Life as a Soloist GM

As I mentioned earlier in my What I'm Playing Now article, I'm more of a soloist style GM, and having been this way for much of my GMing career, Its led me in directions that generally aren't as easily recreated with a group of gamers. In this article, I'm going to explore what I see as the roots behind a solo game.

One of the key factors of a solo game is that there is only one player, and that player's character is full on in the spotlight for the entirety of the campaign. At first, this notion may seem to players to be the ultimate best situation; no competition from any other player, save NPCs. But I've found that this style of playing doesn't seem to work for every player. It requires a definetly strong sense of the character and a great internal drive to realize the character's long term plans. PCs that don't have very detailed backgrounds or Players that are indecisive, I've found, have a very difficult time making a solo campaign last beyond the first few adventures.

In order to build an adequate solo game, the GM needs to spend a little extra time with the Player upon character creation. Work a little closer with the Player and ask as many questions as possible to ascertain as many aspects of the character's personality, goals, and whatnot before starting play. I generally use the following template as a basis: Ae'rinus Character Creation Notes. From there, I can get the starting point for the campaign (both location and time), as well as the general overall "feel" of things.
Here's an example of the setup process: Recently, my wife came to me and said she was kicking around a new idea for a character--a dhampiel. I gave her the ok on the concept, and she came back to me a couple of days later with her background. The dhampiel's name was to be Vera and she has been sealed in a stone sarcophagus for over a year. She has amnesia and only remembers a few things from her past: a dark man giving her the necklace she now wears, that the dark man told her to feed only from animals--drinking blood from humans was bad, an image of an evil lady that was friends with the dark man--she taught her things of the occult and drank blood of humans, and an image of a young boy named Donovin, who was her friend in a garden and they fenced together.
From there, I interviewed Sue on all aspects of Vera's personality. And this sort of interviewing continues as we play (It's a lot easier to plan stuff for the character when you understand what emotions are ripping through the character). Vera is a sort of manic depressive that displays an almost faux "happy daredevil" outer appearance to cover the anger, confusion, and grief underlying everything (especially moreso now that she remembers her past). We both agreed that the feel for this campaign would be slightly tilted more towards cinematic than realistic; and it's been working out very nicely. The advantage of going to a more cinematic playstyle is that it emphasises Vera's natural superiority to most of the people around her. She may have started out at first level, but as soon as she fed on blood to recover her stamina, she was faster, stronger and meaner than just about everything around her. If the campaign were played with more rules and realism, I think a lot of Vera's Dhampiel edge would be lost and along with it would be interest in playing.

Another requirement is that as a GM, you must be prepared to control many NPCs and run them in a way that they have separate personalities, goals, and intelligences, which, to say the least, is a monolithic task. One of the key factors that helps the flow of a solo campaign are the character's companions. Usually I'll try to limit the companions to one or two others, because any more than that begins to get difficult to manage and roleplay (I'm still not fond of having NPCs talk to eachother--I usually screw up one of their accents/speech patterns and end up breaking tension). For the Vera campaign, I decided that she would meet her first companion in a prison colony called The Cauldron. His name is Esteban and he was thrown into The Cauldron fourteen years ago at age 10, for being "cursed by the gods." Essentially, he's one of the many people affected by the magical fallout resulting from the destruction of Elven Magic on Ae'rinus in 1600; however, he had the horrible misfortune of being a native of the religiously fanatic Barony of Ganto, and having his innate magical pollution manifest as demonic looking growths. He's big, has horns, hooves, a tail and a big black claw arm. But underneath he's a sweet little boy that doesn't know much about the world. In a lot of ways, he's very similar to Vera (trapped and without a history to call his own), but at the same time, he's managed to maintain an incredible amount of innocence in respect to having almost no anger over his inprisonment. His similarities and differences allowed for some really great interactions between Vera and Esteban and gave Vera a really good reason to not allow herself to descend into a deep depressive and violent trough. And when the two of them break out of The Cauldron, they collectively are beginning a new life together, and leaving the solitary life behind them.

From there, you now have a clean slate (sort of) to work from. They don't know any antagonists, and haven't really made any enemies yet to date. In order to create more interaction with Vera, I created a hook before she was sent to The Cauldron. She was aware of the sarcophagus being opened and a man calling himself Corvin looking at her and saying that if she got out of The Cauldron to seek him in Riversedge. When they eventually found Corvin, they were given the opportunity to join a semi-secretive guild, from which multiple interesting NPCs were brought about. Rather than having Vera travel in a traditional party, which doesn't really fit her personality, she usually travels with no more than two other specialists. This allows me to flesh them out, develop personal histories and backgrounds, as well as maintain a good roleplaying flow without buning out on having too many NPCs tooling around together at once.
In addition to the planned associates, Vera has made her own connections through her personal angendas, such as a blood doll (her source of clean blood), an accountant (to manage her estate, and go out on dates with her when the need arises), and her former quartermaster. Each NPC needs to be a little more fleshed out than your standard NPC because the PC is relying more heavily upon their input than input from other members of a traditional group-style game. As a GM, you need to keep this in mind, and dole out information carefully. All the PCs clues end up coming from the GM's mouth ultimately, so you have to be somewhat careful in controlling tension; if you let something slip too easily, then the player doesn't have much of a challenge on solving a problem. On the other hand, if you don't help the player enough, she'll get frustrated with the problem at hand. Basically, the best plan of action is to try to get your player to diversify who she talks to as much as possible, so that she has a wide knowledge base to make her decisions from.

The third piece that comes into play moreso than a group campaign is continuity. Nearly all of my solo campaigns have progressed on a day to day basis, with only a few short spots where the PC will be "doing nothing but research for the next week." Generally, the PC's actions are motivated either by personal goals or plot elements that I drop in her face. And this is the point that really will make or break your solo-campaign. All the background, NPCs and good interaction in the world can't save a solo-campaign when the PC becomes complacent with her position. What you need is a division of goals between both GM and Character. The Character needs to have certain personal goals aside from whatever plot the GM is currently running. These personal goals, add tension when time constraints are brought into place, and provide excellent rich filler when between set plot elements, or a certain amount of time needs to pass before the next plot element moves. Personal goals also provide the GM with a great fresh sense of action; you don't necessarily know what the character wants to do, so when she announces that she's going to spend some time trying to force the magic in one of those magic stones to work, you end up with a very interesting unplanned sidequest. These sidequests are the meat of my entertainment, because they're usually the place where characters grow the most, mainly because they're persuing activities that they're generally interested in, not forced into through circumstance. And as a result, the sidequests usually provide a nice little creative charge that tends to boost up the interest in your active plot elements.

This post has gone on for a little longer than I anticipated, but I hope that it provides some sort of interesting information regarding the art of solo-GMing. It can be a lonely path, but at the same time, I regard all of my best campaigns to have developed their roots within the lonely road of the solo adventurer.