The Moment Solo Roleplaying Finally Clicked

 

Sleepdrifter's Newsletter #24📜 Why I stopped posting & I finally got past the mental barrier I had around narration in TTRPGs

Welcome to Sleepdrifter’s newsletter, now coming to you every other Friday.
Deep forests, giant mountains & weird dungeons.
I speak about TTRPGs, video games, music and what I like.

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🧙🏼‍♂️Why I Stopped Posting

Oh! A newsletter, in this economy?
Yes, it’s been a while! I usually post a newsletter every other week, but since the last one, in March, I have had a lot of mental struggles/problems. I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, and the past few months haven’t been easy. The “fun” part: I have had no particular problem in my life recently. That’s just my brain messing up.

That’s why I didn’t post anything, writing newsletters, and not writing newsletters was stressful for me, but I also had a lot of trouble even playing or creating TTRPGs.
For a few weeks, I started a new small TTRPG project that was very helpful to me, to get me back into the creative process. You may have seen it in a few notes I posted, it’s a tiny dungeon crawler on a business card. I haven’t entirely finished it yet (layout problems) but it was fun to make. I will post a newsletter about how I created it, with all the thoughts and design process behind it, when the game is ready for release.

Also, I started working on my Gévaudan project again(yes, about the Beast Of Gévaudan), and it’s probably been a year since I left it aside! I’m heavily reading historical books and websites about the whole case, to grasp the vibe of this era, understand the economy, what the life was back then etc. It’s really fascinating!

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The other problem I had was playing TTRPGs.
I stopped playing in my The One Ring group because of a scheduling conflict(on my side) and because I had a lot of trouble staying focused on the game during the Discord sessions, in English. I’m someone who is always distracted, and playing through a mic, without being present at a real table, in a different language than French was too much to handle for my messy brain. It was hard to admit though…

On the other hand, I used to have a small group of people I played with: my SO and a good friend of mine. We played a lot of stuff, often in one-shot sessions, and had a lot of fun, but my friend left our region of France to live on the other side of the country. So, I wasn’t able to GM games for a long time, probably more than a year. But, the last time he visited, we played Shadowdark and it was really cool!

Finally, I didn’t play a solo session for a while, probably this whole year, before my recent actual play. But I’ll let you read the next section of this newsletter, because that’s what I’m writing about.

So, will I start posting again every other week? I don’t know. The next few months will be pretty busy. But posting Actual Play seems like a good compromise. I really want to talk more about game design, and creativity, and for that, I need to play again and play more!

Again: thanks a lot for your support!

🧠I Finally Got Past The Mental Barrier I Had Around Narration In TTRPGs

I have been playing TTRPGs for several years now. I played a lot of different stuff, from Mörk Borg to OD&D, Shadowdark and Kal-Arath. I played some really rule-lite games, one-pages, business cards etc. But there is something I’ve always struggled with: narration.

Every time I enter a city/village/town, every time I randomly meet an NPC, every time a POI is just a word on a table, I don’t know what to do. Discussing with myself feels weird and just writing “I stumbled upon [insert POI type]” and moving on feels like a lack of opportunity. Worse than that, I often stop my session when I stumble upon them. I felt blocked. That’s why I haven’t been playing that much lately or why I haven’t posted (almost) any Actual Play since I began my Substack journey. The only type of playthrough I was comfortable with was Dungeon Crawling: doors, monsters, treasures. Simple. It was a real bummer. How could I get past that mental barrier?

Castle Grief’s Hacksilver cover

Then came my recent actual play of Castle Grief ’s Hacksilver with his Tarvannion setting. Before playing it, I already knew I’d probably stop the moment I entered a village, or stumble upon an NPC somewhere. Last time I played a solo game, it was Shadowdark. I played a good Dungeon Crawling session, and at the very moment I left the dungeon and met someone, I quit. Like it was too much to handle for my brain, like I didn’t know what to do at all. I was afraid it’ll be the same here.
At first, I hesitated to do an Actual Play, because I know I suck at narration. Then, I hesitated to do a Dungeon Crawling Actual Play of this game, but I knew something would be missing. In the end, I started playing anyway, because Hacksilver seemed really fun (and it is!) and I really wanted to try Tarvannion since it came out.

At first, it was easy, rolling some hex crawling, delving into a cavern. You just have to follow the dice and the rules. I’m comfortable with procedures.
Then, I entered the first village. I rolled the settlement, despite knowing I would probably stop after that. It gives me a place with a “major godshall”, surrounded by slums. That gives me a weird vibe. A magnificent cathedral-like place, with only slums around it? In my mind, I imagined the whole place filled with crippled and ill people whom the local church takes advantage of.

I started to note that I met someone, without rolling any oracle dice. I was just writing, as I thought, letting my mind do its thing. And the magic finally happened: the words started flowing. This was the first time I felt that way, solo playing a TTRPG.

I’m used to writing stories, I love doing that, but when it came to solo gaming, I felt that it wasn’t really playing to let your brain think and note. Like it’s not “in the rules”. Yes, I was probably playing my solo TTRPG sessions too much like a boardgame…
My brain wanted to have “game” moments, like true gameplay stuff, with procedures and rules, and not “writing a story” moments. It almost felt cringe to me, to just write what comes to your mind. “You are not playing a game, you are just writing a book”, that’s what I wrongly thought.
Strangely, I’m a daydreamer. I often let my mind tell itself stories and imagine things while I’m bored. So I’m very capable of this kind of imagination. This wasn’t the problem in my case.
This was the first time I enjoyed writing a game like it was only a story, almost like a cutscene in a video game. And it was such a relief! I truly felt my narrative mental barrier was broken at that moment.

The next day, I started playing the second session of this Actual Play (not finished as I write this newsletter) and it was the same, everything seemed easy.
If I imagine something, well, let’s just write it. If the flow comes naturally just write it. Don’t roll dice and write. Then, when you have to roll because it’s a fight, because you need to generate something, because you have a question or because you feel like it: roll. Simple enough.

Solo playing is playing with rules yes, but as it is when you play with a group, it is more playing with a story. Let your brain fall into daydreaming when narration is important.
Now, I feel ready to play anything, any type of gameplay and any solo role-play moment. Much more than that, I feel ready to play a bigger campaign and not one-shot anymore.
It’s truly a relief as a solo play enthusiast and it’s even more important as a game designer.
I truly think that my problem is that I tend to create stuff because I want to play it, instead of just starting to play it to create it. This is probably my video game-dev side taking control. If you want to play a specific kind of video game that doesn’t exist, you have to create it BEFORE playing it. In TTRPGs, you can start playing it AT THE SAME TIME as you create it.

What I’m saying here will probably feel like a pretty common thing for a veteran solo player, like “yeah, this is solo roleplaying, what did you expect?”, but this was a game changer for me. Maybe this small post will help some people with the same struggle finding the way to solo narration.

Meanwhile, have fun playing and creating what you love!

That’s it for this time!

Let me know if you enjoyed this article, if you played/read/watch any of the stuff I mentioned here 😀

See you!

Cheers !

Sleepdrifter

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