I was reading this thread at RPG.net (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?730734-Blind-Man-s-Elder-Scrolls-or-Solo-Tabletop-sandboxes) interestingly enough about a blind RPG player who wanted to explore a world, in the manner of say, playing Elder Scrolls through solo roleplaying. I suggested context as a main component, and roryb bracebuckle echoed it. It got me to thinking.
All of my solo roleplaying have been within some predefined world or genre. So I've always felt I've had context, but now in thinking I want to say there are two sides of the context coin. There is macro-context that permeates the world and will generally be true of all players in that world, but there is also micro-context.
Often times I create micro-context on the fly. The Oracle suggests an NPC enters the scene, so early on I might have to create an NPC on the fly. Locations, enemies, etc. are often times all created or at least taken from a template at a moment's notice. They weren't there before.
My next big experiment is to use Chuubo's to go through the Hero's Journey, or as much as I can, based on The Writer's Journey book. Chuubo's has macrocontext with locations, some NPC's (that could also be PC's), and some enemies. I think before I start I am going to at the very least flesh out the Archetypes to create more microcontext before I even begin.
Going back to that thread at RPG.net, the OP talks about world building, and I wonder how much world-building - creation of microcontext - could improve the solo RPG, or at least create a variation in flavor. Has anybody created a lot of microcontext before playing and then entered that world?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?730734-Blind-Man-s-Elder-Scrolls-or-Solo-Tabletop-sandboxes
Friday, July 11, 2014
I was reading this thread at RPG.net (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?730734-Blind-Man-s-Elder-Scrolls-or-Solo-Tabletop-sandboxes) interestingly enough about a blind RPG player who wanted to explore a world, in the manner of say, playing Elder Scrolls through solo roleplaying. I suggested context as a main component, and roryb bracebuckle echoed it. It got me to thinking.
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Cool thanks
ReplyDeleteIn the Stars Without Number game I play solo, everything is generated as needed. In the Scarlet Heroes game, though, I created a sandbox first, and created a list of NPCs creatures, and events that might occur. I'm sprinkling them in amongst the random tables. Really though, I think I prefer just generating content when it's needed.
ReplyDeleteJohn Fiore I definitely agree. I was doing a Werewolf the Apocalypse game just to play around with the system after I got the 20th Anniversary edition. And, throughout the game I was faltering with microcontext... I needed another werewolf NPC statted out, I needed bad spirits to kill, and I needed a spirit that had taken over a body! It was a lot, and it would have been nice to pull the stats of those, or at least templates, from an archive.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I didn't know that bodied spirit was going after my werewolf NPC friend... so having that microcontext beforehand would've killed my surprise.