ICRPG Solo [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

Trials For One Solo Role-Playing

Parts Per Million

Credits Written By: Peter Rudin-Burgess Art By: Maciej Zagorski - The Forge Studios Game Icons: This book uses game icons from gameicons.net under the Creative Commons 3.0 BY license. The icons used were created by Lorc and Delapouite. Index Card RPG© RUNEHAMMER GAMES LLC Trials for One©2020 Parts Per Million Limited.

Contents Introduction ........................................................................... 4 How to Solo ....................................................................... 4 Solo Combat ...................................................................... 5 Getting Started ...................................................................... 6 Genre & Setting ................................................................. 6 Failing Forward .................................................................. 7 Location, Goal, Obstacle .................................................... 7 Goals .............................................................................. 9 No Adventure Survives Contact with Characters ........ 10 Question Time ..................................................................... 11 When to ask a Question .................................................. 11 Getting Answers .............................................................. 12 Yes-No.......................................................................... 12 Likelihood .................................................................... 14 ‘Skill Tests’ and Questions ............................................... 15 Open Questions ........................................................... 15 20 Second Rule ............................................................ 18 Dodging The Bullets ............................................................. 19

Introduction If you are reading this, I hope you already have your copy of Index Card RPG [ICRPG]. You are going to need it. This book was inspired by the Trials in the ICRPG core rules (2nd edition page 48). The rules say you can play the trials solo, but there are no rules for solo play. This book fixes that. I hope you enjoy it.

How to Solo The cornerstone of solo play is the question. It is the basic building block. Imagine your character in a situation, any situation, at some point, you would ask your Game Master a question. Is the Goblin near or far? Are the poppies poisonous? This is where the solo rules will come in. You roll a dice and get an answer. Questions where there are two choices, are the easiest. Frame the question in a yes-no format and roll. High is yes, low is no. Because the answer is out of your control, the adventure can go in any direction. There are going to be times when an answer will flip how you imagined the scene. In ICRPG, you start out with a really strong idea of the situation your character is in, you get all the visual stimulus you need. The questions you are going to ask are more about visualizing the living world, how or where are people, or threats moving or acting. You roll the dice, get an answer, and imagine the action. At its heart, that is all that solo play is. Rather than saying what

your character says, and telling the group what your character does, you imagine it.

Solo Combat I have inserted a suggested solo combat system, see Dodging the Bullets below, into this booklet. In the ICRPG rulebook, there are a set of trials [page 48], and at the end, we are given a set of questions. The last ones says ‘Who rolls for the monsters?’ My answer to that is ‘no one’. What you are going to do is roll your dodging, parrying, or evading, and if you don’t make the roll, the monster hits, squashes, eats, or vaporizes you. The emphasis is always on you. You attack, and you try and avoid being hit.

Getting Started Everything in the game masters section of the ICRPG rules holds true for solo play. The added difficulty is that you will have foreknowledge of what is to come. Try to think of playing and planning in ICRPG as a Hollywood blockbuster movie, only with better special effects and CGI. When you see the nine nodes and the cards, you have seen the trailer for the movie, not the movie itself. When I am playing, I like to deal a card for the location I am in and the locations that I imagine as directly connected to it, but no further. This keeps a little mystery.

Genre & Setting Solo play works equally across any genre or setting, just like ICRPG. I prefer hard sci-fi, and many of the examples in this book will be sci-fi inspired, but that makes no difference to how you play.

Failing Forward Games were you cannot progress because you failed a roll, you didn’t find the key, you didn’t convince the scout to show you the way, you failed to locate the safe, can grind to a halt. Failing forward is a technique where whatever you roll, you get what you need. Where the failing comes into play is that every failure comes with a consequence. If you need to open a safe but fail the roll, then you took so long that security was alerted. If your persuasion of the scout was so dire, that he agrees to take you, but he tips off a gang of criminals set up to ‘car-jack’ you. Finding clues or getting into new locations advance the story, and they bring new challenges. Being stuck with no way forward is less fun. If the roll was an attempt to shoot a charging alien Rhinoceratops, the missed shot is consequence enough. Suspension die/Timer Die When you use fail forward if you cannot think of an immediate consequence, tick your suspension die down by one. If the suspension die is not in play, roll a d4 and start the suspension die running.

Location, Goal, Obstacle This method of building scenes works exceptionally well for solo play. In this example, I am going to use Game Icons in place of ICRPG cards. If you want Runehammer map locations, buy a map set, and support the game. My node layout looks like this:

1. The Stakes: This looks like an impending meteor impact. 2. Get There: This looks like a raging inferno, maybe the meteor has already hit, and the mission is to go into the disaster zone? 3. Meet the Enemy: This is an apt icon! For now, I think law and order have broken down in the disaster zone, and the ‘enemy’ are being led by warlords. 4. Skill Check 1: Water do I need to restore water supply or is the water a threat? 5. Skill Check 2: This makes me think of a fortress or fortification. I think the skill checks require stealth. 6. The spilling jug has given me an idea. I think the water has been cut off, the only water supply has been dammed, and the challenge is to bring down the dam and restore the water that way. The dam, of course, will not be undefended 7. This looks like the hilt of a sword. I think we have single combat against the Warlord’s champion. 8. The Warlord confronts my character in a final showdown. The icon looks quite mysterious and threatening. 9. The final journey hows the Drama icon. It doesn’t look like the journey back will be uneventful! You can tell that as I was laying down the nodes, they were suggesting ideas, but nothing is set in stone. As I play out the game, the fiction will define the facts. The questions and my imagination will inform the fiction.

Goals Once you have your location and an outline of an adventure, goals can add a layer of complexity and detail over the top. The Node Map should help you apply context to the goal you are going to roll next. Grab your d20 and roll it twice. Look up the result on the table below and put the results together. 1d20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

First Roll Escape Kill Avenge Pass Retrieve End Close Reach Exorcise Rescue Activate Seal Stop Repair Win Uncover Solve Remove Protect Hide

Second Roll the thief the children a monster a secret the haunting the portal the border an anceint horor a great power an important resource an ally the workers the infestation enemy forces the confusion your doppelganger the usurper the old one the cleric the leader

If you get a combination you don’t like, re-roll one or both parts.

I rolled a 6 and 10, which gives ‘End an important resource.’ This immediately suggests that the important resource is the water supply. It suggests to me that most of the people are being held to ransom to get access to the only clean water

source. Without water, they [the people] cannot fight the fires that are turning the disaster zone into a living hell.

No Adventure Survives Contact with Characters Although I have an idea of the locations and challenges, and the goal, this does not mean that the adventure will play out like a film script or book. Everything up until this point is there to help you set the scene and suggest how to interpret answers. The set up you have just read will be used to explain how the solo rules work and how you can roleplay on your own.

Question Time Solo players generally deal with two types of questions. The first is a simple yes-no style question. The second is a slightly harder open question such as what is in the vault, or what does the diary say?

When to ask a Question When you are solo playing, there is no loss of fidelity between what the game master imagined when they planned the adventure and what you imagine when they describe the scenes, NPCs or monsters and aliens. ICRPG is so visual as a game that imagining your character from 5m or 20’ away, rather like a movie director’s view, helps a lot. In this view, you can see the action and hear the dialogue. This simple point of view takes away a lot of the questions you may have asked your game master. If you want to know if there is a pawl of smoke on the horizon, it is exactly as you picture it. It is only when you need a little bit of extra input to start your improvisation that you need to ask a question, or you want outside input, to stop your adventure from being a simple procession of scenes. The answers are going to be without context. It is up to you to take what you know of your adventure and everything that has gone before and decide what the answer means to you in this situation. Because you are only looking for inspiration, there is no need to keep asking questions to drill down to absolute truth. Ask a question, if the answer throws up more uncertainty, try and limit yourself to a single follow up question. Beyond that, more and more questions will just slow your game down.

Getting Answers Getting your answer will involve rolling a d20 one or more times. The simple yes-no question is a single d20 roll, the more interpretive open questions are two or more d20 rolls.

Yes-No Even with a simple yes-no question, we can add in a few shades of grey. The yes-no roll is going to give you four possible answers. Yes and no are obvious, but we also have no, because… and yes, and… The no, because… answer comes into play if your d20 roll is 1 or less. It means that the answer is a no, but it prompts you to add in additional detail, possibly one that your character could hope to change. The yes, and… answer is the most extreme form of yes. It is what you asked for and more. On your d20 roll, a result of 20 or more is a yes, and… answer. Yes and no start as yes on an 11 or more and no on 2 to 10.

In my ICRPG game, my character is in a world inspired by Escape from New York/Mad Max dystopian future. The meteor has struck the earth, and the world is plunged into a nuclear winter. A few pockets of humans survived by being in high-security bunkers, deep underground. I was one of those lucky few. The game is about being sent to hotspots and trying to bring resources back online, and building a new civilization upon the foundations left by the old. My character, code name Shawn Bravo, is on the ground near the crater site. Before him is a parched valley, and ahead is a great canyon. The sky is brooding with thunderhead clouds that flash with internal lightning, and the world reverberates with constant thunder. All the pre-disaster maps have this area as fertile farmland and a river that provided irrigation and supplied a city downstream. This is the setting. I know that the river is dammed, but I want to know if Shawn can see any signs of the dam or even of human activity. Can I see the dam? I roll a d20. I will come back to answer this in a moment.

Likelihood Not everything is as likely as tossing a coin. Sure, some things are just 50/50, head or tales, yes or no. If you think that something is much more likely to be yes, you get a +3 on your question roll. This is the same as making an Easy attempt. If something is less likely, you apply a -3 to your question. This is the same as a Hard attempt. Likely Question

= roll + 3

50/50 Question

= roll

Unlikely Question = roll -3 At the start of your game, the yes-no Target is 11. 11 or more is a yes, and 20 or more is a yes, and… Every time you roll a natural, unmodified 1, you reduce the yes-no target number. On a natural 20, you increase the yesno target number. Examples in play Asking if I can see the dam, I decided that this is unlikely (-3). Rolling the d20, I got 17 (-3) gave a 14, which is yes. In the distance, I can see the dam blocking the river.

‘Skill Tests’ and Questions Some things are skill tests, and other things are questions. You should not try and circumvent a hard skill test by turning it into a question. If I was looking for signs of vehicle tracks, that should be a Wiz check. But how do you know if there are any tracks or not? What you do is combine the check and the question. If you made the check, a Wiz Check in this case, then you ask the question as to whether there are any tracks or not. If you failed the check, you don’t have to ask the question, as you will never know. All you know is that you couldn’t find any tracks. If you made the Wiz check, but the dice say there are no tracks to be found, then all your character knows is that they didn’t find any tracks. If you make the check and the dice say the tracks are there, then you have found the tracks and can move forward. If you choose to fail forward, you can turn the failed Wiz Check into a success, but at the cost of a consequence that will come back to bite you.

Open Questions Open questions are slightly less obvious. It is easy to decide if something is big as a dam can be seen or not, but a yes or no is not going to help you decide what is in a vault, or a diary or what the Warlord really wants. For these questions, we need a different approach. On the table below are different categories. What you are going to do is roll three or four d20s. If there is an intelligent being involved, the roll is four dice; if not, then just the three. Pick one entry from each column. Put the first three together to

form a strange little sentence. If there is a fourth roll, that sets the tone or emotion of the answer. Roll

Part I

Part II

Part III

Emotion

1

Addressing

avoiding

a core belief

admiration

2

Assuring

concluding

a decision

adoration

3

Commending

confronting

a desire

amusement

4

Deceiving

connecting

a dislike

anxiety

5

Demanding

detailing

a fear

awe

6

Digressing

discussing

a like

awkwardness

7

Endorsing

divulging

a love

envy

8

Examining

enjoying

a possession

excitement

9

Guiding

excluding

a skill

sympathy

10

Imparting

exposing

allies

disgust

11

Inspiring

improving

an ability

triumph

12

Interjecting

lying

an annoyance

craving

13

Negotiating

negating

an attribute

sadness

14

Pondering

obsessing

enemies

confusion

15

Proclaiming

preparing

friends or family

romance

16

Protesting

repairing

home or hearth

calmness

17

Reminiscing

training

you

joy

18

Resolving

understanding

personal qualities

horror

19

Scrutinizing

weakening

wealth

fear

20

Speculating

working

your nature

boredom

For example, Shawn has got himself up on the canyon wall, he is looking down on a camp of the Warlord’s followers, and I want to know that they are doing. I rolled 8, 15, 10, 20. That combination gives me ‘Examining preparing allies’ plus boredom.

‘Examining preparing allies’ suggests that there are two forces here, the Warlords regular followers and some other more elite followers. The Warlords followers are looking on as these elite guards are getting their gear in order, but with a sense of boredom, as if they have seen this many times before. I decided that the elite types are armed. But the regular followers are just normal people who have fallen under the Warlords control. You have the option of using some, all, or just parts of the little sentence. If you use part, it can change the meaning completely. ‘Examining Allies’ and ‘Preparing Allies’ could be two totally different things. The important thing is, how do you interpret the answer. At the top of this section, I listed two example open questions. What is in the vault? What does the Warlord really want? What is in the vault? ‘Examining preparing allies’ in this case suggests a bundle of military intelligence reports, complete with a manilla envelope, TOP SECRET stamp, and secured with a strap just like in the movies. What does the Warlord really want? Now we are dealing with a person, the boredom element can come to the fore. I suspect that the Warlord has achieved everything that they wanted. There are no more challenges for them. They have conquered everything that has stood in their way. What they want is a challenge or an intellectual equal to be that challenge.

Once you have that kind of insight into what is driving an NPC, it means you can play them with a different level of understanding.

20 Second Rule If you roll an answer and the meaning does not come to you inside 20 seconds, just forget it and either make something up that seems logical, or look at the lists and pick what you wished you had rolled. There is absolutely no point in agonizing over an answer that just does not fit with your vision of the game. A constant refrain in solo play is ‘this is your game, and it exists purely for your entertainment’. This means two things. If the game is not fun, change the game. And, if the dice say one thing, but a different answer would be more in your choice of playstyle, your choice wins out.

Getting Answers Getting your answer will involve rolling a d20 one or more times. The simple yes-no question is a single d20 roll, the more interpretive open questions are two or more d20 rolls.

Yes-No Even with a simple yes-no question, we can add in a few shades of grey. The yes-no roll is going to give you four possible answers. Yes and no are obvious, but we also have no, because… and yes, and… The no, because… answer comes into play if your d20 roll is 1 or less. It means that the answer is a no, but it prompts you to add in additional detail, possibly one that your character could hope to change. The yes, and… answer is the most extreme form of yes. It is what you asked for and more. On your d20 roll, a result of 20 or more is a yes, and… answer. Yes and no start as yes on an 11 or more and no on 2 to 10.

Journals and Record-Keeping I recommend keeping a journal or record of your adventures. The first reason is that having something to look back over will help you get back into character at the beginning of each solo session. I record the location; just a few words normally is enough to help me imagine what my character could see. Then I fill in a brief summary of the action, what happened in this scene. I also include any questions I asked, what I rolled, and how I interpreted the answer. The questions and answers are an important part of the game fiction. If you have established a fact about your world, that should remain true from sessions to session. I frequently do not create NPCs until after the session. I don’t want to interrupt the flow of play to write up an NPC. What I do is write down anything I learned about the NPC in the journal. Then when I do sit down to make some characters, I can make sure that what I know remains true. Tip: Make a variety of characters to use as stock NPCs in your solo games. How much you write is your choice. I know soloists who will roll a few questions and answers and then write up an entire scene longhand, like a chapter in a novel. My journals are so brief they are almost encrypted. They would make no sense to anyone but me. You will have to make your own decision about how much structure you like.

Clever Stuff with Your Journal I include these tips in just about every solo book I write because I think they are important. Solo play gives you some

options that would be more difficult with a regular group. One of these options is the ‘What if…?’ Your adventure may have taken a winding path and reached a conclusion. Looking back over your journal, you can see where everything hinged on one fateful dice roll. In the What if… you imagine that the dice roll had come up with a different option, turning your yes into a no, a yes, and into a no, because, and so on. Now you play on from that point, taking a different alternative route through your adventure. This is a challenge for any roleplayer. You will have foreknowledge of future events, and you shouldn’t change established facts. You are just seeing them from a different perspective. An even more interesting take on this is to highlight particularly interesting NPCs in the story and highlight them in your journal. After your adventure is over, pick an NPC, and build an interesting back story. Then you play that NPC as a player character, plot armored up until the point where your stories intersected. From that point on, you play the character in free play, just to find out what happened to them after their brush with your character. This version allows you to reuse locations and NPCs that you enjoyed but different stories and characters.

Likelihood Not everything is as likely as tossing a coin. Sure, some things are just 50/50, head or tales, yes or no. If you think that something is much more likely to be yes, you get a +3 on your question roll. This is the same as making an Easy attempt. If something is less likely, you apply a -3 to your question. This is the same as a Hard attempt. Likely Question

= roll + 3

50/50 Question

= roll

Unlikely Question = roll -3 At the start of your game, the yes-no Target is 11. 11 or more is a yes, and 20 or more is a yes, and… Every time you roll a natural, unmodified 1, you reduce the yes-no target number. On a natural 20, you increase the yesno target number. Examples in play Asking if I can see the dam, I decided that this is unlikely (-3). Rolling the d20, I got 17 (-3) gave a 14, which is yes. In the distance, I can see the dam blocking the river.