All Things Solo

Second part of Player Approach is for places in which your PCs will try to achieve their goals and the conflicts they will have to overcome. Oh, don't forget the environmental storytelling for solo play. All these within the context of inspiration. Finally, I'll tell you d8 ways of personalizing all of the above from both parts.

# Solitude In Mystical Places

## Vision

Places are feast for the eyes. They don't have to be eye-candy maps to be believable. It doesn't matter if the map or pic is low quality. It is only there to spark your imagination. Your imagination is the real game-space that game events take place. So, if you think moving tokens around doesn't feel the same as playing a video game, engage in it with your mind. When you move a token in a map, don't just look at it, try to imagine that character is sweating to get into a defensive position in fear of getting shot! Or whatever is the context. And express it in any mode of play for record purposes. This will spark your imagination and make the game more vivid. It will also trigger reactions and new ideas. Of course, you apply this only to important parts, and leave unimportant details out-of-camera.

## Place

In GM's Approach, I talked about one way of getting inspired by your vacation place. But wait, there's more! Lists of places in the internet will play a role in this. We'll just use the questions from "Questioning the Holy Grail" in Part I in conjunction with them. Of course, all these "mysterious" places are just tourist traps but we'll use the myths that surround them for our inspiration. For example this list of 40 strange places. I'd pick Devil's Bridge (Kromlau, Germany), look at the picture of it, and without even reading anything, I'd ask "WHAT IF the bottom reflection of the bridge in the water is a portal to plane of water?"

OR take Lake Natron (Tanzania) for example. It supposedly has the power to turn birds to "stone." Petrification is part of D&D rules. Next question would be "how do I incorporate such a lake into my game?" Could my character find "statues" of a group of gnomes with research equipment and wonder what happened there? I simply asked a question: "What type of characters would be interested in this lake?" First thing that popped into my mind was curious gnomes. Maybe they want to use it to petrify some enemy without using magic [WHY?] because the monster is immune to magic. As you can see, even with random images of places and some questions, anyone can be creative. If you're new to the game, don't worry. It doesn't matter if you have no idea what a gnome is. Just use the elements you know. Make it curious human researchers, for example.

## Time

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.

Time is change. And it is inevitable. This actually can be a conflict in itself for a stubborn character. Although, all places exist in time, they change with the passing of it. And even the most resistant buildings can not defend themselves against the entropic effects of time -let alone characters. For now, keep this in mind as I will expand on this subject, later.

## Travel

Your travels doesn't have to be moving your token from place A to B. But if your PC has a quest to do in a place over there, don't bother with travel details. You want a fast flow for solo sessions. If you're measuring time and rolling for random encounters, whatever the length of your journey, don't bother with more than 2 random encounters regardless of distance. 1 combat encounter and 1 point of interest that is randomly decided (including IF there is an encounter) is enough. There is a reason for this. Just like nothing is happening in your game can get you bored of it, having too many things happening on top of each other can frustrate you, eventually. Not to mention, it is not a good way of spending your game time.

## Environmental Storytelling

Environmental storytelling is the art of arranging a careful selection of the objects available in a game world so that they suggest a story to the player who sees them. Think of original Bioshock. Even if you remove everything but the environment, you can still deduce many things about the underwater city "Rapture". But in Solo Play, we'll randomly create these objects on-the-spot or in prep phase and link them together to determine what story they are telling us. It is a matter of simple rolls for mundane objects (or not, add something you want) and using Freeform Association. That's it!

Treat the creation of the scene as an investigator. Your PC does NOT have to be Sherlock Holmes or a ranger with tracking skills, if you're doing it ingame. Remember the 2 sides of Solo Play: GM & Player. This belong to the GM side in creation and Player side in actual play. The trick is, roleplaying your character in the scene and refraining from using your GM knowledge as a player. Let your character find it out without your help, see what happens.


# All That Glitters Is Trap!

Where to get inspiration for conflicts?

• Real life! Maybe life sucks when you're living in it, but it doesn't have to be so when you're playing. Best type of conflict to use in Solo Play is the conflicts you're experiencing in life. As you can learn from exploring themes, you can also learn about both sides of the conflict and it has therapeutic effect because you start to understand the nature of it instead of worrying about it. It is this proactive approach that all heroes take is what makes the experience therapeutic.
  
  • Other than that, pick any famous person / group in the world, find their "haterz" and just steal from them.
  
  
• Fiction: As you go back in time for the works of old, the quality of the conflicts and their execution increases. Most people understand "combat" when they think about conflict. But it doesn't have to be that way! I will expand on this subject in its own entry. You can get inspiration from fictional works by simply reading plots of them in wikipedia to just take the main conflict in them.
  
  • Find the protagonist -> Find about his goal -> Find the antagonist > Read what the Bad Guy does to the protagonists to stop them. Easy.
  
  

# My Precious!

It doesn't matter if the content of your inspiration is too generic. You can personalize anything as in GM Approach Exercises. FREEDOM is the name of the game in Solo Mode. So, here's the d8 ways of personalization.

1. Changing elements in the content of inspiration to whatever is your dream.
2. Using Freeform Association with CHOSEN words.
3. Changing things depending on your mood, be it good or bad.
4. Combining the context at hand with another thing you find cool.
5. Doodles (not just drawings but writing random sentences, singing a made up song about the context).
6. Rule-based personalization: Order yourself some items: i.e: "1 PC with an inner conflict", "1 villain with the opposite outer conflict", and "1 dungeon" to go, please. Oh, and some fries.
7. Experimenting with all these ideas and more items from the rulebooks ingame. Just pick a random thing you like and start playing with it by asking questions about it. It doesn't even have to be a real solo session.
8. Try some other activity (other than gaming) if you have a creative block. Like walking in nature with music in your headphones. Or just look out of the window and if you like what you see use it, if you don't then change it to your liking -whatever is your heart's content. "Instead of a concrete building, I'd like to have an inn here." Same applies to characters and quests. Think quests as real world jobs; especially your (old/current) job, or make it about being a student (of a wizard / warrior / bard...)

If all else fails, don't force it. Just leave it as is and return later. Or have some muses.