My Solo RPG Blog

 Tom Singer and his fiancée Sixpence Berrycloth are travelling in their new(ish) blue Austin Tourer down a winding, narrow country lane towards the quaint village of  Twixton Bewely.

Question - What time of day is it?

I go to randomthings.com, it gives me the time of 5:16pm, 

okay, so its early evening then.

Whilst I am on randomthings.com, I ask for two random verbs from their random verb generator, I get 'Charge' and 'Decay', interesting, I can use those words to help get this scene moving.

As you round a blind corner a speeding Roadster is charging towards you and showing no sign of slowing down or getting out of your way.

Question - Can we get out of the way of the oncoming car?

Roll 1d6 and consult the Oracle,   I roll a 4 which gives me 'Yes- but'.

You swerve off the road on to the grass verge to avoid being hit by the speeding roadster, and narrowly miss hitting a stone wall , your engine stalls and the Austin judders to a halt.  The stone wall marks the boundary between the road and an old decaying manor house.

Question - Are we both okay?

Roll 1d6 and consult the Oracle, another roll of 4 'Yes-but'

No injuries but you are both a little shaken by the experience.

Okay - We will rest a few minutes. Sixpence is a medical doctor so she will be able to check we are good to continue our journey.

Question - Any sign of the speeding car?

Another Oracle Roll, a 3 gives the answer -'No, but'.

The Roadster is long gone but you did observe it to be a red Riley two seater.

Tom - "A Riley, someone with a bit of money must own that"

Sixpence - "Its getting late Tom, lets go into the Village and see if there is anywhere we can get something eat, maybe somewhere to stay overnight, I think we should get some rest before we continue". 

Tom - "Good idea, someone in the village may know who owns that Riley, there can't be  many cars like that about".

Question - Does the Austin start okay?

Roll on the Oracle - a 5 which gives the answer 'Yes'.

You start the car and make your way towards Twixton Bewely .

1930's Blue Austin Tourer

And so ends the fist scene of my solo gothic horror adventure, who was driving the red Riley, why were they driving so fast away from the village and what is the significance of that creepy old decaying manor house?  

Why play RPG's solo? 

There are many reasons you may want to solo play an RPG.  Maybe you are a GM and want to walk through a new scenario before playing it with your group.  Maybe you want play a set of rules or a setting but your group are not interested or they are just happy playing the games you usually play. Maybe meeting up once a week or once a fortnight for a game isn't enough of a fix for you or perhaps your GM just isn't available this week.  Maybe like me, you just live out in the sticks and there are no players nearby.

All of the above are valid reasons for playing RPS's solo, and non of them are valid reasons for not playing your favourite RPG's.

How do you play RPG's solo?

Its not as difficult as you would think. You need a GM emulator. In its simplest form you ask an oracle a 'yes' or 'no' question roll a dice and the oracle supplies the answer, like in the opening scene from my horror game above its up to you to fill in the details.

There are plenty of simple GM emulators on the internet, most are free to use, there are some that take the idea to the next level, Mythic being perhaps the best known.  Some will give tables for creating NPC's on the fly, tables for how NPC's react, they may offer mechanisms for adding new twists to the plots which may send the game off in a totally different direction to the way you expected.

You can also pick up books with loads of random tables in, take a look for them on sites like DrivethroughRPG, they can really help you flesh out a scene, generate monsters, treasure, magical items and the like.  There are also games like Ironsworn that are designed for play without a GM, these are full of ideas to bring your solo games to life.

Then there are loads of random tables on the internet that you can use to add details or surprise to your game, random verbs may help prompt you to go in a particular direction or help if you just don't know what to do next. 

Combining all these resources can give you an enjoyable solo RPG experience. 

And that's what this blog is about.

I want to share my solo adventures, how I use the various tools that are available to create and play my games, solo play may not be everyone's cup of tea but if you find yourself  without a GM its worth giving it a go and hopefully I may help inspire you to do so.

So what happen next to Tom and Sixpence?

Well, as I type this introduction to my blog, I genuinely don't know, the opening scene is as far as I have got, in fact  I don't even have a set of rules for horror gaming yet, just an oracle and dice, I guess now would be a good time to get some rules and generate some stats for my characters and maybe roll up some NPC's.

Rest assured though, when I play the rest of the game I will post what happens on this blog.

Till next time