So I've been thinking a lot about solo Lovecraftian horror this evening, especially of the less action-heavy sort.
My thoughts are basically that many of the stories Lovecraft actually wrote weren't nearly as investigation-focused as the RPG scenarios which claim to emulate them. I think this is actually a good thing, as it frees us somewhat from the problem of making up a random mystery in which we don't know too much about what's going on.
I am thinking about a plot similar to "The Rats in the Walls." My character is approached about some family property or legacy he is entitled to. He tries to learn more about what this implies. I know, because I'm wanting to run something Lovecraftian, that it will be terrifying for him, somehow. I'm not sure how exactly, but I believe random generation of facts and scenes as the character delves deeper might explain it.
Maybe this is a bit metagamey, I don't know. I have yet to put it into practice, but I was struck by it and thought I'd post here for theoretical discussion, anyway. Basically, the gist is that i'm not sure I need to be as worried about the mystery as conventional wisdom might suggest. The Lovecraftian genre itself imposes tropes and formulas, but the details vary.
I got this google hit when looking for a review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_5528.phtml. It's pretty short, however, in its review of the solo component: "ok Three re-invents the wheel, coining a neologism so common in gaming “Solo Pyschodrama”, or making a game yourself. The gist is that you play the game yourself, maddened little scribblings in a room. Write up tables, documents, draw maps, play alone. Apparently “Solo Psychodrama” means “play with yourself”."
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested in a more in-depth review towards the solo component, though, if anyone has the book/pdf.
Random generation of facts and scenes worked for my Lovecraftian adventure. At some point you do have to engage total GM mode to decide on the ultimate horror based on the facts/clues you've acquired. There will usually be at least one that doesn't fit with the others, so that gets to be a red herring.
ReplyDeleteI had an idea about solo Call of Cthulhu once that I have yet to put into practice. Come up with 3-6 ultimate horror ideas, ends to which a satisfying horror game might come. You don't need to have final scenes mapped out, just enough of an idea that it will drive things when you get that far. Your PC then goes around gathering clues. Each clue should naturally indicate one or more of the ultimate horrors. Whichever of the horrors gets the most clues after a certain number have been found, or X more than the next highest, or reaches a certain number (whatever makes the game last the duration you want) is then revealed to be the Awful Truth, and it's time for the sanity-shattering endgame.
For example, say that your three ultimate horrors involve a Cthluhu cult, being cursed by Yig, and a family connection to the Deep Ones. During the game, your PC finds a letter written by his weird great-uncle St. John. Your random generator for the clue comes up with 'boat'. For the narrative, you decide that your uncle once was in the navy, or owned a lot of shares in a shipping company that went bust, or died in a(n alleged) yachting accident. All of these would seem to point to both Cthulhu and Deep Ones, so you'd add a point to each of those tallies. You could even expand the schema, keeping a tally of horrors and a separate, secondary tally of family members or organisations and have the ultimate horror relate to whichever person/group is ahead in the ranking at the time. Or maybe it's more than one, if there's a tie.
I do worry that this might be a bit mechanistic, but maybe not much more so than Mythic.
I've been thinking about investigations and mysteries in solo RPGs since I read John Yorio's blog post about his musings. Sometimes I think we as solo games forget that what we might call meta gaming is sometimes just setting assumptions.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I'm explaining myself well so to put it more simply, if I'm thinking of running a Cthulu game or a supers game then I expect suspense or over the top action, I don't class that as meta gaming.
Getting back to Cthulu, I'm no Lovecraft expert, but I would have no problem with taking the clues and making a monster to fit, even if there is no direct link to an existing canonical monster. Mind you I'm in the camp that every Cthulu games doesn't need a monster of the week,