Narrative Solo Gaming: Addressing Premise

[Demonspahn]

Hi Nathan,

I would like to see you take a page out of Silent Hill (PS) and have just an honest, every day guy start the adventure.  What would be really cool is to have his path choices define what class he learns.   If he reads the spellbook, he learns magic.  If he picks up the sword and armor in the room, he uses that from now on, picks the lock on the chest---thief, etc.  

Might be difficult to pull off, depending how in depth you wanted to go, but I think it would be neat.  You would basically have to duplicate entire portions of the book to reflect what the character knows/what path he took.  Frex a fight with an ogre would have to be included/modified three times to account for wizard, warrior and thief characters.   Come to think of it, it might actually be more interesting to write a different storyline for each class/archetype, based around the same location.  It would certainly increase the replay value.  

Barring that, I honestly can't say what class would be best.  A warrior or wizard are easiest to identify with.  A thief or other more obscure class/archetype is more interesting to hardcore gamers because they haven't been overdone.  What's your target market?

Same thing about race.  Humans are simplest.  Other races might be more interesting, especially after FotR and TT in Dec.  

As for gender, well if you plan to let people roll up and play their own characters you might want to keep it gender-neutral.  I'm not a big fan of this but it's practical.

One thing to keep in mind, if you do decide to go gender-free---it is a constant struggle to write a story/adventure based around a gender-neutral character.  For one thing, it's harder to get a "feel" for and keep an image of that character in your head, for another you run into big problems with dialogue with NPCs, always being addressed as "Hey you!", etc.  Then there is the matter of artwork and never being able to include your main character in any shot, unless your protag is based after Pat, of course.  :)

I would suggest writing it as normal (using either he or she pronouns), then editing everything at the end of the story to gender free if that is what you decide to do.  

Personally, I don't think you should, not for the main character at least.  I think you should pick a character and a gender and make him/her the default.  It gives the work more of its own identity---most of us can remember Lone Wolf, though I'll be damned if I can remember what adventures he went on.  

It also helps create mental images of the character.  I want to imagine Lone Wolf stalk into the tavern and glare at the patrons, or Lady Starra sashay into the bar and look at all the drooling men with thinly veiled contempt.  Gender neutral takes that away and leaves you flat with statements like "You walk into the tavern."  Granted, Lady Starra could stalk into the bar and glare, but if Lone Wolf starts sashaying around town, I'm closing the book.  :)

Just my opinion.  Hope these comments help,

Pete

[Paganini]

There seems to be some misunderstanding here. The gender question was meant to be "should the main character be male or female" not "should I avoid using correct grammar."

The question about target audience is a good one. I'm not honestly sure who would want to read these, other than the few positive coments I've recieved. I'm thinking they should probably be aimed at experienced gamers, since the "cool elements" are pretty unusual. A new gamer might feel a little lost.

Having the character pick his class during the game is a really cool idea, and fits with everything I've already got. OTOH, it would be *extremely* difficult to do. These adventures already have tend to grow exponentially, meaning I'm going to have to limit the number of adventures in a single line. Having to include separate pathes for each possible class would humongify the whole enterprise.

Although, maybe it would work with a *separate* line of adventures for each class, taking place in the same location / starting situation. Hmmm.

[talysman]

As for gender, well if you plan to let people roll up and play their own characters you might want to keep it gender-neutral.  I'm not a big fan of this but it's practical.

for a solo adventure line, gender shouldn't be a problem at all. the principal pronoun used to refer to the player's character could be "you". the only tricky part is to avoid using other gender-specific terms or descriptions, like the sashaying you mention.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I've kind of stayed away from this topic because I've found I've had remarkably little to say in spite of whatever ideas I might have had on the topic of solo RPGs before. But now I have a suggestion in regards to character generation:

Don't have any.

I'm serious. Especially since we're talking narrativist solo design here. How can you write a solo adventure that  can accomodate every possible character? You can't. And even if you do it will be a 1000 page monstrousity.

I suggest you take a page from the solo gamebook series from TSR-- Super Endless Quests AKA AD&D Solo Gamebooks. (Strange how I find this series so well presented in terms of solo play) Each book was written for a specific character that was provided. Now, they didn't really use this to their advantage in most cases IMO, but you could, tayloring the story and the choice points to the character in a narrativist manner. The AD&D books did allow for some customization of the character. I suppose you could include this if you must, but I don't see the point really.

My mind flashes on the Kurt Vonnegut Jr story "Who am I this time?" AKA "My Name Is Everyone" about a man without much of a personality of his own who was in the community theatre who was a demon on stage who completely fell into the role given to him. Hence the title "Who am I this time?" I think a similar mentality would be beneficial to this concept.

However, the with this is that the character will not carry over from book to book, unless a particular character becomes popular and multiple books are written involving the character. I could see some form of metagame "points" that could be gained by the player and carried from book to book. Maybe points isn't the way to go but a level system for the player? Just skylarking on this idea.

So, that's my suggestion. Since your goal is to make Narrativist solos, it only makes sense that they will be better if focused on one particular character.