Post from Newsletter

Since some of you asked, this is the text of the newsletter that went out this week. If you haven’t signed up, be sure to go to www.memyselfanddie.com/newsletter

I want to talk to you today about the origins of my brand of solo roleplaying.

When I was about 10 or so, I fell in love with the board game Axis and Allies. It was part of the Milton Bradley “Gamemaster Series” that included Shogun, Broadsides & Boarding Parties, Fortress America, and Conquest of the Empire (I had all of them!).

The problem was, Axis & Allies was designed for 2-5 people, and I couldn’t always convince my friends to devote 8 hours on a Saturday to winning World War II. 

So, one day, I set up the board for a new game, and just started playing by myself, one turn at a time, going from Russia, to Germany, to Britain, to Japan, and to the USA - playing what I would eventually call a “self game”. I found that when I would switch turns, my mind would immediately alter strategies, and I would act as though I had no idea what the “other players” were going to do. In other words, I played every country as honestly as I could, with no insider information about the other countries’ plans to bias my current choices. I just thought, “In this situation, if I had no idea what the other players are going to do, what moves would I make?” Believe it or not, this kept the game mysterious and interesting, as the greatest strategies and plans were still subject to the whims of the dice.

This core idea went on to permeate every aspect of my roleplaying games. I came to see the dice not just as simple randomizers, but as agents of chaos that represented all of the unknowns in a given situation. This allowed me as a GM to relinquish narrative control to the dice, and allow fate to take its course. Despite my best intentions, despite whatever narrative I had in mind, despite whatever scenes I was predicting in my imagination, the dice would always surprise me, and my players. This was a Very Good Thing. A terrifying thing at the beginning - but it became liberating as I learned to trust the process.

Of course, I was still the one choosing when to roll those dice, and what modifiers to make on that roll, and so on and so forth; I didn’t give up all control. I didn’t want to play a completely randomized RPG free of any context or frame of reference, after all! Nevertheless, releasing control and allowing the dice to tell the story was an important lesson that would be responsible for creating some of the most memorable RPG moments of my 40+ years of gaming.

It also influenced how I approached solo roleplaying when I started my YouTube channel back in 2019.

I had delved a little into the Mythic GM Emulator in the mid 2000s, mostly as an aid to adventure design. But I had never actually “solo role-played”. The idea seemed counter-intuitive. In fact, when I started the channel, I thought I was doing some crazy gimmick that no one had ever really thought of before: one guy, playing all the characters and GMing himself?!? Surely not!

Well, as it turns out I wasn’t the first. Far from it. (The first to popularize it on YouTube, maybe; I’ll go so far as to say that!)

But the real take away? Running solo is really not that different from running for a table. All I do is replicate the mindset that I learned playing Axis and Allies all those years ago: honestly portray the parties involved, have them act according to what I believe they would do, regardless of what I as the GM already know. Separate my mind between GM-mode and player-mode.

Certain game systems make that easier than others, of course. Which is why in my own game, The Broken Empires, I have developed mechanics that reinforce the idea that the universe is ultimately beyond anyone’s control - and that’s what the dice represent. It runs through the full DNA of the game: I use a Timer Die in many of the subsystems, for example: a kind of ticking clock that counts down to its own conclusion, utterly independent from what the GM or players may be planning. Not independent of their agency, or their choices; independent of their pre-imposed ideas of how “the story” should play out. Once again, the game is ultimately at the whim of fate. And this makes it easier to play honestly. When you make a strong choice, take definitive action, and roll the dice, you put yourself in the hands of the game system, and from that result comes the emergent story. 

… just like it did when the dice decided to make the story of how Germany managed to conquer both Russia and Britain in the very first turn of the game. What a surprise that was, and it could only come by playing honestly, and trusting the system. (Good thing real history didn’t unfold the same way!)

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

Trevor