Is it just me, or are "mission based' RPG's a LOT easier to run solo than "emergent narrative" ones? I have driven myself half mad trying to coax solo systems into providing "hidden information" style play with emergent narrative & slow reveals in the horror genre. But I picked up a few generators for action/adventure over the weekend & played around with them & BOOM, I was ready to go off & running with an action thing.
Sadly, it seems it's a lot easier knowing who you are, where you're going, & what you're doing up front rather than tease those & other details out of the non-purpose dedicated random oracles during play.
#SoloHorrorRPG
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Is it just me, or are "mission based' RPG's a LOT easier to run solo than "emergent narrative" ones? I have driven myself half mad trying to coax solo systems into providing "hidden information" style play with emergent narrative & slow reveals in the horror genre. But I picked up a few generators for action/adventure over the weekend & played around with them & BOOM, I was ready to go off & running with an action thing.
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I've only written one horror game, 6 Against the Dark. And I was too chicken to play it myself (I playtested an alternate action-adventure version).
ReplyDeleteYou have a few traits, and you follow a "board game" path of scenes, each with a focus event and a play suggestion, like "your usual approach fails". Three Act structure inspired.
It was a good blend of knowing what will happen next, and always having an idea where things were going, without having too much control of individual events.
One technique I used, inspired by S\lay w/Me, is purchased outcomes. The idea is that as you play you earn tokens, and you spend those tokens at the end for various outcomes. Like, "one of my characters survives" or "the bad guy dies" or "there's nobody to carry on the bad guy's plans" or whatever.
It gives weight to individual scenes -- you want to succeed so you have tokens to purchase the outcomes you care most about -- and it also means you often face a real choice at the end.
I'm wondering if you could leverage other soloers to get more suspense? Like, say, start the game, start a post, and ask for input in the post as you go.
I find goal based games to be much better. Whether it is an external imposed goal or an internal motivational goal. Without one it just feels too aimless.
ReplyDeleteMysteries are in my opinion the hardest games to solo, while generating clues themselves are fairly easy, tying them into a coherent and satisfying climax while trying to be surprised is difficult.
I just had a thought that would require some work, what if there were 'tags' for different monsters with the clues they may leave behind. For example claw marks, wet, fur or blood drained.
Each clue would narrow down the possibilities for the monster of the week. So claw marks and fur might indicate a werewolf, bigfoot or just a simple wolf. It could get very unwieldy though, and you'd need to be able to search them.
You could mitigate this somewhat, if it was setting relevant, to have a partial bestiary. So you might have some ghosts, vampire-types and werewolves 'tagged' out, but you could consider it incomplete and add more monsters as you encounter them in play from the random accumulation of clues.
So you might get wet as your first clue, and fur as the second. This could imply weather, in which case you might ignore it, but it could also be a new swamp based predator you don't have recorded.
Alternatively, if you wanted to know absolutely nothing, then you could try the GMless Mystery Explainer. This was posted a while back and consisted of 'bracketing' two clues, when you had enough say 8 you pair them and set about explaining say 3 of the pairs, then two of those answers to give a 'solution'. Which, because they all lead from exisitng clues, should give a 'relevant' answer.
Tam H Thanks Tam, picked up Silent Legions :)
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