Solitaire play questions

[JAFARR]

I am attempting to do a solitaire run through The Imperial Fringe introductry adventure. Rather than playing a character, I am attempting to play the entire crew as a team with me as the coach. The only way I can see to do this is by making up charts to compliment the standard ones already in place. All encounters etc. will have to be results of these charts.

Has anyone done anything of this nature? What do I need to plan on incorporating into the charts beyond those already in existance? Maybe a set of pre-determined events based on where in the Spinward Marches I am currently exploring? All input welcome.

 

[Brian Smaller]

Sorry I cannot help you here. Sounds too much like solitary vice to me

 

[Easterner9504]

Game

Err sounds like your running a crew of NPC's.

Im my TRAV games I use MYTHIC Game Master Emulator on occasion. It generates random encounters and can handle problems that arise that a GM who knows too much can't, fairly.

It is based on Yes, No questions, the kind you'd ask a GM. So if in play and I as GM doesn't or can't answer a players question I pull out emulator and it does it for me.

Example: A player wanted parts for TL15 A/R on TL10 world. Advised impossible, checked Emulator and found a 1% Critical Success, 4% success, 77% failure and 18% chance of critical failure. He left impossible as is.

 

[Lapthorn]

I've just begun a solo game centred around the misadventures of the 4-strong crew of a far trader, based on MGT rules and also using Mythic to generate plot elements.

When used as a "GM emulator", Mythic is scene-based. You come up with the scene setup then roll to check if it's altered, and if so, how. There are 3 d100 rolls for event focus, event action, and event subject. The focuses are things like "Move towards a plot thread" or "Introduce a new character". The action and subject tables are lists of words. It's up to you how you string it together to generate a reasonable scenario.

I haven't got my campaign notes with me as I'm "travelling" myself, but at one system I got something like "Neutral event / Vengeance / Posessions". I decided this meant the two middle-passangers the crew had scrounged up on their Pop-3 stop were actually skip tracers with a lead that a stolen ship was holed up in grounddock at an outpost in the system. The skip tracers hired the crew to fly them over to the outpost.

True enough, the crew are no more "PCs" than the criminals running the outpost, but I identify more with the crew than I do with the other characters, so they are "the PCs" to all intents and purposes.

I find it meshes quite well with a free trader setup in Traveller - visiting a system is a "scene". If it isn't modified, I just play out the trade and passengers and roll for random space encounters. If it is modified, I use Mythic's GM emulator to generate a scenario. It helps to have a few basic plots going on in the background - mine are pretty standard Traveller fare (a budding trade war between two megacorps, rivalry between noble houses, and a foreign plot to disrupt the Imperium's grip on the sector). MGT's character back story generation helps with inspiration, too.

I'm not saying it's as good as playing in a group, but that isn't an option for me right now owing to various real-life distractions, so it's not too bad as a substitute (for now anyway).

 

[Mithras]

I've done alot of this. Crucial to keeping it 'alive' is a PC interaction table.

Just consider Firefly. Think of who gets on with who, bugs each other off, etc, and how that can spill over to kill a mission or create wild and interesting diversions, even love stories ...

Create a chart for every PC! Eg.

1 Jack argues with the Captain (again)
2 Jack gets drunk when he should be working
3 Jack is melancholy about his dying mother again
4 Jack tries to chat up the navigator, roll...
5 Jack is OK
6 Jack is OK

Roll once per week on the tables. You'll get all kinds of sparky interaction without any mission or trade goods, just throw them in as well!

Add Mongoose Traveller's great space encounter table, and include perhaps another general event table; eg:

1 Accident, one crewman injured
2 Mechanical failure. Needs urgent repair.
3 Non-urgent part failure
4 OK
5 OK
6 OK

etc.

The idea is, the crew aren't one multi-tasking individual PC, but individuals.

Have half the crew female, half male, and you get all KINDS of interactions!

 

[wnourse1]

You could also use the NPC motivation values from TNE for your PCs, which would help to generate interaction among the 'PCs' as well as the other NPCs.

I picked up Mythic from DTRPG after reading this thread, looks pretty interesting, but of course the first thing I'd want to do is to automate it One more project for the list which never gets any shorter.