For many years now, I’ve been seeking to play the tabletop roleplaying game that I really want to play. This nebulous, somewhat elusive concept has finally caught up with me. It was a conversation with Legend of the Bones podcaster, Simon Williams, which unlocked something deep inside me and if you are curious to know what he said then you should check out Roleplay Rescue Season 11, Episode 21 to be released on December 10th 2022.

Simon recommends solo gaming for everyone because he believes that, whether we have a regular group or not, it offers us the chance to play a game that is truly ours. You are not beholden to anyone else, he claims. You go and seek the Otherworld-immersion that you crave alone and on your own schedule. This idea appealed to me so much that I decided to sit down and try it.

Because this is my game – the game I really want to play – I decided first of all that I needed to stop my usual internal dialogue about what other people, especially players I know, will think. This was hard. I considered several games systems and settings before settling where I am today.

Like Simon, however, I realised that I needed some vehicle to drive me forward with my solo play. While this was to be a game I was creating just for me, I couldn’t motivate myself to action without the possibility of sharing something from it. Simon made a podcast but I am not sure I can meet his high standards, with music and sound effects and all that stuff. But, off mic, he did make a suggestion: why not, he asked, write up your solo plays as you usually do but then record yourself reading them and share those recordings.

Past solo play has been shared via my blog but I always feel it’s too technical in style – too meta, if you will, containing as it does all the die rolls and details of HOW I play – and this kills my enjoyment over time. Simon’s suggestions about going deep into character, about recording the roleplay session as a narrative, and then the idea of sharing that as an audio-book type of experience appealed to me. My thought, right now, is to perhaps record them and post them to the RPR Patreon as bonus episodes. This will give me a loose schedule to play and then record the sessions. It might just work.

And so here we are.

I’ve grabbed an old game off my stack of roleplaying books. I’ve grabbed dice and a notebook. I’m going to type up the narrative and see what happens. Who knows where the adventure will take me?

Thank you, Simon.

Game on!