The Doug Alone
A man wanders through a liminal space with dice and dominos.

Category: Design Philosophy

Fourth Wall Break #7. 2025 Solo Play Resolutions and Blog Changes

By

On 2025-01-05

In Campaign Design, Design Philosophy, Fourth Wall Break

No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit

There will be no The Bleak + The Pearl this week because I spent a lot of my gaming time going through and fixing up months' worth of glitches that were holding the Eustace & Hitomi series back. Right after I finished that (within literal minutes), I { wrote | played } what I think is the longest ever session-post on the old blog: around 11k words. It took up all of my free time on Friday (Jan 3).

The week prior to that was mostly spent sorting through and updating a lot of "offline" and backend parts to my solo play kit: digital files, scripts, cloud storage folders, and other tools.

I have actually played a little of the second session for "In Search for the Harcuram Mantle", but a lot of that "play" was going back and rewriting some of my on-virtual-table notes to be more character-viewpoint focused and running through a slightly complex encounter and realizing I was rushing it. I have discussed before how rushing solo play greatly dampens my fun so it was best to take a step back, breathe a moment, and just enjoy spending an hour fiddling with a virtual map and thinking about the characters.

This trio of things — (1) fixing up and restarting a series that had stalled out, (2) reorganizing the blog and the stuff behind the blog, and (3) feeling rushed to meet a "Sunday Deadline" — helped me to realize that it was a great time instead to take a step back and think up my plans for the new year.

This means, as you read on the next couple sections of resolutions, there actually won't be any The Bleak + The Pearl for maybe a week or two. I'll explain. Give me time.

2025 { Resolutions | Changes }

Let's start with the bigger changes and then maybe move down.

Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → Arcs } Format

I'm not 100% what you would call this but the first word that comes to my mind is a "mini-arc" format. Where mini-arcs (some not so mini) are played within a larger frame with a direction towards a few days or weeks or months instead of an indefinite time frame.

Start with a broad The World. Have one or more Campaigns set within it (each is a set of characters at a certain time), and then each of those Campaigns gets one or more Arcs (where the characters try to accomplish a goal within that Campaign, eventually leading up to finishing the Campaign as a whole). Each Arc is one or more Posts (representing a sort of traditional "session"). Where each Post is one more Sessions of actual playing | writing.

Fascinating insight into my brain that probably exposes me a librarian if you didn't know already, I know. But, my intended format for my play in 2025 might look something like this:

  • The World

    [Alabama Weird, The GLOW, Khel]

    • The Campaign

      [Eustace & Hitomi, 1996, The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH]

      • The Arc ← *Focus on this as the Unit*
        ["and the Case of the Rambler's Inn", "Agent Johnny Blue", "The Stone Crack'd"]

        • The Post

          ["Chapter 3. Arrests and Friends, in That Order", "Chapters Two & Three", "05 - The Triptych Healed"]

          • The Session

            [each time I sit down and accomplish something in game: art, playing, writing, designing, etc]

For some campaigns, like the offline campaigns, it might be less "arcs" and more "one to two pre-written adventures with some padding" but the principle is still the same.

Again, it's more a formalization than an abrupt change. It does slightly free me up mentally — which I surprisingly need — to do things like build in the kind of time jumps, thematic clusters, and conceptual shifts that I love. Even allows for things like shifts in play-style or systems.

Focusing on One Arc at a Time

This is a bigger change than above but it kind of requires the other change to make sense. I want to spend a couple of months playing differently. Rather than juggling multiple campaigns, with multiple arcs, where I have to shift into and out of various worlds and modes, I want to focus on one arc at a time.

The broad structure would be to figure what arc I want to play next — based on interest, fun ideas I have, some spark of inspiration, some challenge, or just a broad sense that it is time to revisit some old friends — and spend one "time slot" thinking up concepts, keyed scenes, lore, art motif, and goals at the arc level. Play the whole story arc through to completion, divided up into sessions (posts | sessions | etc) with potential extra content.

Keep the three-times-a-week schedule.

When I get done with arc, take a bonus "time slot" to do one of my absolute favorite activities with solo play: the self debrief and edit process. That last step wraps up the arc with some thoughts, re-packaging, final sorting. Potentially, but not necessarily, sets out some seeds for future arcs.

Then, figure out the next arc and do it again.

Right now, my plan is to finish out "Eustace & Hitomi and the Case of the Rambler's Inn" [+ bonus dog-catcher story which is somehow related], then finish up "The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH, The Stone Crack'd" after that, and then do The Bleak + The Pearl's current dungeon [the dungeon delving stuff will likely be shorter bursts in between the longer story modes] with each session being a bit shorter than current (a couple of hours at a time instead of trying for four to six hours at a time).

Around March, I will evaluate if this has improved, worsened, or not really impacted by game play and update accordingly.

Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice

I need to get into a habit of playing and writing the session at least 24 hours before it is published. Edit it once immediately just to fix the no doubt several misspellings, broken sentences, and other glitches that show up from writing stuff down as I play. Schedule the post anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks later depending on the buffer. And, before it actually goes live, spend more time going back over and make sure it all makes sense with a harsher comb than that first edit. Once it is published and around the time I hit the "debrief" stage for the arc, maybe go back over it and smooth out the harsh edges but not in a way that is unfair to past-Doug.

A long variation of this discussion and my preferred method was included in the aftermath of realizing I had violated one of my own rules during playing The GLOW and I wrote a long commentary talking about how I like to do things and why it went wrong.

Trying Out "New" Game Systems

This blog basically grew up around two systems — Tricube Tales and Shadowdark — and frankly I could play those systems, backed with Mythic and Solodark, for quite some time, still. So much so that there has been a slight inertia towards bringing in something new. I could use a shake up, though, so a few systems I want to bring in (maybe two or three this year as a goal to start) include:

  • Cypher
  • Outgunned
  • GURPS Lite+: meaning start with GURPS Lite 4th edition and add in just enough content to play whatever game I want to play.
  • Ironsworn, Starforged, and/or Sundered Isles.
  • At least one Call of Cthuhlu game.
  • Maybe actually play one of Sine Nomine's awesome ...Without Number games instead of just using them for parts.
  • Troika and Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
  • Of course, a whole stack of other possibilities.

Besides these, try a few things like Thousand Year Old Vampire and other more solo-first systems (maybe as one-shots). The whole point of this is just to get me to think about other game systems and modes.

Trying Out "New" Game Worlds

I currently have a few game worlds into which the various campaigns fit: Alabama Weird (a "mostly" normal take on Alabama but one where cosmic horror and folklore are real and have influenced things), The GLOW (an even weirder version of the Alabama Weird), Barthus & Silt (the setting of The Bleak + The Pearl), Phillia (the island upon which Ick & Humb and related are played), and Khel (the continent from The Bloody Hands). What I would like to do is to add in at least one post-apocalyptic world and at least one science-fiction | space-opera world. Possibly also a kind of dreamscape type world but that one might just be technically an off-shoot of the Alabama Weird.

I figure as long as I can add one new world I should be happy.

That being said, I would rather develop new content for existing worlds rather than have a bunch of vague, unfinished places that never get revisited. I really love lore and I really love generational shifts and wide geographically-separated play.

(Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles

By "oracle" in this case I mean both the yes|no + and|but + twist generator — think Mythic — but also stacks of random tables, cards, and other tools. I am mostly good with the largish set of random generators I already use but it might be nice to bring up a few things — like Rory's Storycubes — that I have gotten out of the habit of using. I also have a whole "Like the I Ching but with dice" system I created but then left behind.

One thing I am very excited about adding is something like Dixit as well as more real world divination methods.

Also, I have enjoyed using some diegetic oracles where music and images that might be part of the game world (or represent things in a similar way as the characters would experience them) can be used as oracles in themselves. Either by using the stock art to influence elements, music to shift the mood, or materials that otherwise could, in theory, be experienced by the characters that I play to determine outcomes. I want to find more ways to use this.

Things to Not Sweat...

  • Most of all, Don't sweat the Dougness.
  • Don't sweat the long commentaries that only I read.
  • Don't sweat the long session building.
  • Don't sweat the corny jokes that only I will like.
  • Don't sweat the romances or friendships or moments that only I will like.
  • Don't sweat the cosmic horror, folklore, body horror that I like.
  • Don't sweat the literary references or in-jokes even if no one else catches them.
  • Don't sweat the stories where some young upcoming hero saves the realm a few weeks later. It's nice.
  • Don't sweat the overlong explanations.
  • Don't sweat the deadlines.
  • Don't sweat the struggles to make sure it is fair. Make it make sense later or don't.
  • Don't sweat the formatting (so much). Things can look different later on.
  • Don't sweat the way I play (sort of like the first one, but this is important). I like to pre-gen ideas and stew upon some concepts (the prep is play portion) and that is fine. Do it. Then break it down (the play is prep portion). Who cares if no one else does it exactly the same way? Besides, I'm sure some do... It's ok if I figure out who the killer is early so I can work towards it. It is also ok if I change my mind and turn that all into a plot twist.
  • Finally, Don't sweat the apologizing. I'm sometimes worry that I self-apologize too much on this blog. I do, but who cares. That is part of me finding out who I am and how I play.

Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc

I like making (bad) art for my games. Bad maps. Bad character sheets. I like my campaigns (and arcs) to have their own style. I want to spend more time working on those little bits. I often avoid making my own art and own visual tools because I worry of it is good enough. It is good enough. I am the only person that has to be my own fan.

Just make sure I give lots and lots of credit as I go. A lot of people make things that help me tell the stories I like.

Build Up a List of Graphical Resources

I use a lot of stock art (most free, some paid) and a lot of illustrations and stuff to visually build up my blog. I think it might be nice to sit down and list some of those tools out in a way (probably a new page for the sidebar) so that others can find them.

It will also save me some headaches.

CREDITS

The art used to head the resolutions section is a CC0 licensed photo by Jeffrey Paul from the WordPress Photo Directory. According to the alt-text, it depicts the mysterious “O” rest stop (aka “Cerchio dello Staccioli”) outside Volterra, Italy. It summed up my feelings of looking forward fairly nicely. I have edited, as usual, using GIMP and several filters to give it a kind of video-game like feel. A motif I am thinking about adopting for an upcoming series about many tiers of reality.

The Four Solo Play Techniques of This Blog

By

On 2024-11-25

In Design Philosophy, Solo Musings

tl;dr version

Over the months of adapting my playstyle to the blog, some of the "Dougness" of my playing got increasingly lost. This post talks about trying to reclaim that and establishes the four baseline techniques I use to communicate my sessions to folks through this blog:
  1. Play it in my normal style and then write up a recap (the original flavor)
  2. Try to play it in-line with each session being an hour-ish spent playing and writing a blog at the same time
  3. A fiction-first style of play where the mechanics are minimized and the focus is more on presentation and development of "chapters"
  4. A style of play that embraces different modes (Gamemaster, Player, Lore, Commentary) to give the different elements each a fair shake to build up mental gaps
In this post, I will look at those different elements and talk a bit why a return to #1 while retaining #4 (and some #3) is likely the best options for me. 
It also has a longish example of the kind of roleplaying mistakes I like to make: building an entire session around lore and worldbuilding that never actually got used. 

The Four Solo Play Techniques of This Blog

My usual playstyle for solo RPGs, at least before I started this blog earlier this year, tends to be a bit haphazard fitting my mood, location, time-available and some other elements. I tend to lean a bit more digital-notes rather than physical because my handwriting is crap and I toss so much text into the game-space that my hands start cramping but past that it can lean anywhere from "a stream of notes in a text document" to a bundle of (digital) character sheets, digital maps, Mythic tools, VLC Player set to stream something ambient, a stack of PDFs, a handful of physical books, and a set of physical dice. 
One of my quirks is that no matter how much digital everything else gets, I tend to prefer physical dice unless it is just too inconvenient. It's a question of blame, you see. You can blame digital dice but you cannot properly build up a sense of resentment unless you have something physical at which to point and glare. 
This is not exactly a post about my overall playstyle, though, but instead about something closely related. As I started posting just a portion and ended up posting the vast majority of solo play content to this blog, I realized that haphazard notes and shorthand scribbles would not make anyone, not even myself, happy. I began to develop a few different write-up styles which in turn deeply impacted my own playstyle. 
Prep is play and play is prep, after all. 
I thought it could be a good time to sit down and quantify the four different styles that developed around this blog (with links to some examples). This gives me something to point towards when I am trying to explain some different flavors. 

Technique One: External Play with Recap and Notes

The original style used for this blog. Just play however I want to play with posts largely being just summations of that with some commentary and possibly links to actual supporting documents and notes.
The style here is to play as I normally play - digital files, pdfs, books, dice, notes - and then to type up a summary of what happened usually with some link (or embed) of maps and notes.
You can see it most in the earliest posts on the blogs initially. The first Bloody Hands episode - A Fragile Merger - has a link to an external document. The original Bleak + Pearl episodes - such as the Scarlet Minotaur playthroughs - had only a map with a few quick notes and then a lot longer recap trying to sum up some of the significant rolls and events. 
After a couple of weeks posting like this, I kept thinking about how to actually turn the blog as a whole into a more interesting long term project and that led me to phasing that style out because I, like a lot of folks new to something, felt the need to copy other people and their advice and there were a handful of people saying that fewer mechanics and more fictionalized story was the way. Which is a shame because a lot of my talent in the solo-sphere is the way I dance around with rules and rulings and concepts and flow and ebb to let things develop a bit organically (a paragraph might be several encounters or a lot of details alternatively). 
Eventually, I realized abandoning it entirely was a mistake that was trapping me into spending more time working on a blog than just playing and I brought it back for some campaigns. The Bloody Hands returned to this format with "The Late Returners" and by part 2 of that mini-arc, the idea occurred to me to go ahead and start posting the actual in-Doug-style type notes while prefacing it with a short recap. I really like that style. It gives me the freedom to both play in the vibe I tend to play and to have some mental space and time to go back and analyze, right up, and organize it. It maximizes my own particular solo play in both ways, without requiring a lot of external write-up. 
However, in the arc between starting this way and then returning to a modified version of it, three other styles started being used and all three deeply altered my own workflow for solo roleplaying. 

Technique Two: Blog-First Playing with Actual Play In-Line with the Blog

Trying to make posts that felt more like the standard style of such things, I started moving towards "in-line" play. I would fire up the blog editor and start typing. When I got to mechanics, I would put it in italics or have a footnote. As I wrapped up the post, I wrapped up the session (and vice versa)
This style involves typing into the blog directly as I play with mechanics set-aside but generally in-line with the rest of the post and the blog itself being the primary storage device of the session. The idea was to not slow down or hesitate but play as I wrote and write as I played. Mechanical notes start showing up at the bottom of the post (and sometimes in set-aside italics/bold-passages).
The earliest examples would be my playthrough/playtest of Sinister Semester X and then the fifth episode of The Bloody Hands (Biting the Hand that Feeds You). Both of these are definitely more in the older school of my posts and are written in a kind of quasi-summary style. A few patches of dialogue got worked in, some after-post edits showed up to blend early passages with later passages. 
Around the first delve in the Monolith of the Cyclops in Bleak + Pearl, you start to seeing this style mature a bit more. Mechanics are more blended into dialogue and room descriptions. At the peak of posts (roughly one a day), this was the style the blog was based around. 
However, it had two rough problems that are largely just a clash with own playstyle. The first, and primary one, was that mechanics tended to have been wrote up in a way that did not completely derail the flow of the fiction. My personal playstyle will sometimes involve writing up whole charts, maps, and details. 
Any but the simplest of these things simply did not fit (see the bonus story at the end of this post to see exactly the kind of thing that would not fit in with the "in-line technique"). 
Each post was a session and each session was a post and I generally wanted each to be whole unit: one played in a smooth, complete sort of flow. It put me in a mindspace where I was having to constantly bounce back and forth from a fiction writer to a gamemaster (with a much smaller sprinkle of player and a much larger sprinkle of editor). This meant that posts started getting shorter since it was more mentally exhausting. It was not easy to keep a thread going and as soon as some sort of twist or heavy scene shift occurred I would often have to take a break so I could contemplate and build up a few expectations before starting again. 
Things like scenes and threads starting getting muted because it was hard to tell exactly where one might end and another begin. I sometimes had to go back and rewrite earlier, even posted, sections because later developments would make these half-developed sections non-sensical. 
The breaking point of that playstyle was the Bleak + Pearl fight with the garfolk and the meeting of the strange mushroom man. 
Because of this, I developed another style to handle more OSR/event-heavy content. But first, the happy accident of me trying to Doug-up the in-line playstyle. 

Technique Three: The Fiction-First Game

Around the time I was taking a three week break from SoloDark to try and figure out how to move from Technique 1 to Technique 2, I embarked on what was meant to be a fancy one-shot: Gareth Hendrix and the Bunker Bigfoot. While it remains something of a successful failure that got better, that series worked out a new style for me. It is a modified take on the second technique - in-line blog-first play - but it put fiction first. 
For this style, game mechanics are minimal. Each scene tends to have only one or two rules and one or two oracles checks. Each chapter has between one and four scenes. The focus is on a more literary take with game mechanics being used to add plot twists, find out secrets, develop characters, and challenge me to take stories to places I did not expect. 
Gareth and his barely novella length adventure was a major reason this entire blog kept going. During the time period I was getting deeply frustrated about finding my voice there was a series that was entirely my own voice. It involved personal photographs and personal stories woven into the narrative and was set in (though fictionalized) my home town.
I love that I did that. It was a risk I would not have taken without this blog. 
That being said, there is a non-zero chance that the Eustace Delmont series might be the final time I try it for a while (I have long had an idea for a third part but I do not know). It can be frustrating. The Gareth storyline was kind of quick and punchy but trying to mature it into the Eustace one meant it takes a lot of time and a lot more external note taking. 
There is also the slight glitch that it is the solo roleplaying equivalent of a walking sim. 90% of the flow is decided with my own brain as the primary oracle. There were major twists that I did not expect but in between these islands of dice rolls were great seas of short story workshop. Maybe I just need to keep working on it. 
Going to the other end of the spectrum in the meantime... 

Technique Four: The Gamemaster + Player Style

In essentially the same week, I was wrapping the last of the original Bloody Hands arcs (Sink or Swim part 3) and concluding the garfolk obstacle in Bleak + Pearl (Drying off just to Get Wet Again). Both in the then standard "Technique 2" style. I had struggled through both (the "Doug's Notes" for each talks about frustrations and switching things up while trying to put a positive spin on it). The honeymoon era of the blog was fading and I was slowly but surely getting stuck with a completely alien way to play solo games where a month long gap was suddenly noticeable. 
Would I keep going? Would I just go back to my Google Docs and quick notes? I was not sure. However, I was becoming aware of two definitely truths: 
(1) I realized that I worked best when I gave myself space to cook. I had to play with the ingredients, tweak the tastes. I would never be consistent with the ebb of flow of my playing. Sometimes I just wanted a fight with no real backstory and sometimes I wanted a backstory with no real fight. Sometimes I would spend hours crafting a town to never really visit it and sometimes I would spend around 10 seconds to make a town that would be the backbone of a campaign. I needed something that allowed for me to be me. 
(2) I am not actually that good at what might be the kind of "standard" roleplaying set of tropes. I GM a lot of games and do a decent job. I play in some games and do a decent jobs. But when it is just me, the kind of old-standards just do not quite jive with the kind of stories I like to tell. I suck at being a being a murder hobo. I play at long and complex subplots. I like my dungeons to feel uniform and purposeful. I like my NPCs to sometimes have little details like "favorite food". Months might pass with the same story impact as days. 
I started playing with making a more Doug-like playstyle in the next Bleak + Pearl post (On Waterfalls in the Dark, Painting the Past, and When Fighting Is Best Saved for Another Day). What if I take time to construct the rooms and encounters completely separate from the "play" (though of course such prep is play even if the more in-line version made it hard to spend much time with prep without "spoiling" it) and then took more time to figuring out how the puzzles worked before trying to figure out how I, from a different viewpoint, would solve it. I have a lot of experience with dancing around the meta-game and I was pretty sure I could pull it off. 
This technique involves having two to four distinct phases of the game that each have their own methods. The first is the Gamemaster Phase which involves the construction of rooms, encounters, and scenarios using all the standard tools and a more relaxed flow that speeds up and slows down based on personal need and story requirements. Then there is the Player Phase that matches more the in-line phase but bounces off the stuff established by the Gamemaster with the post being in essentially "real time" with the play and writing flowing together. There are optional Lore Phases that are more like the Fiction-First Games of Technique 3 that are about pure world-building with a minimal amount of mechanics. Finally, there is a Commentary Phase to sum it up, figure what did and did not work, and to set-up expectations and ideas for the next session. 
The breaks in between phases allow for natural mental rests. The Gamemaster and Lore phases give a chance for worldbuilding, zooming out, and changing up the cadence so that not everything has to feel evenly split. The Player Phases then can be varied, quick, and often kind of punchy. Sometimes the Player Phase challenges the Gamemaster Phase's assumptions. Sometimes elements in the Gamemaster Phase are not used in the Player Phase. 
It works really well for me and is kind of the ultimate expression of my personal style, though is a bit more complicated than I need for all of my campaigns. 

A Real Life Example of Why Technique 4 Is Needed for Solo Players Like Me

To show a variation of this from before I had my blog, let me tell you a story about my Advanced Fighting Fantasy campaign near the end of the Barston Bakersfield arc. 
I wanted a simple quest: a man along the side of the road has lost a valuable relic to some goblin bandits. Bog standard, right? Except I started out playing out what the jar was and who the man was. There was an entire session of backstory involving several moving pieces. He was a con-man who robbed old tombs. He had found the tomb of an ancient king and found, in this tomb, a relic that made anything inside seem valuable. People just had to have it. It was a perfect set-up for him. Toss in some rocks and sell people what they think is a jar full of gold. Later, they think they were robbed and he gets the jar back. 
Along the way to town to set up such a con, he runs into some goblins. These are not bad people, per se, but they are extremely cranky because their home had been overrun by hobgoblins who considered the short, unlucky gobs to be worthy of all the jokes and the pranks. They basically stole what they thought was a worthless jar because they were wanting to be petty. Only the man who stole the jar has angered a fairly powerful guardian who is hunting him. Now, it is hunting the goblins. Said goblins have gone to a grove that was once a place of giants and are staying in essentially a small garden that looks like a massive walled structure, complete with giant bees. 
This was going to be a set-up for a meta-story that had been going on since early in the campaign about people on the hunt for giants in the area. It was going to set-up some lore for the place. It was also going to establish a moral dilemma of the player trying to help thieving but not really bad goblins versus a righteous but murderous guardian. And there was a whole other place of power (the tomb) baked in for backstory. 
After this story session I spent time thinking what the giant garden might mean. Figuring out what might happen with the goblins if any survived. Would they become regular NPCs? Allies? Enemies? Would the conman get caught? Would the guardian be a multi-session arc? 
Only right as I was getting ready to play out the session where Barston meets this man and kicks off the whole thread I spent a couple of hours developing, a random event shows up. Barston's best friend needs help carrying out a task. It takes a couple of days then another event shows up that gets Barston tangled up with unraveling a conspiracy. This kicks off a big fight between guilds and establishes some important lore. 
I never got to play the scenario with the goblins. I never got to meet the conman. I never got to fight the guardian. I never got to visit the giant garden. 

I spent an entire worldbuilding session building up a lot of truths that never made it "to the table." Except they did (a side story involves a person who had to deal with the aftermath of the goblins fleeing into town while being hunted by the guardian). It is one of my favorite stories to tell because all of it is canon but all of it happened behind the scenes. 
I love the vibe of consistent inconsistences and organic plot development. I love side stories. I love dumb twists. I ADORE fun NPCs. I love ad hoc mechanics. I love off-the-cuff worldbuilding. I love that I have found different ways to achieve this in the blog format. 
It just means this blog needs to be my style of play rather than my style of play being a blog post. And I think I can do that.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Intermission 2: Creating the Everburning Forest

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On 2024-08-18

In Design Philosophy, ShadowDark, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The adventurers have a map to lead them through the Everburning Forest. Let's break this down and start figuring out what this means. 

First, some lore. The Everburning Forest is going to be a valley with a lot of geothermal activity, lava pools, and the burning smell of sulfur. At some time in the past, the pre-Barthic Ancients developed flora which could resist the constant burning heat and low oxygen and which to this day thrives in a place where even the Bleak has trouble penetrating. 350 years ago, a young Jonias Grunkheart found this forest/valley through local legends and went in with a team to build a workshop to study the Ancient technology and to find out how to channel it. Such technology was used by him to create the burning light of the Lighthouse. 
Now, let's populate it. 
Flipping through Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation (Courtney C. Campbell and others), I wanted to pick a couple of "faction" types that made sense in an ever burning forest. Efreeti made sense to me but I was thinking maybe just a single entity who has been cast out from the City of Brass and found some solace in the valley (and possibly, long ago, worked with Jonias). Another one was lizard folk but I was immediately put in mind of Romancing Saga 2's Salamanders and so we'll use them instead. Besides this we can use fire elementals and fire beetles. The salamander tribe is not necessarily going to be an enemy (at least not until I absolute fail reaction rolls again). I'll save the question about the efreeti being a boon or bane if the adventurers encounter it. 
With those ideas in mind, let's make up a basic map using some ideas talked about at the end of my contemplating hex-crawls post. Rolling 10d6 "green", 1d6 "red" (to represent the workshop), and discarding all green 1s I come up with the points of interest and get a rough number of paths. I then roll another set of 5d6 "on top of it" to represent difficulty of terrain. 1-3 is varying degrees of easily passable. 4-6 gets increasingly hard to traverse. Then for each path, I roll another d6 with 1-3 being "in good condition, lower is better" and 4+ being a path that will require some trouble. Putting that all together, I get...

I pick the blue star to be my starting point. There are two dead ends off of it that are passable. There's another path the south that is harder to traverse with very rough terrain to get through. The air is harsher and the lava pools are wider while the path breaks down. Then, there is a clear and obvious chunk that takes a couple of hours (the left over bits of some road that has not yet been reclaimed) but it passes by a significant element. We'll make that the salamanders who hunt the road. After another point in the road, another long stretch through less passable terrain happens. However, the workshop's path is collapsed (workshop was a 6 so no paths to it). At this point, the characters will have to go off road and deal with the issues. 
In the distance, in the deepest and roughest portions of the Everburning Forest, is the makeshift manse of the efreeti. Now I'm going to roll on the Overland Hex Maps table to learn roughly what everything else might be though I will not dig too deeply into elements. I get the "4" and the rightmost "3" are holy shrines. Stopping spots on the way for researchers to reset and to perhaps even worship the Ancients. the "middle 3" and the "topmost 2" are "natural landmarks". We'll have one be a crag and another being one of the largest trees. We'll make that the one-time home of a Sulfur Dryad but we'll see what's up when it is found. The other "2" is a cave complex which could be interesting. 
Putting this all into Hex Kit (using Thomas Novosel's Strange Tile BW hex pack) and then taking some liberties with exact layout, we get... 

The intended path will then be to start at a ruined tower (which was the 5/crossroads). Head south to the crumbled roll until you get the first shrine. Head deeper into the relatively clear forest past the salamanders you come to the First Burn tree and then find another shrine. Here, you have to leave the path and head through the rough terrain until you find workshop. Go to far, and you end up in the territory of the efreeti. 
What exactly the shrines are and the cave complex and such...we'll figure it out. 
Step one is to start at the beginning: gathering up fire protection something and then figuring out the tower as a start and going deeper and deeper. 
Other details will be developed as I go. For those that want to see this with a hex overlay, with each hex this time being about 1.5 miles or so...it looks like this... 

Expanding my Tricubes Tales Solo Card-Based Oracles and Adding Several Framework Rules (July 14, 2024 Edition)

By

On 2024-07-04

In Design Philosophy, Oracles and Tools, Tricube Tales

When I started playing The Bloody Hands using Tricubes Tales Solo I used the system as is except for tweaking the basic oracle to something a bit more complicated. That worked just fine through the first four "episodes" and I still like my little "Dice of Changes" style resolution.

However, I played a TriSolo style game with my partner and have been trying to introduce some more friends to the concept of how solo playing works (yes, I understand the irony) and sometimes it takes a bit more of a framework to kick off some ideas. That got me thinking about how to expand on some of the inherent design choices in TriSolo to make something that could meet folks more half-way and could be adjusted/tweaked on the fly based on the comfort level of the player. 

Here is my current working model. Like all things on this blog, I'm considering it CC-0 so take it and run with it. The OG Tricube Tales Solo materials are CC-BY 3.0 and this post in no-way-shape-or-form is meant to interfere with the original system. As we sometimes say in the adaptation business: with apologies to Richard Woolcock. 

-- How to Use This --

This is primarily intended for solo and GM-less play when a more structured framework is required. If a GM wants to use this to give players more control or to provide a more precise framework and gameplay loop, sure, but is mostly designed to stand in for a GM in a fair, consistent way . As always, everything is optional. Always has been, always will be. Such are RPGs. 

-- Changes & Additions to the Aces/Jokers, Face Cards, Discard Piles, and Reshuffling --

In default Tricube Tales: Solo, Ace and Jokers are marked as "Scene Changes" and then have a 1d6 element that represents something inherent in the scene. In this framework, to keep language more consistent, Ace/Joker trigger "scene shifts". 

A shift had at least a minor to moderate impact on the current scene and story line, and may or may not be a major shift. Draw a second card once you get an Ace or Joker. This is the "Shift Test". To sum up these variations:

  • Ace or Joker is pulled
    • Roll 1d6 as instructed in TriSolo. 
    • Pull a second card, this is the Shift Card. 
    • If the Shift Card is another Ace/Joker:
      • Elevate the shift to a major shift
      • The second 1d6 should highlight the focus, combine the results together
      • In cases such as "Positive (for you)" and "Negative (for you)" treat the combination as somehow involving both 
      • Do not pull a second Shift Card
    • If the Shift Card is a face card:
      • Progress the associated plot as expected
    • If the Shift Card is a number (2-10) card:
      • Play the shift as is, discarding this card
      • Alternatively, use the Suit and/or Value to give hints about the direction and value of the shift (see the various oracles, below)
    • If you still need a card to answer the oracle or establish the scene, draw again and discard additional Ace/Joker cards. See the note, below. 

For face cards, they only trigger plot advancements when pulled as a Shift Card or as a Main Scene Card. In all other card draws, they are read as values 11, 12, and 13. 

EXAMPLE

Jerry is trying to sneak into the chemical factory to search for a missing teenager in a crime drama style campaign. The player draws a card to figure out what kind of task Jerry will need to face and gets a Joker. Rolls a 1d6 and gets "Negative (for you)." Drawing a Shift Card, Jerry's player gets an Ace and rolls 1d6 again and gets "New Character (roll)". These two results are combined together that there is a major shift in the scene with this new person making the issue much harder on Jerry.

OPTIONAL: For plot shifts (Jack, Queen, Face) and scene shifts (Ace, Joker) you will only get one per card draw. Besides the Shift Card, extras can be discarded. For instance, if you draw a King of Spades and the main plot is progressed negatively. You have to draw another card as per TriSolo rules and get a King of Hearts. Rather than interpret this as a shift back into the positive (somewhat neutralizing the first) you discard it instead. The scene has a single plot shift for this one card draw. Later oracle draws in the scene might generate another shift, though. This does not include the Shift Card itself for obvious reasons. 

There is now a more obvious discard pile. All cards except  the main scene task cards are placed in it after being used. There are a lot of cards across the oracles, side tasks, and such. This also means you might have to reshuffle. The only cards NOT reshuffled should be the completed main scene task cards and current main scene task cards. Those are held until the end of the session. 

This means you have a discard pile, a successful scene pile, and a failed scene pile. You can arrange them with the successes going to the right of the draw pile, the failures going to the left, and the discards going either above or below.

-- Karma to Draw a New Card --

Besides some of the new options for spending Karma below, Karma might be used after a card draw for any purpose (scene, oracle, relationship) to cancel that card and draw another. 

This framework favors using Karma more continuously to control the flow and therefore players are encouraged to play off Quirks more often to build up additional Karma. 

- Optional: Increase Starting Karma - 

If groups wish to have more control, Karma's default value can be increased from three (3) to four (4) or five (5). However, it should be balanced and not made much higher than the default value. 

--Additional Materials Needed --

While all of this is optional, some additional tools for using this framework are 

  • A number (3-4 maybe) tokens per character to represent tasks, locations, NPCs, and events/plots/elements to which that character is currently committed. Note, I did NOT say "meeple" even if we all thought the m-word.
  • A small stack (maybe 10-20) index cards of a logical size (3x5, 4x6, whatever your local equivalent is) and slightly less small stack (maybe 20-30) "note cards" of a logical size (2x3, 1.5x2, your favorite sizes).  
  • One deck of cards is probably plenty but if you have a larger group (more than 4) you might want to shuffle a second deck in to start just to reduce the amount of reshuffles. 
If you are playing digitally, you can obvious ignore all this and just use tokens as appropriate.
NOW! On with the changes and the Framework! 

-- Card Based Yes/No Oracle --

When asking a yes/no question, pull a card:
  • 2 to 7 = No. 
  • 8 to K = Yes.
  • A or Joker = There is a shift to the question. Follow the procedure above. If resolving this shift does not answer the question satisfactorily, then an additional card might be drawn.
In this system, the suit of the card might indicate an and or but:
  • Hearts = "And..." 
  • Spades = "But..." 
In this way, you can have "yes, but..." "yes, and..." and so forth. 
This can be expanded for Likely and Unlikely results as follows:
  • Likely means 2-5 = "No" but 6+ = "Yes". 
  • Unlikely means 10+ = "Yes" but 2-9 = "No". 
When it doubt or debate, treat it as the default setting of (2-7 & 8-K). 

-- Other Basic Card Based Oracles --

There are other basic card-type oracles. 
In all cases, these three general notions are true
  • For card value:
    • High numbers tend to represent more (usually more "yes")
    • With vibe style checks, numbers on the end (2, 3 and Q, K tend to represents the extremes of the vibe)
  • For card suit:
    • Hearts = relationships and working with someone/something
    • Diamonds = objects/transactions
    • Clubs = skills/actions
    • Spades = conflict, interactions, or working against someone/something

- Simple Value/Vibe Check -

In this oracle, if you are trying to figure out how much of something there is (how many people, how strong is the storm, how cluttered is this house, etc) then simply pull a card and treat higher as more. Again, Aces and Jokers represent shifts as above. 
If you are trying to find how the vibe is going for or against the characters, consider, as a baseline: 
  • 2 to 4: Negative
  • 5 to 10: Neutral
  • Jack to King: Positive
This can be adjusted or read as more of a spectrum as needed. 
For value/vibe checks, Hearts and Spades can be taken as 
  • Hearts --> The value/vibe is increasing in its direction: growing more negative, more positive, etc. For neutral vibe results, this might be interpreted as being apathetic to the characters' actions or the general flow of the campaign. 
  • Spades --> The value/vibe is about to change. Perhaps do another check later in the scene or in a follow-up scene. 
One particular variation of this check that is frequent in hexcrawls and outside games is a weather/conditions check. In this case, lower values point to worse conditions and higher values point to more favorable conditions. Shifts and Major Shifts point to the weather/condition being particularly out of the normal (dust storm in the desert for a shift, thunderstorm in the desert for a major shift) but use the Twist oracle for ideas. Hearts/Spades can show if the conditions are holding steady, growing worse, or improving, etc. 

- Determining Relationships -

If you are trying to find out how a person, location, character, or event is related to another person, location, character, or event then draw a card and consult the suit. There is a lot of overlap here so a coworker might be someone transactional or task-related or personal depending on the vibe:
  • Hearts = personal relationships (family, friends, personal enemies, places of personal interest)
  • Diamonds = transactional or object based relationships (store owner, coworkers, banks, something paid for)
  • Clubs = related by a task, action, hobby, etc (people who share a hobby, a place where the task takes place, an event involving the action)
  • Spades = related to a specific event or conflict (somewhere who was there when something happened, the place it happened, an event caused by the first). 
The value of the card can be used to hint towards intensity. A 3 of Spades means the connection between the event is fairly faint while a Queen of Hearts might hint the personal relationship is very strong. For obvious reasons, ignore Heart/Spade for "And"/"But" type responses.
Aces/Jokers mean there is unusual characteristic and/or a recent change in the relationship. The Shift Card can give more details about this. Draw again if it is still unclear.

- Determining Types of Scenes -

If you need some inspiration for what type of scene or type of specific task this is, suits can also be used to generate a type of event/scene/task (again there is some overlap):
  • Hearts = interpersonal or personal scene/task (probably involves talking or settling an issue with someone, could involve dealing with a personal issue)
  • Diamonds = transactional or item-based scene/task (the classic "market/shopping" scene, but can also be about finding a specific item, a specific clue, etc). 
  • Club = action scene/task (this involves using a specific skill, performing a specific practical action, or generally applying to some external, non-personal consideration)
  • Spades = conflict scene/task (scenes and tasks of opposition: this scene involves a fight or a struggle, it could also be something like sneaking past guards or climbing a wall definitely meant to keep you out). 
If you draw a numbered card (2 through 10) then you can use the value to decide the general intensity of the problem or the vibe, however you wish to interpret it. 
If you draw a face card then it means effort is needed. Jack = 1 effort per committed character, Queen = 2 effort, and King = 3 effort. 
Obviously, in this case, as above, Hearts/Spades do not generate "And"/"But" answers. 
Aces/Jokers represent scenes that are interrupting are altering the main story. Roll the dice as instructed in the base rules to try and figure out what is happening. For Aces/Jokers, the shift card can help give a focus or draw again if it is unclear.
For more inspiration, draw two two scene-type cards and treat duplicates as an increased intensity (two Spades might mean 3 effort instead of 2, two Diamonds might involve a more complicated transaction or search). Non-duplicates show how the types overlap, a Heart + Diamond might involve finding an item related to a personal quest while a Spades + Club might be a conflict where you are trying to complete a task to win the fight rather than directly confronting someone. If you use the two-card method, only count the first Ace/Joker pulled. 

- OPTIONAL: Weirdness Checks - 

For certain types of campaigns (horror, paranoia, mystery, surreal) it can sometimes be interesting to know if something is going strangely. A Weirdness Check is a variation of the value/vibe check. 
  • Number cards (2-10): the event, person, object, or task (aka, subject) is as expected given the context of the scene, session, or campaign [note: this can still be fairly weird by default]
  • Jack: the subject has a minor but distinct weirdness from its base type. 
  • Queen: the subject has a notable weirdness from its base type.
  • King: the subject has a major weirdness from its base type.
  • Shift (single Ace/Joker): the subject is massively weird.
  • Major Shift (double Ace/Joker): the subject is extremely weird to a degree that the base type is mostly just a suggestion that people might use to give it some explanation. 
In this system, the standard suit distribution might give some idea of how it is weird
  • Hearts --> something is off about the people/creatures involved
  • Diamonds --> something is off about the objects/aesthetics involved
  • Clubs --> something is off about the actions/procedures involved
  • Spades --> something is off about how the subject interacts with the characters or world around it. 
One variation could be to draw an additional card for Queen, two additional cards for King, and three/four for Shifts/Major Shifts and read only the suit if you need inspiration for how to upgrade the values.
This can be used to find out if a creature fits the general type (zombie) or is something different (a raging, screeching zombie) to add some creature inspiration more on the fly. 

Example

In a horror campaign, there is a festival going on and a parade is going down the street. A Jack of Diamonds might indicate the people are wearing strange masks. A Queen of Hearts might be the people in the parade having unusual appearances (too tall, too thin, etc). A King of Spades could have the parade floats having folks in cages while the crowd cowers and looks afraid. An Ace might combine all these elements into one. An Ace followed by a Joker might involve all that and also the day shifts into the night, strange voices are heard shouting from somewhere down the side streets, and the the ground quakes and shakes as the city takes on a different vibe as the parade passes.

-- Main Scene Task vs Side Tasks --

Most scenes still has a Main Scene Task determined by cards (aka, the Main Scene Card). As in the base game, draw a card to determine the main task for that scene. This highlights the general focus of the scene, a task that must be completed to face. Face cards equal a shift while Ace/Jokers add an alteration to the scene, as above. One or more characters might work to solve this (or be required to individually solve it). If the flow of the story has reached a point where this main task is more disruptive (example: players need a scene where they discuss strategy, take a break from the main plot, or elsewise) this can be considered more indicative of the flavor of the scene but a card should be drawn since there might be shifts and/or progressions in the plot. 
This main task can be solved either before, during, or after the Side Tasks. Construct the fiction at the table to reflect this: is this something blocked by the side tasks, something that enables the side tasks, or something happening at the same time, et cetera. 
Characters not tackling the main task of the scene can have a side task. State the intentions for these characters and then decide to either pull a card for a completely random tasks (which can help to add a few twists and unexpected interactions) or decide the Trait used in the tasks and pull a card to determine the difficulty:
  • 2, 5, 8, Jack = Easy (4+ to succeed)
  • 3, 6, 9, Q = Standard (5+ to succeed)
  • 4, 7, 10, K = Hard (6 to succeed)
These two methods (purely decided by cards or using cards to determine difficulty) should be considered the default way to determine side tasks outside of letting fiction decide. If not every player agrees on the fiction, then a card draw can be used.
If an Ace/Joker is drawn, this side task is somewhat related to a shift in the scene. Proceed with the Scene Shift rules as above.

In some cases, the relatively difficulty of the tasks might be obvious (example: an early scene trying to get into a nightclub when there is no real obvious conflict, yet) but the Trait might be in doubt. Or, figuring out the trait might be a good clue as to how difficult the task is. In that case, you can use this chart:
  • 2, 3, 4 = Agile
  • 5, 6, 7 = Brawny
  • 8, 9, 10 = Craft
  • Jack = Agile/Brawny
  • Queen = Agile/Crafty
  • King = Brawny/Crafty
Treat the face cards as if either is applicable but flavor the task in a way that makes sense. Multiple characters approaching these tasks might use either of them or in cases of effort being spent, a single character might switch. 
In either of these, Aces and Jokers still result in an alteration that adjusts the task. 
When using side tasks, only the main scene card is added to the success/fail pile and only the main scene card is counted for the suits to determine the flow of the adventure. 
OPTIONAL: If this last detail means the session goes on too long because of the number of characters, you may treat all task cards for the determination of story flow. However, with 3+ characters, this might conversely make the session go by too quickly to actually resolve the story. 
In that case, you can set up a limit of scenes (6-8), instead. For a great six-scene structure, see the Tricube Tales Micro Edition. 

-- An Optional Way to Determine Effort/Conflict Scenes -- 

Besides drawing scene-type cards and getting face cards, an optional way to determine if a given Main Scene Task is the sort of conflict that requires effort you can use the discard pile. Keep the top three cards visible. If the suit of the main scene card matches two of the top three cards in discard pile, it requires two effort per character (or per character present, whichever makes sense). If it matches all three, then it requires three effort. 
As in all cases, fiction is the cornerstone. Some scenes are just naturally lead to a task that will require effort. Likewise, sometimes effort does not make sense. Play to your table. 

-- Locations, NPCs, Details, and Elements --

This is a framework that establishes the fiction at the table in a more controlled manner. It is partially inspired by some games such as Microscope but is not in any way bound by that structure. It is recommended you use both index cards and smaller note cards (or the digital equivalent) to handle some of this. 
First, decide the mission being faced by using the micro-setting of your choice or through other methods. The main details are things such as main tasks (the main *required* detail), side tasks, general location, and complications. Outside of rolling, you might let players take turns deciding on these details. Add these to an index card or multiple note cards with enough basic details to start but leave room for more. 
Next, create locations. 

- Locations - 

Start with a Positive Location unless the set-up makes it unlikely the characters have a place to treat as a home base. In that case, make a starting location which is either Neutral or Negative. 
Then, for each character (not player) add a location based on the details of the mission (a place where the main quest might happen, a place related to the complication). If there is only one or two characters, then have two or three per character. You want, besides the "home base," there to be four or five places to start. Decide if each location is Positive (a place with no initial threats to the characters), Neutral (a place that might have threats, but no immediate or inherent ones), or Negative (a place where threats are active). 
Write a name and a couple of basic details for each location on an index card per location and place it on the table in whatever order makes sense (rough geographic order, a relative scale of Positive to Negative, etc). 
Then set aside roughly the same number of index cards to represent possible future places. 

- NPCs, Non-Player Characters - 

Start out with at least a couple of possible NPCs (at least two to three are good, but four or five might make sense). These can be people related to the known details (such as main quests, side quests, complications), people that make sense for certain locations, or people that might be interesting to the story. They are not guaranteed to show up in any scene but they at least provide a background fiction. 
These go on the smaller cards. Like locations, these non-player characters have some basic details (name, occupation, demeanor) and are graded Positive, Neutral, or Negative. Apply these character cards to a location to start or set them at no specific location if it is unknown (such as tracking down the main villain). 
Again, set aside a small stack of character cards for additional characters. The general table flow might determine this but a rough start would be no more than double or triple the number of player characters (again, around 4 to 5 extra). 
MINOR NPCs might not get a character card and instead be a detail showing up on another character card (a sidekick or goon type) or a location (a bartender or barfly at a tavern, for instance). 

- Events and Elements - 

For this last type, think if there are any overarching events (festivals, disease, things related to the main/side-quest or the complication) and add in event cards on an index card somewhere to one side of the location cards. If this event is at a specific location, attach the card. Like above, write a couple of basic details about it. 
Element cards are a kind of catch all for anything that does not fit into one of the other categories. It might be a ticking clock condition, an aspect to the adventure, a personal consideration, an overarching force, or some similar element that needs to be called out. These should NOT attach directly to a specific location, character, or event: these are more generalized than that. 
For both Events and Elements, determine if they are Positive, Negative, or Neutral again and mark them as such. 
There may be no starting Events or Elements or there might be several. 

- Adding Content to these Cards - 

As a Scene starts, first draw the main scene card from the card deck and then determine which location, NPC, event, or detail it might impact. Attach it there. Then as player characters determine their intent, assign their token (or note it somehow) to whichever of these locations/npcs/events/details they must engage with to perform their task or scene actions. Those not attached to the main scene task will then figure out their side tasks related (in some way) to the location/character/event/etc they are attached. 
At the end of the scene, a character attached to one of the above (and likely multiple of above) will have a chance for their player to add in a detail or two based generally on the following principle:
  • Fiction always takes precedent. The story ultimately decides details. Start with this principle to decide a detail or two to add as exposed/explored in the scene.
  • When the fiction does not necessarily dictate the detail, the player may add one detail either chosen by personal choice or through an oracle role (should likely be a mix of both). 
  • No more than one or two details should be added at a time by a player. Leave room to keep developing. 
  • New details should only conflict with the given fiction IF some shift developed or the tone of the session changes or some time has passed to allow it. In all other cases, new details should consider all prior notes on the table as in-canon. 
  • When a player is adding a new detail, other players should give them space and avoid actively collaborating except in cases where assistance is asked or if questions need to be answered.
  • When in doubt/debate, a player may spend one Karma from a character to force a detail. Even then, it should not conflict great with the prior details or general vibe of the session unless it makes overall sense with the current fiction (spending a single Karma will not create a comic-relief unicorn character at odds with the hardboiled detective story, for instance). 

- Shifting Positivity - 

At the end of each scene, an attached character's player may also decide to shift the positivity by one step (negative place made neutral, neutral NPC made positive or negative). The above considerations should be taken in mind. 
The success or failure of the task might be a good indication (a failure might shift a relationship more negative, a success might shift it more positive). 

- Adding Locations/NPCs/Events/Elements - 

There are three main ways to add more:
  • The fiction requires something new to make sense.
  • Ace/Jokers generate new locations, characters, or events.
  • A player spends one (1) Karma from their character. 
Once all the possible cards are used up, this final cost should increase to two (2) Karma at least or be avoided. Permanent cards should not count against this limit. 

- OPTIONAL: Splitting Locations/Events/Characters/Elements - 

Once any of these Locations/Events/Characters/Element cards have accrued more than 4 or 5 details, consider possibly splitting it into two cards. A hotel might get a lobby and a rooftop nightclub. A person might get, well, themselves but also a relative or sidekick. This is one way to generally reflect the weight applied to these foci in actual play. A location with multiple sub-locations shows other players are interested in using/exploring it. 

- OPTIONAL: Making Locations/Events/Characters/Elements PERMANENT - 

At the end of a session, the table should have a good number of these cards in play. It will be tempting for certain campaigns to try and retain many or all of these. Instead, it is suggested that the table decides a few (one of each per player at the most) to be turned into a Permanent version (events will likely be the odd duck in this case, they tend to stick around or go away based on what they are). If players wish to choose more than one, two (2) Karma should be spent unless other players agree this is obvious. Players may also choose to add none to the pool. 
As always, fiction takes charge. If a particular place is baked into the campaigns fiction or a particular person needs to show up over multiple session: that can be a freebie. 
If the fiction decides a place or person should be removed from the campaign, mark off its permanent status. Likewise, a player may choose to remove one of each from the permanent pool. This should never be used to get rid of a place newly chosen by another player. If this choice is in contention, a player can spend two (2) Karma to force it unless the fiction absolutely disagrees. 
It is recommended to only have 1-2 permanent places and NPCs per player on the table to keep the framework loose. For excess of this, consider placing several into a sideboard and only add to them to the main table when needed.
Not all permanent locations need to be considered to in play at all times. The sideboard can also be used to store those chosen to be permanent if it makes no sense for them to be in place (home town locations when characters on a road trip, etc). 

-- The Final Scene --

As recommended in the Tricubes Tales Micro Edition, the final scene will be a task that requires effort. The default is two successes per character with resolve lost due to failure. 
An optional rule to make this more variable is to look at the failures and success for the Main Scene Task cards. If the table has zero (0) failures: one (1) effort per character is required. If the table has failures equal to or less than the successes: go with the default two (2) effort per character. If the failures outnumber the success, then it takes three (3) effort per character. If there are no successes, then it requires three (3) effort per character and the scene difficulty is locked in on Hard. 

- Optional: Gauntlet Scenes - 

"Gauntlet" scenes can be thought of as mini-bosses or montage scenes where the team gets get together to prep a house for a zombie invasion or to build a ship to attack the dread pirate or such. With the above structure, they are used to "burn off" failures by having a collective scene task related to all  characters which is called before the scene starts and takes the place of a normal scene. It might be used as the penultimate scene. 
Count up all the failure cards. Using the same rough ratio as above determine that much effort per failed main scene task, not per character (if there are no failures but the table would like to play out one, go with the default of two per player). Then, go around per character and rapid fire draw a task card. It is recommended that the cards are used as is (3 of Hearts = Standard Agile). Resolve may or may not be lost depending on the fiction (a mini-boss fight will lose resolve, a gathering supplies will not). Success earned for these gauntlet tasks are applied to gauntlet effort, not to the individual tasks. 
At the end, remove a number of failed cards based on how many successes were generated, rounding down (two-per would mean five (5) successes = 2 failure cards removed). 
Gauntlet scenes are fun rapid fire kind of scenes but should only be used maybe once per session and should not be a default. They apply an in-framework-way to representing wrapping up loose ends if the session is coming to a close but things feel unresolved.

Steal This Rule: "Death is primarily a narrative conceit"

By

On 2024-07-01

In Design Philosophy, Reconsidering Fairness in Solo RPGs, Solo Musings, Steal This Rule

Imagine this: you have spent some time kicking off your solo campaign. A few sessions in, you have backstory and lore. You have an entire chart of threads and characters. You have a hexcrawl with a dozen notes. And then, your second level wizard springs a trap and you roll on a table and get poison. The effects say, "Make a saving throw or die." And you roll a critical fail. What happens next?

It is a fascinating aspect of the tabletop sphere that out of all the many genre hobbies - comic books, movies, novels, videogames, etc - that really only tabletop games, including role-playing games, consider the death of characters (or, in the case of many board/card games: depletion of a life point type pool of the player) to be a primary driver of narrative tempo. 

In books and movies, death is side story reserved for plot twists and big reveals and mostly impacting side characters and NPC types. In videogames, while you have a dedicated fanbase of hardcore runs,  you still have restarts and save points and resurrection deals and campfires so that the vast majority of lost run are generally, cognitively, the start of a new one that is very similar to the old one, immediately with little pause. 

In RPGs, including solo play ones, death is an outsized driver for the way we conceive of story beats. A side effect of RPGs being rooted as modular expansions to war-gaming means folks sometimes ask how a relatively deadly game like Shadowdark can be more deadly[Reddit]. and you find cases of people trying to nerf things like fudge/fate/hero/luck tokens or resurrection because, for a certain mindset, death justifies all the AC and the HP and the XP and the STR and the GP. Characters overcome death to face higher level death down the road. Time is a flat circle. 

Searching Google/etc can bring back a host of articles about how to handle character death ranging from "get over it" to "maybe don't kill off characters possibly". It is so baked into the baseline assumption that people who come up with reasonable responses to how to handle it (see Dealing with Character Death [Youtube Video] and How to Handle Character Death in Dungeons and Dragons [DnDBeyond]) still have to dance around whether or not there should be some mitigation for the inevitability of 0HP (usually now some -XHP) in a way not unlike how we would talk about grieving and dying in the real world.

Yet, outside of RPGs, these discussions are almost nonsensical. Batman and all the various Robins have clocked up multiple deaths, each. Many fantasy novels have characters fail battles but the outcome is retreat, imprisonment, or some other safety rope tossed in by the author. These stories are not necessarily about trivializing loss but more finding a way to make 0HP a narrative increase rather than a cease. 

In a recent response to a r/solo_roleplaying thread about lowering lethality to avoid character death, I wrote: 

In a lot of novels, movies, and so forth the main character "dying" is usually just a phase: they wash up face down on a beach, they get rescued by a new ally, they get imprisoned/have to escape, or they wake up in a hospital with no good explanation how they got there.

For this look at Steal This Rule! I want players, especially but not just solo roleplayers, to consider this:

Death is primarily a narrative concept...

That is taken verbatim from many of the micro-setting/scenarios for Tricube Tales ([DriveThruRPG], link goes to the one I've been posting on this blog: "Guardians of the Shadow Frontier"). When I first read this, I merely nodded. As I've played more and more, I realized how it allows the players (including the GM) to regain a piece of power that roleplaying games have traditionally removed from them: to decide what 0HP means. A few bad dice rolls (especially at early levels), a particularly unfair trap, an oracle going a bit awry, or just a side-effect of players not really actualizing the world in the way that characters might: all can lead to a death that was completely unseen or unexpected a scene prior. 

That's partially why I am suggesting to players to go with...

0HP can mean the character is unable to act, not necessarily dead. 

Rather than threating 0HP as perma-death, treat it as a temporary inability to drive the story forward. A 0HP character is knocked out, captured, lost, injured, retreating (painfully), or just generally unable to engage in elements like combat or controlled mobility for a time. 0HP means the character is "at the mercy" of the game world at large (and the enemies that caused the HP loss).

What this means can be a number of things. In a truly-Solo game (one character only) this might involve a time-out of sorts as they regain some HP. During that time, the world goes on without them. In a party style game, the 0HP character might be out until healing spells or items can revive them. At least until the Total Party Wipe occurs. 

Whether captured by enemies, rescued by an ally (or a new character), or generally forced to wake up weak and alone on a dungeon floor, the total loss of HP does not end the story but offers up new avenues to add to their story. 

0HP can be a narrative increase rather than a cease

Who rescues them? What does being captured mean? Are they tied up? Tossed in a cage? Left in a pile of rubble? How do they overcome washing up on shore? How do they survive on a hostile planet after being marooned from a crash? If 0HP is a loss of ability to engage in the narrative then what story beats can you use to return that ability to the character?

Death is still an option if it suits the current story.

And all that is not to get rid of death entirely. The character is not newly immortal. This is not about cheating death but about making the story rich and meaningful. There are times when it it is all said and done that that 0HP = narrative shift means that 0HP = death (at least for a time). This is not about making death impossible but about taking one of the three de facto assumptions of RPGs (random rolls, character abilities, HP/death) and saying we can do something different with it. 

Note that besides Tricube Tales, Fate has had this aspect (PUN!) in their SRD for some time [Fate-SRD]. And I think it is time that we apply it to other games to try and tell the kinds of stories we like without feeling like we are cheating.

Unless you really like 0HD = permadeath and then, as always, you do you, Boo. 

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