How I approach the Player Knowledge / Character Knowledge Dilemma in Solo Roleplaying

How I approach the Player Knowledge / Character Knowledge Dilemma in Solo Roleplaying

I dislike separating character knowledge from player knowledge, so if I have a story premise in mind, I will frame things such that I know only as much as the character.

One Way To Avoid That Split As a Player

When you’re trying to avoid that player/character knowledge split, I think that the #1 thing is being conscientious to avoid omniscience. Anything that your character does not know is something that can’t be treated as a fact. It’s only a possibility that you as a player know about.

In my opinion, you shouldn’t even attempt to confirm or deny a fact until your character is in a position to find out. Just leave it hanging there until such a time.

Hardcore Immersion

If you want to be even more hardcore, consider this:

Some GMs consider in-game player chatter to be in-character chatter.What if you considered your own in-game mental chatter to be in character mental chatter? In other words, if you find yourself thinking of some possibility, you should treat that thought as something that has also entered your character’s mind.

Remember, though, just because it entered your character’s mind, it doesn’t mean it’s a fact. How your character reacts to these thoughts is in itself an interesting roleplaying exercise. Is she/he going to dismiss them as fanciful flights of imagination? Is she going to keep them in mind as a real possibility?

For me, that’s going to be informed strictly by what’s already been established as a confirmed fact during the initial set up of the game’s situation, and in the course of play.

If any of this doesn’t make sense, or needs some examples, let me know.

#solorpg   #soloroleplaying   #solitairerpg   #justmusing  

I’ve been playing around with different solo games, and I finally got around to the Call of Cthulhu module Along…

I’ve been playing around with different solo games, and I finally got around to the Call of Cthulhu module Along Against The Flames. It’s something of a “lone wolf” style game book, and it was suitably creepy and fun. I’m actually a tad disappointed that my character manages to survive though. Guess all those years of being a Keeper have finally paid off!

Anyone else played this yet?

https://www.chaosium.com/free-adventures/

https://www.chaosium.com/free-adventures/

I wanted to get this in before the end of November, but just could not swing it. Still—here is my cut at playing the…

I wanted to get this in before the end of November, but just could not swing it. Still—here is my cut at playing the classic Death Test adventure from Metagaming. It is written for The Fantasy Trip, but could be converted to any system pretty easily. The original was a play-by-numbers adventure, but this uses my rules-lite modern solo rules (link included). Check it out and let me know what you think.

https://inthelabyrinth.org/adventures/death-test-i/

Hey, just posted the second part of my ongoing Ironsworn game. More roleplay heavy this time, but what mechanics did…

Hey, just posted the second part of my ongoing Ironsworn game. More roleplay heavy this time, but what mechanics did get engaged ended up pushing it in some interesting unexpected directions.

Originally shared by Zack MacDonald

Hey sorry this is so much later than I’d said it’d be; work got busy and I didn’t get the chance to play I’d been planning on.

This one was a little heavier on roleplay and dialogue than the last. I’m expecting the next part whenever I get around to playing it to have some more in the way of mechanics, hopefully. I messed around with the spelling of a couple of the words from their origin, but the only one that I think is probably unfamiliar and not referenced in English in the parenthetical notes is Wikipedia-able and verbatim in terms of spelling. Still having a lot of fun with the game, and am planning to play some more; don’t hate me too much for the cliff hanger if you do get that far; this one’s rather long… Let me know your thoughts and if any questions come up. And apologies as usual for any degree of difficulty in parsing the prose or notes as a result of poor punctuation/style or inconsistency of notation respectively; for what its worth, it’s exactly the document as it gets written during play without any editing.

Oh, and Justin Gordon, do you mind if I use your character sheet as the template for my own? I’d been using a physical version up to now, which has been cool, but I’d like to share the character sheet in case anyone’s curious what assets/vows Ludvik’s got.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gq-GA0TYkXj9f70LFTjGHjKwjrCJD3ko3K8It0QVfDo/edit?usp=sharing

Remember Tomorrow: Elena Yamamoto Vs. Wan Brothers Multinational – Face Off Scene

Remember Tomorrow: Elena Yamamoto Vs. Wan Brothers Multinational – Face Off Scene

I still followed the same format that I did for Sarah Rheita’s intro scene, where I don’t write the actual play as fiction but as an interaction between GM and player.

In this case, I decided to GM because I had more knowledge about the in game situation, especially when it came to what Simao Okada of Wan Brothers had found out. I try to avoid having to pretend a character doesn’t know something I do, so this is a nice way of dodging the situation. That’s going to be my rule of thumb now: If I know more than the character such that I have to play it as if I didn’t know what I know, I’ll GM.

My approach to concordances keeps growing. I decided that in some cases it made sense to incorporate a more traditional oracle as a way to add indirection. For example, generating a random event and using those keywords as my concordance search. I added a few other things to my personal method as well which you can find out in the spreadsheet notes.

#RememberTomorrow   #SoloActualPlay   #ActualPlay   #SoloRpg  #SolitaireRpg