Last weekend, I grabbed the Solo Tales episodes that I’ve been posting as bonuses on the main Roleplay Rescue podcast and set up a new home: Roleplay Rescue’s Solo Tales. There are four episodes as I write this, with a plan to add perhaps one per month.

Solo Tales began back in February when I recorded Season 12’s second episode (aired March 4th). At the moment of conception, I wanted to explore the roots of my own hobby by revisiting my first imaginary game-world: through dreams and many hours of day-dreaming as a teenager, I uncovered a rich fantasy realm that I was long-overdue returning to visit.

Despite a few attempts to bring other tools to the table, games that I deeply enjoy and seek to explore, the reality is that the first game I stole from my Dad – RuneQuest, plus the even simpler Basic Roleplaying introductory booklet – became the key to unlocking that “specially made game-world” that exists just for me. I began with some characters, a situation, and a simple first session.

Given the positive response from listeners, I decided to make some more episodes and share them. I took my in-session solo gaming notes and presented them, largely unedited, as an amalgam of roleplaying game actual play and ever-so-slightly dramatised emergent story.

I’ve been managing to record and edit a new episode about once a month and release it as a bonus to Roleplay Rescue but that’s getting to be a bit messy. It seemed much more satisfactory to set things up as a separate podcast feed and post new episodes there. Hence, the Roleplay Rescue Solo Tales podcast was born.

The whole thing was – and remains – an experiment. As with all experiments, some things don’t work and other things do. As I have found my way into playing with the old BRP system, the largest realisation has been that I’ve moved on quite a bit from my roots back in 1980. While I will eternally love that old RuneQuest boxed set, I don’t want to be bound by the rules from it in my solo play.

Listeners will discover that the first game I shared – starting with Crag’s Ruin and forming the first five episodes – underwent quite a few tweaks and changes over the first bundle of sessions. While I did take things on for some 10 sessions of play, I eventually ran into a fundamental question in my solo play: am I playing for my enjoyment, or the enjoyment of the listeners?

While I hope that listeners will continue to enjoy the podcast and episodes that I share, this is not the same offering as the shows which inspired it. While “Tale of the Manticore” and “Legend of the Bones” are excellent shows, I have discovered that I don’t want to be bound by a production schedule in quite the same way.

Solo Tales is about one man’s solo play. It’s played for my own enjoyment and produced as a podcast simply because I’ve discovered that doing so deepens my enjoyment of the game. While I hope it’ll inspire others to try solo roleplaying, the main goal is to share the journey I’m on. Direction changes and shifts in worlds, rules, and methods are therefore likely.

Like everything I seem to do with my roleplaying games, this is a messy and emergent experiment. I have no idea where it’ll take me except to say that I am going over the edge into the wild spaces outside of the “regular kind of game”. If you fancy coming along with me, you’re very welcome to see where it leads.

Thank you to everyone who has encouraged me on this quest thus far!

Game on!