Overview

I always have at least one solo game going all the time. Mythic is great, but there are also solo rules and emulators for other systems. When I still enjoyed D&D, I found a particularly useful book called The Solo Adventurer's Toolkit by Paul Bimler on DM's Guild. If you're a 5e fan and want to play solo, I recommend it.

can't get much crazier then the excel nerds who figured out how to actually draw anime waifu's in the same application that said i guess this means if i can't find people to play with i can just play a solo game of vice and violence or whatever

It's designed to be a universal system to play any game solo. I haven't used it for too many systems, but that's exactly its function. Being the weirdo data person I am, I recreated a lot of the rules and tables in Excel and Word with formulas to track stuff easier... well, easier for me, because I live in Excel for half my job. Everyone else would probably think I'm nuts.

all that aside this gm emulator sounds like it can be applied to any rpg game regardless if its designed as a solo game or not

In a solo RPG, an oracle is a tool (usually a table, but I've seen online generators as well) that provides answers to your questions about the game world, generates story elements, and creates content for improvisation, filling the role of a Dungeon Master (DM) in a traditional game. By rolling dice or drawing cards and interpreting the results, a player can get answers to yes/no questions, receive prompts for characters or locations, and generate plot hooks to keep the adventure moving forward. An example from the solo game I'm currently playing: The PC has amnesia and has been recovering in a small town, trying to find work without identification and social security number, and mostly relying on the kindness of a few locals who have sort of adopted her. Her amnesia was caused by trauma (nearly drowning in a flash flood) but before that, she was... someone. I hadn't decided if her background was more sci-fi, spy tech/espionage, supernatural, super hero, or... well, really anything. I just knew that there was something special about her and people would come looking if they thought she was alive. The way Mythic GM works, you figure out what would be the next most likely scene based on what has already happened, and then roll to see if that scene happens as expected, if there's an alteration (removing/changing a character, item, location, etc.) or if it's an interrupt scene (aka random encounter/event/etc.) She was found by the shore of a river after a flash flood with no id, no phone, nothing but the clothes she was wearing, so my expected scenes were: 1. wake in hospital, 2. meet nurse, 3. meet doctor get diagnosis, 4. meet sheriff get questioned, 5. hang around until sheriff or doctor have news, 6. find out she can't be identified, 7. find out she can't be kept in the hospital, 8. be released on her own. Those things all happened as expected. Based on the conversations and expectations I set, the next scene was her getting a bed for the night at the community center. BUT, I rolled the the scene would NOT be the expected scene, but be an "Altered Scene". On the Scene Adjustment Table, I rolled a 7, which meant I needed to roll for TWO adjustments. I rolled 5 (which says "Remove an Object" on the Scene adjustment table) and 3 (which says "Reduce/Remove an Activity" on the scene adjustment table). To figure out what object is being removed and what activity is being reduced or removed, I rolled once on the d100 Object Oracle Table and got 83 Soft. The I rolled on the d100 Location Oracle Table and got 81 Safe. So soft and safe are being removed. That was easy to interpret. The bed is not available, nor is the safety she assumed she'd find at the Community Center. It turns out the nurse was mistaken, and there are no beds available there- they only have beds there during a crisis or emergency. So now she has to figure out where else to go. She asks the community center employee for suggestions and gets a list of possible places to find a bed, one of which is the motel. She is told she might be able to work at the motel in exchange for lodging, so... off to the motel she goes. So the oracles give you lists of words that you interpret (or if you really want to take your chances, you could put them in chatgpt or something) to tell you what NPCs do, what happens in a scene. Mythic has generic "action" and "description" tables, but it also has tables for Adventure Tone, Alien Species Descriptors, Animal Actions, Army Descriptors, Cavern Descriptors, Characters, Character Actions (Combat), Character Actions (General), Character Appearance, Character Background, Character Conversations, Character Descriptors, Character Identity, Character Motivations, Character Personality, Character Skills, Character Traits & Flaws, City Descriptors, Civilization Descriptors, Creature Abilities, Creature Descriptors, Cryptic Message, Curses, Domicile Descriptors, Dungeon Descriptors, Dungeon Traps... and that's just through the letter "D". It's very versatile, and you can lean into the oracles as much or as little as you like... after all, it's your game.

uh the oracle? whats the oracle?

I've been loving Mythic GM Emulator for solo play. It's provides a really nice pacing mechanism for random events or interrupt scenes where something changes the characters plans. It seems more like a book or movie than a typical dungeon crawl. When things are going well for the PC, they are more likely to continue to go well for a bit, sort of emulating a downtime period, or the setup, planning, or regrouping phases of a story. But then once things go sideways, they're increasingly more likely to continue going sideways, which gets into some great high pressure, fast-paced scenes driven by action and the oppositions' plans or interference. Plus the oracles have been pretty helpful, and when I'm at a loss for how to interpret one, I've been feeding the last thing that happened into AI and then telling it to provide possible next scenes using the oracle results as inspiration and I've been pleasantly surprised.

tried to do a game of orphans of hoomanity.... its not really getting the traction i thought it would get... might opt for funning a plain dnd 5e session.... or i might try a solo one... if i can find one i can pirate from

I’m at least willing to consider joining in, but again, have no experience with this sort of thing and not sure how easy it is to change that quickly. Will leave that up to you guys, who have a better idea.

Sounds neat! I think then maybe I would be most interested in the 1880's steampunk/fantasy one then.

I would 1010% be interested in either of these, dear god both of them are absolutely leaving me drooling at the thought<3 one of my favorite time settings is the 1920's so being exactly 40 years apart on either side is 1 hillarious and 2 absolutely tantalizing in terms of potential options

anyflips has a full PDF of the basic 2014 5E handbook wikidot is the 5e reference I like to use for classes, races, spells, magic items, etc. its a really solid tool and far easier than flipping through every book released for 5E would have posted a link, but I was told just now its against TOS so uh... hope the site names helps?

In the Cortex Dramatic version I'll be using, the drama focuses on a tight-knit group of characters and NPCs. You can use it for any genre, but think of groups of characters whose interpersonal drama is the focus of a tv show, like Smallville (the original Cortex Dramatic system was written for the Smallville RPG), Deadwood, The Expanse, Andor, Burn Notice, Alias, etc. You can use it for any genre, and characters of any power level are equal because their powers aren't the focus of the game or the dice rolls, their relationships and values are. It changes the focus from "complete the mission/quest" to focus on the people you're with and your relationships with them, good or bad. It tightens the focus on drama and is great for lewd games if you love a randomized element to whether or not two characters have sex and then focus on the emotional fallout of those sex scenes (or lack of sex scenes, if it didn't work out.)

Someday I should actually read some of my books, with the mind of maybe actually playing them. See if there is interest, after I finally get myself writing more frequently again. Though they are mostly older/based on specific licensed setting, and may be obscure, other than the first edition AD&D stuff. Or possibly getting pulled into something else, if it is easy to do without owning the material myself.

I've never tried Cortex but I am up for trying new systems! I wouldn't mind either setting. The first would definitely give more character variety options I think, which I prefer, but the espionage one is definitely not one that has been done much.

I was contemplating running a super dramatic and very lewd game in either: an 1880s steampunk / mad science / wild west / supernatural world OR... a 1960's cold war espionage spytech type setting I'd be using Cortex to run it, so the setup would take a bit to get through the Pathways system. It's a very collaborative character and world building system where the players get to create their characters as well as NPCs, locations, powerful organizations both good and bad, etc. I'm curious if there's any interest in either of these settings.

All right. I'll cook up a separate thread and do like a session zero setup thing.

I have been summoned with the possibility of an enticing game possibility. Harroo ^~^ @roll to seduce icarian got a hold of me about this. Might I be able to join in as well? 5etools is a good spot for referencing stuff and going through rules. The interface can be a little weird when you first use it, but its not too complicated. Roll20 compendium can be useful and with 5e wiki for quickie looking up on stuff.

I'm sure I have one somewhere. I'll see if I can't find it when I have a quiet moment

@roll to seduce Do you have a preference sheet or something similar I could look at? I need to know all your secrets and darkest desires >:D

3 is probably the ideal group size. If you're able to manage your character sheets I'm completely fine with that. I haven't played savage worlds in ages so I can't really remember how it goes other than having really impactful mechanics.

I'd love to join in as well, and I potentially know someone else who'd like to join as well, if you'd have us :3 I'm familiar with Pathfinder (though it's been a while since I last played), though unfamiliar with Savage World. With how numbers-crunchy PF can be, I'm willing to learn, though :p

AP - Adventure Path - a 6 chapter adventure taking you from first level and evolve into a world ending threat ending at level 16-20 Savage Pathfinder - is a mod for Savage World to make it more compatible with the parhfinder playstyle. Less numbers, more flavour, but also less mechanical options

Real quick, anybody know where I can read the stuff for dnd for free? Online I mean. I do wanna get into it but I see everybody has read quite a bit and I didn't know I needed to lol

Well i have played exactly one pathfinder 1e campaign before and it was... very brief, and im not sure what AP means here... nore Savage pathfinder really? But i like playing in new systems so ill be happy to play ^-^