A Word on My Solo Style

I have a lot of Solo RPGs. A lot of them were free, and others I purchased in RPG bundles. Some of them are funny or silly, while others are dark and foreboding. Some ask the player to introspect, others are casual coffee-break games. I’ve played and written about only a small sampling of my collection; it’s extensive.

All the same I’ve noticed a pattern, one in which I think there is value in exploring. Both with RPGs in general and as a writer, I would like to talk about planning versus pantsing.

Pantsing is not pulling down someone’s trousers. In writing circles, it is the alternative to the method of writing that involves preparing plot skeletons, character backstories, themes, and charted plot-points, even before the first chapter is written. It’s “by the seat of the pants” writing, where you just write, and leave all that plot nonsense for later.

In RPGs, its the difference between rolling as you play a scene versus rolling before you play a scene. Most RPGs go for the pantsing style, but there are games like Fiasco or After the War that do it differently. (And any game could be played that way if the table wanted it.)

As I’ve played Solo RPGs with a mindset towards writing a story, I’ve tried multiple methods of play. With 6 Trials of the Weavers and Monster Hunter I wrote as I went along, changing the scenes as the cards and dice dictated. With Rattenkönigin, I played the whole game before I wrote a single word. Lighthouse at the End of the World was sort of a mix, where I played and then wrote each chapter separately. Last Tea Shop has such a small portion of the game devoted to the mechanics that I had to write alongside the play, each visitor getting written as soon as they were created.

These two styles have their merits for writers, but Roleplaying is such a different beast. Recently I find myself relying on the planning method, playing the game before I write out the narrative, letting the meta-narrative influence the writing. It’s a practice born of both efficiency and practicality; it’s easier to organize and write out a game’s play if you do it all at once, rather than sort through your actions at a later date. It also makes for a smoother story, as there are fewer occasions when a story action or plot point comes out of nowhere, and you have to crowbar it into the narrative.

But isn’t that part of the point of Solo play? If you’re playing a game and then writing a story afterwards, what’s the difference between a Solo RPG and a writing prompt? Part of the allure of RPGs is that they can surprise you, suddenly going in different directions as the story unfolds. All at once, you’re fighting for your life instead of casually strolling towards a tavern. Suddenly you’re imprisoned by alien guards, instead of chatting amicably with a local contact.

But narrative requires structure, of a kind. To quote some mad genius:¹ “[S]torytelling itself has rules, and they aren’t like game rules. There’s Checkhov’s Gun, Conservation of Normality, Conservation of Detail, Economy of Character, and any number of expected narrative structures like foreshadowing, maintaining convention, low-points, moments of dramatic tension, denouements, and climaxes.”

So does that mean RPGs can never be “good stories?”

I’ve already talked about embracing imperfection before, so I won’t touch on that again. Instead, let’s talk about anti-stories.

Anti-stories are stories that, for one reason or another “aren’t stories.” Perhaps there is no main character, or it’s all written backwards, or mirrored, or phonetically, or in a fake language, or there’s no climax, or dramatic tension, or any number of other possibilities of how the writer has “broken the rules” of storytelling. It is a kind of absurdist art, forcing the audience to look not only at the text, but themselves and their expectations as well. Similar to how everyday objects can be statues or silence can be a song, liars and madfolk can be narrators and languages can be blended.

I’ve said before that RPGs make “bad stories” due to their inability to be revised, but if we look at RPGs as a kind of anti-story, some fascinating ideas crop up. First and most obvious is that the rules of writing that RPGs challenge are cultural, rather than structural. Stories are supposed to be revised, edited, and polished; this is a “behind the scenes” process that largely remains hidden from the audience, but is none-the-less ubiquitous. Editors exist as a means of improving a writer’s work, both through extensive syntactic and grammatical knowledge, and through offering a comprehensive “audience response.” They suggest edits to increase the quality or saleability of a text.

The examples of “anti-story” that I offered are strictly audience facing. These narratives are “challenging” because of their content or format. All of my above story-examples were likely subjected to multiple drafts as the writers came up with new ideas, realized they could improve this scene or that paragraph, or changed their minds about any number of things. These anti-stories are challenging the ideas of what things can be labeled “story,” not what process can be called “writing.”

There are other kinds of anti-story, though. Some texts suggest that music can be incidental, theatre can be unrehearsed, poems can be accidental, stream of consciousness can be a story. These are anti-stories that challenge the process of creating a text. Not questioning what can be labeled art, but challenging how art must be made.

Interestingly, RPGs are a kind of combination of all of the above examples. Chance, improvisation, and a lack of editing turn RPGs into a strange kind of text, one that is fundamentally focused on participation. As I’ve said before, RPGs are one of the only mediums where artist and audience are the same.

So what does that say about Solo RPGs?

It certainly suggests that publishing the story afterwards is a kind of bastardization of the process. If RPGs aren’t supposed to have non-participants and audience, introducing an audience is a defiance of the intended structure. At the same time, all RPGs are hacks, and I’m hardly the first person to publicize an RPG. Heck, observing an activity that’s supposed to be participatory has been commonplace at least as far back as the Grecian Olympics.

Really, as mentioned above, Solo RPGs focus more on the process of creating the story, rather than the editing or publishing thereof. Many Solo RPGs are largely personal, and after the journal is written or the last die is rolled, the game dusts its hands and says you can do what you want with the results.

So you’ve decided to share your own personal journey/story; how does the Solo RPG process influence this? I suppose what it encourages is a kind of bravery. I certainly could go back and edit all my stories into more cohesive and thematic wholes, removing unpleasant cruft or awkward tangents, but that’s not really the spirit of RPGs as a whole, is it? We could edit each 3-hour session we play into a 1-hour podcast episode, but that’s like those condensed sport-videos where they only show the significant or interesting plays. Even typos are part and parcel of the whole Solo-RPG deal.

This is all a very long way of repeating — I am a fiddler. I fiddle and fix and polish until my work barely resembles its original form. A lot of this is anxiety and deep-seated social trauma,² but even outside my own issues one of my pet peeves is wasted potential — the fascinating hook that becomes a formulaic romance, or brilliant thematic questions that are answered with a poorly thought through shrug.

I suppose me not editing my Solo RPG writing is a bit of exercise. Practicing being okay with imperfection and public flaws. It’s a way of becoming more comfortable with ignoring that voice in my head which says “don’t hit publish, or you’ll feel really ashamed later!”

So with Solo RPGs, I have a lovely little excuse. “That’s the point,” I’d say. “It’s supposed to be unpolished, a garbage draft, a poorly structured and clunky mess,” I’d say. “It’s real, isn’t it?” I’d say…

…to whom?

I’m sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed to some of you that there is no comment section on my blog. Part of this is a static-html issue — I value simplicity and elegance, and putting a JavaScript-heavy comment section in the middle of often-updated pages is… eaugh — but part of it is by design.

It’s easy to say things to the imaginary people in my head, but much like physical therapy can hurt like heck, mental therapy can involve challenging what’s holding you back.

And that’s what I’d like to talk about next time.