Hello, I am Enraged Eggplant. Welcome to the episode of Only the parts you need. In this episode, I am going to tell you how to play GURPS solo, or with friends, but without a GM. At least, I will describe one of the options, the one that I have experience with.
First, what is solo roleplaying? This is a kind of game where you play alone, without a gamemaster, but with an oracle, that essentially is a set of tables that dictates what is happening in the game. At least, that was the definition before the existence of RPGs made for solo-play, such as Ironsworn. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard good things about it, so check it out, it’s free! On the other hand, even before solo roleplaying was a thing, there were CYOA books, but that’s a different matter.
Nowadays, solo roleplaying became more popular and well known, probably due to COVID. I’ve seen people asking for more solo RPGs, implying Ironsworn-like games, and they seemed to be unaware of the “classic” way of playing – with an oracle. The most well-known such oracle is Mythic Gamemaster Emulator. It’s not free, so you will have to buy it, but it’s not exactly expensive. It has two companion books – Variations 1 and Variations 2. Honestly, I’ve never used Variations 1, but Variations 2 is a good one. As far as I know, a revised second edition of Mythic Gamemaster Emulator is coming out in the near future, with integrated and somewhat revised variant rules from the Variations books. Adventure Crafter, from the same author, if I’m not mistaken, works a little differently. I’ve given it a read, found it interesting, but have not tried it yet.
I find Mythic GME to be the most appealing, because it’s generic, just like GURPS. It works with any system, and works well whether playing a dungeon crawl, a modern investigation game, or a sci-fi game. However, I have only tried fantasy and sci-fi myself. And just like GURPS, it is easily modified for your needs.
How does it work? Let me explain you. You create a character as normal (or characters – there’s nothing wrong with emulating NPC companions with Mythic). Then, the actual gameplay is separates into scenes. Each scene has the following:
Chaos Factor: this is just a number that represents the degree of control the character has over the situation. It increases if the character loses control, and decreases if the previous scene was in character’s control. Of course, it’s all up to you, and I believe you can even disregard it entirely. However, some random events depend on the Chaos Factor, so it’s probably not a good idea to overlook it.
List of characters. This includes your character and the NPCs. This list is expanded as the game progresses, and sometimes characters get crossed off the list.
List of threads. This is the list of the current plot threads or questlines. It may start empty.
If you have an idea for the starting scene, you should go with it. Otherwise, you can generate a random event using the tables provided in the book, and interpret it. Depending on the result of an additional roll you have to make, the scene setup may be unchanged from what you have envisioned, altered, or interrupted by a random event.
Now let’s talk about the events, because they comprise a large part of the game. Mythic has three components of an event:
Event focus. It describes the effect of an event. For example, it may negatively affect an NPC, positively affect a PC, etc.
Description. This is two words generated randomly from a table. Most of them are adjectives. This was introduced in Variations 2, and can be used independently to answer some questions. The examples are: Boldly Historical, Officially Simple, and so on. We’ll talk about it later.
Action. Again, this is two words generated randomly, but from another table. One word is the action, and the other is the subject. The examples are: Violate Spirit, Trick Prison, and so on.
Each event needs to be interpreted in the context of the current situation. For example, if you’re a sorcerer in an ancient, forgotten library, and you had to roll an event upon opening a dusty grimoire, and event with a focus of “PC Negative”, description “Frighteningly Mighty”, and action “Desert Prison”, could be interpreted as opening of the grimoire releasing a bound demon that attacks the character. Usually, the description part isn’t even required, you can do fine with just focus and action. Feel free to throw the description out! If you are having a hard time interpreting the combination, just roll a new one – nobody will judge you.
The second important part of the gameplay process is the so-called Fate checks. At any time, you can ask the oracle a “Yes or no” question, such as “is the room occupied?”, “is the sword enchanted?”, “is this a formidable foe?” Then you roll on the Fate check table to get a result. The result is modified positively or negatively, depending on how probable is the positive answer in the current situation, using game world logic as the mechanism of determination. For example, if the sword if very unlikely to be enchanted, you modify the Fate check roll by -4. Then, depending on the roll, you get a “No”, “Yes”, “Exceptional No”, or “Exceptional Yes”, possibly with an addition of a random event (the Chaos Factor is the factor here). “No” and “Yes” are easy to interpret, but their exceptional variants can be more difficult. For example, if the question was “is the sword enchanted?”, then an exceptional no might mean that not only it is not enchanted, but it is also of very poor quality or cannot be enchanted at all. An exceptional yes might mean that not only the sword is enchanted, but the nature of the enchantment is obvious.
So, the game is basically you asking “yes or no” questions, interpreting the answers, and sometimes interpreting random events that the oracle throws your way. When there is a significant change, the scene changes, the lists are updated, Chaos Factor is adjusted. Aside from that, there are description checks from Variations 2 that can be simplified to just rolling on the descriptor or action table, behavior checks that are quite confusing, but will be revised in the second edition of Mythic, and statistic checks. Instead of the latter I just roll 1d+9 or 1d+8 to determine attributes or skill levels – worked well for me.
Combat actions performed by the enemies or allies can be resolved either with a behavior check, or with a combat tactic table that I will link in the description. I prefer the latter.
For some reason I’ve seen a lot of people claim that solo roleplaying only works with narrative, rules-light systems. I haven’t tried these, but in my opinion, this is not true. GURPS, being a crunchy system, at least in the way I use it, seems perfect for it. You can use all the complex rules you wanted to try out without worrying about slowing down play for others, you can make characters that do not work well with allies, and so on. Things work the way you want them to work.
What I found with experience, is that solo roleplaying works better for me when the game setting is well documented and detailed. That way you know what can be encountered where, and that makes applying logic and interpreting oracle results much easier than when you do not know anything. On the other hand, I’ve heard people using solo roleplaying as a form of creative writing and worldbuilding, where they start with a blank slate and fill in the details based on the oracle’s results. That could work too.
Another important thing is not to limit yourself to the tables in the oracle book. There’s lots and lots of tables and generators that can be used for solo play, both in books for other systems (for example, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables; Gary Gygax Living Fantasy, and so on). There’s a lot of online generators, such as chaoticshiny. And do not forget that you can always create your own tables tailored to your needs. Get creative!
I think that’s all I wanted to say on this topic. You can find several GURPS solo play reports on my blog under the solo tag, if you want to see an example. Thanks for listening, and have a good day!
