/hob/ - Hobbies

solo roleplaying? reminds me of the devices that ancient writers would use to create stories. i don't know what they were called and i spent a while googling but can't find them. but imagine something like a wheel that you spin to select thigns like characters, jobs, time and place, qualities, and so on. actually curious what they were called now that i've forgotten

Never tried solo roleplaying but if you're interested I can vouch for some solo board games that are rpg like, same for a couple of wargames
However you would need to spend money or be willing to use tabletop simulator

Mythic GME v2 is out now, so grab that.

Ironsworn system is free. Use that too. Starforged is the sci-fi version but you'll have to pay or pirate.

See attached, my solo RPG systems folder.

>>68452
I did some dungeon game when I was a kid and played it with my brother

I've also been interested in getting into solo roleplaying.
My intention is to run a solo superhero game in Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition.
I haven't had the level of privacy or solitude to begin, although that should be changing quite soon.

>>68455
made by myself*

>>65629
>One Page Solo Engine
That REALLY piques my interest.

The issue I have with a lot of solo TTRPGs is that the amount of effort I have to do is enough that I might as well just play a videogame instead. I'm interested in the ability for solo gaming to be an ENTIRELY mental activity. As I've thought through this, I think it's possible to do, but there are a number of hurdles and challenges in doing so:
- It has to respect the mental limits of the brain. You can only hold 7 +/- 2 pieces of information in your head within a category at a time. So arranging the mechanics, tables, etc. to fit within this is a challenge. Because of this, the "mechanical" space of the game has to be limited.
- You are benefited that 'long-term' storage of the game could be larger as effort could ostensibly be memorized/use method of loci for certain lookup tables of the gameplay.
- Instead of dice, it has to be a PRNG that is simple enough to implement to be an exercise in mental calculation.
- I'm interested in Hillfolk/Golden Sky Stories' character interaction mechanics. The fact that those mechanics are diceless makes me think they'd fit in well with such a system.
- Given the inherent laziness of the system, making it fit on a single page would be ideal.
These are pretty rudimentary thoughts, and I'm so fucking lazy that I don't even want to go to a table to play a game, so why would I be not lazy enough to actually do this? So, this probably won't go anywhere, but I wanted to detail these thoughts anyways, just in case, if at least to my future self that might have some interest.

Tl;dr, I want to sit like an enlightened wizard who–like some kind of genius hermit mentat–can play a game absolutely alone with nothing other than his mind.

>>69658
I once thought if there might be a way to generate random numbers using only the body/mind, instead of dice or other external means.
Haven't found any yet.

>>69658
Well, I'm currently feeling inspired. Here's hoping I actually follow through on something in my life and finish writing this up. My goal is to have it fit a single page (because it has to be really simple to memorize so you don't need paper or dice to play it), but I kind of want to write more not only to get my reasoning for the decisions here, but also because…I think this has applications beyond just playing a RPG alone inna bedroom. If I end up making anything, it'll only be a bad first draft, I think.
>>69660
I think the key is that if you're just using your mind, it doesn't need to be a Donald Knuth Approved Totally Psuedorandom Amazing Algorithm (R) (TM) (C) (CC). It only needs to be just good enough to fool yourself. Also, you can sort of depend on how bad we all are at arithmetic, especially when we're being lazy. To this end, I've been playtesting with just doing Fibonacci and then dropping the first digits. So, you remember two numbers "A" and "B", then in the next step set "A" to "B" and "B" to "A+B" with the tens place dropped.
E.g.:
A=3,B=4
=>
A=4,B=7
=>
A=7,B=11->1
=>
A=1,B=8
=>
A=8,B=9
=>
A=9,B=17->7
And you just keep "B" as the "random" number.
Yes, it's not "good." Yes, it does repeat given enough time. But in my playtesting so far it seems to be "good enough," and that's all I care about. You do also have to bend the rest of the ruleset to fit around only using d10s.
In general, linear shift register algos (or whatever they're called again) seem the most mentally doable out of the psuedorandom algorithms I've read about.

>>69661
Wow that's smart. And for d6 numbers you could just use a base 6 number system.

>>69668
This is the first genuine complement I've received in a long time, and I think the first complement I've come across on a chan, ever. Thanks.
Sage because this post is sappy.

>>69661
I've put some thought in trying to make the system as bare bones as absolutely possible and this is what I have so far. Each successive iteration I've been stripping out more and more until this is what I'm left with so far. I still don't know if the categories quite make sense/work in my playtesting so far, even though I can force them to work…
My main issue atm are the action/theme oracles. In practice, I find I do need them to be that small so that the whole system "fits in human memory" without too much effort for a new player. By making them "multiplicative" I can capitalize on the exponential compression to really expand their power, e.g., you "roll" 3 times to get a word for each category, and the word combination defines the theme/noun or action/verb. This allows me to "fit" a lot more words into the same space. However, I find the theme/action oracle to still be really abstract to work with in playtesting so far. It's hard to bullshit up a MBTI/Compass system to define nouns/verbs.
The fate oracle I think works well when you play with the principle of "If you aren't willing to accept 3:7 or 7:3 odds, then don't bother with the fate oracle and just have it happen in the game."
Idk, I'm going to do a bit more playtesting to see if I can even out the action/theme oracle kinks.
I've got a more complete writeup I'm working on w/examples/etc., but I wanted to make sure I could at least get it not only on a single page, but on a single page with plenty of white space and DEAD simple (it's got to be done all in your head!).
Again, I don't know if I'll be arsed to finish up the full writeup, but whatever. I find the full writeup interesting as it not only explains all the design choices so far, but also explains what I've noticed in some other playtesting, which is that the system seems to have far more applications than just games.

>>69674
Draft v.1

>>69679
Been playtesting some more, and the main issue I've come across is using the theme oracle. There are the specific words I choose in the theme oracle are giving me..bad vibes.
It's also not just that I can "represent" as many things as possible with as few words as possible, but I have to make the weightings of those representations be things more likely to carry a story. For example, one time I was playtesting and hit "ethereal" like three times in a row and was like, "O.k., come on, I don't want to make a @#$!ing pantheon right now!"
I think I can fix it by choosing the word categorizations more carefully, and being more willing to completely avoid certain categories, but…I'm not an ontologist.
…
I just had a thought. If I incorporated toki pona's ontology, I think that might help. Also, if I gave the player choice at each vertex of the triangles between a word or it antonym, that might help too?