May 18, 2025 • 38 mins
Bonus Episode - Solo Podsters Roundtable 1: 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:
Steve Morrison of Errant Adventures:
https://www.errantadventurespod.com/
Brian Rideout of Swords Against Madness:
https://swordsvmadness.stormheadproductions.ca/
Dungeon Mister Ty: Chronicles of Nephes:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-the-chronicles-of-nephes-196592036/
Nephalos Silvermoon of Reflections in the Darksome Mirror:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-reflections-in-the-darkso-251806336/
**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:
Steve Morrison of Errant Adventures:
https://www.errantadventurespod.com/
Brian Rideout of Swords Against Madness:
https://swordsvmadness.stormheadproductions.ca/
Dungeon Mister Ty: Chronicles of Nephes:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1323-the-chronicles-of-nephes-196592036/
Nephalos Silvermoon of Reflections in the Darksome Mirror:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-reflections-in-the-darkso-251806336/
**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):
Hi there, folks.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I am very excited to share with you this bonus episode.
It's a panel discussion with some of the best players
in solo RPG podcasts. It turns out that there are
so many talented and creative minds out there that I
couldn't fit them all into one show, so I intend
to run this as a two or maybe even three
part series. To kick us off, I've invited four fellow
podstrs here today. All of them have excellent shows and
(00:41):
do solo in their own way. I highly recommend that
you check them all out now. Before we get on
with this show, A quick note to say that the
timing of the release is deliberate. If you stick around
till the end, you'll hear me talk about an exciting
new collaborative project that I think you'll really like. All right,
let's meet our guests and get this thing started. Steve,
(01:02):
want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit
about your show.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Absolutely thanks for having me on here, John So. I
am Steve Morrison of the Errant Adventures podcast. It is
a solo actual play where stories are told at the
speed of dice, and essentially I love to create narratives
of exciting action, adventure and deep characters, and most of
(01:31):
my stories take place in a sci fi milieu, although
I do have some fantasy as well. But I'm currently
running a long running traveler campaign of about thirty episodes
in and just getting started.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you, Steve. How about you, Brian?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
I'm Brian right out. I run the podcast Swords Against Madness,
where I'm trying to capture the spirit of the very
early D and D with all of this weird psychedelic elements.
There's robots and crash spaceships right alongside your ogre may
Gui and your cobolds. You know, I really like lean
into the pulpy, strange elements. I want my chainmail bikinis
(02:12):
and my flying wizard vans and my three bladed swords
in there.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Fantastic ty tell us about your show.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Hello. I am Dungeon, mister tie on the socials, the
owner of Adventure Slang Productions, the creator of the new
of Arden TTRPG and Fortunes dfour system. I also have
two podcasts. The first podcast is called the Adventure Sling Podcast,
where we speak to all kinds of cool people doing
neat stuff in the industry and industry adjacent, and I
(02:40):
also have the Chronicles of Nephis, which is my solo
actual play podcast set in New of Arden. Both those
are on the website adventure sling dot com, where you
can also find the soft launch digital file for New
of Arden with rent files to come.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Alrighty, last, but not least, Nephalos.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
This is Nefhalo's sh I'm the creator of Reflections in
the Dark Some Mirror and that is kind of a
vessel for my TTRPG called darks Mirror, And then eventually
there will be a novel as well that follows the
story of the podcast. The podcast itself is, like many
of the others in this space, a dark fantasy.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I think mine has.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
A bit more of an emphasis on slow kind of
brushstroke painting, long form prose, flowery prose as I've heard
some people say, and very defined characters with distinct motivations
and a deep lived in world. And the story follows
(03:42):
the character Shinareth, born of two heroes, on her journey through.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The world of Volgraph.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's a super diverse group and I can't wait to
pick your brains. So let's jump in with our first question,
and that is going to be how would we actually
start a brand new game from scratch? So do we
start with characters? Do we start with system? What do
the opening moves look like? And why don't we start
with Steve? You're going to start a brand new game,
(04:11):
what does it actually look like at the table?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Well, it kind of depends. There are a couple of
different ways that I like to get into starting a
new game. Sometimes I have a character that I'm really
excited to play, and that's the driving force to get started.
Sometimes I've got a story idea. Sometimes I've got a
world that I want to play in. I would say
(04:36):
less frequently do I have a game system or you
know something like that that is the kind of driving force.
It kind of always starts with story or character or
world for me. But it's just kind of figuring out
what that thing is that I'm most excited to explore,
and then building on top of it. So if it's
(04:57):
a character, kind of figuring out what the bra strokes
of that character are, and then you know, deciding what
kind of system I want to play in, deciding what
kind of world it was going to be, and all
that stuff adds on top.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's really interesting. If you're going to start off with
a character and you're going to put them into conflict.
Are you going to make that up? Or are you
going to roll on a table?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Typically, I would say, because I have a background in
writing fiction, I oftentimes am coming to the table with
a starting idea like this is the starting conflict, and
then I usually have an idea of what the ending
is going to be, and that is the thing that
(05:39):
I'm shooting towards that I'm trying to move towards. And
in pretty much every story I've ever written, I have
never actually ended the story at that point because I'm
a discovery writer. So I'm similarly with RBGS, and that's
why they kind of work well together, is that I'm
discovering the story as I go, and I usually find
(05:59):
a better ending than what my original kind of anticipated
ending is. But it's good to have something to shoot
for so that it keeps that momentum moving forward.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
A very good point, isn't that the truth? Let's hand
it off to Brian. Brian, how do you start off?
And why not let's build on what Steve was talking about.
Do you have an ending, even like a possible ending
in mind?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
When you do, I'm pretty much the opposite of what
Steve was describing, in that I don't like to know
what I'm getting into to begin with. I'll roll up
a couple of characters, and I pick the system based
on what kind of feel I want or what I'm
play testing at the time for a blog entry or whatever.
So one day I might feel like a kind of
tragedy field adventure. I might grab Dungeon World, or I
(06:45):
might want a really old school D and D games.
I'll grab Swords and Wizardry, and I will start my
characters someplace where they're completely faced with a totally alien
environment like crashed spaceship or shipwrecked or teleported to someplace new,
or being sent out into the wilds where they don't
know what's there. And then I rely a lot on
(07:06):
things like random generation and tools like random hex map
generators to start to just put a world in front
of me and figure out what's going on, and using
tools like mythic right.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
On, Now, do you believe in that whole? Like starting
in Media's Reds, do you kind of like, let's start
with action.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I prefer it that way. I find that, especially with
a solo game, you're spending a lot of time talking
to yourself. If you're trying to get the player characters
to meet at a tavern and figure out what they
like about each other, so why not put them into
a harsh situation. You get to know the characters based
on how you have how they react to those first
few moments of the adventure.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So true, so true, Ty, We're going to head it
off to you next. For people that want to get
into solo gaming but don't really know how to start,
how do you do it?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I think the first place to start with solo play
is having a system. You know which system do you
want to use? The and the dice system, and the
things that are enjoyable for you as a player are
going to be the things you're going to want to use, because,
for one thing, you'll know them and you need a
system to help guide and create that randomness that is
part of role playing games. So once you have your system,
(08:17):
hopefully or preferably choose one with encounter tables, where now
we could create our own encountertables as well, but if
they're already built into the system, then it's just a
matter of using what's there and not have to do
all that extra setup work. The next thing to do
is make your character or two, depending on how you
want to run it. If you want to have two
characters for survivability purposes, that's never a bad idea, although
(08:41):
starting out it may be a good idea just to
have one and say how it goes. The next and
final thing, perhaps is just give them, give your character
or characters a quest and go, and then you probably
want to have some sort of larger over our ching goal.
I like to build my plot lines from I'm a
big encounter, if not the final encounter, at least like
(09:03):
the end of our encounter, and then work backwards a
little bit to you know how that encounter arrives or
how the character, excuse me, how the character arrives at
the encounter. So when you know what the end result is,
at least for a phase of the adventure, then the
characters are heading towards that final encounter. They don't necessarily
(09:25):
know it, But then you build in your other encounters
along the way, and they get stronger, and the whole
game is happening then at that point, and then you
see you know how they get to where they're going,
where they arrive depending on how you want to do.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It fantastic and Lasbian, not at least Nephilos. How do
you start a solo game?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah, so I think those of you familiar with writing
might be familiar with the comparison between the architect and
the gardener. And I'm more of an architect myself, So
I think the system is actually the least important choice
in my opinion. It can certainly lend flavor, but to
(10:04):
a certain extent, you can adapt a system to almost
any story that you want to tell. Obviously there are
some exceptions to that, but most systems are fairly open
to interpretation and kind of house rules and warping flavor
or whatever. So I'll start with, you know, basically an
an out line and a setting, and I like to
(10:26):
get pretty defined. So in Darks and Mirror, I have
defined factions, countries, map characters, world. So I'll set the
table in a pretty detailed fashion, and then I'll kind
of think about which characters and factions are motivated by
what and where.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
It's a good.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
Place to start from an action filled perspective, So I'll
take my perspective character and say, hey, what could happen here?
And then at that point that's when I'll start, you know,
making some custom tables and rolling on the dice to
determine like, Okay, this faction wants to do this, and
this influence is the main character this way, and you know,
so if someone is struggling, I would say, try to
(11:08):
define all the motivated parties and influential parties in your
setting and then.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You know, kind of make tables and roll from there.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Really cool. Okay, So here's another question, and for this
one we'll start off with Brian. This question is how
do you handle open ended questions in a way that
is organic and can surprise you as the player.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
I find that there's two things that are really helpful
for that, and the first one is just because I
don't know where anything except where I'm starting, I leave
myself open to a lot of surprises, using a lot
of random tables, and I use older systems that have
roles for things like the attitude of the NPCs, what
the monsters are doing when you encounter them, that sort
(11:53):
of thing, And that way, I don't have to worry
too much about the open ended questions, but when they come,
I take a moment and I daydream and see if
something cool comes up. In my head. And if that
doesn't work, I've got a bag of ruins and a
deck of Tarot cards, and so I just will grab
whatever strikes my fancy. And the one thing I don't
let myself do is sit and wait for too long.
(12:16):
A good enough answer is way better than a perfect
answer three days later.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
That's awesome. Let's not bury the lead. You've got a
bag of runes. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I've been a practicing neo pagan since I was fourteen
years old. I used to actually make a living as
a psychic. I used to read tarot cards and tea
leaves at a cafe when I was just out of college.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Wow, not what I was expecting to dig up so
early in this roundtable. This is podcasting gold.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
All right, thanks Brian. Let's head over to Tye next.
Ty how do you how do you answer open ended
questions when you're solo playing?
Speaker 5 (12:57):
So I started off as a forever when I first
started playing role playing games, and so I had to
learn improvisation and responsiveness to other people's decisions that I
didn't see coming from the beginning. So in solo play,
it's just a matter of following that same sort of practice.
When an uncertainty arises, just follow the get how would
(13:21):
you respond to it if it were presented to you
by a group. The narrative is providing the same sort
of challenge, so you just address it intuitively and through improvisation.
The other thing to do, though, and this may be
even more effective, and it should be maybe in combination
with the intuitive response, and that's still let the dice decide.
(13:42):
When I created the Fortunes Defour system, I wanted a
system that took the I don't know that the judgment
or the arbitration, the judgment out of the arbitration for
the game master, because the dice would ultimately determine it.
So when I'm playing, when I'm running a game one
of my ten, it's just to say, you try to
say yes to the what the character wants to do,
(14:04):
and then the dice will decide whether that works out
or not. And so the same thing can happen with
the solo play where you roll the dice and say
an odd number on the die is no, and a
even number on the die is a yes, or some
sort of combination like that that gives you a direction
to go one way or the other without having to
make the decision. Force the decision, if you will. She
horned it into the outcome.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Right on, nephlos, you are odd. Next, how do you
answer open ended questions tips and tricks?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I would say it.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Comes back to the architect and the gardener thing again.
Just once you have a set of characters and factions
defined and you know what the possible outcomes could be,
then you know you have to define a range of
possible outcomes, you know, within that spectrum.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So for most.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
Scenarios you're not going to want to go to wacky,
But in certain scenarios maybe you do add like a
chaos factor to your oracle role for example. And I
like to stick pretty close to the roll of the
dice for that reason, since my system has metacurrency and
other systems you may have metacurrency, but I can see
(15:13):
where you know if you didn't, and you could, you know,
throw in a little dmf ot in there, of course,
if it makes the story better. I don't see why not.
It's obviously open to interpretation. But yeah, just like find
out where things can go, and then if if it
warrants it be open to new and strange ideas based
(15:38):
on the roll of.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Dice in the system that you're using, Well, it's it's
your own system. Do you use like any kind of oracle,
like a yes and yes yes, but that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
Yeah, I'm glad you asked so dark So mirror has
a two D ten yes no, and then chaos normality
oracle it's on my blow and more dev But essentially
it's two D ten and the first D ten is
yes no kind of with degrees, so you know, all
the way from yes and all the way to no,
but depending on where it lands. And then the second
(16:12):
dice is kind of how influenced by chaos and randomness
or weirdness?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Is that answer the previous dice, So all the way.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
From totally mundane to wild and wacky supernatural arcane influence.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Just for listeners that aren't familiar with metacurrency, what is that?
Speaker 6 (16:33):
Yeah, So, medicurrency is a feature in a lot of TTRPGs,
especially modern ones. I think it's more of a recent
trend than it's definitely not an old school thing as
far as I'm aware. But it just means essentially that
you have some degree of reroll allowed. So some systems
have metacurrency where you can redo an entire role or
(16:53):
some allow like a modified reroll of some sort. But
essentially it boils down to giving a character a second
chance at something in some scenario.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So Steve, we're gonna have you answer this one last.
And nobody's talked about any kind of like event meaning
tables yet. Did I know you use them?
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yes, Could you talk.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
About that a little bit, how you use them, when
you would use them, and even what is that and also,
of course anything else that you want to add in
terms of open ended questions?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, absolutely, Well I first of all agree with everybody
else on their takes of approaching open ended questions curiously,
but like not holding on to trying to find the
right answer and just picking something and going with it,
because I think it is especially when you're playing solo,
(17:42):
like there is no one else at the table who
is going to be bothered a if you choose something
and then twenty minutes later you go actually that took
me down an avenue that I don't really want to
go down, So I'm going to go back and choose
something else, or you know, ultimately, like you just have
to pick the thing that is the most fun and
(18:04):
interesting for you because you're the only player at the table.
And I think that's that's super important to remember because
it is really easy when playing solo to put your
characters through so much more turmoil than they need to
because I feel like, as you know, you have this
sense of like, well, they have to suffer because I'm
(18:28):
the you know, it would be cheating if I if
they let them off easy this time. So I think
that's that's important. But yes, I absolutely love random tables
and I use Iron Sworn a lot. Iron Sworn Star
Forged is the game that I started with when I
started on my solo podcasting journey, and I think I
(18:51):
pretty much always have Iron Sworn the Iron Sworn Yes,
no Oracle in the back of my head when I'm
running basically any game, but especially the action and theme tables.
These are tables for anybody who's not familiar with that,
that are essentially just a list of words, and you
(19:12):
might have like a list of one hundred nouns and
then one hundred adjectives, and you roll your D one hundred,
you pick a noun, you roll D one hundred again,
you pick an adjective. You put those two together, and
then that helps to prompt you, and I think that's
something that's important as a solo player. When we're playing
(19:32):
at the table with other people, our imagination is fueled
by each other. But when you're just sitting at the
table by yourself, like, you don't have anything to kind
of feed off of. And that's where those tables are
really helpful, because oftentimes, if I come up against an
(19:53):
open ended question and I don't immediately have an answer,
my first instinct is to pick up the dice roll
on those tables and see if those words trigger some
sort of path forward or some sort of brainstorm idea
that is going to take the story in a new
(20:15):
and an interesting and a dramatic direction.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Those tables are magic, yeah, And strictly speaking, you don't
need them to play, but boy, I do think that
they're so fun. I want to say that Tanna Pigeons
Mythic is where those were first introduced into gaming. I
know that they come from Tarot Carts. Actually, I just
learned that fairly recently, I think from Pj's show Does
(20:38):
anybody know? Was there anybody doing it before? Mythic? I
feel like I should give credit where it's due, like
Tana introduced that mechanic.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Does anybody know I don't know specifically, but I would
say if it did exist before mythic mythic is what
made it viable?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Is she codified it?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
When I first learned about that, it really my brain
exploded and I thought, oh my god, somebody's actually like
revolutionized gaming with this one idea. Okay, let's move on
to another one. Ty, You're going to start us off
on this one. And this next question is when dealing
with NPCs and when dealing with dialogue, do you introduce
(21:21):
that into your games, especially when you're not making content specifically,
if you're playing a game just for yourself, are you
doing the dialogue? How are you going to flesh out
your NPCs? Any wisdom that you want to share about
those topics.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
So, when I'm thinking about NPCs, I like to follow
the details that first come to mind, sort of like
I do with following my gut on the yes no
or the open ended question and go or elead. So
figure approaches. What do I see first thing in my mind?
What's the length of their hair, what is their general build?
What kind of clothing are they wearing? Are they male
(21:58):
or female? You could roll a die for male, female,
non binary, whatever you wish to do, like a D
six can give you three options or something like that,
and then you just sort of go with what kind
of accent might they have? What is their race or species?
And again this can all be done on tables, right,
so you can have a table to determine randomly what
(22:20):
the characteristics are and then just intuitively build the personality.
And then as you build that personality and you start
to get some of those details and familiarity, then let
the details build on each other and you continue to
flesh out of character. And it depends on how important
the NPC is as well, because not every encounter is
going to be a return encounter when it comes to
non player characters, and when it comes to dialogue, if
(22:43):
it's if you're a private solo playee, dialogue may not
really come up unless you enjoy speaking out the back
and forth encounter, which is a preference in production. Of course,
that's a little bit different a factor because you have
to have all your characters speaking to each other to
create the immersive story. So a play, if you're journaling,
(23:04):
it may be fun to write the dialogue out in
the journal and that may be sufficient. Whether it's verbal
or not is another thing. And then as far as
writing dialogue, that's a whole other aspect of like fiction writing,
but with a little bit of practice and making it
sound natural. That just takes practice and reading and things
like that. So that's a little bit of a different
(23:24):
issue than solo play, but I think probably it works
most effective to me in journaling kinds of solo play games.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Now, I know that, like me, you produced for content.
So it's a hard answer, hard question to answer when
I when I frame it that way, let's hand it
off to Nephilos. How do you handle NPCs and or
dialogue in your games?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, this might be a little different than.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Others who are kind of going at this since I'm
essentially writing a book, But I have a table for
character creation that can apply to and as well. So
I will if the character is more important than like,
you know, random tabern inkeeper that has one line, then
I'll roll on the table and generate.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
A fully fleshed out character.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
But I will probably exclude some results on that table
if they're like to wacko, you know, so, because the
character creation table has like every single option that's possible
in the system, and sometimes you just don't want the
random peasant in the field to be a sorcerer that
has a pet demon or something, right.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So you know, if they are going to be at all.
Speaker 6 (24:38):
Have any screen time at all, then I'll definitely influence
their outcome by rolling on that table first and then
kind of seeing where it goes from there and seeing
what makes sense for their motivations and the place.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Okay, interesting, Steve, how about you?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I similar I think to Tie, I just grab a
couple of character traits and just kind of go with
what feels right with the vibe of that character and
the situation that that NPC is coming up in, and
just kind of see where it goes. And I feel
(25:20):
like my answer to all of these questions is basically
like I don't know, I'm just going to see where
it goes. Because it's similar with dialogue, where I, first
of all, I love writing dialogue, and so as somebody
who also is producing a show, and I have done
it both ways, where I have just extemporaneously created dialogue
(25:43):
and then I've written dialogue when I play solo without
creating something for a show. Which is rare. I'll admit
I'm in that camp as well, where most of my
solo play is creating my show, but when I do,
I tend to lean more towards the writing journaling side
(26:06):
of things, in which case I do kind of slow
down and spend time creating dialogue for the characters, because
essentially I'm just sitting at my computer writing, and every
once in a while when conflict happens, I just go
ahead and engage with the mechanics in order to see
(26:29):
what happens. So I think like, if I were just
going to play solo by myself, I would still write
dialogue because I enjoy the act of writing dialogue. But
if I was somebody who wasn't necessarily writing down their
solo play, I don't know that I would kind of
(26:49):
create dialogue in the same way. And so in the
instances where I've played like something like five par Sex
from Home, where it's more of a tabletop war game,
but still playing it solo, I don't really come up
with dialogue for the different characters. Maybe occasionally they'll like
shot a one liner back and forth, but for the
(27:10):
most part, I'm just kind of writing some notes to
myself and then rolling the dice to decide what happens
in the tabletop battle.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Thanks Steve Brian. How about you when dealing with NPCs
and dialogue, what's your approach?
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Well, when it comes to dialogue, you know, solo gaming
is an opportunity to have a slightly structured version of
make believe. So I'm not playing it very different than
I did when I was five. Right, I will sit
there and I will do an evil villain monologue, or
I will do back and forth different character voices with
characters when I feel like it. Sometimes you know you're
(27:47):
doing something like hashing out a long bargain with someone
and it isn't all that interesting. But I mean, this
is make believe and you don't have an audience. There's
no one to feel self conscious about, and I'm alone
in my apartm until a lot of the time I
can just sit and have a conversation with myself in
funny voices as much as I like. As for NPCs,
I mean, I will definitely agree with just about everything
(28:10):
I've heard so far. It's great to know a trait
and it's great to have just some description and maybe
a voice for a character to play with. But one
thing I like to do when I'm creating characters, ask
the question what's their damage? What's the thing that's bothering
this character is what is the reason that they are
unpleasant with other people? I spent years as a life
(28:31):
coach fixing up broken marriages, and one of the most
useful books in the world is a book called Games
People Play by Eric Berney, which introduced psychological a psychological
tool called transactional analysis. Basically, it talks about how people
just replay the one thing that's bothering them in their
life over and over again. If they had a mean
parent that talked down to them and you know, puffed
(28:54):
up and browwheat them, that's what they're going to do
to other people. Or they're going to play a victim
to get other people the browbeat them just to get
their kicks. And so if you just figure out what
problem a person has, and you can often figure that
out by the situation they're in in the role playing game,
then you can figure out how they're going to bring
terrible drama into the story.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
That's really cool. I've heard a lot of people talk
about like what's the character's motivation, Like what are they want?
What do they fear? That kind of thing, But your
approach is slightly different. I love it really cool. Let's see,
let's do one more question, and we'll start with Nephilos
for this one. Okay, what is one best practice tip
or trick or thing that blew your mind, some mechanic
(29:38):
that you discovered, anything that you would want to share
with other solo gamers that they might not be aware of. Nephilos,
how about you.
Speaker 6 (29:48):
I think the closest thing I can get to a
tip that really shakes things up or blows your mind,
so to speak, is going to be using something like
the event meaning table or as is previously mentioned, tarot cards,
or using tarot to provide kind of an element of
(30:09):
specific but very diverse randomness into the game. That's probably
as close as I can get to that question.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Fair enough, fair enough, Let's see if we like this
question as we pass it off to Steve, any kind
of interesting thing, little trick that you love to use.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Well, I said it earlier, but I absolutely love the
iron sworn oracles, And in my current game, I'm playing
a long running campaign of Traveler, but I still use
the iron sworn oracles both the yes no oracles, mostly
because I have those memorized to a point where I
(30:51):
don't really have to think about it, but even just
the like the action and theme oracles, and then there's
a whole bunch of oracles in there for you know
problem in a settlement. You know you've come across a
derylic starship, and you can kind of define the ship
as you explore through it. So there are all sorts
of great tables that are I think really useful for
(31:15):
helping to generate and flesh out a situation, a character,
any of that stuff. So I would say that's from
a mechanical standpoint, picking up the dice and rolling on
the oracles I think is great. From a like playing standpoint,
I would say two things real quick. One, I think
(31:35):
that getting started is the hardest thing that you can do,
and it can be very tempting to over prepare. And
this is going to look different for everybody. I feel
like Nephelos and I are probably on opposite ends of
the spectrum as far as how much we like to
(31:56):
prepare before we start a game. So this is this
is not me saying that like, well, don't prepare anything,
or or you know, you can over prepare too much.
But for me, what it comes down to is trying
to create the bare minimum that you personally need to
get started. So if that means you need to really
(32:20):
flesh out a world before you get started, that's great,
go do it. But don't feel like you have to
flesh out a world and then you have to flesh
out all these other things as well, Like, just do
the bare minimum, and that's going to look different for
everybody to get started. So that's the first thing. And
the second thing is when I stop a session, I
(32:41):
try as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And this is.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
True when I'm writing as well, not just when I'm
playing solo, but I try to stop in the middle
of the action, or I try to stop in the
middle of a sentence, even because when I come back
to it, I already have some built in momentum because
I know how that sentence is going to end. And
that way, I'm not looking at a blank start of
(33:04):
a new chapter trying to figure out how I'm going
to get going and figure out what happens next.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, that idea of leaving with something unresolved is one
hell of aseel trick. I love that over to you, Brian.
Any other tricks or tips that you'd like to share.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Well, I think the most important one for me that
really set me free while I was starting the solo
journey was to remember that the only rules lawyer in
the room is yourself. Right, nobody else is going to
fault you if you get the rule wrong, or you
decide you're just going to start playing something different, Change
the system, change the rule however you like to get
the satisfaction you want out of the story. I'm willing
(33:41):
to bet that just about everyone here and probably anyone
listening who wants to start solo role playing has a
bunch of books on the shelf. You're allowed to pull
them all out and get what you want out of them.
Most of my systems are pretty cluegye right. I'm probably
running with a base of swords and wizardry, with the
skill system from Death Trap, Light and Monsters dragged out
of the AD and D second edition book, and maybe
(34:02):
some mechanics stolen from Dungeon World when I feel like it.
If I need a space battle Travelers right there, you
can play with the whole bookshelf, why not, you know,
and mix and match to your heart's content. Don't let
yourself be bound by any set of the rules.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Amen to that, Brian, and we are going to end
off with tie any other tricks or tips that you'd
like to share.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
So probably my biggest point of advice, especially when I
go back to the randomized tables or using encounter tables,
is use them to generate the initial idea of the
encounter and then work to find a way to make
them fit into the theme or plot. You know, you
don't want to just say, well, I rolled a meteor.
(34:46):
I don't know what your tables are like, but I
roll a meteor that crashes into the ground and you know,
destroys five square kilometers. That might not fit what you're
trying to do, and it probably wouldn't fit for most scenarios,
but the point being that you don't want something that
just apps does not track with the narrative that you've
got going on. And I have an example some years ago,
I was using encountertables while a party was doing their
(35:10):
camp over and I rolled a wear boar. Now I
didn't have like anthropes as part of the world necessarily
or not that they weren't part of the world, but
they weren't part of the written script of the plot,
if you will. But what happened was this were boar
in bar form was rooting around in the camp when
the century the person on guard noticed it and encountered it,
(35:32):
and I believe there's a little bit of a skirmish.
The boar ran off, and that was it. The party
didn't think too much about it. The next day, though,
they finished their trip and they went into a city
to meet with a contact that they had to establish
connection with. And when they met the person, they had
a distinctive bodyguard in attendance, a stout person with a
(35:57):
kind of pigle like features and rough hair and things
like that. And I believe there was another telling trait
I can't remember exactly, as a scar or something like that.
But what I did essentially was randomly rolled a wearbor
encounter and then turned that encounter into an NPC that
(36:19):
was a tag along to another central NPC in the storyline,
and that NPC had acted as a spy slash scout
for the primary NPC, who ultimately was not allied with
the party, so they weren't It wasn't a good disposition.
The party didn't know it at the time, but they
were being evaluated by an observer with more sinister means,
(36:41):
and they used their wearbore scout to gather some information
prior to meeting the party. So it all worked into
the plot carried on for you know, from there into
the storyline to various degrees of revelation.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
It's a bit of an art form, isn't it too
to make your random encounters become a part of the
fabric of the plot. But it's super satisfying when you
can make it happen. Sometimes it can be hard, at
least I find that sometimes it does feel like a
square peg round hole. But boy, when you can make
it fit, it's very enriching to the story. And I
guess one of the nice things about solo gaming is
(37:18):
you can take the time to think it over. You
don't have to improvise how it fits into the story
right away. Maybe it dawns on you a few days
later when you're taking the bus to work or something.
All right, guys, I want to say thank you so
much for joining me in this round table. And I
think we've got a very kind of eclectic bunch here,
which is really cool and a lot of different perspectives
(37:38):
on how solo gaming can work. As always, I continue
to enjoy all of your shows, and I would recommend
for anybody listening to this to check out all of
these creators excellent shows, and I'll put links in the
show notes. Thanks so much for listening to this first
of three roundtable discussion about solo gaming with some of
(38:01):
the most interesting podcasters in the hobby. Now I mentioned
in the introduction that I had some news to share
about a new collaborative project. We have just launched Solo
Roleplayers Network dot com and the site is live. I
would love to invite you to go there and see
what we've got going on. Our goal is to have
a one stop place for fans of the genre to
(38:22):
find new shows and new inspirations. The term solo network
might be an oxymoron, but here it is all the same.
I know I speak for all the network members when
I say that we hope it's something you'll find actually useful.
We intend to make it a hub and center for
all kinds of future activities and initiatives too. Once again,
that url is www dot Solo role Players Network dot com.
(38:46):
We'll see you there.
Hi there, folks.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I am very excited to share with you this bonus episode.
It's a panel discussion with some of the best players
in solo RPG podcasts. It turns out that there are
so many talented and creative minds out there that I
couldn't fit them all into one show, so I intend
to run this as a two or maybe even three
part series. To kick us off, I've invited four fellow
podstrs here today. All of them have excellent shows and
(00:41):
do solo in their own way. I highly recommend that
you check them all out now. Before we get on
with this show, A quick note to say that the
timing of the release is deliberate. If you stick around
till the end, you'll hear me talk about an exciting
new collaborative project that I think you'll really like. All right,
let's meet our guests and get this thing started. Steve,
(01:02):
want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit
about your show.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Absolutely thanks for having me on here, John So. I
am Steve Morrison of the Errant Adventures podcast. It is
a solo actual play where stories are told at the
speed of dice, and essentially I love to create narratives
of exciting action, adventure and deep characters, and most of
(01:31):
my stories take place in a sci fi milieu, although
I do have some fantasy as well. But I'm currently
running a long running traveler campaign of about thirty episodes
in and just getting started.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Thank you, Steve. How about you, Brian?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
I'm Brian right out. I run the podcast Swords Against Madness,
where I'm trying to capture the spirit of the very
early D and D with all of this weird psychedelic elements.
There's robots and crash spaceships right alongside your ogre may
Gui and your cobolds. You know, I really like lean
into the pulpy, strange elements. I want my chainmail bikinis
(02:12):
and my flying wizard vans and my three bladed swords
in there.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Fantastic ty tell us about your show.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Hello. I am Dungeon, mister tie on the socials, the
owner of Adventure Slang Productions, the creator of the new
of Arden TTRPG and Fortunes dfour system. I also have
two podcasts. The first podcast is called the Adventure Sling Podcast,
where we speak to all kinds of cool people doing
neat stuff in the industry and industry adjacent, and I
(02:40):
also have the Chronicles of Nephis, which is my solo
actual play podcast set in New of Arden. Both those
are on the website adventure sling dot com, where you
can also find the soft launch digital file for New
of Arden with rent files to come.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Alrighty, last, but not least, Nephalos.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
This is Nefhalo's sh I'm the creator of Reflections in
the Dark Some Mirror and that is kind of a
vessel for my TTRPG called darks Mirror, And then eventually
there will be a novel as well that follows the
story of the podcast. The podcast itself is, like many
of the others in this space, a dark fantasy.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
I think mine has.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
A bit more of an emphasis on slow kind of
brushstroke painting, long form prose, flowery prose as I've heard
some people say, and very defined characters with distinct motivations
and a deep lived in world. And the story follows
(03:42):
the character Shinareth, born of two heroes, on her journey through.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
The world of Volgraph.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's a super diverse group and I can't wait to
pick your brains. So let's jump in with our first question,
and that is going to be how would we actually
start a brand new game from scratch? So do we
start with characters? Do we start with system? What do
the opening moves look like? And why don't we start
with Steve? You're going to start a brand new game,
(04:11):
what does it actually look like at the table?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Well, it kind of depends. There are a couple of
different ways that I like to get into starting a
new game. Sometimes I have a character that I'm really
excited to play, and that's the driving force to get started.
Sometimes I've got a story idea. Sometimes I've got a
world that I want to play in. I would say
(04:36):
less frequently do I have a game system or you
know something like that that is the kind of driving force.
It kind of always starts with story or character or
world for me. But it's just kind of figuring out
what that thing is that I'm most excited to explore,
and then building on top of it. So if it's
(04:57):
a character, kind of figuring out what the bra strokes
of that character are, and then you know, deciding what
kind of system I want to play in, deciding what
kind of world it was going to be, and all
that stuff adds on top.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's really interesting. If you're going to start off with
a character and you're going to put them into conflict.
Are you going to make that up? Or are you
going to roll on a table?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
Typically, I would say, because I have a background in
writing fiction, I oftentimes am coming to the table with
a starting idea like this is the starting conflict, and
then I usually have an idea of what the ending
is going to be, and that is the thing that
(05:39):
I'm shooting towards that I'm trying to move towards. And
in pretty much every story I've ever written, I have
never actually ended the story at that point because I'm
a discovery writer. So I'm similarly with RBGS, and that's
why they kind of work well together, is that I'm
discovering the story as I go, and I usually find
(05:59):
a better ending than what my original kind of anticipated
ending is. But it's good to have something to shoot
for so that it keeps that momentum moving forward.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
A very good point, isn't that the truth? Let's hand
it off to Brian. Brian, how do you start off?
And why not let's build on what Steve was talking about.
Do you have an ending, even like a possible ending
in mind?
Speaker 4 (06:23):
When you do, I'm pretty much the opposite of what
Steve was describing, in that I don't like to know
what I'm getting into to begin with. I'll roll up
a couple of characters, and I pick the system based
on what kind of feel I want or what I'm
play testing at the time for a blog entry or whatever.
So one day I might feel like a kind of
tragedy field adventure. I might grab Dungeon World, or I
(06:45):
might want a really old school D and D games.
I'll grab Swords and Wizardry, and I will start my
characters someplace where they're completely faced with a totally alien
environment like crashed spaceship or shipwrecked or teleported to someplace new,
or being sent out into the wilds where they don't
know what's there. And then I rely a lot on
(07:06):
things like random generation and tools like random hex map
generators to start to just put a world in front
of me and figure out what's going on, and using
tools like mythic right.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
On, Now, do you believe in that whole? Like starting
in Media's Reds, do you kind of like, let's start
with action.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I prefer it that way. I find that, especially with
a solo game, you're spending a lot of time talking
to yourself. If you're trying to get the player characters
to meet at a tavern and figure out what they
like about each other, so why not put them into
a harsh situation. You get to know the characters based
on how you have how they react to those first
few moments of the adventure.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
So true, so true, Ty, We're going to head it
off to you next. For people that want to get
into solo gaming but don't really know how to start,
how do you do it?
Speaker 5 (07:53):
I think the first place to start with solo play
is having a system. You know which system do you
want to use? The and the dice system, and the
things that are enjoyable for you as a player are
going to be the things you're going to want to use, because,
for one thing, you'll know them and you need a
system to help guide and create that randomness that is
part of role playing games. So once you have your system,
(08:17):
hopefully or preferably choose one with encounter tables, where now
we could create our own encountertables as well, but if
they're already built into the system, then it's just a
matter of using what's there and not have to do
all that extra setup work. The next thing to do
is make your character or two, depending on how you
want to run it. If you want to have two
characters for survivability purposes, that's never a bad idea, although
(08:41):
starting out it may be a good idea just to
have one and say how it goes. The next and
final thing, perhaps is just give them, give your character
or characters a quest and go, and then you probably
want to have some sort of larger over our ching goal.
I like to build my plot lines from I'm a
big encounter, if not the final encounter, at least like
(09:03):
the end of our encounter, and then work backwards a
little bit to you know how that encounter arrives or
how the character, excuse me, how the character arrives at
the encounter. So when you know what the end result is,
at least for a phase of the adventure, then the
characters are heading towards that final encounter. They don't necessarily
(09:25):
know it, But then you build in your other encounters
along the way, and they get stronger, and the whole
game is happening then at that point, and then you
see you know how they get to where they're going,
where they arrive depending on how you want to do.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
It fantastic and Lasbian, not at least Nephilos. How do
you start a solo game?
Speaker 6 (09:43):
Yeah, so I think those of you familiar with writing
might be familiar with the comparison between the architect and
the gardener. And I'm more of an architect myself, So
I think the system is actually the least important choice
in my opinion. It can certainly lend flavor, but to
(10:04):
a certain extent, you can adapt a system to almost
any story that you want to tell. Obviously there are
some exceptions to that, but most systems are fairly open
to interpretation and kind of house rules and warping flavor
or whatever. So I'll start with, you know, basically an
an out line and a setting, and I like to
(10:26):
get pretty defined. So in Darks and Mirror, I have
defined factions, countries, map characters, world. So I'll set the
table in a pretty detailed fashion, and then I'll kind
of think about which characters and factions are motivated by
what and where.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
It's a good.
Speaker 6 (10:46):
Place to start from an action filled perspective, So I'll
take my perspective character and say, hey, what could happen here?
And then at that point that's when I'll start, you know,
making some custom tables and rolling on the dice to
determine like, Okay, this faction wants to do this, and
this influence is the main character this way, and you know,
so if someone is struggling, I would say, try to
(11:08):
define all the motivated parties and influential parties in your
setting and then.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You know, kind of make tables and roll from there.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Really cool. Okay, So here's another question, and for this
one we'll start off with Brian. This question is how
do you handle open ended questions in a way that
is organic and can surprise you as the player.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
I find that there's two things that are really helpful
for that, and the first one is just because I
don't know where anything except where I'm starting, I leave
myself open to a lot of surprises, using a lot
of random tables, and I use older systems that have
roles for things like the attitude of the NPCs, what
the monsters are doing when you encounter them, that sort
(11:53):
of thing, And that way, I don't have to worry
too much about the open ended questions, but when they come,
I take a moment and I daydream and see if
something cool comes up. In my head. And if that
doesn't work, I've got a bag of ruins and a
deck of Tarot cards, and so I just will grab
whatever strikes my fancy. And the one thing I don't
let myself do is sit and wait for too long.
(12:16):
A good enough answer is way better than a perfect
answer three days later.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
That's awesome. Let's not bury the lead. You've got a
bag of runes. Tell me about that.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
I've been a practicing neo pagan since I was fourteen
years old. I used to actually make a living as
a psychic. I used to read tarot cards and tea
leaves at a cafe when I was just out of college.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Wow, not what I was expecting to dig up so
early in this roundtable. This is podcasting gold.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
All right, thanks Brian. Let's head over to Tye next.
Ty how do you how do you answer open ended
questions when you're solo playing?
Speaker 5 (12:57):
So I started off as a forever when I first
started playing role playing games, and so I had to
learn improvisation and responsiveness to other people's decisions that I
didn't see coming from the beginning. So in solo play,
it's just a matter of following that same sort of practice.
When an uncertainty arises, just follow the get how would
(13:21):
you respond to it if it were presented to you
by a group. The narrative is providing the same sort
of challenge, so you just address it intuitively and through improvisation.
The other thing to do, though, and this may be
even more effective, and it should be maybe in combination
with the intuitive response, and that's still let the dice decide.
(13:42):
When I created the Fortunes Defour system, I wanted a
system that took the I don't know that the judgment
or the arbitration, the judgment out of the arbitration for
the game master, because the dice would ultimately determine it.
So when I'm playing, when I'm running a game one
of my ten, it's just to say, you try to
say yes to the what the character wants to do,
(14:04):
and then the dice will decide whether that works out
or not. And so the same thing can happen with
the solo play where you roll the dice and say
an odd number on the die is no, and a
even number on the die is a yes, or some
sort of combination like that that gives you a direction
to go one way or the other without having to
make the decision. Force the decision, if you will. She
horned it into the outcome.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Right on, nephlos, you are odd. Next, how do you
answer open ended questions tips and tricks?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I would say it.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Comes back to the architect and the gardener thing again.
Just once you have a set of characters and factions
defined and you know what the possible outcomes could be,
then you know you have to define a range of
possible outcomes, you know, within that spectrum.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
So for most.
Speaker 6 (14:53):
Scenarios you're not going to want to go to wacky,
But in certain scenarios maybe you do add like a
chaos factor to your oracle role for example. And I
like to stick pretty close to the roll of the
dice for that reason, since my system has metacurrency and
other systems you may have metacurrency, but I can see
(15:13):
where you know if you didn't, and you could, you know,
throw in a little dmf ot in there, of course,
if it makes the story better. I don't see why not.
It's obviously open to interpretation. But yeah, just like find
out where things can go, and then if if it
warrants it be open to new and strange ideas based
(15:38):
on the roll of.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Dice in the system that you're using, Well, it's it's
your own system. Do you use like any kind of oracle,
like a yes and yes yes, but that kind of thing.
Speaker 6 (15:51):
Yeah, I'm glad you asked so dark So mirror has
a two D ten yes no, and then chaos normality
oracle it's on my blow and more dev But essentially
it's two D ten and the first D ten is
yes no kind of with degrees, so you know, all
the way from yes and all the way to no,
but depending on where it lands. And then the second
(16:12):
dice is kind of how influenced by chaos and randomness
or weirdness?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Is that answer the previous dice, So all the way.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
From totally mundane to wild and wacky supernatural arcane influence.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Just for listeners that aren't familiar with metacurrency, what is that?
Speaker 6 (16:33):
Yeah, So, medicurrency is a feature in a lot of TTRPGs,
especially modern ones. I think it's more of a recent
trend than it's definitely not an old school thing as
far as I'm aware. But it just means essentially that
you have some degree of reroll allowed. So some systems
have metacurrency where you can redo an entire role or
(16:53):
some allow like a modified reroll of some sort. But
essentially it boils down to giving a character a second
chance at something in some scenario.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
So Steve, we're gonna have you answer this one last.
And nobody's talked about any kind of like event meaning
tables yet. Did I know you use them?
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Yes, Could you talk.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
About that a little bit, how you use them, when
you would use them, and even what is that and also,
of course anything else that you want to add in
terms of open ended questions?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, absolutely, Well I first of all agree with everybody
else on their takes of approaching open ended questions curiously,
but like not holding on to trying to find the
right answer and just picking something and going with it,
because I think it is especially when you're playing solo,
(17:42):
like there is no one else at the table who
is going to be bothered a if you choose something
and then twenty minutes later you go actually that took
me down an avenue that I don't really want to
go down, So I'm going to go back and choose
something else, or you know, ultimately, like you just have
to pick the thing that is the most fun and
(18:04):
interesting for you because you're the only player at the table.
And I think that's that's super important to remember because
it is really easy when playing solo to put your
characters through so much more turmoil than they need to
because I feel like, as you know, you have this
sense of like, well, they have to suffer because I'm
(18:28):
the you know, it would be cheating if I if
they let them off easy this time. So I think
that's that's important. But yes, I absolutely love random tables
and I use Iron Sworn a lot. Iron Sworn Star
Forged is the game that I started with when I
started on my solo podcasting journey, and I think I
(18:51):
pretty much always have Iron Sworn the Iron Sworn Yes,
no Oracle in the back of my head when I'm
running basically any game, but especially the action and theme tables.
These are tables for anybody who's not familiar with that,
that are essentially just a list of words, and you
(19:12):
might have like a list of one hundred nouns and
then one hundred adjectives, and you roll your D one hundred,
you pick a noun, you roll D one hundred again,
you pick an adjective. You put those two together, and
then that helps to prompt you, and I think that's
something that's important as a solo player. When we're playing
(19:32):
at the table with other people, our imagination is fueled
by each other. But when you're just sitting at the
table by yourself, like, you don't have anything to kind
of feed off of. And that's where those tables are
really helpful, because oftentimes, if I come up against an
(19:53):
open ended question and I don't immediately have an answer,
my first instinct is to pick up the dice roll
on those tables and see if those words trigger some
sort of path forward or some sort of brainstorm idea
that is going to take the story in a new
(20:15):
and an interesting and a dramatic direction.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Those tables are magic, yeah, And strictly speaking, you don't
need them to play, but boy, I do think that
they're so fun. I want to say that Tanna Pigeons
Mythic is where those were first introduced into gaming. I
know that they come from Tarot Carts. Actually, I just
learned that fairly recently, I think from Pj's show Does
(20:38):
anybody know? Was there anybody doing it before? Mythic? I
feel like I should give credit where it's due, like
Tana introduced that mechanic.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Does anybody know I don't know specifically, but I would
say if it did exist before mythic mythic is what
made it viable?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Is she codified it?
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
When I first learned about that, it really my brain
exploded and I thought, oh my god, somebody's actually like
revolutionized gaming with this one idea. Okay, let's move on
to another one. Ty, You're going to start us off
on this one. And this next question is when dealing
with NPCs and when dealing with dialogue, do you introduce
(21:21):
that into your games, especially when you're not making content specifically,
if you're playing a game just for yourself, are you
doing the dialogue? How are you going to flesh out
your NPCs? Any wisdom that you want to share about
those topics.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
So, when I'm thinking about NPCs, I like to follow
the details that first come to mind, sort of like
I do with following my gut on the yes no
or the open ended question and go or elead. So
figure approaches. What do I see first thing in my mind?
What's the length of their hair, what is their general build?
What kind of clothing are they wearing? Are they male
(21:58):
or female? You could roll a die for male, female,
non binary, whatever you wish to do, like a D
six can give you three options or something like that,
and then you just sort of go with what kind
of accent might they have? What is their race or species?
And again this can all be done on tables, right,
so you can have a table to determine randomly what
(22:20):
the characteristics are and then just intuitively build the personality.
And then as you build that personality and you start
to get some of those details and familiarity, then let
the details build on each other and you continue to
flesh out of character. And it depends on how important
the NPC is as well, because not every encounter is
going to be a return encounter when it comes to
non player characters, and when it comes to dialogue, if
(22:43):
it's if you're a private solo playee, dialogue may not
really come up unless you enjoy speaking out the back
and forth encounter, which is a preference in production. Of course,
that's a little bit different a factor because you have
to have all your characters speaking to each other to
create the immersive story. So a play, if you're journaling,
(23:04):
it may be fun to write the dialogue out in
the journal and that may be sufficient. Whether it's verbal
or not is another thing. And then as far as
writing dialogue, that's a whole other aspect of like fiction writing,
but with a little bit of practice and making it
sound natural. That just takes practice and reading and things
like that. So that's a little bit of a different
(23:24):
issue than solo play, but I think probably it works
most effective to me in journaling kinds of solo play games.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Now, I know that, like me, you produced for content.
So it's a hard answer, hard question to answer when
I when I frame it that way, let's hand it
off to Nephilos. How do you handle NPCs and or
dialogue in your games?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Well, this might be a little different than.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
Others who are kind of going at this since I'm
essentially writing a book, But I have a table for
character creation that can apply to and as well. So
I will if the character is more important than like,
you know, random tabern inkeeper that has one line, then
I'll roll on the table and generate.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
A fully fleshed out character.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
But I will probably exclude some results on that table
if they're like to wacko, you know, so, because the
character creation table has like every single option that's possible
in the system, and sometimes you just don't want the
random peasant in the field to be a sorcerer that
has a pet demon or something, right.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So you know, if they are going to be at all.
Speaker 6 (24:38):
Have any screen time at all, then I'll definitely influence
their outcome by rolling on that table first and then
kind of seeing where it goes from there and seeing
what makes sense for their motivations and the place.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Okay, interesting, Steve, how about you?
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I similar I think to Tie, I just grab a
couple of character traits and just kind of go with
what feels right with the vibe of that character and
the situation that that NPC is coming up in, and
just kind of see where it goes. And I feel
(25:20):
like my answer to all of these questions is basically
like I don't know, I'm just going to see where
it goes. Because it's similar with dialogue, where I, first
of all, I love writing dialogue, and so as somebody
who also is producing a show, and I have done
it both ways, where I have just extemporaneously created dialogue
(25:43):
and then I've written dialogue when I play solo without
creating something for a show. Which is rare. I'll admit
I'm in that camp as well, where most of my
solo play is creating my show, but when I do,
I tend to lean more towards the writing journaling side
(26:06):
of things, in which case I do kind of slow
down and spend time creating dialogue for the characters, because
essentially I'm just sitting at my computer writing, and every
once in a while when conflict happens, I just go
ahead and engage with the mechanics in order to see
(26:29):
what happens. So I think like, if I were just
going to play solo by myself, I would still write
dialogue because I enjoy the act of writing dialogue. But
if I was somebody who wasn't necessarily writing down their
solo play, I don't know that I would kind of
(26:49):
create dialogue in the same way. And so in the
instances where I've played like something like five par Sex
from Home, where it's more of a tabletop war game,
but still playing it solo, I don't really come up
with dialogue for the different characters. Maybe occasionally they'll like
shot a one liner back and forth, but for the
(27:10):
most part, I'm just kind of writing some notes to
myself and then rolling the dice to decide what happens
in the tabletop battle.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Thanks Steve Brian. How about you when dealing with NPCs
and dialogue, what's your approach?
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Well, when it comes to dialogue, you know, solo gaming
is an opportunity to have a slightly structured version of
make believe. So I'm not playing it very different than
I did when I was five. Right, I will sit
there and I will do an evil villain monologue, or
I will do back and forth different character voices with
characters when I feel like it. Sometimes you know you're
(27:47):
doing something like hashing out a long bargain with someone
and it isn't all that interesting. But I mean, this
is make believe and you don't have an audience. There's
no one to feel self conscious about, and I'm alone
in my apartm until a lot of the time I
can just sit and have a conversation with myself in
funny voices as much as I like. As for NPCs,
I mean, I will definitely agree with just about everything
(28:10):
I've heard so far. It's great to know a trait
and it's great to have just some description and maybe
a voice for a character to play with. But one
thing I like to do when I'm creating characters, ask
the question what's their damage? What's the thing that's bothering
this character is what is the reason that they are
unpleasant with other people? I spent years as a life
(28:31):
coach fixing up broken marriages, and one of the most
useful books in the world is a book called Games
People Play by Eric Berney, which introduced psychological a psychological
tool called transactional analysis. Basically, it talks about how people
just replay the one thing that's bothering them in their
life over and over again. If they had a mean
parent that talked down to them and you know, puffed
(28:54):
up and browwheat them, that's what they're going to do
to other people. Or they're going to play a victim
to get other people the browbeat them just to get
their kicks. And so if you just figure out what
problem a person has, and you can often figure that
out by the situation they're in in the role playing game,
then you can figure out how they're going to bring
terrible drama into the story.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
That's really cool. I've heard a lot of people talk
about like what's the character's motivation, Like what are they want?
What do they fear? That kind of thing, But your
approach is slightly different. I love it really cool. Let's see,
let's do one more question, and we'll start with Nephilos
for this one. Okay, what is one best practice tip
or trick or thing that blew your mind, some mechanic
(29:38):
that you discovered, anything that you would want to share
with other solo gamers that they might not be aware of. Nephilos,
how about you.
Speaker 6 (29:48):
I think the closest thing I can get to a
tip that really shakes things up or blows your mind,
so to speak, is going to be using something like
the event meaning table or as is previously mentioned, tarot cards,
or using tarot to provide kind of an element of
(30:09):
specific but very diverse randomness into the game. That's probably
as close as I can get to that question.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Fair enough, fair enough, Let's see if we like this
question as we pass it off to Steve, any kind
of interesting thing, little trick that you love to use.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Well, I said it earlier, but I absolutely love the
iron sworn oracles, And in my current game, I'm playing
a long running campaign of Traveler, but I still use
the iron sworn oracles both the yes no oracles, mostly
because I have those memorized to a point where I
(30:51):
don't really have to think about it, but even just
the like the action and theme oracles, and then there's
a whole bunch of oracles in there for you know
problem in a settlement. You know you've come across a
derylic starship, and you can kind of define the ship
as you explore through it. So there are all sorts
of great tables that are I think really useful for
(31:15):
helping to generate and flesh out a situation, a character,
any of that stuff. So I would say that's from
a mechanical standpoint, picking up the dice and rolling on
the oracles I think is great. From a like playing standpoint,
I would say two things real quick. One, I think
(31:35):
that getting started is the hardest thing that you can do,
and it can be very tempting to over prepare. And
this is going to look different for everybody. I feel
like Nephelos and I are probably on opposite ends of
the spectrum as far as how much we like to
(31:56):
prepare before we start a game. So this is this
is not me saying that like, well, don't prepare anything,
or or you know, you can over prepare too much.
But for me, what it comes down to is trying
to create the bare minimum that you personally need to
get started. So if that means you need to really
(32:20):
flesh out a world before you get started, that's great,
go do it. But don't feel like you have to
flesh out a world and then you have to flesh
out all these other things as well, Like, just do
the bare minimum, and that's going to look different for
everybody to get started. So that's the first thing. And
the second thing is when I stop a session, I
(32:41):
try as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And this is.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
True when I'm writing as well, not just when I'm
playing solo, but I try to stop in the middle
of the action, or I try to stop in the
middle of a sentence, even because when I come back
to it, I already have some built in momentum because
I know how that sentence is going to end. And
that way, I'm not looking at a blank start of
(33:04):
a new chapter trying to figure out how I'm going
to get going and figure out what happens next.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah, that idea of leaving with something unresolved is one
hell of aseel trick. I love that over to you, Brian.
Any other tricks or tips that you'd like to share.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Well, I think the most important one for me that
really set me free while I was starting the solo
journey was to remember that the only rules lawyer in
the room is yourself. Right, nobody else is going to
fault you if you get the rule wrong, or you
decide you're just going to start playing something different, Change
the system, change the rule however you like to get
the satisfaction you want out of the story. I'm willing
(33:41):
to bet that just about everyone here and probably anyone
listening who wants to start solo role playing has a
bunch of books on the shelf. You're allowed to pull
them all out and get what you want out of them.
Most of my systems are pretty cluegye right. I'm probably
running with a base of swords and wizardry, with the
skill system from Death Trap, Light and Monsters dragged out
of the AD and D second edition book, and maybe
(34:02):
some mechanics stolen from Dungeon World when I feel like it.
If I need a space battle Travelers right there, you
can play with the whole bookshelf, why not, you know,
and mix and match to your heart's content. Don't let
yourself be bound by any set of the rules.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Amen to that, Brian, and we are going to end
off with tie any other tricks or tips that you'd
like to share.
Speaker 5 (34:25):
So probably my biggest point of advice, especially when I
go back to the randomized tables or using encounter tables,
is use them to generate the initial idea of the
encounter and then work to find a way to make
them fit into the theme or plot. You know, you
don't want to just say, well, I rolled a meteor.
(34:46):
I don't know what your tables are like, but I
roll a meteor that crashes into the ground and you know,
destroys five square kilometers. That might not fit what you're
trying to do, and it probably wouldn't fit for most scenarios,
but the point being that you don't want something that
just apps does not track with the narrative that you've
got going on. And I have an example some years ago,
I was using encountertables while a party was doing their
(35:10):
camp over and I rolled a wear boar. Now I
didn't have like anthropes as part of the world necessarily
or not that they weren't part of the world, but
they weren't part of the written script of the plot,
if you will. But what happened was this were boar
in bar form was rooting around in the camp when
the century the person on guard noticed it and encountered it,
(35:32):
and I believe there's a little bit of a skirmish.
The boar ran off, and that was it. The party
didn't think too much about it. The next day, though,
they finished their trip and they went into a city
to meet with a contact that they had to establish
connection with. And when they met the person, they had
a distinctive bodyguard in attendance, a stout person with a
(35:57):
kind of pigle like features and rough hair and things
like that. And I believe there was another telling trait
I can't remember exactly, as a scar or something like that.
But what I did essentially was randomly rolled a wearbor
encounter and then turned that encounter into an NPC that
(36:19):
was a tag along to another central NPC in the storyline,
and that NPC had acted as a spy slash scout
for the primary NPC, who ultimately was not allied with
the party, so they weren't It wasn't a good disposition.
The party didn't know it at the time, but they
were being evaluated by an observer with more sinister means,
(36:41):
and they used their wearbore scout to gather some information
prior to meeting the party. So it all worked into
the plot carried on for you know, from there into
the storyline to various degrees of revelation.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
It's a bit of an art form, isn't it too
to make your random encounters become a part of the
fabric of the plot. But it's super satisfying when you
can make it happen. Sometimes it can be hard, at
least I find that sometimes it does feel like a
square peg round hole. But boy, when you can make
it fit, it's very enriching to the story. And I
guess one of the nice things about solo gaming is
(37:18):
you can take the time to think it over. You
don't have to improvise how it fits into the story
right away. Maybe it dawns on you a few days
later when you're taking the bus to work or something.
All right, guys, I want to say thank you so
much for joining me in this round table. And I
think we've got a very kind of eclectic bunch here,
which is really cool and a lot of different perspectives
(37:38):
on how solo gaming can work. As always, I continue
to enjoy all of your shows, and I would recommend
for anybody listening to this to check out all of
these creators excellent shows, and I'll put links in the
show notes. Thanks so much for listening to this first
of three roundtable discussion about solo gaming with some of
(38:01):
the most interesting podcasters in the hobby. Now I mentioned
in the introduction that I had some news to share
about a new collaborative project. We have just launched Solo
Roleplayers Network dot com and the site is live. I
would love to invite you to go there and see
what we've got going on. Our goal is to have
a one stop place for fans of the genre to
(38:22):
find new shows and new inspirations. The term solo network
might be an oxymoron, but here it is all the same.
I know I speak for all the network members when
I say that we hope it's something you'll find actually useful.
We intend to make it a hub and center for
all kinds of future activities and initiatives too. Once again,
that url is www dot Solo role Players Network dot com.
(38:46):
We'll see you there.
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