So you read through the Rolling Solo series and learned how to engage in solitaire role-playing — great job! I hope you enjoyed it. But, if you were left asking yourself questions like “That’s it???” or “Now what???” or “Help!!!!?“, I don’t want you to think I’ve left you hanging. Wisps of Time got your back.

But, what should I do now??

If I haven’t said it enough already: whatever you want! It’s up to you! But, if you’re like me and often want or need a little more direction when faced with such an open-ended response, I  have some suggestions for you.

First, if you haven’t checked it out already, the best resource for solo role-players is Sophia Brandt’s DieHeart.net Solo Resources page. Not to mention, the Lone Wolf G+ community is very active and full of helpful individuals who want to hear about your adventures. If you still want my help after perusing those, then my suggestion is to decide what you’d like to focus on — exploring solitaire more deeply, exploring games more broadly, or to just keep playing and increasing your comfort level:

• Focus on solitaire:
  • Add a framework. Keep using the solo engine you like, but add in The 9Qs, Perilous Intersections, or some other “framework” tool to give more structure and boundary to your play. Solo play, being a product of your imagination, obviously has no borders or limits, and thus can tend to get unruly, endless, or otherwise out of hand. These frameworks give you reigns to stop the cart. In general, most frameworks can also be used as a standalone game without need for a solo engine, so that’s an option as well.
  • Try other solitaire engines. Mythic: Game Master Emulator, while the most well-known, is certainly not the end of the line nor necessarily the best for you. In addition to general-use or stand-alone engines, some games come with solo engines packaged in (or label themselves as “GM-less”), while some engines or frameworks are games unto themselves. Trying to stay more specific to solo engines:
    • CRGE, Conjectural Roleplaying GM Emulator – a general purpose solo engine similar to Mythic GME
    • The Covetous Poet’s Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook – just like it says, an adventure generator and solo engine in one book.
    • Miso RPG – similar to so1um, it’s a very rules-light solo engine and RPG in one.
    • Scarlet Heroes  – heralded for its solo engine, many extract it from the Red Tide setting for use in any game.
    • GameMaster’s Apprentice Deck(s) – card decks that can act in place of a solo engine. Check out the creator’s YouTube playlist for examples.
    • Mythic Variations – expands upon the Mythic GME. (It should also be noted a new Mythic publication should be out soon!)
  • Try other solitaire tools. There are innumerable tools, generators, tables, software, supplements, etc. — too many to list here (again, check DieHeart.net for a very comprehensive list). I will offer some suggestions, though:
    • Play around, have some fun, try new things, but don’t get overwhelmed! Products like 10,001 Tables for your Pen & Paper Game (I just made that up… I hope) can quickly undermine the fun, especially in tandem with similar products.
    • Do try things like NPC emulators, story frameworks, adventure seed generators, and random dungeon generators (or dungeon tiles or geomorphs).
    • If you prefer software over paper and dice, try Pythia Oracle, RPGSolo.com, and/or AdventureSmith.
    • Seek to find combinations that really click for you — but beware you could spend hours, months, and years just discovering and playing with these tools, so… all things in moderation.
    • Try some alternative ways of answering questions through “divination” or “cleromancy” with tools like Mark’s Adventure Glyphs (there’s an app for that), Rory’s Story Cubes, or tarot cards
  • Try other solo-enabled products. We generally think of solo role-playing as being the combination of things mentioned in Chapter 1: an RPG (usually intended for a group), a solo engine, and a means of recording it. But, there are plenty of solo games and books that aren’t necessarily “engines” or even RPGs:
    • Gamebooks — Like those from Fighting Fantasy, or Lone Wolf can be a fun change of pace — or even an obsession and hobby unto themselves. Many solo role-players had their origins here and these books are more than just branching stories from the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books you may recall, but actually have character creation and game mechanics to steer the story. A good selection of the Lone Wolf books have been made freely available in various formats (including PDF and e-reader) thanks to a collaboration among its creator (the late Joe Dever), its other authors, and the community: known as Project Aon. TSR, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, also had their own take on CYOA called Endless Quest.
    • I’m not fully up to speed on Tunnels & Trolls, but I understand they have many solo adventures very similar to gamebooks, which utilize the T&T rules, if those are to your liking.
    • Barbarian Prince — a free to download board game
    • Ambush! by Avalon Hill, or other solitaire wargames
    • How to Host a Dungeon
    • Quill — a solo letter-writing game
    • Rory’s Story Cubes, or their new story-telling game, Untold
    • The 7th Continent
    • See more at the Solo Gaming Appreciation Month website
• Focus on games:
  • Keep using Mythic GME and explore all those games you’ve wanted to play but never could before!
  • Trying running an adventure module for yourself — substitute random elements (room contents, monsters, treasure) in place of the published content to keep yourself guessing, or turn the tables and emulate the players instead of the Game Master.
  • Right now “the OSR” — Old School Renaissance/Revival — dominates the RPG scene, so there’s plenty to explore here in these “retro” games that aim to take you back to the early days of D&D. Before you take the dive, be sure to read “A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming” (FREE) by  Matthew J. Finch. There’s also an extensive list of OSR/retroclone games at Taxidermic Owlbear.
  • There are many games that don’t call themselves RPGs, but probably still fit my definition at least. They are “adventure” games for solo play:
    • Four Against Darkness – A great introduction to solo games (see my review here).
    • Chronicles of Arax
    • The D&D board games — a tad pricey, but a worthwhile investment for the miniatures and dungeon tiles if you’re lacking those:
      • Castle Ravenloft
      • The Legend of Drizzt
      • Wrath of Ashardalon
      • Temple of Elemental Evil
      • Tomb of Annihilation (Premium edition with painted miniatures)
  • Some other [mostly popular or notable] suggestions from my backlog:
    • Ars Magica — medieval europe, but magic, myths, and fables are real. Currently in 5th edition (4th edition rules are FREE)
    • Basic Fantasy — totally free, created by the community, and huge selection of adventures and other works, all very well regarded
    • Blades in the Dark — play a seedy character in a criminal underworld.
    • Castles & Crusades — modern, modified-d20 spin on early AD&D
    • Dungeons & Dragons 5e — hey, it’s D&D. Basic rules & DM guide are free (and there are solo modules available on DTRPG)
    • Dungeon Crawl Classics — “Adventure as 1974 intended you to, with modern rules grounded in the origins of sword & sorcery“
    • Dungeon World – award winning fantasy PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse) game
    • Labyrinth Lord — clone of 1981 Basic (“Moldvay”) D&D
    • Lamentations of the Flame Princess — a very gory, not-for-kids/NSFW, B/X D&D clone that is extremely popular
    • Palladium Fantasy RPG — an early 80s alternative to D&D, the company is better known for its Rifts sci-fi RPG with similar core rules
    • Stars Without Number — highly regarded sci-fi game by the maker of Scarlet Heroes — FREE edition here.
    • Tales from the Loop — based on the 80s-inspired sci-fi art of Simon Stålenhag, it’s been turning heads in 2017
    • Did you know there’s a Buffy RPG?
    • And a My Little Pony RPG? Where my bronies at???
    • There’s really way too many games out there — find one you like and play it. Just don’t spend all your time finding games instead of playing them (I’m guilty of this myself)!
• Focus on improving:
  • I’m new at this. You’re new at this. Learning is a process, and experience is the vehicle that drives it home. You can keep right on with your RPG and solo engine of choice, figure out your likes and dislikes, and work on improving your all-around solo experience with the tools that work best for your play style.
  • Maybe you feel like you don’t quite grok a certain aspect of the game or the engine — explore it deeper with specific scenarios. If, like me, you take ages to hand-write pages and pages of prose when you could possibly just jot succinct notes and actually do more playing, then work on finding ways to do that — shift the focus to the game play, work on being more efficient to maximize your experience.
  • Maybe you had fun but you just want to continue the story without so much game and engine getting in the way:
    • Take the so1um or Miso RPG game, rpgsolo.com, or Mythic GME  and keep writing. It can just be writing or it can be writing the story of your game. Or it can be the game, in a product like the Ennie Award-winning Quill or English Eerie.
    • Add in The 9Qs, Perilous Intersections, or some other “framework” tool to give more structure and boundary to your play. (see above)
    • Branch out into not-so-solo arenas such as Storium or other play-by-post venues.
• Meta:
  • There’s another option I encourage you to explore alongside the above: all the stuff about and surrounding RPGs, which can be a deeply satisfying solo activity in its own right:
    • Blogs, Google+ groups, analysis, research, ponderings, musings, and discourse about role-playing games — what they are, what they mean, what they could be, where they come from, and why we play them, among other topics and occasional flame wars.
    • You might also immerse yourself in the history and inspirations of fantasy role-playing to help attain a deeper understanding of it all. Works by authors such as:
      • H. P. Lovecraft
      • Fritz Leiber
      • Clark A. Smith
      • Edgar Rice Burroughs
      • Michael Moorcock
      • Robert E. Howard
      • Jack Vance
      • Roger Zelazny
      • J. R. R. Tolkien (of course)
      • innumerable others…
      • For a closer look at Dungeons & Dragons’ inspirations, check out the list of books and authors in [Gary Gygax’s] Appendix N.
    • There’s also a lot to be learned as a solo player from content, tips, tutorials, settings/campaigns, and adventure modules that are intended for a Game Master or even game designers. Examples: Principia Apocrypha, Tomb of the Serpent Kings (“tutorial” dungeon), or the Running the Game series of YouTube videos by Matthew Colville. Also, watching other masters of, uh.. game mastery… in action, like Matt Mercer and his group of players, all professional voice actors, in Critial Role.
    • I can also recommend checking out RPG game theory topics like GDS and GNS, and the RPG Design Patterns research paper that attempts to come up with some “building blocks” of RPG design by examining common elements in existing titles — especially if you’re interested in designing your own RPGs.

What’s next for Wisps of Time?

Oh, alright. Since you asked! I’ve started out at a good clip here on this blog, and I hope to continue, but perhaps at a slightly milder pace, or at least with shorter, more succinct articles (I seem to hit 5k words without blinking most times).

Looking forward, I want to play more SS&SS and post another actual play with more encounters. I’ve got a huge backlog of mostly OSR material to read and perhaps play and share here in the form of reviews and/or actual plays. I also want to push the focus back towards the family gaming side for a time, since I’ve largely been devoted to getting this Rolling Solo series in the books. I mean, out of the notebook and into the blog. There’s really a million things swirling around in my head right now, so I mostly just need to sit down and grab some clarity on how I’d like to proceed — and of course, I’d love to have your input on what you, the reader, would like to see! Not out of the question are new supplements, tools, adventures, settings, and maybe even games, both in the Family Gaming arena and Solitaire/OSR. All things I want to share with you folks and hope that you enjoy!