I’ve been busy moving Godspark fulfillment toward the finish line, so I’ve got some new information to share on that, as well as some game plans for the future. I picked up some new games at GameFaceCon, and I got to play through Thousand Empty Light, so I’ll share my reactions to that module as well.
Inside
GameFaceCon Wrap-Up
Thousand Empty Light
Godspark Updates
Production Calendar
GameFaceCon
Since the last newsletter, we had a table at GameFaceCon. The venue was cool, the company was nice, and we had a lovely time chatting about TTRPGs with the good folks of Baltimore. As at PAXU, our top sellers were Sprinkles is Missing! and Mycopedia. People just love magic mushrooms apparently.
Thousand Empty Light
Of the handful of games that I picked up at the convention, Thousand Empty Light is the only explicitly solo game, so I decided to dive into that one first. I plan to work on some solo plays of the other games soon, so you should be hearing about those in future issues of Ink & Dice.
Thousand Empty Light is a module for Mothership 1e by
that includes a solo procedure that can be used with other Mothership modules, and honestly could serve as the basis for a universal engine for playing TTRPGs solo: the ORACLE system. The zine itself is an incredible diegetic document, though I will admit that it took me a while to decipher exactly how to play it. Even after multiple read-throughs, I still can’t quite figure out what I’m supposed to do with the Additional Objective on pages 6 and 7. (If anyone knows, I’d love to hear it!)Finding the example play-through on the Itch.io page definitely helped me sort out how to approach the zine. If you are planning on playing, definitely read that first. Even if you aren’t, but you are interested in solo TTRPG play, the demo has wonderful explanations of what the player is doing at each step of the character’s story. Reading this would still be helpful for someone trying to wrap their head around solo-TTRPGs.
I am going to focus on the ORACLE system, because I think this serves as a great way to introduce players to the steps of solo play.
O: Observe
When your character enters a new space, the first thing that they will do (as it is the first thing anyone does when they enter a new space) is perform a visual assessment of the area. In Thousand Empty Light, such an assessment makes use of the included oracle table (the Combined System Semiotic Standard, hereafter referred to as the CSSS). The CSSS is a D50 table that contains words and icons for plot complications that are theme-appropriate, other words and phrases to be used as sparks, and a yes-no spectrum. By combining all of these into one table, it becomes the only table needed to answer any kind of question that could arise during play (which makes the included bookmark with the CSSS on it even cooler).
R: Resolve
Once your character has observed the space, identifying relevant threats and complications, they will decide on their path forward. This may involve dealing with or avoiding whatever they found during the Observe step. (I would be inclined to call this a “Plan” step, but Resolve works to fit the acronym.)
A: Act
With their course of action decided, the character will now act. This will most likely involve rolling dice, usually in the form of a Mothership stat check or at least checking the CSSS table. In the event of combat, multiple rolls may be required.
This is stage of the procedure works well for Mothership, and other D100-roll-under-stat systems (i.e. Call of Cthulhu), because there is no need to set a target for the roll. The character’s stat determines the roll required for success. This is where a GM would usually be most involved in a traditional TTRPG, setting the difficulty of an action by deciding what the threshold is for success—such as the Difficulty Rating (DR) in MÖRK BORG or the Difficulty Class (DC) in D&D. To play one of those systems using the ORACLE engine will require an additional step where the player must also set the success target for their rolls, unless such a target is supplied by the adventure text (such as a set DR or DC for disarming a trap).
C: Conclude
The player will now determine how the roll in the Act stage translates to the fiction being created. This might result in repeating the Resolve-Act-Conclude cycle, especially in the event of actions that generate additional complications to a scene. (I would usually call this “Resolve” when I write about the solo gameplay loop—as in you resolve the actions that you Planned and Acted on—but again, it’s close enough and works with the acronym.)
LE: Leave Evidence
This step brings an extra layer of complications to the game, and is really a brilliant addition to the gameplay procedure. After each significant event (“Incidents and Near-Misses”), the player records what kind of event they experienced and assigns a score to the incident by rolling a d10. If they ever have a second event that gets the same score from the d10 roll, a new complication arises in the story from one of the two incidents. This is a lovely way to have things that you have done in previous scenes come back into the fiction later.
In my play-through, I dealt with the hazard “gas leaks” early in the story. It went onto my Incident report with the score of 3. When I rolled this score again later after dealing with some rats, I rolled an 8 on the CSSS and got “laser light/fire.” Clearly, I had not properly handled the gas leak, and now there was a fire in the previous area, consuming the oxygen throughout TEL 022. By this point, my character had given up most hope of ever getting back to the entrance, so she locked the door between sections 3 and 4 and pressed ahead.
In summary, Thousand Empty Light is a wonderful display of solo TTRPG design, and its ORACLE procedure could be applied to most TTRPGs that do not have pre-built solo procedures. The book is pretty too.
Godspark Updates
We’re getting closer to the finish line! Today, the digital edition officially released on Itch.io. Kickstarter backers should have already received their download codes to claim the digital edition from Itch.io. (If you also purchased the digital solo game bundle add on, those codes should be on their way to you as well.)
To help you dive right into your first play-through, I put together a little video where I demo most of the core mechanics of the game. It is not comprehensive, but it should get you 90% of the way to mastering the flow of the game. Take a look:
I am still waiting on the arrival of the books, but I hope to have physical fulfillment started by the end of the month. So close now!
Production Calendar
Now that Godspark is almost done, I’ve got my eyes on my next project. I modified the production timeline used by Hinokodo (and made available on his Itch.io page) to show the projects I currently have rattling around in the old think tank.
I’ll probably be trying to push DKTM (full title to be revealed soon) to a crowd-funding campaign next. This will be a solo role-playing game in a more traditional sense than Godspark was, but still with well-defined mechanisms of play. It will be my first collaborative project, and I am excited to show everyone what we have been working on.
After DKTM, I expect Foul will be the next project that actually gets finished. This will be a new module for MÖRK BORG. Endling will most likely round out my major releases for 2024.
Mushroom Hollow and Cold Beacon are bigger projects, and they are both reaching into different tabletop gaming genres, which is why they get a ‘?’ in the Release column. I really hope I can bring them both to life, as I am very excited about what they could be, but I am a long way off from finishing them.
Thank you!
That’s it for now. Thank you for reading! Ink & Dice will be back in a couple of weeks, hopefully will good news about progress on Godspark shipping.
— MAH