Hello!
Inspired by Passage, I am wondering about our base assumptions about solo roleplaying. As far as I can tell, just about all free-form solo roleplaying system (as opposed to CYOA books) use a variant of a Yes/No oracle.
What if we dropped the Yes/No oracle and used only a content generator/keyword generator like Passage's domains or Mythic's Action and Meaning tables?
Instead of asking Yes/No-questions, we would need to ask questions about how, what and so on.
What do you all think, or has anyone tried something like that?
Yours,
Deathworks
Benjamin Nehring Libre looks extremely interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteTom Domanski it does stand apart from other solo RPGs.
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteTodd Zircher Matt Van Gorkom
Thank you for those bits of information/suggestions.
Omari Brooks
Thank you for illustrating how getting away from Yes/No questions can work.
Alex Yari
A good suggestion, although I am really wondering how much the Yes/No questions can be reduced.
Paul Drury
A magazine may be nice, but I have already bad experiences with getting involved and then real life preventing me from fulfilling my commitments. Still, collecting ideas in articles could be nice.
Benjamin Nehring Tom Domanski
Libre has not been mentioned because it does not really pertain to the question asked. And I have to object to your description of the Libre system. The Libre rules are action-based, just like Mythic or most other RPGs. However, unlike Mythic, it does have mechanisms in place that are meant to enforce an adventure structe. But within that structure, you act just as with Mythic - declare your actions, do skill checks and see how things work out. The scene-based thing does influence how you set up scenes because you need to do a certain number of skill checks, so you need to actually think about the system while setting up scenes (so it is relatively gamey as you try to bend the narration so as to get situations where you can make the required dice rolls).
The concept of scene is actually bent a little bit, as unity of space, time, and persons is not required as scenes are a functional unit for game progress. Scene setup is quite detailed, with a very nice aspect of enforcing adding some random elements that really help to create interesting scene.
Mind you, it is a very nice system, and I like it, but it does not revolutionize solo roleplaying as it lies somewhere between Mythic and Covetous Poet and the THW adventure titles.
Charlie Vick
Of course, it is not for everyone. Personally, I really like the Passage oracle because it is so open. I prefer to have only vague hints and a specific oracle might be too restrained for my style. The detailed tables of Covetous Poet in the end did not really have that much appeal to me, and I rather turn to Little Spaces instead.
But that is a matter of taste.
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My project with Wanderer's Romance has been off to a good start. I ended up randomly ascending a mountain passage, finding a hidden valley with an abandoned hut within a creepy bog fed by a well with water flowing from it in intervalls. Returning to the town I presumably passed through before, I am now looking for someone who knows something about that valley.
Thus far, I have been able to avoid Yes/No questions, even though at times, it took some thought to get away from that initial thought. It is fun, and Little Spaces has been working quite well. I also tried out Character Mechanisms for the barkeep, but it was a bit overkill with some details. Still, quite interesting and inspiring.
Yours,
Deathworks