What?

I play tabletop roleplaying games solo, either ones designed for solo play or group-focused games that have been augmented to allow solo play.

It’s a bit like writing a story, but I don’t have to worry about planning and I don’t have to worry about knowing what will happen before it happens. The rules of the games I’m playing push and pull against the story as it unfolds, turning it in directions that I didn’t foresee.

Different rules help create different types of story: heroic, horrific, adventurous, mysterious. The games I’m playing as I write this are often of the dark fantasy or cosmic horror genres. I have tried to play more lighthearted or zany games but they often fail to land.

The storytelling effort that I have to bring to the games is considerable — I have many half-played games where I run out of ideas for where things are going and how things tie together. Games rules are very good at creating new problems and throwing curve balls, but rarely excel at answering questions and tying up threads.

I try to lay out the reports as clearly as possible to show which bits are “story” and which bits are “game”. These boxed game sections where I show dice rolls and other mechanical steps should be obvious and can be ignored entirely if you just want to read the story.

Some people find the links between the mechanical steps and the resulting story interesting: seeing how the sausage is made and how it tastes at the end. I sometimes write asides explaining my thinking, showing where mechanical outcomes and story outcomes meet or sometimes when they clash and I have to unpick the results.

Ultimately these stories are badly written, with mechanical interventions and not much editing. But if you gain any enjoyment or learn anything useful from them then I’m happy.