Solo RPGs

[IsabellaRose]

Has anyone tried playing solo RPGs, or playing standard RPGs using something like Mythic GM Emulator to be able to play solo?

I'm currently playing an idea I had where my character wakes up with amnesia and no ID in a small backwater town. She has an ability that will become apparent to her over time, but she is unaware of what it is, how it works, or that it's even there in the beginning. It just happens and she thinks it's just a lot of strange coincidence. For this solo game, I've set her ability myself rather than randomly generate it, and she has a sort of "instant turn-on/attractiveness" effect that sometimes works on people around her. I haven't put anything in stone a to whether it's a biological or magical effect, so the cause could be anything, and the random elements I generate during play will slowly bring me to an answer. 

For this game I'm using a very light Cortex ruleset with just a few base stats and several stress tracks. I'm using Mythic GM Emulator v2 with the Chaos Factor set to 5. I skipped the chaos factor for the opening scenes of 1. waking in a hospital, 2. meeting local medical, law enforcement, and social services personnel as she recovers, and 3. being discharged into the world. Now she's on her own in a small town where everybody knows everyone else, and they all knows she's "Amnesia Girl". 

Mechanically it's pretty simple to use Mythic - whenever I would ask the GM a question like, "is there anyone else at the community center when she goes there to find a room at the shelter for he night?", I take a guess as to how likely a yes answer is (50/50 in this case) and roll on the "Fate Chart" using the current Chaos Factor. Then I interpret the answer. For more randomness, I fed the mythic rules to ai and let it generate the possible yes, no, strong yes, and strong no responses ahead of time. Then I roll and I have an answer, and go from there. 

Mythic and AI combined have generated a few NPCs for me so far, but the only story thread I have so far is "who am i?" which I imagine would be the thing that bounces around inside your skull most often if you wake up with amnesia. I'm curious if this will be a superhero story, a spy thriller, a modern fantasy/magic story, or what. As a bonus, I've come up with a list of skills she may know that she could suddenly just "use" under pressure. If a situation requires a very specific skill, I'll roll randomly to see if she suddenly uses it and then we get a whole new mystery... why do I know kung fu? Where did I learn to evasive driving techniques? What were those words I just said and why did all the lights go out when i said them? Maybe she's magic, maybe she's a spy, maybe an alien... I kind of like not knowing for now.

[inkylore]

i  did at some point if only because i didn't have friends to play a traditional game of dnd with, quickly stopped doing so when i discovered it required a book, and sense i couldn't find a pirated version of the book i just kind of gave up on looking

[WickedCadrach]

Mythic GM looks fun, but I haven't tried it out myself. I've played through a couple specialized Solo RPGs like Thousand Year Old Vampire and really enjoyed them. It's interesting how those sorts of systems force you make your own meaning. With a human GM, there's some prepared thread or at least intentional elements in the sandbox, and you assume there's going to be coherence before you open the next door. But with tables and interpretation, you end up having to justify it yourself, and I've found that sort of system gives you these really delicious moments where something from earlier in the story ends up dramatically recontextualized. In my TYOV playthrough, I had this late-game moment where I realized my vampire had been lying to herself over the ages and purposefully forgotten that her cherished ally and touchstone of her humanity had betrayed and tried to kill her, leading them into a tearful 'why are you doing this?' final showdown. 

[IsabellaRose]

2 hours ago, inkylore said:

i  did at some point if only because i didn't have friends to play a traditional game of dnd with, quickly stopped doing so when i discovered it required a book, and sense i couldn't find a pirated version of the book i just kind of gave up on looking

I have a printed copy of Mythic. Can’t remember where I got it, maybe Drivethrurpg.com? I also have a PDF and since I’m a big spreadsheet weirdo I made my own copy of a bunch of the tables and forms in Excel. 

[TiedToScript]

Tell us how it is!

[WritesNaughtyStories]

I own the PDF of Mythic but haven't used it. I play solo journaling games a lot though.

Void 1680 AM is my current favorite. I love that the playlist is integral to the game.

[TiedToScript]

Cool! I tried Delve a while back that was pretty fun!

[IsabellaRose]

This is my solo game folder... I had to screen shot it 3x to get everything in... I haven't even played half of them.

  

[WickedCadrach]

@IsabellaRose Thanks for sharing! Did any really stand out for you? All this talk is making me want to pick one up again.

[IsabellaRose]

The Beast stood out for how hard it was to write the content when I really let myself go. It came out disturbing and uncomfortable and very, very sexual. I feel like I delved into very dark places within myself playing it.

All We Love We Leave Behind also struck a rather personal note and I'll never forget my playthrough. You play as the person left behind when someone you love must leave and write letters to them. I may have leaned into some personal trauma when creating the Absent and really got out some very personal stuff while playing that game. It might have been more therapy than roleplay, but it touched me deeply.

Apothecaria was just loads of fun as a solo game, building up my witches' cottage, treating various ailments, meeting all the NPCs. It may have inspired me to start creating a lewd hack of it. 

Fetch, too, got weirdly personal and made me examine my relationship with my own broken and aging body. Maybe it's just me putting too much of myself into my solo games?

Her Odyssey was fun if a little simplistic. I did write a wonderful little narrative of my character leaving home, facing many trials, and returning changed. But it's a Caltrop Core game and I hate rolling actual d4s - all of mine are the little pyramid ones and they're a pain to pick up lol

Hiria, the Eternal City was fun, pursuing something through an every-changing city. It got weird by the end, but wrapped up nicely.

Notorious was one I wanted to like more than I did. It stood out as disappointing me more than any other game. Solo space bounty hunter game sounded fun, but I found the options on the tables limited so I kept repeating the same results. 

The Magical Year of a Teenage Witch is right up there with Apothecaria as a favorite solo roleplay experience. I really enjoyed the Ghibli-inspired vibes and had a lot of fun getting my witch into and out of all kinds of trouble. This one also inspired me to create a version where the witch is a little older and the magical year is also a year of sexual awakening, because... well, I like that kind of thing. 

 

[WickedCadrach]

2 hours ago, IsabellaRose said:

Maybe it's just me putting too much of myself into my solo games?

Can't help but have some parts of ourselves in every kind of RPG, but solo games definitely set a stage where it's more natural to 'play yourself'. 

[IsabellaRose]

1 hour ago, WickedCadrach said:

Can't help but have some parts of ourselves in every kind of RPG, but solo games definitely set a stage where it's more natural to 'play yourself'. 

It wasn't so much that I was playing myself as infusing the story with very emotionally real elements from my real life. The Beast and Fetch in particular felt disturbingly intimate and personal despite having nothing to do with my actual self of any actual elements of my real life. 

[WickedCadrach]

1 hour ago, IsabellaRose said:

It wasn't so much that I was playing myself as infusing the story with very emotionally real elements from my real life.

That's a valid distinction. With solo rpg's you can leave that imprint of yourself in the world and the story, not just in how you play the character. Playing a character with the same values and general experiences as you (which I guess is how I think of 'playing yourself'?) is definitely not the only way for the game to resonate with real life emotions and insights.