, do all the roles, and
once I've done the gaming version of a single scene,
I'll go and write that up long form about you
know how long it is, maybe a page, page and
a half of text, and then go back to the
next scene, back and forth until I've done about four
four and a half thousand words, And that's an episode
(13:48):
and the whole thing. I tend to try and have,
you know, some sort of cliffhanger, and you know, I'll
balance it a little bit, but that's generally how it works.
I'll just follow the play over the course for several scenes,
back and forth, interspersing it with description of how those
scenes came about from there. Once I've got my four
and a half thousand words, I go away. I record
everything in audacity, and then I come back and master.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
It and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Pup music on. With regard to some of the tools
I use that maybe others don't, I'm a real fan
of a website called Perchance, which is a random generator generator.
And what you do is you create very very simple
scripts that will allow you to get a random random encountertable,
(14:31):
for example, gives pusher generate button. It will say, right,
this is what happens. But you can get it much
more complex. You can layer in all sorts of stuff.
I've basically built the whole of Mythic second Edition into
a Perchance generator with all of the different sort of
buttons and tools. Not my own work, I've pinched loads
of other people's really good work to do it, but
I've sort of customized it for my need, so I've
(14:52):
got multiple different generators that I use. Perchance is really
worth checking out.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I will absolutely Let's move on to PG. Tell us
about how you record your sessions and any tools that
you might like to share with everybody.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
So I think I knew when starting out, I always
I always wanted it to be an entirely analog experience,
sort of based around the time that I was doing it.
I wanted to be getting away from screens, and I really,
I really love the tactile nature of things, and so
I knew I wanted it to be analogue. I suffer
the same problem as Robin with terrible handwriting, however, and
(15:29):
I still want something that I am proud to look at,
or at least don't hate looking at at the end.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Of the day.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
So that's actually why I started making a podcast, because
I didn't want to write long form. I found that
it was breaking my game play too much, and so
I just started playing and just recording everything and purely
just playing, not thinking about the content necessarily just playing,
just hitting record and then coming back and filling in
all that writing stuff later. And so for me, that
(15:57):
really helped me split up the different experience and getting
what I wanted out out of each of them. I
really enjoy the writing part of it. I love the
playing part of it, and then when it comes time
to voice and mix it, I really enjoy that for
separate reasons as well. And so for me keeping those
three things separate it was just a sort of an
accidental but looking back on it natural solution for me.
(16:19):
So I do everything physically. I have a notebook. Generally,
I love to have other elements that go with the
game for me that are also tactile depending on the game,
which also ties into the tools that I use. I'll
try and use tools that come with a game or
that are related to a game. So for example, for
Dragon Bain, I try to use only the Dragon Baane stuff.
For Shadow Dark, I've been using pretty much only the
(16:42):
Shadow Dark stuff. For another game, I might use a
separate tool if it needs it. But then I'll almost
pair those two together and sort of only play them together.
Then I sort of feel like they have their own
home and feel. And you know, when I play games
like that that started with a Wasteland story, the more
narrative show. When I started the other show. Then I
knew I wanted to play other stuff. I knew I
(17:03):
wanted to do it analog, but I didn't have the
time or the bandwidth to write these massive narratives like
I was doing for that, and so I thought, I'm
going to change the way I play and just record
my off the cuff thoughts as I play, but to
a quality and a performance that I would be happy
with it as a podcast.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So that's quite a.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Different experience for me when I do the two different shows.
Then then I'm actually still thinking about how is my pacing,
how is my performance, my tone of voice, all those
kinds of things when I do it that way. And
funnily enough, I realized when I go back much later
to edit it, I'm almost listening to it for the
first time because my brain is in performance space and
(17:41):
not in gameplay space as much then, And so I
have a lot of fun when I go back and
edit old recordings and some of the months old, and
I'm like, oh, wow, that's cool that I do that
and sort of relive the stories as I go again.
So I think I've accidentally crafted a way where I
get enjoyment out of each of the different elements of
the process by keeping them sort of separate.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Awesome, that's great. This wasn't part of the original question,
but listening to all of your responses, I am now curious.
Does anybody use AI for any part of their gaming experience?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
A little, A little, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Was fully expecting crickets on that one.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
No, I've used it a little bit. Name generation sometimes
sometimes actually I will create a prompt from mythic so
the two words prompt, and I'll sit there, I'll stare
at it for a bit, and then I'll turn to
gmmemulator if sorry, to the chat GPT or something similar
if I can't come up with a solution, and say,
(18:39):
in this context, with these two words, what have you got?
And that's actually sometimes worked out really really, you know,
some really interesting responses. The other one that I did
a while back, which was great, was an NPC was
giving a mission to my PCs, and so I gave
chat GIP the prompt come up with a mission profile
(19:00):
to recover mcguffin provides some interesting detail along the way.
Where it is it? Where is it?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
What are the.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Obstacles to overcome? What are the parameters? And it came
back with a fantastic, really really fun setting for me
to play in. I try to limit the use for
a couple of reasons. One, I kind of question the
ethics of AI. I think that's a bit of a problem.
The second one is I think it a roads skill
(19:26):
set that if you rely on it too much, you
will continue to rely and you will increasingly rely on it,
and you will erode those skills that you build up
as a solo RPG player. But against that, we always
use tools in this hobby as role playing games. As
solo RPG players. You know, all of the stuff that
we're using, the rule books, the source books, the tone
(19:50):
of adventure, design, a book of names, all of those
things or analog versions of what an AI is giving us.
So I think using the right tool for the right thing,
as a long as it's not overlied upon, is a
good plan.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Really interesting. I'm going to stay with you, Carl as
we move on to our next question. All of us
are doing solo gaming in a slightly different way. What
is something that you think sets your particular style apart
from the rest, Carl, do want to take that first,
and then we'll go to PG and then RATA.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Sure? So, I think the difference with mine is primarily
in that split between the gaming bit and I kind
of originally intended it to be an audio drama on
the one hand and a tutorial on how to solo
roleplay on the other, And it was always meant to
be that balance between the two things, and I think
(20:41):
as a result, it kind of drifts into that ASMR
type of vibe for people. The people that care less
about one can kind of tune out but just listen
to the nice, sort of mellow tones hopefully on the
bit they're less interested in, and then plug back in
again and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's great. Next tip is going to be PG.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
So I said this to you the other day, Carl,
when we met in London the pub. That was fun.
So I'm glad I hadn't heard your podcast before I
started mine, Carl, and I'm a huge fan of your podcast.
But one of the reasons I started mine was that
I wanted to hear a bit of how the sausage
was made. I was loving the narrative stories that were
coming out from some of these podcasts that I was
(21:22):
listening to, but it didn't tell me what the thought
processes were behind the players, and that's what I was
really really hungry for. That's what I wanted to learn
myself and try out myself. And so having not heard
that anywhere, that's exactly what I tried to do as well,
and that's why I split it between that purely play
thing and then coming back into the narrative to try
and provide both of those aspects. But happily, the happy accident,
(21:46):
one of the many that came out of that is
that I found it was the thing that helped me
actually start to write, because before that iways liked writing,
but I wouldn't commit to it. I was overwhelmed by
a big empty page or round out of ideas or
something like that. And I found in this process the
way that I'm doing it, I'm writing the script as
I listened back to the audio, and when a small
(22:08):
scene has happened, I'll stop it and then I'll write
something else, and then I'll play it back again and
then I'll write something else. And so for me, it
accidentally turned out to be a collaboration with my past
self in this writing exercise, which was completely accidental. And
I think the reason that I am able to do
this and write so much when I have always failed
to do so in the past.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, listen, that is fascinating and I'm not sure if
that answers the question. No, it totally does, and what
you're doing absolutely works, and it's a very addictive kind
of format to listen to as well. Let's move on
to Robin, what are you doing in this creative space?
That is kind of setting your show apart?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I would say my show is based on what I've
heard from everyone else's. It's relatively lo fi in terms
of production. I'm I don't have a huge amount of
experience in audio production, which I think does is evident
when I listen back to the recordings. I do think
I have improved considerably over the couple of years in
(23:10):
which I've worked on it. I guess I quite like
the interaction between the narration and working out where to
fit in these external character voices. So I really like
dragging in people from outside who generally I feel provide
a much needed kind of variety and kind of the
(23:33):
kind of storytelling. I find that I'm much more comfortable
with the writing element. I've always been a sort of
creative writer, and so I can sort of knock off
a sort of for in a half thousand word episode
relatively quickly over a week or so. Having then reading
it out loud, you kind of stumble over certain sentences
and phrases, which means I go back and correct it
(23:55):
as I record, So I find the storytelling element a
bit more natural to me than their recording and the
mixing and so on. Having said that, I do enjoy
bringing in a variety of special effects and music from
various sources. I've had people play guitar for me. I've
played guitar or myself my own podcast, which I find
(24:16):
is quite cool with bringing all my kind of hobbies together.
So yeah, it's all quite amateurish, but you know, I
quite enjoy that.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Robin. When you're writing at a curiosity, how long is
a writing session for you? Do you go for hours
or are you doing kind of fifteen minutes here, twenty
minutes there.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Generally it's fairly short, so I have on a few
days a week, I have quite a long train commute,
so I can probably knock out two hundred and fifty
to four hundred words on the train. Once I've kind
of stitched it together to sort of a free to
three and a half thousand word episode. I will then
go and do a sort of fairly hefty edit in
the space of like three or four hours at home
or something. So yeah, that's kind of it's kind of
(24:57):
pieced me or really, I don't try and write a
thing all at once.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I was curious because I tend to do like maybe
a scene at a time is typically how I go,
and I was wondering if if we were approaching it
the same way, it looks looks like we are. Okay,
this next question is I love this question. I must
know how do you approach the ending to a solo game?
And if you would like to expand and talk about
(25:21):
what is the ideal length of a game? That might
be a session or it might be the story, you
could talk about that as well. So PJ, We're going
to start with you. How do you approach the end
of a game? And if you want to talk about it,
do you have an idea of how long a story
should last?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
In my head, I have endings to my games and
my campaign. I've never got to one yet, so I'm
not sure if I'm the best person to ask about that.
For me, I have a goal in mind and when
I start out doing that method that I thought I saw.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I start with the world whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
This is kind of the loose arc sort of if
you know, or if the list familiar with the Iron
SWAWNA star Forde system, you sort of have this arc.
You will get there eventually, and whatever you do make
progress towards that. Right, That's sort of what happens in
my head, and I think, Okay, my characters they're going
to get to the magical forest and get their magic back,
and then that's fine. Then mythic or whatever I'm using
throws up all sorts of things on the way. And
(26:19):
very quickly I became at peace with the stories not
necessarily having an end. They may have an end one day,
and I keep that in my head and that's great.
But just having all those worlds, and by nature of
playing multiple games at once, having all those worlds and
stories running concurrently in my head all the time and
open ended is one of the really enjoyable parts of
(26:42):
the hobby for me. Actually, I will have to start
finishing something soon for Wasteland story, particularly that that does
have a set arc, And for that one, I would
say it did get there through that natural progression that
I had imagined I had sort of an endpoint in mind.
I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm very nearly there,
(27:02):
and I found having that endpoint in mind did always
keep the overarching goal in play as I worked out
the narrative and as I went along, and so in
doing that, things have naturally funneled themselves towards this crucial point.
I think Mythic is a big part of that because
for that playthrough, IM specifically using Mythic, and I think
(27:24):
that is a huge factor in it because of the
way that it throws back elements of your story at
you with increasing probability based on how often you have
encountered them, and by the nature of that, the story
and the narrative can't help but amp up and focus
on those story elements, and at a certain point you
do feel the momentum go over and bring you to
(27:45):
a point. So, without ever actually having ended a solo
OUTPG campaign, that is my best guess about how I end.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
That's great, Thanks very much, Robin. What do you think
about ending a story or do you even have one
in mind?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, again, with regards to my podcast, I don't really
know because this is my first season and I feel
like there's still quite a lot of way to go yet.
I have a feeling that once I get to a
certain number of episodes, I might start to see if
the threads plot falls will start to wind down and
tie up naturally, and then sort of give myself a
(28:23):
deadline of another five or six episodes to get to
the endpoint. In terms of my data, we'll not day
to day role playing. But if I'm learning a game,
for example, what I've set out to do is have
my own single setting, So like I have a sort
of a particular city, and if I'm learning a new game,
whatever rule set it is, I have I sort of
(28:43):
do a mini campaign in this city just to sort
of get a sense of around the combat mechanisms and
so on. And then I'll have, you know, a party
or a single character for a particular game, and I
will maybe play through two or three scenarios and see
where that naturally comes to a conclusion. So I kind
of creating a multiple sort of level of stories from
(29:07):
these different rule sets, if that makes sense. I think
Russ from Young DM does something similar with his campaigns.
But I like the idea of having one place where
you can test out these different rule sets and have
different characters playing different rules.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Really interesting, Carl, same question for you. Any idea how
to approach an ending to a game or a story,
and any opinions about the length of a story.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
So I definitely think that of beginnings, middles, and ends,
ends in solo RPGs are by far the hardest to
pull off. We are working often with tool sets that
mean that by its nature we have no idea where
the game is going. Mythic can take us offt course
or what we thought was going to happen at any point.
Other tools do similar things. I found it depends a
(29:54):
little bit on the type of game you're playing. I
did a very short, three part dark set of episodes
where I knew that I was only going to do
three episodes, and I conveniently tpkid my Party, and that
was a perfect ending. They all died brilliant, nicely rounded
things up for a really big, meaty campaign. Though you
(30:16):
all bets are off because you're usually going to get
to some point in your story where things are much
bigger than you originally imagined, and you've got all sorts
of really far ranging quests, difficult things to achieve in
exactly the same way as PGA. You mentioned Iron Sworn,
and those sorts of games give you this sort of
long term quest. These those kind of emerge from other
(30:38):
types of games as well. I really like what Mike
Shay aka the Lazy Dungeon Master says about this. He's
got this concept for group games of yam shaped game
design or adventure design, so that as the GM, all
you're doing is staying one move ahead of the players.
And in fact, in solo RPG's we're not even doing that,
(30:59):
we are at zero moves ahead. But the GM in
Mike Shay in his games, he will happily stay one
move ahead until he feels that the natural shape of
the story has reached its apex, and having expanded out,
you then start to narrow the game back in again.
You offer fewer choices, you reduce the possible routs, and
(31:22):
you narrow things to a final end point. And you
can do a very similar thing using the threads in mythic.
You just start to chop off extraneous ones. It starts
to emphasize the ones that have been used a lot
of as PJ said, and you can bring your story
(31:42):
to a natural conclusion by just trimming out routes that
it might go. There's a temptation when using solo RPG
tools to do everything that they tell you so, to
take any given prompt, to accept any given interrupt to
a scene, and actually the so you get if you're
trying to push your story towards an ending, you entirely
(32:04):
at liberty to ignore some of those prompts and to
take it further in that direction, leaving enough uncertainty for
it to be enjoyable, but trimming out some of the
stuff that's attempting to widen the story space.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Again, really interesting answers from everybody, Thanks so much. So
I do have one more quick fire question. What are
your best tips, tricks, hacks, and or advice for solo games.
Let's start with Robin.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, I would say don't just rely on one raw
book or monster list or spell list or anything like that.
You can pick and mix between all the various supplements
and different things going on. As it's a solo game,
you can basically introduce whatever elements you want into it.
I think, and as I said, some of these ones
you find in the raw books, these random table are
(32:54):
quite dry. You can then you know choose, choose some
other places. There's lots of stuff on the internet, well,
even stuff like reading TV, other games, visiting historical sites
or something that has given me a lot of you
know stuff. I've created whole dungeons based on visiting you know,
a ruin on a holiday, for example, and be prepared
(33:17):
to make lots of rulings for events that the rules
themselves don't cover.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Just one one thing I'd like to add you just
made me think of, Carl is if you set up
your character to have a personal long term goal, you know,
and you have that in the back of your mind.
Do they want to retire? Do they want to escape
the place? Whatever it is? And if you just you
don't have to play the game to that goal all
(33:41):
the time like in real life. You know, you just
go on doing the stuff you're going to do. But
if you establish that natural end point for your character
or what they want to achieve in their lives, that
may also help lead that story uc to a natural end.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
That's awesome. And as a side note, yes, that was fascinating.
Let's move it up to curl any advice, tricks or tips.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, I think it took me a while to figure
this out. But with a solo RPG, unlike in a
group game, your social contract is only with you, and
that means the potential to expand your design space in
a game is significantly larger than it might be in
a group game. It means that you can do all
sorts of weird things with your game. You can swap
(34:26):
out your characters, your protagonists, and jump from point of
view to point of view. You can swap locations, you
can move around in time in a way that's much
more jarring in a group game, but in a solo
game it's really easy to do. You're just exploring different
parts of your world. Just as Robin said, having different
characters play in the same basic sampit is really fun
(34:48):
to do. The other one that I've been experimenting with
recently is switching between game systems. You don't have to
stick to the same game system, and you can continue
your same story, but maybe as you change characters or
change the theme of a particular section, you might want
to know. I've switched from D and D to Blaze
in the Dark to staff Forge to Powered by the
(35:09):
Apocalypse of you know, you can jump back and forth
depending on what you want from the story, what feels
like fun and what fits the point of the story
that you're at.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Very good, and we're going to end off with PJ
any tips, tricks, hacks or advice to share.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, especially for people starting out. I've thought about this
a lot. The main thing is, well, one of the
main things is that I would say, don't hold yourself
back by wanting everything to be perfect and just right.
Treat everything you're doing, whether that is methods of playing,
whether that's writing down, whether it's drawing, whether it's recording audio,
whether it's using different games, treat it all as a
(35:47):
learning experience to learn the way that you enjoy to
play the most. Because it ultimately, to me, that is
one of the most special things about this hobby is
that you can tailor it exactly to the experience that
you want most. That's something you don't get in a
group game. You know, that is one of the key
strengths of it. But in order to get there, you
need to be open to trying stuff that maybe doesn't
(36:09):
work for you. And rather than thinking of that as
a failure, think of that as a progression in your story.
As a solo RPG, think of it as a progression
getting towards that place where you really find what works
for you. And there might be multiple places that work
for you in different circumstances or environments, but you can't
get there unless you just don't worry about being perfect.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Just try it. Just get out there and experiment and
treat it as a learning experience. Yeah, definitely give yourself
permission to make mistakes and try something and maybe it
works and maybe it doesn't. But it's all play in
the end, isn't it. And speaking of fun, this has
been a lot of fun for me. Thank you guys
for all agreeing to get together at this roundtable. Appreciate
your time. Really love your shows. I'll put show notes
(36:52):
links in the show notes to all of your shows
as well, and definitely recommend everyone listening to check them out.
They're all fantastic stick and they're all different. And that's it. Guys,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Grays Seth, thank you, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Thanks so much for listening to this second of three
bonus roundtable episodes with some of the coolest folks in
the hobby. Today we spoke with Carl White of the
Lone Adventurer podcast PJ from a waste Land story and
the Solo role Players Podcast, and finally Robin of stories
from the first watch. If you'd like to find out
more about these great creators, check out the show notes
(37:30):
or my blog for links, and for even more great
solo podcast variety, try our new website, Solo Roleplayers Network
dot com. The next real episode of Tales of the
Manticore is just around the corner, so I'll see you soon.
Until then, let chaos roll.
Today we are back with another in this series of
special bonus episodes where we hold a roundtable discussion with
some of the best players in solo RPG podcasts. Today,
I've got three more of my fellow podsters here to
discuss solo RPGs. They all have different approaches and styles,
so it's sure to be a good talk with me.
Are Carl, Robin and PJ. But I'll let them introduce themselves.
(00:40):
Let's dive in. Okay, we have our round table number
two in progress right now, and let's meet the people
at the table. Carl, want to tell us about yourself
and your show?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Sure? Hi John, Hi folks, my name's Carl White. I
record a podcast sono podcast called The Lone Adventurer. I'm
doing that for just over sixty episodes now, kind of
on the narrative audiobook style for half of it, and
then the other half is an explanation of how those
events came about by going through the rules and the
(01:16):
sort of solo RPG mechanisms.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, thank you, Carol, PG over to you.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
I'm PJ. I'm an Ozzie stuck in Germany and I
do the Wasteland Story podcast and the Solo role Players podcast,
the former of which is also a narrative based thing
with some behind the scenes play of how I actually
get to the story. And the Solo role Players podcast,
I interview people in the community. A lot of people
(01:41):
who are on this call right now have been on
my show, and all of the others will be one
day soon. And I get books off my shelf and
play them without knowing the rules. Is kind of the
gimmick for that one.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Fantastic And finally, Robin, tell us about yourself and your show.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hi, I'm Robin. I'm also from the UK. My show
is called Stories from the First Watch. It's a pretty
traditional sword and saucery type old score revival audio drama
with game elements, so much familiar to people who have
listened to your own podcast and Legend of the Bones
as well. Again, a mixture of kind of creative writing,
(02:20):
audio storytelling and game mechanics kind of underpinning that as well,
so familiar to people who enjoy your own podcast.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Jump awesome, So let's move on. I'm going to start
with one of the same questions from round table one,
which is the question that I see most on solo
player Reddit, and that is how do you actually start?
Let's maybe take it from a perspective less of making
a show and rather playing a game. It's going to
(02:48):
be easier for some of us than others, maybe, but
I think a lot of people would like to know
how do you actually start a game? You know, if
you're not going to make content, fine, but how do
I actually start? So let's begin with PGA maybe for
this one, PGA, what does it look like when you're
just going to start a game for your own pleasure,
not necessarily to record.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So for me, I think I've sort of refined a
bit of a technique over the last little while, purely
because I'm getting so many games off my shelves and
playing new games all the time, which is really exciting.
It's also a challenge obviously you're sort of learning new
rules and getting things mixed up. But for me, something
I found that really really helps is to pick up
the book maybe do so whatever the system is. For example,
(03:30):
the last thing I did was Shadow Dark. Have enough
of a go over the rules so you know the
kind of field you're working in, right, But then what
I want to do before I even create a character?
And a lot of this was heavily influenced slash stolen
from Debora, from Geek Gamers, and from her fantastic book
Solo game Master's Guide. And I will just flick through,
and I will just stop at pages that looks like
(03:51):
there's something interesting there, so whether that's some cool item
or weapon, or whether that's some god or some area,
some city like that, and then anything that catches my eye,
I will stop and I'll read a little bit about
that and let these sort of the image of that
whatever it is, form in my head, and then keep
sort of flicking until I have an idea for a
(04:12):
character type that fits in that world that I'm building
in my head, and a little loose setup of what
an opening scene or opening story might be. Now, often
that goes off the rails then and we end up
doing something completely different. But I feel like doing it
that way really grounds me, feeling like I'm already in
the world that makes sense and my character makes sense
(04:33):
in that world, rather than creating a character, which a
lot of people I think, I mean, that's the natural
way to do it, especially the way IRPG books are
laid out.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
The character creation.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Is there, and then you can create a character and
not have that make sense in the world, you know,
So for me that's it seems counterintuitive, but that has
been a really fantastic method that I use slash stole,
and I really recommend that you try it.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Really good advice.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
PG.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
We're going to go to Robyn next Robin. If you're
starting a game, where do you begin?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
So in my case, I came into this kind of
aspect of the hobby from the kind of Choose your
Own adventurer books which were really popular in the early
eighties onwards. So I had that was kind of my
only real experience of sort of solo roleplays, as it were.
(05:24):
So my own game came around sort of as a
development from that. In the during the pandemic, I started
to write to Choose your Own Adventure and eventually got
myself into such a model with plot lines and so
on that I've kind of temporarily put it on ice.
But what I did do was take a lot of
the elements I created from that as starting points for
locations and potential starting plot lines, and when I came
(05:49):
to deciding to record the show, I had these kind
of this this bank of kind of information like of
that I'd already kind of created, which gave me a
nice resource to begin with. I found mythic GM emulator
really helpful once I'd created the characters in a standard way.
So I would create the characters by the usual method
(06:10):
of rolling the stats and then working out which race
and class they would most fit into, and then I
would have to work out, you know, what, what are
these characters' motives? Why are they in this world? And
that's where the event meaning elements of mythic would come in,
sort of giving me a sort of starting motivation, and
that was really helpful in creating backstories for them and
(06:31):
also sort of feeding the subsequent storylines as they went along.
I would also say that, you know, with this kind
of bank of information I'd already got in mind, that
kind of gives me us something to aim for within
the general thread of the stories, so I don't feel
like I'm completely wandering in the dark. I feel like
(06:51):
there's something I want my characters to ultimately get to.
But the obviously the journey on the way is the
bit where the fun is, where their actions of the
GM or myself in this case, can can sort of
throw curve balls in and make new quests, admissions, and
so on. So I think it's a combination really of
that kind of existing creative writing that I've been working
(07:13):
on and the gameplay elements.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Really thanks Rowan Carl. Finally, how do you start a
solo game?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's one of two options, right, it's character first or
it's setting first. You know, just like PG mentioned, that
whole setting first approach can be really effective if you're
not quite sure what you're going to play, just pulling
down a setting book. I listened to a podcast episode
that PG you recorded with Tana Pigeon, a creator of
Mythic recently the Mythic magazine fifty, which was wonderful for this. Basically,
(07:44):
you take an existing adventure, you roll an adventure seat,
you roll a page in that book, you ort a
location on that page, You take that little snippet, and
then you do it again, maybe do it a third time.
Combine those things together. That gives you your starting set
up for the adventure, and then you build your characters
to fit whatever you've rolled. Really nice way of doing it,
and a really effective method I've found across many games
(08:08):
is start where the action is. Don't start having people
with people having a chat in a tavern. Make sure
that you're in the middle of a combat. You've got
a protagonist and antagonist that's going to throw up ideas
for you that you can hook into as you play.
So it's a really good idea to start in media
ass However, I have played character first as well, where
(08:29):
I've come to a game where I've got a really
clear idea of somebody that i want to play rather
than the setting, and that can equally work. You can
use tools like the Tome of Adventure Design. There's a
bunch of these sorts of tools. There's stuff in the
back of some of the the D and D books.
There's plenty of tools that you can use to roll
up sort of random encounters and again, you take that
(08:51):
current you've created, you roll up at some sort of combat,
some sort of location, throw them into it, and a
where you go.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I love that starting on action, I think is fantastic advice. Okay,
let's get to some of the questions that are going
to be new for this roundtable. And I should say
that the questions are supplied by PJ from conversations you've
had on Reddit. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (09:14):
So I put out a call just out on Reddit
to say if people had questions, because I'm constantly getting
emails with questions, and so I put out a call
on Reddit, thinking that one day we could do a
podcast about it and answer these questions. I got a
bunch of responses, and also a few from the patrons
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for collecting
These are really good questions. Let's get into them. And
I'm going to start this round of questions with Robin,
and the question will be when you're playing solo, do
you record yourself with pen, paper, voice recorder, word processor?
And is that even important? Robin, any thoughts on this?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I think it is important. So how I go about
it is I generally start my first draft the game
itself in a a for gridded notebook which I can
use to make sketches of locations. I use it to
bullet point events. I use it for dice roll so
(10:11):
I have my own kind of personal system of kind
of symbols for the dice rolls or for actions, that
kind of thing. I tend to write out my gaming
sessions by hand and play along as I go, making
notes in the margins and so on. Once it gets
to the second draft, which is kind of writing the
more of the script element I tied it up. I
(10:31):
tend to have to do that quite quickly because my
handwriting is really bad, so I have to try and
do it before my memory goes. So that's when I
will sort of write out a flesh out of the
story and then realize, all there's gaps here, or maybe
that could have been done a bit differently. Well about
if I tried that instead, So I would then perhaps
redo a couple of things and see where that takes me.
So my setup would be the notebook. I'd have my
(10:53):
laptop as well. I'd have my dice. Unfortunately, I don't
have miniatures at the moment, so I have to use
various coins, which can be irritating. But I yeah, I
have my various resources, so I use physical copies of
my books just so I don't have to, you know,
faff around with various pds and so on. So I
have my GM emulator, which is why I use quite frequently.
(11:13):
I have some various kind of generation kind of books,
so things like Roll and Play, which is a really
good resource, and obviously I have that I use. My
system is basic fantasy role playing, so I use that
book as well, so that's what my gaming session looks like.
And then obviously once that's recorded, I will then take
that jumple of notes and start writing the script element.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Tell us a little bit about role and play, because
that's one that I haven't heard of.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
So it's a fairly abstract one. So it has lovely
kind of it's basically a book of kind of random tables,
but it goes into huge granular detail so you can
sort of it has random tables for particular terrain, so
you've got things like swamping counters, jungle encounters, desert encounters,
et cetera. It has PC name generators and motivation generators.
(12:05):
It has random events that you can kind of roll up.
Some of them are quite kind of I would say,
a little bit twee and aimed at more of a
fivey crowd perhaps, but I can use them and sort
of adjust them to my needs if necessary, and I
find that's really useful. Rather than sometimes having quite a
dry list of random encounters whatever in some of the
(12:26):
rule books, it's quite nice to have these kind of
sight more thought out encounters to look through.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Very cool. Yea, I haven't heard of that one, I
think we will ask Carl that same question, what do
you use, if anything, to record your sessions? And let's
add that secondary part of are there any materials that
you would particularly like to highlight that maybe people haven't
heard of?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Sure, so I'm perhaps a bit of an outlier with this.
Everything I do is digital. So from the moment I
start to well, when I start a game session, I've
got a batch file on my desktop which I hit
and that launches I think eight chrome tabs. It opens
my characters in notion, it opens my rule book PDFs,
(13:09):
everything just sort of opens up. I spread them across
three screens, and I work almost exclusively from that. Obviously
I use physical dice. I'm not a complete sociopath. But
everything else is digital.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I was gonna say anything.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
So I tend to launch everything, start with the mechanics,
do a scene with mythic, do all the roles, and
once I've done the gaming version of a single scene,
I'll go and write that up long form about you
know how long it is, maybe a page, page and
a half of text, and then go back to the
next scene, back and forth until I've done about four
four and a half thousand words, And that's an episode
(13:48):
and the whole thing. I tend to try and have,
you know, some sort of cliffhanger, and you know, I'll
balance it a little bit, but that's generally how it works.
I'll just follow the play over the course for several scenes,
back and forth, interspersing it with description of how those
scenes came about from there. Once I've got my four
and a half thousand words, I go away. I record
everything in audacity, and then I come back and master.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
It and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Pup music on. With regard to some of the tools
I use that maybe others don't, I'm a real fan
of a website called Perchance, which is a random generator generator.
And what you do is you create very very simple
scripts that will allow you to get a random random encountertable,
(14:31):
for example, gives pusher generate button. It will say, right,
this is what happens. But you can get it much
more complex. You can layer in all sorts of stuff.
I've basically built the whole of Mythic second Edition into
a Perchance generator with all of the different sort of
buttons and tools. Not my own work, I've pinched loads
of other people's really good work to do it, but
I've sort of customized it for my need, so I've
(14:52):
got multiple different generators that I use. Perchance is really
worth checking out.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I will absolutely Let's move on to PG. Tell us
about how you record your sessions and any tools that
you might like to share with everybody.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
So I think I knew when starting out, I always
I always wanted it to be an entirely analog experience,
sort of based around the time that I was doing it.
I wanted to be getting away from screens, and I really,
I really love the tactile nature of things, and so
I knew I wanted it to be analogue. I suffer
the same problem as Robin with terrible handwriting, however, and
(15:29):
I still want something that I am proud to look at,
or at least don't hate looking at at the end.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Of the day.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
So that's actually why I started making a podcast, because
I didn't want to write long form. I found that
it was breaking my game play too much, and so
I just started playing and just recording everything and purely
just playing, not thinking about the content necessarily just playing,
just hitting record and then coming back and filling in
all that writing stuff later. And so for me, that
(15:57):
really helped me split up the different experience and getting
what I wanted out out of each of them. I
really enjoy the writing part of it. I love the
playing part of it, and then when it comes time
to voice and mix it, I really enjoy that for
separate reasons as well. And so for me keeping those
three things separate it was just a sort of an
accidental but looking back on it natural solution for me.
(16:19):
So I do everything physically. I have a notebook. Generally,
I love to have other elements that go with the
game for me that are also tactile depending on the game,
which also ties into the tools that I use. I'll
try and use tools that come with a game or
that are related to a game. So for example, for
Dragon Bain, I try to use only the Dragon Baane stuff.
For Shadow Dark, I've been using pretty much only the
(16:42):
Shadow Dark stuff. For another game, I might use a
separate tool if it needs it. But then I'll almost
pair those two together and sort of only play them together.
Then I sort of feel like they have their own
home and feel. And you know, when I play games
like that that started with a Wasteland story, the more
narrative show. When I started the other show. Then I
knew I wanted to play other stuff. I knew I
(17:03):
wanted to do it analog, but I didn't have the
time or the bandwidth to write these massive narratives like
I was doing for that, and so I thought, I'm
going to change the way I play and just record
my off the cuff thoughts as I play, but to
a quality and a performance that I would be happy
with it as a podcast.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So that's quite a.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
Different experience for me when I do the two different shows.
Then then I'm actually still thinking about how is my pacing,
how is my performance, my tone of voice, all those
kinds of things when I do it that way. And
funnily enough, I realized when I go back much later
to edit it, I'm almost listening to it for the
first time because my brain is in performance space and
(17:41):
not in gameplay space as much then, And so I
have a lot of fun when I go back and
edit old recordings and some of the months old, and
I'm like, oh, wow, that's cool that I do that
and sort of relive the stories as I go again.
So I think I've accidentally crafted a way where I
get enjoyment out of each of the different elements of
the process by keeping them sort of separate.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Awesome, that's great. This wasn't part of the original question,
but listening to all of your responses, I am now curious.
Does anybody use AI for any part of their gaming experience?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
A little, A little, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Was fully expecting crickets on that one.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
No, I've used it a little bit. Name generation sometimes
sometimes actually I will create a prompt from mythic so
the two words prompt, and I'll sit there, I'll stare
at it for a bit, and then I'll turn to
gmmemulator if sorry, to the chat GPT or something similar
if I can't come up with a solution, and say,
(18:39):
in this context, with these two words, what have you got?
And that's actually sometimes worked out really really, you know,
some really interesting responses. The other one that I did
a while back, which was great, was an NPC was
giving a mission to my PCs, and so I gave
chat GIP the prompt come up with a mission profile
(19:00):
to recover mcguffin provides some interesting detail along the way.
Where it is it? Where is it?
Speaker 3 (19:05):
What are the.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Obstacles to overcome? What are the parameters? And it came
back with a fantastic, really really fun setting for me
to play in. I try to limit the use for
a couple of reasons. One, I kind of question the
ethics of AI. I think that's a bit of a problem.
The second one is I think it a roads skill
(19:26):
set that if you rely on it too much, you
will continue to rely and you will increasingly rely on it,
and you will erode those skills that you build up
as a solo RPG player. But against that, we always
use tools in this hobby as role playing games. As
solo RPG players. You know, all of the stuff that
we're using, the rule books, the source books, the tone
(19:50):
of adventure, design, a book of names, all of those
things or analog versions of what an AI is giving us.
So I think using the right tool for the right thing,
as a long as it's not overlied upon, is a
good plan.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Really interesting. I'm going to stay with you, Carl as
we move on to our next question. All of us
are doing solo gaming in a slightly different way. What
is something that you think sets your particular style apart
from the rest, Carl, do want to take that first,
and then we'll go to PG and then RATA.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Sure? So, I think the difference with mine is primarily
in that split between the gaming bit and I kind
of originally intended it to be an audio drama on
the one hand and a tutorial on how to solo
roleplay on the other, And it was always meant to
be that balance between the two things, and I think
(20:41):
as a result, it kind of drifts into that ASMR
type of vibe for people. The people that care less
about one can kind of tune out but just listen
to the nice, sort of mellow tones hopefully on the
bit they're less interested in, and then plug back in
again and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
That's great. Next tip is going to be PG.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
So I said this to you the other day, Carl,
when we met in London the pub. That was fun.
So I'm glad I hadn't heard your podcast before I
started mine, Carl, and I'm a huge fan of your podcast.
But one of the reasons I started mine was that
I wanted to hear a bit of how the sausage
was made. I was loving the narrative stories that were
coming out from some of these podcasts that I was
(21:22):
listening to, but it didn't tell me what the thought
processes were behind the players, and that's what I was
really really hungry for. That's what I wanted to learn
myself and try out myself. And so having not heard
that anywhere, that's exactly what I tried to do as well,
and that's why I split it between that purely play
thing and then coming back into the narrative to try
and provide both of those aspects. But happily, the happy accident,
(21:46):
one of the many that came out of that is
that I found it was the thing that helped me
actually start to write, because before that iways liked writing,
but I wouldn't commit to it. I was overwhelmed by
a big empty page or round out of ideas or
something like that. And I found in this process the
way that I'm doing it, I'm writing the script as
I listened back to the audio, and when a small
(22:08):
scene has happened, I'll stop it and then I'll write
something else, and then I'll play it back again and
then I'll write something else. And so for me, it
accidentally turned out to be a collaboration with my past
self in this writing exercise, which was completely accidental. And
I think the reason that I am able to do
this and write so much when I have always failed
to do so in the past.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, listen, that is fascinating and I'm not sure if
that answers the question. No, it totally does, and what
you're doing absolutely works, and it's a very addictive kind
of format to listen to as well. Let's move on
to Robin, what are you doing in this creative space?
That is kind of setting your show apart?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
I would say my show is based on what I've
heard from everyone else's. It's relatively lo fi in terms
of production. I'm I don't have a huge amount of
experience in audio production, which I think does is evident
when I listen back to the recordings. I do think
I have improved considerably over the couple of years in
(23:10):
which I've worked on it. I guess I quite like
the interaction between the narration and working out where to
fit in these external character voices. So I really like
dragging in people from outside who generally I feel provide
a much needed kind of variety and kind of the
(23:33):
kind of storytelling. I find that I'm much more comfortable
with the writing element. I've always been a sort of
creative writer, and so I can sort of knock off
a sort of for in a half thousand word episode
relatively quickly over a week or so. Having then reading
it out loud, you kind of stumble over certain sentences
and phrases, which means I go back and correct it
(23:55):
as I record, So I find the storytelling element a
bit more natural to me than their recording and the
mixing and so on. Having said that, I do enjoy
bringing in a variety of special effects and music from
various sources. I've had people play guitar for me. I've
played guitar or myself my own podcast, which I find
(24:16):
is quite cool with bringing all my kind of hobbies together.
So yeah, it's all quite amateurish, but you know, I
quite enjoy that.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Robin. When you're writing at a curiosity, how long is
a writing session for you? Do you go for hours
or are you doing kind of fifteen minutes here, twenty
minutes there.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Generally it's fairly short, so I have on a few
days a week, I have quite a long train commute,
so I can probably knock out two hundred and fifty
to four hundred words on the train. Once I've kind
of stitched it together to sort of a free to
three and a half thousand word episode. I will then
go and do a sort of fairly hefty edit in
the space of like three or four hours at home
or something. So yeah, that's kind of it's kind of
(24:57):
pieced me or really, I don't try and write a
thing all at once.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I was curious because I tend to do like maybe
a scene at a time is typically how I go,
and I was wondering if if we were approaching it
the same way, it looks looks like we are. Okay,
this next question is I love this question. I must
know how do you approach the ending to a solo game?
And if you would like to expand and talk about
(25:21):
what is the ideal length of a game? That might
be a session or it might be the story, you
could talk about that as well. So PJ, We're going
to start with you. How do you approach the end
of a game? And if you want to talk about it,
do you have an idea of how long a story
should last?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
In my head, I have endings to my games and
my campaign. I've never got to one yet, so I'm
not sure if I'm the best person to ask about that.
For me, I have a goal in mind and when
I start out doing that method that I thought I saw.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
I start with the world whatever.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
This is kind of the loose arc sort of if
you know, or if the list familiar with the Iron
SWAWNA star Forde system, you sort of have this arc.
You will get there eventually, and whatever you do make
progress towards that. Right, That's sort of what happens in
my head, and I think, Okay, my characters they're going
to get to the magical forest and get their magic back,
and then that's fine. Then mythic or whatever I'm using
throws up all sorts of things on the way. And
(26:19):
very quickly I became at peace with the stories not
necessarily having an end. They may have an end one day,
and I keep that in my head and that's great.
But just having all those worlds, and by nature of
playing multiple games at once, having all those worlds and
stories running concurrently in my head all the time and
open ended is one of the really enjoyable parts of
(26:42):
the hobby for me. Actually, I will have to start
finishing something soon for Wasteland story, particularly that that does
have a set arc, And for that one, I would
say it did get there through that natural progression that
I had imagined I had sort of an endpoint in mind.
I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm very nearly there,
(27:02):
and I found having that endpoint in mind did always
keep the overarching goal in play as I worked out
the narrative and as I went along, and so in
doing that, things have naturally funneled themselves towards this crucial point.
I think Mythic is a big part of that because
for that playthrough, IM specifically using Mythic, and I think
(27:24):
that is a huge factor in it because of the
way that it throws back elements of your story at
you with increasing probability based on how often you have
encountered them, and by the nature of that, the story
and the narrative can't help but amp up and focus
on those story elements, and at a certain point you
do feel the momentum go over and bring you to
(27:45):
a point. So, without ever actually having ended a solo
OUTPG campaign, that is my best guess about how I end.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
That's great, Thanks very much, Robin. What do you think
about ending a story or do you even have one
in mind?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, again, with regards to my podcast, I don't really
know because this is my first season and I feel
like there's still quite a lot of way to go yet.
I have a feeling that once I get to a
certain number of episodes, I might start to see if
the threads plot falls will start to wind down and
tie up naturally, and then sort of give myself a
(28:23):
deadline of another five or six episodes to get to
the endpoint. In terms of my data, we'll not day
to day role playing. But if I'm learning a game,
for example, what I've set out to do is have
my own single setting, So like I have a sort
of a particular city, and if I'm learning a new game,
whatever rule set it is, I have I sort of
(28:43):
do a mini campaign in this city just to sort
of get a sense of around the combat mechanisms and
so on. And then I'll have, you know, a party
or a single character for a particular game, and I
will maybe play through two or three scenarios and see
where that naturally comes to a conclusion. So I kind
of creating a multiple sort of level of stories from
(29:07):
these different rule sets, if that makes sense. I think
Russ from Young DM does something similar with his campaigns.
But I like the idea of having one place where
you can test out these different rule sets and have
different characters playing different rules.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Really interesting, Carl, same question for you. Any idea how
to approach an ending to a game or a story,
and any opinions about the length of a story.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
So I definitely think that of beginnings, middles, and ends,
ends in solo RPGs are by far the hardest to
pull off. We are working often with tool sets that
mean that by its nature we have no idea where
the game is going. Mythic can take us offt course
or what we thought was going to happen at any point.
Other tools do similar things. I found it depends a
(29:54):
little bit on the type of game you're playing. I
did a very short, three part dark set of episodes
where I knew that I was only going to do
three episodes, and I conveniently tpkid my Party, and that
was a perfect ending. They all died brilliant, nicely rounded
things up for a really big, meaty campaign. Though you
(30:16):
all bets are off because you're usually going to get
to some point in your story where things are much
bigger than you originally imagined, and you've got all sorts
of really far ranging quests, difficult things to achieve in
exactly the same way as PGA. You mentioned Iron Sworn,
and those sorts of games give you this sort of
long term quest. These those kind of emerge from other
(30:38):
types of games as well. I really like what Mike
Shay aka the Lazy Dungeon Master says about this. He's
got this concept for group games of yam shaped game
design or adventure design, so that as the GM, all
you're doing is staying one move ahead of the players.
And in fact, in solo RPG's we're not even doing that,
(30:59):
we are at zero moves ahead. But the GM in
Mike Shay in his games, he will happily stay one
move ahead until he feels that the natural shape of
the story has reached its apex, and having expanded out,
you then start to narrow the game back in again.
You offer fewer choices, you reduce the possible routs, and
(31:22):
you narrow things to a final end point. And you
can do a very similar thing using the threads in mythic.
You just start to chop off extraneous ones. It starts
to emphasize the ones that have been used a lot
of as PJ said, and you can bring your story
(31:42):
to a natural conclusion by just trimming out routes that
it might go. There's a temptation when using solo RPG
tools to do everything that they tell you so, to
take any given prompt, to accept any given interrupt to
a scene, and actually the so you get if you're
trying to push your story towards an ending, you entirely
(32:04):
at liberty to ignore some of those prompts and to
take it further in that direction, leaving enough uncertainty for
it to be enjoyable, but trimming out some of the
stuff that's attempting to widen the story space.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Again, really interesting answers from everybody, Thanks so much. So
I do have one more quick fire question. What are
your best tips, tricks, hacks, and or advice for solo games.
Let's start with Robin.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Yeah, I would say don't just rely on one raw
book or monster list or spell list or anything like that.
You can pick and mix between all the various supplements
and different things going on. As it's a solo game,
you can basically introduce whatever elements you want into it.
I think, and as I said, some of these ones
you find in the raw books, these random table are
(32:54):
quite dry. You can then you know choose, choose some
other places. There's lots of stuff on the internet, well,
even stuff like reading TV, other games, visiting historical sites
or something that has given me a lot of you
know stuff. I've created whole dungeons based on visiting you know,
a ruin on a holiday, for example, and be prepared
(33:17):
to make lots of rulings for events that the rules
themselves don't cover.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Just one one thing I'd like to add you just
made me think of, Carl is if you set up
your character to have a personal long term goal, you know,
and you have that in the back of your mind.
Do they want to retire? Do they want to escape
the place? Whatever it is? And if you just you
don't have to play the game to that goal all
(33:41):
the time like in real life. You know, you just
go on doing the stuff you're going to do. But
if you establish that natural end point for your character
or what they want to achieve in their lives, that
may also help lead that story uc to a natural end.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
That's awesome. And as a side note, yes, that was fascinating.
Let's move it up to curl any advice, tricks or tips.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, I think it took me a while to figure
this out. But with a solo RPG, unlike in a
group game, your social contract is only with you, and
that means the potential to expand your design space in
a game is significantly larger than it might be in
a group game. It means that you can do all
sorts of weird things with your game. You can swap
(34:26):
out your characters, your protagonists, and jump from point of
view to point of view. You can swap locations, you
can move around in time in a way that's much
more jarring in a group game, but in a solo
game it's really easy to do. You're just exploring different
parts of your world. Just as Robin said, having different
characters play in the same basic sampit is really fun
(34:48):
to do. The other one that I've been experimenting with
recently is switching between game systems. You don't have to
stick to the same game system, and you can continue
your same story, but maybe as you change characters or
change the theme of a particular section, you might want
to know. I've switched from D and D to Blaze
in the Dark to staff Forge to Powered by the
(35:09):
Apocalypse of you know, you can jump back and forth
depending on what you want from the story, what feels
like fun and what fits the point of the story
that you're at.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
Very good, and we're going to end off with PJ
any tips, tricks, hacks or advice to share.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
Yeah, especially for people starting out. I've thought about this
a lot. The main thing is, well, one of the
main things is that I would say, don't hold yourself
back by wanting everything to be perfect and just right.
Treat everything you're doing, whether that is methods of playing,
whether that's writing down, whether it's drawing, whether it's recording audio,
whether it's using different games, treat it all as a
(35:47):
learning experience to learn the way that you enjoy to
play the most. Because it ultimately, to me, that is
one of the most special things about this hobby is
that you can tailor it exactly to the experience that
you want most. That's something you don't get in a
group game. You know, that is one of the key
strengths of it. But in order to get there, you
need to be open to trying stuff that maybe doesn't
(36:09):
work for you. And rather than thinking of that as
a failure, think of that as a progression in your story.
As a solo RPG, think of it as a progression
getting towards that place where you really find what works
for you. And there might be multiple places that work
for you in different circumstances or environments, but you can't
get there unless you just don't worry about being perfect.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Just try it. Just get out there and experiment and
treat it as a learning experience. Yeah, definitely give yourself
permission to make mistakes and try something and maybe it
works and maybe it doesn't. But it's all play in
the end, isn't it. And speaking of fun, this has
been a lot of fun for me. Thank you guys
for all agreeing to get together at this roundtable. Appreciate
your time. Really love your shows. I'll put show notes
(36:52):
links in the show notes to all of your shows
as well, and definitely recommend everyone listening to check them out.
They're all fantastic stick and they're all different. And that's it. Guys,
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Grays Seth, thank you, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Thanks so much for listening to this second of three
bonus roundtable episodes with some of the coolest folks in
the hobby. Today we spoke with Carl White of the
Lone Adventurer podcast PJ from a waste Land story and
the Solo role Players Podcast, and finally Robin of stories
from the first watch. If you'd like to find out
more about these great creators, check out the show notes
(37:30):
or my blog for links, and for even more great
solo podcast variety, try our new website, Solo Roleplayers Network
dot com. The next real episode of Tales of the
Manticore is just around the corner, so I'll see you soon.
Until then, let chaos roll.
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