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Heeey it's me, Cobalt/June!
23 | Transfemme | Bi | Wannabe Clowngirl!!!

I like to make art, am trying to learn to program, and I like talking to people!!!

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JimmyShelter
@JimmyShelter

I worked on solo rules for my own game, and one thing I struggled on early on when playing solo was the question of how much I should log/record of my game, so I included the following advice in the Pine Shallows Solo rules:

Solo tip: keeping records of your adventures

You can keep track of game progress in different ways. At the very least it's helpful to make notes of any active (Story) clocks, visited locations, Supporting Cast Members you've met, your current character stats, etc.
Some people will journal their complete game, others will keep just some minimal notes. Some people will record audio or even video while playing, others will play entirely in their heads, there is no wrong way! If you're new to solo roleplaying, take some time to try out different levels of detail while taking notes.

This would have helped me a lot when I started out.
What advice would you have liked to get?


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in reply to @JimmyShelter's post:

"You are your own audience." As someone who spent most of my non-solo table-top play experience in the GM seat, it was really hard for me to allow myself to cater to my own interests. I'm used to catering to the interests of players, bending rules for them or adjusting encounters/scenarios to spotlight their characters while keeping to the strict by-the-book structure for "GM stuff." It took a good chunk of time to break out of that and adapt to the idea that, while I am the "storyteller," I am also the person I'm telling the story to. Thus there is no audience other than myself, and normal GM considerations thus do not apply - literally the only thing to avoid is making something I find boring.

Everything which might be considered a "GM sin," be it railroading or focusing all attention on a character you find interesting or even arbitrarily throwing out the rules to force something to happen that you want to happen, is possible in a solo RPG because it's not for anybody but you. In fact, most of those things are "GM sins" because they center the enjoyment of the GM over that of the players. Since there are no other players in a solo game, those very behaviors might actually even be what you NEED to get the most enjoyment out of something. Nobody's going to slap your hand or quit your table for being self-indulgent in a solo RPG, but you will quit if you bore yourself trying to stick to the rules-as-written when you have something you'd find more fun in your head.