Solo Gaming Appreciation Month #1

For SGAM2017, I’m going to try something, a play by play, step by step journal of using free or pay what you want resources to play a solo adventure game. With so many resources available online, there is very little investment needed to try it for yourself, except for time. If you end up liking it, just add the same item to your cart with a monetary amount you feel is appropriate.

The following items, with provided links, will get you started and set up with the same material as myself:

1. Instant Game: This will randomly generate a setting and story
2. Forthright: Effectively a d20 spin on Powered by the Apocalypse style gaming and will be the ruleset that I use.
3. BOLD: Want a character backstory to go with the above?
4. Conjectural Roleplaying GM Emulator: For randomly determining event
5. Universal NPC Emulator: Just in case you come across a stranger…

To differentiate between different modes, I’ll have the GM text in bold, player text unmodified and mechanics in italics.

Instant Setting

• 95 on setting table: wilderness
• 25 on tone table: despair
• 08 on things table: artificial intelligence
• 32 on things table: frontier

Which of these things is not like the other? Almost everything lined up perfectly until I ended up with “artificial intelligence.” However, that can work. Obviously the setting is in the wilderness, and the last roll mentions a frontier. So, I’ve got somewhere that’s remote and isolated, a strong sense of despair, and an artificial intelligence. Perhaps that could be the source; perhaps it’s the solution. It’s definitely something to consider.

Instant Story

• 26 on opposition table: evil mastermind
• 59 on action table: launch and 75 on thing table: ship
• 27 on action table: destroy and 29 on other thing table: grave

Ok, now things are a little weird. Evil Mastermind could tie directly into the artificial intelligence. Destroy grave seems moderately obvious, but launch ship seems kind of generic. I’ll roll twice on the descriptor table: once for the artificial intelligence and again for the ship.

Descriptors

• 63 on descriptor table for the artificial intelligence: mercurial
• 57 on descriptor table for ship: inspiring

That definitely clears things up for me. The intelligence is mercurial, so it’s likely insane, hence the evil mastermind. The ship is inspiring. Perhaps allowing escape or somebody on board can rival whatever plot the evil artificial intelligence has in mind.

Extras

• 72 on descriptor table: precise and 73 on other thing table: red herring
• 60 on personality table: insecure and 05 on people table: aristocrat
• 32 on personality table: distracted and 32 on people table: expert

I generate a trio of extras that may or may not appear later in the game. It just gives me something to consider while I generate my character, which I’ll do in the next post. As weird as it sounds, I’m getting a Star Wars science-fantasy kind of vibe from it: a frontier wilderness with a mercurial artificial intelligence overseer that wants to destroy something on the planet before the character can escape.

I’ll let that percolate for the next few hours while I consider how I’m going to build a Forthright character.