Saturday, December 30, 2017

Hi All, just a quick question. I see a lot of solo play reports here where it looks like the player has literally written out everything that would be said by a dm, players and NPCs plus all die rolls etc. I find it extremely hard to keep that up. Part of the problem is that because of my timetable I tend to get a few minutes here and there to play so often end up playing on my phone using Evernote for tracking the story with help from dice rolling and story seed apps. I am about try starting a new play through (Ironsworn) but just recording key bullet points and use the theatre of the mind for most things. Has anyone else tried this as opposed to explicitly recording everything? Did it work? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated!!

3 comments:

  1. When I started solo play for Edge of the Empire my goal was to flesh it out as much as possible, which essentially meant it was like using a game and oracle to write fiction. It was great, going back to see the detail and get a sense of exactly where I was, and it was especially great because I was doing everything with pen and paper to promote the whole endeavor as a break from digital. However, I found eventually that it became intimidating to sit down and know that I’d need to write a couple pages to really get any real gameplay in, especially as the story became more open-ended.

    Then, I got #Untold : Adventures Await, and I was so excited to try the system I decided to try and take brief notes instead of narrative, figuring I’d go back and write the narrative later. The result? I had a blast, I got a ton of gameplay in, and I was hooked on the note style.

    I tried to go back and do the narrative, but a single scene of an Untold episode took 10 pages of writing to clear!

    I am now consistently playing with short note entries, and I find what I’m most interested is the story as it moves forward. As long as I track the relevant details I don’t really need the narrative. I’m even thinking of going digital for ease of access and speed.

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  2. Ryan B This is fantastic information. Thanks for commenting.

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