Over the last few months I’ve spent some time thinking about how I set up my own solo RPG games. Some of what I’ve thought about will show up in future articles, and some of it you will find below. Nothing here was of significant gravity to deserve its own separate article, so below you’ll find a mishmash of various ideas. Hopefully you’ll find something useful.
Identifying Yourself
So now you’ve picked your game system. Are you ready to get started yet? Not quite. Before you start doing any real gaming, you should have an idea for how you want to play your games. People play RPGs for different reasons. There have been a few books that try to get at these differences, either in whole or in part, such as the Standard System version of Gamemaster Law (part of the Rolemaster line by Iron Crown Enterprises) and Robin’s Laws of Gamemastering, published by Steve Jackson Games. I consider both books to be useful, and you may want to check them (or something similar) out, but for our purposes here let me summarize. The prevailing wisdom is that you can categorize RPG players into a number of different categories, such as “story teller” or “likes combats and not much else” or “rules lawyer” or “just wants as powerful a character as possible,” among others. This is important because it helps to know what type of player you are, as this will directly impact the types of games you like to play.
Most people defy such easy categorization, but thinking in these terms can help you determine what you find most important in a roleplaying game. Personally, I am a “storyteller” (the overall story line is most important to me), with a solid minority of what I’ll call “brawler” (I like my stories to include some head bustin’). Thus, my games tend to be designed to take place within an overall campaign that tells a cohesive story, such as having my characters slowly uncover a threat to the galactic republic, and I make sure to include lots of combat encounters during the course of the campaign. More often than not, I’ll try to end my campaigns with a big fight, probably punctuated with a one-on-one smackdown with the main bad guy. That’s just my style.
Your style is probably different. If you mainly like the tactical combat aspects of RPGs, then you may enjoy a fantasy-based dungeon delving game where you just roll up encounters on random tables, have your characters whack the monsters, take their stuff, and proceed to the next chamber to do it again. Another possibility is a game like Recon, where you can develop a patrol squad and send them out on random missions to ferret out the enemy soldiers. I’ve done the Recon scenario myself, though I found it unfulfilling. I find it unfulfilling because I’m primarily a storyteller, though, and endless random battles don’t tell a good story in my experience. If you are primarily interested in fighting and developing a stronger, tougher, more deadly character, go right ahead. You’re only playing the game wrong if you’re not having fun.
Group Size
Here’s another question to ponder: will you develop a group of characters to play with, or just one? If you have a group, will one of the characters be “your” character and be the object of your favoritism? As usual, there’s no right or wrong answer to these questions, but they will have a significant impact on the way you play your games. I’ve played with one character, and I’ve played with groups of characters. They are different experiences, but neither is inherently superior to the other.
Maybe some of my own experiences will help demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. I’ve only once played a game with just one player character. This was after reading David Elrick’s solo roleplaying article in LW117. I really wanted to play an elven ranger (no pansy elf jokes, please) and I kept a day-by-day journal for my character as Mr. Elrick recommended. Unfortunately, I didn’t use all of his advice. Specifically, I didn’t set it in a city, which would have allowed for a much wider range of interaction with non-player characters. I actually had my character acting as a lone border scout for his clan. It was an interesting experience writing the daily journal entries, but there was limited opportunity for conflict (fighting bad guys, solving mysteries, etc.). It didn’t work out well, and I dropped it after a few months.
My current project is focused on a storyline I have devised which has a distinct ending. One of the four player characters is really “mine,” even sharing my first name. For coming up with adventures, I’m using the same approach used in some television shows like Babylon V. Some of the adventures exist primarily to move along the primary storyline, some adventures exist to further the development of one or more characters, and some of the adventures are just “filler” to help increase experience and make some money. It’s actually going pretty well, and is definitely one of my most successful solo campaigns to date. I actually keep a journal for this one, but rather than the diary approach with the previously mentioned campaign, the journal is used mainly to detail important events, and not give a daily account from “my” character’s perspective.
This doesn’t mean that the “single character with a diary” approach is wrong. I did it wrong, and will probably use it again at some point. I really want to play some games in the old Star Frontiers universe (though I don’t like that system all that much), and I would probably do it in that style, though my character would probably have a single sidekick/partner. It would be a star law/intergalactic highway patrol kind of thing. It sounds great in my head, though time will tell if it works out that well. That’s assuming that I get around to it, of course. Another piece of advice about single character gaming is that I recommend starting your character out with some experience, probably around level 5 in a level-based system. You do whatever works for you, though.
Group Advice
If you do head down the path of playing an entire group of characters, it will work to your benefit to spend time up front to work out solid backgrounds for each character, including why they have ended up together. Most people who have played group RPGs have encountered the “everyone meets in a tavern, and some secretive guy in a robe gives you a map” story hook. It’s lame and stupid, but it works surprisingly well if the game is about treasure hunting. Over time, though, there’s no reason for the characters to stick together. Making the effort up front to develop backgrounds that provide real reasons for the characters to go on adventures together helps to keep your stories coherent.
When you are playing RPGs with a group of people, everyone has their own ideas of what makes a great character. Bill wants to play a barbarian like Conan. Sarah wants to play a beautiful bard with the loveliest voice in the kingdom. Thomas wants to play a noble Paladin and defend truth and justice. Laura wants to play a thief and steal the crown jewels. Lawrence, the game master, wants to run a wilderness exploration campaign. Do you see the problem here? Nothing fits. Sometimes people can overcome these initial problems and create some great stories, but just as often it flops. When playing solo games, you can make sure that all of the elements fit and your stories don’t flop. For example, maybe all the characters are a part of the same religious order, or are at least affiliated with it. Maybe three of your five characters are members of the order, while one of the characters is a relative, and the other is a mercenary hired for physical protection. That could work in a game that focuses around a religious conflict or a similar theme. Alternately, the characters could all be related, or be part of a mercenary unit. Whatever group theme you pick, make sure it fits the overall theme of your game.
My current campaign has as its main characters a brother and sister, children of one of the noble families in the kingdom. The overall theme is about political conflict within the kingdom, and the end will relate to the character’s attempts to defeat an evil rival who is trying to take over the kingdom. There are two other characters; one used to be in a military unit with the brother, while the other is a life-long friend of the sister. This isn’t tied together as well as it really should be, as I’ve hit a situation where there isn’t much reason for the brother’s friend to stick around anymore, but I’ll come up with something.
Here’s a last word of warning on character generation. I am a big proponent of randomly determining things in solo RPG campaigns, in order to keep the element of surprise. However, bitter experience has taught me that you really shouldn’t randomize anything about character design outside of what the rules dictate. Every piece really needs to fit into the overall scheme you’ve got going, or you’re going to quickly run across continuity problems that are difficult to address, if you can even address them at all. Maybe you could randomize non-essential equipment selection or things that have nothing to do with actual story mechanics, like hair color, but everything else should fit your overall theme. Trust me, I’ve tried the random thing, and it really doesn’t work well at all in this context.
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