More Journaling Than Play? My favourite niche way to play in this great hobby.
Lately I've been enjoying a different type of solo rpg that is probably not categorized by everyone as a roleplaying game. Maybe its more fair to say its a journaling game or journaling exercise. Whatever the case, its been a lot of fun and my goal with this post is to hopefully find some like-minded people and hear about your experiences or possibly set you on this path with me.
I recently read a post on this sub called "It turned out in the end I just needed to write a damn book" and it got me thinking about how I play and what I really want out of my games. My answer, as far as I can tell, is that I want to be creative and spend my time making something instead of consuming content.
Ive been in this hobby for around half a decade and Ive spent a lot of time reading rulebooks and looking for the perfect system. I spent a lot of time trying to make the perfect system too. Now I think the reason I cant find the right system for me is that I dont want a traditional rule system at all.
For me, "play" starts with me reading something that gets me inspired. I like the tone and worlds of the different Mork Borg rulesets and I like a lot of OSR style adventures and megadungeons. Once Im inspired I make a character and start imagining. The characters I make dont really have stats but they instead have distinguishing positive characteristics like above average strength, swordsmanship, or magic ability. They can also have some negative characteristics too. These are just there to make them stand out and to make writing about them more interesting and easier. Then I just make stuff up and write some of it down. I dont necessarily love writing so a lot of my writing is in short form or bullet points. I write just enough to ground the story and keep things somewhat structured.
Combat is something I struggled with for a long time. I do not like back and forth dice rolling in combat. Ive made dozens of homebrew combat systems from crunchy gloomhaven inspired rules with homemade cards to a single roll of a D3. Ive settled on something I really like even though its messy and not very structured. To start, I made 2 tables I almost always use. 1 table shows what is lost and 1 table shows what is gained. I customize these tables for each unique combat encounter but there are usually 2 to 6 results with differing degrees of likelihood. The usual results for the what was lost table includes: nothing, HP, sanity, resources, or stamina. The usual results on the what was gained table include: nothing, gold, food, a trinket, or knowledge. I like to treat combat as a fun creative writing exercise with interesting writing prompts being the focal point. More formidable encounters have a few common questions like: do I need to flee? Should I roll for more losses? Is my character badly injured? Is my character having a hard time? How dangerous is this encounter? I dont have any set in stone rules. I just do what feels interesting in the moment. I also like to treat combat as war (questing beast) and use whatever advantages I can because thats more freeing creatively. I never treat combat as rounds. I just let each question or table act as a segment of the encounter. Sometimes I do an entire combat without any tables at all.
Quests, progression, and momentum have been the hardest thing for me. I dont really like leveling up or getting better armor and weapons. Whats been working best for me is something similar to how the Stonetop rpg has your adventurers start in a hometown. I also got a lot of inspiration from Grimscar rpg. I love having a home for my characters thats full of NPCs I care about. My progression is entirely based around this town. It starts out in terrible shape. The people are cursed, hopeless and destitute. My quests and gold all go towards improving their lives and it also gives me an opportunity to flesh out their personalities. Seeing the town change and grow is very satisfying. I have to have some form of this in every game I play. It can be a guild, a ship crew, an adventuring party, travelling caravan etc. As for momentum, I dont have this fully ironed out yet but anytime I get stuck, I just read one of my rpg rulebooks or supplements until inspiration strikes and then I add that to the story and write for as long as I can/ want to. The story usually keeps itself going as long as theres some kind of unsolved mystery or incompleted quest on the go. When in doubt I just explore somewhere new and see what shows up.
On the weekend I walked to a local trail and spent 2 hours sitting on a bench in the woods writing about an adventurer with amnesia who woke up on an endless cobblestone path in the woods. I didnt use any random tables or roll any skill checks. All I had with me was a notebook and a pencil. It was one of the best parts of my weekend. Tonight I was feeling a bit stuck when I returned to that story so I added in some randomness with one of my books of random tables (The Dungeon Dozen vol 1.) I didnt roll on the tables, I just looked for a table and then picked a result that inspired me. My character found a town on this cobblestone path and he's going to make it his home. Will he get his memories back? I dont know. Is there a way out of these woods? Nope! There's plenty of mysteries to solve and NPCs lives to improve.
Anytime I try to talk about solo ttrpgs I always end up talking about the mechanics. I think its because that is probably the best part about all of this. I can do whatever I want. I can pick and choose which tables to use from which books, I can steal adventure hooks from my favourite adventure modules, I can make up my own D3 or D6 random tables. I can decide how much randomness I want at any given time and I can add or take away any mechanics I want. I can even steal npcs and plot hooks from everything I watch, play, and read. I love this hobby and it has gotten me through some hard times. I am incredibly grateful for this community and for all of you who also play solo rpgs and share your experiences. I wouldn't have gotten into it if there weren't other people telling stories about their adventures and enjoyment.
Please let me know about how you like to play or whats going on in your current game! What are some of your favourite ways to keep your story going and interesting? Thanks for reading.