How I Play Solo (And You Can Too)

 Welcome to How I Play Solo (And You Can, Too)! We’ll be discussing my solo roleplaying techniques that I use to play games that are normally group-oriented. In eight easy steps, you can start soloing any game!

Step One: Read The Book

First, and most importantly, read the book of the game you want to play from cover to cover. There’s a chance that there’s already tips for playing solo inside. Even if not, it’s good to familiarize yourself with the systems.

Step Two: Create Tables

Once I’ve read the book and have a pretty good handle on the vibe of the setting, I create three of my own d100 tables for Urban Events, Wilderness Events, and Dungeon Events if the game does not already provide tables for these events. These can help me when I get stuck. I just roll on one of the tables, depending on where my characters are at, and it helps me get moving. The events should be generic enough to fit into any setting, but detailed enough that they can trigger a quest or a scene.

Step Three: Make Items

If the game doesn’t already have items, I also make at least a d20 list of items so my characters have some treasure to find after fighting enemies or discovering a treasure chest. Most games have magical items built into them, but there are plenty of system-agnostic books out there that detail magical artifacts if you’re looking for more ideas.

Step Four: Lore

Next I create the lore for my world if it doesn’t have any already. Games like Perils & Princesses don’t have much lore, but games like the One Ring have tons of established lore. Either way, this is the time I write down notes about the game world in a document, create characters, make maps, and plot locations.

Step Five: Map 

When I make a map of my game world, I write down notes about different locations to try to help me figure out what kind of encounters I might have in that area, or what kind of people I might run into. I also write down any potential quests in that area.

Step Six: Enemies

Most games include a bestiary, but if you’re like me, there’s a few monsters and/or enemies you just have to have in your game. This is the time to follow the outline of the monsters in the book’s bestiary and make your own creatures to fight. I am thoroughly creeped out by spiders, so giant spiders are always a must in my games, for example. I tend to make all of my unique enemies have medium difficulty. I don’t want to go too easy on myself, but I also like a bit of a challenge.

Step Seven: Create Your Team

Once you’ve made your world, your map, your events, maybe homebrewed some rules, now is the time to create the characters you’ll be roleplaying as in the game. Almost as a rule, I always create at least four characters to roleplay as solo. That’s because if you’re playing a game intended for a group, you need to simulate a group on your own. Four characters usually provides a good balance for most games. I print out four character sheets for the game I’m playing and fill them out. I might draw pictures or symbols of my characters. Then I write out their backstory and how they connect to the world I’ve created, or to the world that the game is set in.

Step Eight: Grab Two Notebooks

After that I grab two notebooks: One for chronicling my adventure and one for notes and combat logs. I like to keep these separate so my writing in my adventure chronicle will look smooth, while my other notebook will look like a lot of erratic notes. I love to read back over my adventures again and post them online on my blog.

I also keep a lot of notes on my phone, as well as a dice roller app. Depending on where and when I’m playing, the dice roller app may just make things easier. Like when my son is asleep; I really don’t need to be rolling a lot of loud dice then!

I keep the rule book by my side the entire time I play. PDFs are useful, but I prefer physical copies because it’s easier to flip through a physical book and bookmark it than to scroll up and down a PDF. I’m checking the rule book constantly as I play, especially in the beginning, to make sure I’m keeping up with the flow of gameplay and the overall vibe of the setting.

That’s how I get ready to play roleplaying games solo. All of this is to immerse me into the game more. It may seem like a lot of prep, but prep work is part of playing and/or GMing any roleplaying game. In order to start my story, I usually come up with an inciting incident that my characters find themselves in the middle of, like a bandit attack on their village or a delve into a cave searching for treasure. If you place yourself in the middle of the action, it’s a lot easier to get started playing solo.

Remember: Have fun! Solo roleplaying is about freedom and creating your own story with your own rules with no restrictions and without someone telling you “No, you can’t do that”. If a rule doesn’t work for you, tweak it, or dismiss it entirely. If you like a mechanic from another game, try applying it to the game you’re currently playing and see how it works out. Experiment, experiment, experiment! And try lots of different kinds of games, whether they were intended to be solo or in a group! Journaling games may help you discover prompts to move your adventure game forward. Adventure games may help you turn the journaling game you’re playing into a kind of sandbox. There are no limits to your creativity when all the restrictions are turned off.

Forever Witchy

Hi everyone! I'm back with a new game and a supplement for the new game! The game is called Forever Witchy. In it you play, you guessed it, Witches! The Witches in Forever Witchy are being hunted down by Witch Hunters as the technologically advanced kingdom of Marten has invaded your rural home, the land of Ruth. They have brought with them pollution that has upset the natural balance of the land of Ruth, causing the elemental guardians of the temples that watch over Ruth, the Daemons, to go mad. The Daemons, in their madness, have corrupted Ruth, turning the fae folk into ravaging killers and mutating the animals into terrible beasts. Ruth cries out for heroes. What it will have instead are Witches.

As some of the last few Witches, you will join together in a coven and enter the temples, braving traps and solving puzzles, to defeat the guardian Daemons and bring purity and balance back to the land of Ruth.

If you are playing solo, you will create a coven of four Witches. If you are playing in a group, each player will create one Witch. Don't worry, character creation happens over the course of simple minutes. You can create an entire coven in under half an hour.

There are six magic disciplines to choose spells from: Elementalism, Radiance, Daemonic, Necromancy, Chronomancy, and Druidic. At the start of the game, each Witch will select one spell from each magic discipline. After that, how your Witch or Witches advance is up to you.

The game uses a Skill-based system instead of leveling up. You spend XP to buy new Skills that may increase your Ability Scores, upgrade your wand, learn a new spell, or increase your HP. It's a simple, rules-light system for character progression.

You can also brew potions and cook meals. Potions do much of what spells do, although there are a few that are unique. You can cook meals in order to give yourself boons.

I've also released Forever Witchy Beldam's Bedlam. The story of the coven of Witches continues in this installment as you head to the kingdom of Marten for the first time to eliminate the invasion at its source: by defeating the Councilmen who rule over Marten. 

It comes loaded with 18 new spells and 20 new potions, as well as a new map to create and new enemies.

I really love the Forever Witchy series. It's been such a blast working on it and doing research into historical witches. I'm using public domain art in the core book and the supplement, and it was awesome combing through old pictures and paintings of witches and witchy women.

I hope you will give this game a try. Forever Witchy is $4.99 on itchio here.

Forever Witchy Beldam's Bedlam is free and can be downloaded on itchio here.

 

Superhero Game!

 

Hi everyone! I spent half my vacation working on an idea that just wouldn't rest. To start, I LOVE superheroes. I'm mostly a DC kind of girl, but I like Marvel, too. I mostly read DC though. My favorite hero duo is Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, followed closely by Fire and Ice, and a third is Superman and Batman of course. I don't have an ultimate favorite superhero, but I really love The Flash comics (mostly because his Rogue's Gallery is my favorite, though).

I wanted to create a journaling game where I could make my own in-depth superhero by simply answering a few prompts. I wanted the superhero I made to be able to fit in whatever superhero IP I wanted, or maybe I could make my own superhero universe.

The plan worked! I had a great time making this journaling tool. It's not really a game, per se. It's more to set you up for success for a game like Mutants and Masterminds or for making your own well-rounded superhero for your own comic series or novel.

Anyway, I succeeded in coming up with the perfect prompts to answer about your superhero to make them a fully developed character. I even included tables. I'm especially proud of the d100 table I came up with for superpowers. You don't have to use the tables in the book. They are just there if you need a little inspiration.

The game has 22 prompts that ask questions like: What is your background? What are your powers? How do your powers affect your everyday life? Who is your archenemy? What makes them more significant than your other enemies?

I also ask if you have a no-kill rule, who your love interest is, and if your alter ego is a secret to those you love. If some of these questions don't apply to your character, feel free to skip them. Only write about what is relevant to your character.

Have fun making your characters! And feel free to post little blurbs about them here on my blog in the comments below!

You can buy My Hero for $1.99 on drivethrurpg here or on itchio here.

Upcoming Game

Hi everyone! Now that I have 20 published products under my belt, what's next? Well, I've been working on a journaling tool for superheroes that's in the same vein as Cosmic Creator where you answer questions and use prompts to create your very own superhero characters. It's perfect for writers and tabletop players who are using any superhero game system. The system is completely agnostic so you can create heroes for any heroic universe, or make your own. 

I'm currently on vacation, but I'll be back in a few days. The game should be ready by then, if not then a few days after I return. I'm really excited about it! I made a d100 list of super powers that I'm especially proud of! 

As for what projects I'll work on after this, I don't really know. I know there's much more creativity in me, I just need to find my spark of inspiration. I was thinking of doing a supplement for Aethership. Maybe another supplement for Colossus. I really love Colossus. I think it's the game I play tested the most because I just had so much fun with it. 

As a side note, I've play tested my superhero journaling game on the ride to my vacation destination and it has been a lot of fun! Super easy to play in the car! I have a dice roller on my phone so that helped with rolling on the tables I made.

As I am still on vacation and neglected to bring my laptop, please be patient with me. The superhero journaling game is coming soon, I promise! For now, there's 19 other PWYW games I've designed and 1 paid game I've created for you to try out! All are solo friendly games. 

The Cosmic Creator Games

 Hi everyone! I’m back with THREE new journaling tools called Cosmic Creator, Cosmic Creator Part Two, and Cosmic Creator Part Three! These journaling tools, which I hesitate to call games, are useful for anyone looking to create their own worlds from scratch! Inside are prompts full of questions that give meaning to your choices in worldbuilding. They are also FULL of name tables for inspiration!

Cosmic Creator, the original, has twenty different prompts that will help you flesh out your general world. Cosmic Creator Part Two has event prompts to help you create the history of your world. And Cosmic Creator Three has thirty different prompts in five different genres: Horror, Futuristic, Post-Apocalyptic, Mythology, and Space. Each genre has six prompts each, designed to make you think about different aspects of your world.

An example of a prompt would be like this from the original Cosmic Creator:

Prompt 12: Religion

What is your world’s religion like? Do the people worship you, the Cosmic Creator God, or have they made their own gods? Do they worship the spirits of nature? How important is religion in your world? Are daily prayers common, or do people only pray when they require something? Are there churches and temples? Shrines? Statues to your greatness? Are there prophets in your world who foretell of a Chosen One? Are the prophets correct? If so, who is the Chosen One?

You answer the prompt in 2 to 4 or more sentences, trying to answer each of the questions in the prompt in your sentences. In practice it just works. It’s become a major part of what I do, which involves a lot of worldbuilding. I use the Cosmic Creator series to make my own games. It’s also perfect for fiction writers! Or anyone who is making a world for any reason, really.

Here’s another example, this one from Cosmic Creator Part Two:

Prompt 10: Civil War

A realm has fallen into civil war. What started this conflict? What are the traits of both sides? Is it a rebellion? Two princely brothers fighting over the title of king? Will you interfere somehow, or just let whichever side prevails rule this realm?

In this prompt you can see that the questions can be leading. They simply offer up suggestions or inspiration for you to come up with your own answers. There are endless ways to answer these prompts and questions, and all answers will be unique to the writer using these books. I really hope these books make worldbuilding not just easier for others, but also fun! I find them fun to use and they give me things to think about when worldbuilding that I normally wouldn’t.

If you enjoy these books like I do, please consider leaving a small donation on my itch.io or drivethrurpg store page. Every dollar helps me to fund the next big project I’m working on!

You can find Cosmic Creator, the original, here. You can find Cosmic Creator Part Two here. And you can find Cosmic Creator Part Three here.

Cosmic Creator

I just released a new journaling tool called Cosmic Creator. I hesitate to call it a journaling game because there isn’t much gameplay inside. It’s more of an exercise or a method to get the juices flowing for worldbuilding your very own world. You play as a Cosmic Creator God developing a new planet full of people to worship you. It takes you through twenty prompts that will inspire you to create your own world. Each prompt has a different subject it focuses on, such as Prompt 20 being Apocalypse, the end of your world. It also features over thirty tables to help you name locations, holy books, religious organizations, armies, and more.

The inspiration for this came from wanting to create a journaling exercise for creating my own worlds. It follows a lot of my same worldbuilding process. It asks you to answer questions in the prompts that will get your mind flowing and in a way that will give you inspiration to answer. Each prompt asks that you write two to four (or more) sentences each, answering all of the questions in the prompt in your sentences.

There are prompts for medicine in your world, plants in your world, animals in your world, your world’s calendar, and more. It’s a really simple process to follow, but by the end of it you should have a fully-developed world that you can use in your tabletop games or fiction books.

It’s Pay What You Want on itchio. I didn’t think pricing a journaling exercise was a good idea, especially since it only clocks in at seventeen pages. But those seventeen pages are filled with ideas and inspiration for you to make multiple realms for your world.

If you like it, do consider returning to the store page and leaving a donation. It’s not required, but every donation helps me to develop my next game.

Anyway, I hope you give it a chance if you’re a worldbuilder like me and I hope you enjoy the process!

Here is the link to the store page on itchio.

My Creative Process

 

Here is an overview of my creative process when I make tabletop games. I hope this can help you in your own process if you have the urge, like I do, to create fun games for people to play at their table.

 

Read and/or play video games for inspiration: When I’m looking for inspiration, I go to my two favorite outlets, books and video games. I was inspired for Idlewater and Cozy Monster Heroes by playing cozy farming games like Rune Factory and Stardew Valley especially. I also tend to get inspired by games like Final Fantasy (story-wise). My other inspiration are books, both fiction for the vibe and other TTRPG books for mechanical systems and table ideas. I LOVE tables, and I love making them. I have a ton of table books that I flip through for inspiration sometimes. I also have books that I don’t intend to play ever because they aren’t a good fit for solo roleplaying, but the vibe of the book is interesting or it has a mechanic or two I can use as inspiration for my own ideas. I try to keep as many different genres of fiction books and tabletop game rulebooks as possible. Just reading them, even if I don’t intend to use anything from its system, is fun and reminds me of things that I tend to forget, like what good formatting looks like or appropriate sentence structure when describing your lore or mechanics.

Have an idea: This is the most uncertain of these steps, because there’s no guarantee that any inspiration or research will result in an idea. Or, conversely, if the idea you have will be worthwhile. You may need more than one idea to spark that next tabletop project. For me, though, it usually just takes that one idea that will grab hold of me and not let go until I write it down somewhere and analyze it.

Let the idea settle: Speaking of analyzing, that’s the next step. Letting the idea settle is an important part of my process. Even if I’m flooded with passion about an idea the moment in pops into my noggin, I still need to let the idea settle for a day or two to make sure it’s as great as I really think it is. It feels like the slowest part of my process, because at this point I have the idea but I’m not doing anything with it, except maybe writing it down for a little clarity. Then I just leave it and continue about my day, letting my brain develop the complete picture of the idea on its own.

Jot down rough notes: After a day or two of letting the idea percolate, I write down some pretty rough notes about it in a Google Doc dedicated to that single idea. At this point I start reading again, looking for more inspiration, but mostly I’m writing down things I think sound cool or that I want to try with this project. I’m also developing what I call the Point of the project, or its purpose. Why would you play this game? That’s the big question I have to answer at this step in the process.

Develop the notes: After I have all of my notes written down, I then develop them and write out what I would like them to sound like in an actual document or PDF. This is a tricky part of my project: Making all of those rough notes sound like a masterpiece and giving clear and concise instructions for my various ideas and systems. But I want it to be so clear that when I transfer it to another document, the Outline Document, that I hardly have to edit at all.

Transfer to an outline document: I then take all of my polished notes and transfer the information to another Google Doc that I name (Name of the Project) PDF. I write a short table of contents at the top of the document first of what will be in the final work and in what order, then I start transferring the notes and information into the document.

Proofread and edit the document: After that I proofread and edit like crazy. It doesn’t usually take more than a few read-throughs, though, because I already polished my notes before. I just want everything to look and sound nice and flow well. I also take this time to underline what needs to be underlined and bold words that need to be bolded.

Playtest the game extensively: After proofreading and editing is the fun part: The playtest! I get to play the project I’ve been putting my blood, sweat, tears, and passion into. I get to make my characters and roleplay as them in a world I created with systems I developed for this game. I may playtest for a week, for a month, or for several months. It all depends on the game.

Make appropriate changes/edits: After I playtest an appropriate amount of time I make changes based on my playthrough that either didn’t work when actually playing or needed tweaking. Things like enemy stats are the most common things I need to tweak at this point, but sometimes major issues pop up that I only would have caught in play.

Playtest the game some more: After that, I playtest some more! Now that I’ve made changes and tweaks, it’s time to test them out! I play for a few more weeks and refine the rules as I go along.

Make more appropriate changes/edits: After my final playtest, which could take a while, I make more edits, tweaks, and read-throughs of my project for proofreading purposes. When I’m satisfied I’ve made a complete game, and more importantly a fun game, I move on to the next step.

Create a Cover: At this point I create a cover for my project. I don’t really know how I come up with the cover ideas. I just sort of play around with pictures and fonts and frames until I find a combination I really like that evokes the overall aesthetic of the project. Then I save it to my computer.

Transfer edited outline to Microsoft Publisher: Now almost all of the creative work is done and the hard work begins, at least for me: Transferring all of my outline into a Microsoft Publisher document. I basically copy and paste everything into the document, organizing it and formatting it as I go along. This is the hardest part because while I consider myself a creative person, I am not a designer by any means. I try to make the document look nice and formatted appropriately, but it’s tricky sometimes. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, it just doesn’t look the way I want it to. Eventually I may need to hire an editor for this part. Until then, though, it’s a learning process.

Make A Character Sheet if needed: At this point, I make an official character sheet for the game. Before, when I’m playtesting, I just use Google Docs to keep track of all relevant character information. Now I use what I’ve learned while tracking my character’s progress in the playtest to make a character sheet that covers everything you need detailed about your character to play my game.

Hit export: When I’m done with my character sheet, my project, and any maps I need to make for the project, I export all of these things as PDFs. I like to keep them separate. It’s just easier to print out exactly what you want that way, I think. At this point, I read over the PDFs just to make sure they look okay and I didn’t miss anything in the editing and proofreading stage. If I haven’t, I move on to the publishing phase. If I did, I go back to the Publisher document, fix it, and re-upload it as a PDF.

Write up a sizzling description for the store page: At this point is another tricky part of my process: Making the game sound good to prospective players. Just like I’m not a designer, I’m not a businesswoman or an advertiser either. But I do my best to make the game sound captivating by listing the features and giving a brief overview of what my game is about and what you’ll be doing in the game.

Publish to the store page: After I write an adequate description of the game, I can finally publish it on itchio or drivethrurpg. With itchio, it’s published immediately, but drivethru has a waiting time before your game is officially published on their site. So far, I’ve published seven core games and nine supplements using this method. When I create games, I create several at a time. I’m always working on something new! Some of my ideas for my games have been in my head for years. Others were inspiration that have popped up within the past few months. All of my games are works of passion, though, and I’m proud of each and every one of them. That’s why I want people to play them and enjoy them! And THAT’S why I have them as Pay What You Want, that way more people can afford to play my games.

 

Anyway, that’s my creative process. Hopefully this has given you a few ideas of your own. If you have an idea, jump on it, write it down, let it percolate, and then develop it! You might just have the next best tabletop roleplaying game!