Writing Solo Adventures
and Foul coming soon.
I’ve been working hard to get Foul wrapped up and shipped, so that has had most of my attention recently. I have, however, been spending a fair amount of my daily commute thinking about the challenges of solo adventure design, and how to address some of those, so I’ll be talking about that in this issue of Ink & Dice.
Inside
Designing Solo Adventures
Foul Digital Release
July Production Update
Designing Solo Adventures
I’ve talked a bit before about creating solo TTRPGs. Lots of TTRPGs are written to be played by one player, and these games are designed with mechanisms focused on supporting solo play. Many games, however, are designed to be played with two or more players (often with a GM). We know that we can convert these games into solo games by adding our own mechanisms (see Designing a Solo System and A solo procedure for playing WyrmHack), but then what?
Sure, you could create your whole story from scratch, but often you will want an adventure or module to get you started. You will still be using your solo rulesets/oracles, but playing a pre-written module takes a good bit of the creative work off the player, letting them focus on telling the story rather than building the world. This leads to the following question for game designers:
How can we write adventures to support the solo player?
This is not an easy question to answer, especially for designers that do not play solo TTRPGs. Let us start, then, at the beginning of the adventure, which is where many solo players find they have the most difficulty. (source: frequent posts on r/soloroleplaying talking about having trouble getting started with a game)
Starting an Adventure
How will the story get started? Most of the time you can assume that the player has a character sheet filled out. Maybe they have already been playing for a while, or maybe they just built the character to play this adventure as a one-shot. Either way, the module should offer the player ways to draw this character into the adventure. While this is not too different from the hooks that most modules include, when you are writing hooks for a solo player, think about the wording. It’s one thing to say:
The PCs seek the riches hidden within the tomb.
but quite a different thing to say:
A loved one has found themselves with a large debt. They ask you to seek out the riches within the tomb, stories of which you have heard since you were a child.
In the first example, we have given only the thinnest of explanations for why the PC would seek out this tomb. And without a good reason, it is hard to explain how the character remains motivated in the face of the dangers they will surely face. This has put the job of generating a motivation on the player, and they are back to writing a story from scratch when they chose to play a module.
In the second example, we have given pretty much the same reason (find treasure), but we have supplied an emotional backing for that reason (a loved one in trouble) that the player can fall back on as motivation as they tell their story.
Exploration
The next major barrier to playing most modules solo is exploration/using maps. While most solo role-players are used to separating what the player knows from what their character knows, it is difficult to experience the awe, the joy, the suspense, and the terror of exploration when one glance at the map tells the player exactly where the exits/traps/enemies are.
Instead of a fixed map with fixed contents, think about using roll tables to dynamically create the map and/or the encounters. For a randomly generated map, I think about Dark Fort. Each room’s shape and number of exits are generated randomly using roll tables and drawn during the course of play.
Maybe the module you are writing depends on a specific map. In this case, you could instead randomize the encounters that occur in each room. The Mothership module Return to Star Station does a great job of this with a fixed map and a D30 “Dynamic Table” that contains encounters for enemies, traps, and loot drops.
I also like adding a depth crawl layer to encounter tables, which allows you to change the selection of encounters as the adventure progresses. This can be done a number of ways, but I will usually number the rooms on the map, and then each encounter is created with a “Roll 1d6 and add the room’s number” table with 12-20 entries. The last entry on the table will be either the boss fight or the exit from the dungeon, depending on how the adventure is structured. (This is how I designed the encounters in Moe’s House of Meat.)
NPCs
The last big thing to consider when designing a module for solo play is how the NPCs will behave. This depends a lot on the system, but for many TTRPGs, the default encounter that includes another character/creature will be a fight. If this is not your intent, you need to build in mechanisms (or remember to invoke them) to drive encounters away from combat.
I often write for MÖRK BORG, which has a Reaction Roll mechanism, but I usually assume if the player(s) encounter a giant crocodile in the sewers, they will fight it. If there is an encounter with a group of NPCs of uncertain motivation (for instance, a group of cultists), I will often include the direction “Roll Reaction” in the encounter description to remind the player(s) that you don’t need to fight everything that moves.
If the system your module is written for does not have this type of mechanism built in, you can always create it, or you can outline the specific goals and motivations of each NPC/creature so that the player can decide what would happen when they encounter them.
Going back to Return to Star Station, each NPC comes with both a Behaviors table and an Attacks table to help the player run those characters during play. These tables do a great job of taking the onus off the player to manage multiple characters in each scene, allowing them instead to focus on the story that those characters are telling.
Conclusion
To wrap up, writing modules for solo play requires keeping in mind the specific needs of the solo player. A few areas to pay attention to are:
Adventure Hooks: Generic motivations (gold, revenge, magic power) are okay, but they will require further refinement by the player to start their story, which is work usually done by a GM. Make the suggested hooks as specific as possible to draw the character into the adventure and kick off the story.
Maps: Making some amount of the exploration randomly generated will help the player maintain the boundaries between player knowledge and character knowledge. You could present encounters on a roll table to fill the map as it is explored, or you could make the map itself be quickly created by the player during play.
NPCs: Give the player a way to determine NPC behaviors so that they do not resort to killing everything that moves. Use the Reaction Roll, specify NPC goals/motivations, or use a Behavior roll table to assist the player with running NPCs during play.
What did I miss? What kinds of things do you find helpful (or otherwise) when you are playing a TTRPG module as a solo player?
Foul Digital Release
We are so close! All of the physical pieces have arrived and been assembled. It was quite the production getting the covers attached, but I am thrilled with how everything looks.
If you backed the campaign, you will be receiving your Itch.io download code for the digital edition of the module today. (If you don’t see an email, you can check your BackerKit account or contact me directly through Kickstarter.) The zines should be shipped out by the end of the week, so make sure your BackerKit survey is finished (we still have a handful of backers that need to do that!).
This Kickstarter was an overwhelming success, and I am excited to be able to bring this module to PAXU this December as something new for the MÖRK BORG fans there.
July Production Update
I have had a very productive 2024 so far, with 9 projects released on Itch.io, 2 successful Kickstarter campaigns, and 3 more projects finished and awaiting release through various avenues. Here is my updated production schedule:
Since last month, aside from Foul, One Night on Rose Hill is finished. This is a single-player module for The Lost Bay RPG. I will be releasing it during the upcoming digital convention, All Flesh Is Surplus. I may also be running the module as part of the convention. If you want to see what The Lost Bay is all about (and you should!), head on over to the Discord server to see what all will be happening this October.
There are two other new projects this month as well. V.G.S. is a solo ruleset, campaign generator, and adventure module for a system I’ve not worked with before; I’ll share more details as I can. UHF Grimoire, similarly, is going to be a solo-first series of modules. This is a much bigger project, and, again, I’ll be sharing more information soon. I’m very excited to share these with you all!
The astute reader will notice a new color on the schedule this month. Certain projects are now tagged ON HOLD. Each of these projects has proved challenging in its own way such that I am not currently putting much effort into them. Some are already complete games, but the design demands are too high. Some were ideas that I’ve just moved on from. Whatever the case, we may see some of these projects start disappearing from the production schedule in future months.
Thank you!
That’s it for now. I need to get back to packing rewards for Kickstarter backers. I know I’ve been saying it for months, but I really will be putting together another actual play report soon, both because it’s fun for me to play and because I think it might be helpful to show how I play solo, since it affects how I design solo games. But more on that later.
— MAH
Loved your thoughts on solo RPG adventures. I am just now trying to start a solo adventure and am definitely stumbling over myself to get started!
Im diggin it!