Solo Gaming

The Process & The Play

Okay so after multiple attempts at making a video, I gave up on it. Instead, I just decided to write an article. I mentioned to those reading my

Against All Odds

Substack that I’d take you through the process of how those stories get told and I’m not going to abandon that, so, let’s get started.

This is what I was playing yesterday. What isn’t pictured are the notebooks and pen. I used two in particular but let’s break down the list of supplies here.

1. The Game. This is Hostile Solo by Zozer Games. If you’re into Hard Sci-Fi where things are wired, information still takes time to move across the cosmos and space horror without the pronouns on your character sheet (easily ignored if you use scratch paper like some of us old heads) then this is the game for you. Without going heavily into it, I picked this game because it truly is one single book. You will also see Load The Simulation and The Database by

   Cezar Capacle
   . I selected these books because, while Hostile Solo and Load The Simulation are two completely different and separate games, I thought it would be a good idea to combine them while the crew was in transit. The Database adds more tables for the crew training portion of the game. Good on their own, great together

2. Dice. I know my Bob World Builder dice are pictured, however, I realized I’m not playing We Deal In Lead, Four Against Darkness, Call of Cthulhu or Vampire: The Requiem. I switched them out for three six-sided dice and ran with that. So just ensure your dice are appropriate to your game. The dice you see fit about 98% of the games I own.

3. Oracle. Okay I’m not referring to tarot cards themselves or anything I’d normally use for Divination, so do not let the terminology fool you. An Oracle in an RPG sense can use anything at all to generate a prompt that moves the game forward. Some of these oracles are just books and booklets of tables. Others are a simple die like The Fate Mill Die. Some games built for solo play have them, other games that aren’t built for solo play may have a solo play companion. Examples are as follows: The Fate Mill Die, Mythic GM Emulator, Old-School Solo, Solodark, Tuesday’s Child: Solo Rules For Vaesen. This just lists a few examples and a couple of them can be used for any game whatsoever.

4. Notebooks: Look, this doesn’t have to be a fancy, expensive journal. Just get some cheap notebooks and composition books, these work just fine.

5. Pens/Pencils: Yeah you’re gonna need something to write with.

6. (Optional) Miniatures & Battle Mats: This will give you the visual element if you desire it.

Now these are the minimum requirements to actually play this game.

In This Post, I give you each of the character sheets as a character reference file but you still see their stats for this game. I introduce you to each character before the story begins because, I started Against All Odds by playing four characters in Four Against Darkness, which is a self-contained game. This time, it’s eight. That’s a lot of characters to have to play at a time. After that, I give you a prelude just to set the tone and give you an idea about what each of them are like, filling in the blanks.

Many of the characters you saw were inspired by a mix of characters from the Ricky & The Boss Channel on YouTube, Alien, Aliens and some of the other hard sci-fi films out there. So the notes at this point are all mental. I wanted a comically-dysfunctional group to head out for a survey mission with a new ship, new equipment, and new mission. At this point, this is idea-gathering. All of this comes well before character creation. You need a list of things that will inspire you and inform your setting.

This setting comes mostly from the book, the names of corporations, where the sectors are. I mean there’s even a nifty star map you can use where each hex equals one parsec.

Personally, I’m sitting at my computer with a small table, a dice tray, two notebooks, pens, pencils and I’m actually composing it all on my notepad on my computer.

The illustrations of the crew and ship come from the site NightCafe, which I use to generate some single images for some stories and for others, a few. Whether you like AI-Generated art or not is beside the point. I’m providing the battle reports for free, I like to illustrate them. Sometimes the results are awesome, other times…well, let me put it to you this way…it’s still trying to put demon horns on my vampire characters so there’s that…a lot of them. You would not believe how many pics I’ve either archived or deleted. Anyway, that’s something for you that is entirely optional. If you can draw the images yourself, I say go right ahead. If all you want to post is text, okay.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to solo play: It’s your game. Do it up how you want to do it.

Now, let’s get into actually playing this thing.

Hostile Solo does have a sort of built-in flow of sorts. There’s sort of a flow chart to this. You have Station Encounters, random encounters in space, so on and so forth. You have to go through that process in order to find out what your conflict is, you ask open-ended questions in your mind that would generate a yes or no answer.

In previous games I’ve asked questions like, “Is this character an enemy?” “Is this character a friend?” so on and so forth. You roll on a Fate Chart if you’re using Mythic GM Emulator or simply roll the Fate Mill Die in order to get your answer which will be completely at random. To get a little specific, with Mythic’s Fate Chart (which is the part of the book you’ll use most) you ask a question and you can do what I do, roll to find what your likelihood of success will be or decide how difficult the task would be and roll accordingly. With games that have supplements created for them or have the oracles baked into the game because it’s built for solo play, you may only need your normal dice set in order to navigate.

“What If Something Goes Wrong?”

That’s okay! Again, it’s your game and there’s nothing you really can’t do. Who’s there to judge? The GM is a book or a die, no one’s going to care. It exists only in your mind and in your notes. You can do what I do and share it with the world if you want but it’s not a must.

Now, honestly, randomly-rolling dice and rolling with whatever results I get, that’s the entire process after character creation takes place. You’ll have to keep your characters on file so you can look at stats, you’ll have to keep a diagram of your ship there so you know where rooms are and what’s in them. Every character needs motivation. There are some things about the characters in that story that haven’t even been revealed yet, we’re only scratching the surface so far but the next time I sit down, the process will be just a bit different because I’ll be in the game and asking those questions, mentally. As the results of the rolls pop up, then I have to decide what to do with that.

For example, let’s say that the crew is now out of Tau Ceti Station. They have supplies, they topped up the fuel, everyone is going into stasis for the long trip to their destination. Will D.A.X. find something off about the hyperdrive? Will something go wrong in one of the stasis tubes that takes out a crew member? What if D.A.X. goes completely rogue? Those are things that can pop up and now, the eight roughnecks have to deal with that, together. As dysfunctional as they are, they’ll have to work together to overcome the issue they face. That’s a pretty big step. Any of those things can happen. Hull breaches, Vacc Suit Malfunctions, hell, a drill malfunction as they’re getting a core sample could uncover something that wasn’t meant to be uncovered. We just never know and that’s the absolute most fun part of this, when the session ends, there’s always something unknown that needs to be looked at and that’s why we come back to them.

That’s it. That’s the entire process. There’s not much more to it than that but it is some of the most fun you’ll ever have with your clothes on.

“I Got Everything. How Do I Start?”

That’s easy. If you have your rulebook, first, go through it, get a look at the artwork, look at some of the flavor text, watch some movies similar to the setting for the system you picked and, one of the easiest ways to learn a rule set you otherwise might be kinda intimidated by is to just start creating characters. Create a few. Get the imagination really going. Once you have characters created or even a single one. That’s when you start really deep diving because solo mechanics are pretty simple but you went through Character Creation in order to know what the ability scores are and mean and can apply them correctly to encounters. Check out your tables, run a few one-shots featuring your characters.

“What if I Run Afoul of a Rule I Didn’t Know About?”

Don’t worry about it. Literally just loosen up. If you go back and read the entirety of my Four Against Darkness game, I didn’t even check the book to see about potential traps. I’m not kidding. Cavern of The Chaos Lord had no traps whatsoever. Wanna know when that came to my attention? Right after I posted the final episode of that adventure. Wanna know who noticed? Not a soul. Bad as I felt about it for a minute, no one else seemed to so I shrugged it off and moved on. Make a note of it. Remember it for next time. Have a recap for yourself that way you remember. This also helps you learn the rules as you go.

But remember, this isn’t really about the system, it’s about the story that emerges from game play.

For example if you’re playing a single character then the story can be as complex or as simple as allowed by the game. A simple, rules-lite booklet like Cairn, Mothership, Into The Black Hack, Ten Candles, Load The Simulation or others can serve as the framework you need to play that character. You Don’t Need A Tome Of Rules!

Let me cite something more specific.

If I were to play Fabled Lands or The Lone Wolf Series, there’s not a lot of rolling to be done. Remember, these games were specifically-designed for solo play, however, what you’re doing is rolling dice when the book calls for it or when it becomes an option. Everything else is the book describing the setting where your character is and asking you what you’d like to do which is the heart of any RPG. You still make a small character sheet. You still have to do some minor book-keeping but it’s effortless and if effortless fun is what you’re shooting for, these are the easiest. If you’re looking for something a bit more complex, then any game in your library will become a solo RPG if you want it to be.

But what I post are the stories that emerge from those games. On the Lone Wolf and Fabled Lands front, I play those but I don’t post them. Those are just a relaxing day for me. Something I don’t really have to put too much thought in. Don’t misunderstand me, those are still fun for me and I enjoy them more than you might think but I just don’t post them.

The ones I do post have very little written in the way that I have to do so I have to satisfy the conditions of the scenario put in front of me.

To cite the example of Thousand Year Old Vampire, they’re writing prompts. If the prompt reads that I create another vampire from sloppy feeding, then I can write whatever I’m inspired to write which can come from anywhere but that element has to be included. It could take a long time to get there. It could be a short passage, it could even have long-lasting implications for my character and repercussions that echo through time itself but all that’s up to me. It’s up to you if you play it. Still, that one condition needs to be satisfied before I can conclude. Remember what I said about messing up? I actually found a passage in the notebook that I didn’t even finish. It got incorporated into one of the last two posts. See? No one noticed, no one cared. Moving on.

Once I start writing or taking notes, there’s little to nothing that will take me away from it. Why? It’s my mental vacation. Once I’m tired of dealing with entitled, hostile, snide and quite frankly some of the most impolite people I’ve ever met in my entire life, I don’t want more of the same because I will demand payment for it. If some NPC causes me grief in a game, sucker’s done. I will figure out a way to settle that in a satisfying way to me and then I just hope you may feel the same once I post the notes and things in the form of the story that emerged from my game.

To get the process down to it’s bare essentials though, it’s just that list of items that I need. The biggest problem for me is “Which game to play today?” or “Am I going to have time?” and that second question comes from people knowing when my days off of work are going to be and deciding to plan things for me without asking me. I’ve learned to start ignoring calls on my days off at some points. If you planned it without clearing it with me first, it’s a no…automatically. Even my job asks and gives me some heads up from time to time. With that part out of the way, it’s just find a quiet place to sit down with some books, dice, pen and paper and pick up where I left off or start something new. That part’s up to me. Once that’s all been selected, then I have a better idea of where my mind should be. Should it be in space aboard a survey vessel, then so be it, I’ll be eight different people, an AI, a corporation that might have ulterior motives, etc but ultimately, the dice will decide and if I screw up…who’s gonna care?

Seems messy, doesn’t it? It’s not and that’s the beautiful part. What makes all of this seem messy is the multitude of games out there. Right now, you’re probably looking at the books you really want to play but can’t get a group to join you? Okay, well grab something that can replace a GM and play that thing yourself. You’ll pick up on the rules as you go and over time, maybe someone else will want to join you and you can do a GM-less Co-op game. You can do that with something like Four Against Darkness, Four Against The Great Old Ones, or even Four Against Mars. Here’s where system matters a bit because you have to find something that you truly want to play and then, start playing it. On your own. Modify the hell out of the rules to suit you when needed.

This is where games show you the true meaning behind my sentiment of Your Table, Your Rules, Always In All Ways. That’s my number one rule when it comes to solo playing. If I think a rule doesn’t fit, it’s out. If I think a rule fits super well, it stays but it’s also situational. I’m not playing Vaesen Rules As Written, Solo. Not even the Solo supplement created for it or any other game says I need to do that. It cherry-picks the rules you absolutely need to play on your own and it’s not that many, if I’m just being honest with you.

In any case, if you have any questions, feel free to pop them into the comments down below, thanks for reading this BTS look on how I come up with stuff for the Against All Odds Substack.