Fourth Wall Break #7. 2025 Solo Play Resolutions and Blog Changes

 

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• No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit
• 2025 { Resolutions | Changes }
• Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → [Mini-]Arcs } Format
• Focusing on One Arc at a Time
• Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice
• Trying Out "New" Game Systems
• Trying Out "New" Game Worlds
• (Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles
• Things to Not Sweat...
• Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc
• Build Up a List of Graphical Resources
• Credits

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No The Bleak + The Pearl For a Bit

There will be no The Bleak + The Pearl this week because I spent a lot of my gaming time going through and fixing up months' worth of glitches that were holding the Eustace & Hitomi series back. Right after I finished that (within literal minutes), I { wrote | played } what I think is the longest ever session-post on this blog: around 11k words. It took up all of my free time on Friday (Jan 3).

The week prior to that was mostly spent sorting through and updating a lot of "offline" and backend parts to my solo play kit: digital files, scripts, cloud storage folders, and other tools.

I have actually played a little of the second session for "In Search for the Harcuram Mantle", but a lot of that "play" was going back and rewriting some of my on-virtual-table notes to be more character-viewpoint focused and running through a slightly complex encounter and realizing I was rushing it. I have discussed before how rushing solo play greatly dampens my fun so it was best to take a step back, breathe a moment, and just enjoy spending an hour fiddling with a virtual map and thinking about the characters.

This trio of things — (1) fixing up and restarting a series that had stalled out, (2) reorganizing the blog and the stuff behind the blog, and (3) feeling rushed to meet a "Sunday Deadline" — helped me to realize that it was a great time instead to take a step back and think up my plans for the new year.

This means, as you read on the next couple sections of resolutions, there actually won't be any The Bleak + The Pearl for maybe a week or two. I'll explain. Give me time.

 

2025 { Resolutions | Changes }

Let's start with the bigger changes and then maybe move down.

Formal Move Towards { Worlds → Campaigns → Arcs } Format

I'm not 100% what you would call this but the first word that comes to my mind is a "mini-arc" format. Where mini-arcs (some not so mini) are played within a larger frame with a direction towards a few days or weeks or months instead of an indefinite time frame. 

Start with a broad The World. Have one or more Campaigns set within it (each is a set of characters at a certain time), and then each of those Campaigns gets one or more Arcs (where the characters try to accomplish a goal within that Campaign, eventually leading up to finishing the Campaign as a whole). Each Arc is one or more Posts (representing a sort of traditional "session"). Where each Post is one more Sessions of actual playing | writing.

Fascinating insight into my brain that probably exposes me a librarian if you didn't know already, I know. But, my intended format for my play in 2025 might look something like this:

• The World
  [Alabama Weird, The GLOW, Khel]
• The Campaign
  [Eustace & Hitomi, 1996, The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH]
• The Arc ← *Focus on this as the Unit*
  ["and the Case of the Rambler's Inn", "Agent Johnny Blue", "The Stone Crack'd"]
• The Post
  ["Chapter 3. Arrests and Friends, in That Order", "Chapters Two & Three", "05 - The Triptych Healed"]
• The Session
  [each time I sit down and accomplish something in game: art, playing, writing, designing, etc]

For some campaigns, like the offline campaigns, it might be less "arcs" and more "one to two pre-written adventures with some padding" but the principle is still the same.

Again, it's more a formalization than an abrupt change. It does slightly free me up mentally — which I surprisingly need — to do things like build in the kind of time jumps, thematic clusters, and conceptual shifts that I love. Even allows for things like shifts in play-style or systems.

Focusing on One Arc at a Time

This is a bigger change than above but it kind of requires the other change to make sense. I want to spend a couple of months playing differently. Rather than juggling multiple campaigns, with multiple arcs, where I have to shift into and out of various worlds and modes, I want to focus on one arc at a time.

The broad structure would be to figure what arc I want to play next — based on interest, fun ideas I have, some spark of inspiration, some challenge, or just a broad sense that it is time to revisit some old friends — and spend one "time slot" thinking up concepts, keyed scenes, lore, art motif, and goals at the arc level. Play the whole story arc through to completion, divided up into sessions (posts | sessions | etc) with potential extra content. 

Keep the three-times-a-week schedule. 

When I get done with arc, take a bonus "time slot" to do one of my absolute favorite activities with solo play: the self debrief and edit process. That last step wraps up the arc with some thoughts, re-packaging, final sorting. Potentially, but not necessarily, sets out some seeds for future arcs.

Then, figure out the next arc and do it again.

Right now, my plan is to finish out "Eustace & Hitomi and the Case of the Rambler's Inn" [+ bonus dog-catcher story which is somehow related], then finish up "The Bloody Hands: REBIRTH, The Stone Crack'd" after that, and then do The Bleak + The Pearl's current dungeon [the dungeon delving stuff will likely be shorter bursts in between the longer story modes] with each session being a bit shorter than current (a couple of hours at a time instead of trying for four to six hours at a time).

Around March, I will evaluate if this has improved, worsened, or not really impacted by game play and update accordingly.

Post Once (and Early), Edit at Least Twice

I need to get into a habit of playing and writing the session at least 24 hours before it is published. Edit it once immediately just to fix the no doubt several misspellings, broken sentences, and other glitches that show up from writing stuff down as I play. Schedule the post anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks later depending on the buffer. And, before it actually goes live, spend more time going back over and make sure it all makes sense with a harsher comb than that first edit. Once it is published and around the time I hit the "debrief" stage for the arc, maybe go back over it and smooth out the harsh edges but not in a way that is unfair to past-Doug.

A long variation of this discussion and my preferred method was included in the aftermath of realizing I had violated one of my own rules during playing The GLOW and I wrote a long commentary talking about how I like to do things and why it went wrong.

Trying Out "New" Game Systems

This blog basically grew up around two systems — Tricube Tales and Shadowdark — and frankly I could play those systems, backed with Mythic and Solodark, for quite some time, still. So much so that there has been a slight inertia towards bringing in something new. I could use a shake up, though, so a few systems I want to bring in (maybe two or three this year as a goal to start) include:

• Cypher
• Outgunned
• GURPS Lite+: meaning start with GURPS Lite 4th edition and add in just enough content to play whatever game I want to play.
• Ironsworn, Starforged, and/or Sundered Isles.
• At least one Call of Cthuhlu game.
• Maybe actually play one of Sine Nomine's awesome ...Without Number games instead of just using them for parts.
• Troika and Advanced Fighting Fantasy.
• Of course, a whole stack of other possibilities.

Besides these, try a few things like Thousand Year Old Vampire and other more solo-first systems (maybe as one-shots). The whole point of this is just to get me to think about other game systems and modes.

Trying Out "New" Game Worlds

I currently have a few game worlds into which the various campaigns fit: Alabama Weird (a "mostly" normal take on Alabama but one where cosmic horror and folklore are real and have influenced things), The GLOW (an even weirder version of the Alabama Weird), Barthus & Silt (the setting of The Bleak + The Pearl), Phillia (the island upon which Ick & Humb and related are played), and Khel (the continent from The Bloody Hands). What I would like to do is to add in at least one post-apocalyptic world and at least one science-fiction | space-opera world. Possibly also a kind of dreamscape type world but that one might just be technically an off-shoot of the Alabama Weird.

I figure as long as I can add one new world I should be happy.

That being said, I would rather develop new content for existing worlds rather than have a bunch of vague, unfinished places that never get revisited. I really love lore and I really love generational shifts and wide geographically-separated play.

(Re)Trying Out "New" Oracles

By "oracle" in this case I mean both the yes|no + and|but + twist generator — think Mythic — but also stacks of random tables, cards, and other tools. I am mostly good with the largish set of random generators I already use but it might be nice to bring up a few things — like Rory's Storycubes — that I have gotten out of the habit of using. I also have a whole "Like the I Ching but with dice" system I created but then left behind.

One thing I am very excited about adding is something like Dixit as well as more real world divination methods.

Also, I have enjoyed using some diegetic oracles where music and images that might be part of the game world (or represent things in a similar way as the characters would experience them) can be used as oracles in themselves. Either by using the stock art to influence elements, music to shift the mood, or materials that otherwise could, in theory, be experienced by the characters that I play to determine outcomes. I want to find more ways to use this.

Things to Not Sweat...

• Most of all, Don't sweat the Dougness.
• Don't sweat the long commentaries that only I read.
• Don't sweat the long session building.
• Don't sweat the corny jokes that only I will like.
• Don't sweat the romances or friendships or moments that only I will like.
• Don't sweat the cosmic horror, folklore, body horror that I like.
• Don't sweat the literary references or in-jokes even if no one else catches them.
• Don't sweat the stories where some young upcoming hero saves the realm a few weeks later. It's nice.
• Don't sweat the overlong explanations.
• Don't sweat the deadlines.
• Don't sweat the struggles to make sure it is fair. Make it make sense later or don't.
• Don't sweat the formatting (so much). Things can look different later on.
• Don't sweat the way I play (sort of like the first one, but this is important). I like to pre-gen ideas and stew upon some concepts (the prep is play portion) and that is fine. Do it. Then break it down (the play is prep portion). Who cares if no one else does it exactly the same way? Besides, I'm sure some do... It's ok if I figure out who the killer is early so I can work towards it. It is also ok if I change my mind and turn that all into a plot twist.
• Finally, Don't sweat the apologizing. I'm sometimes worry that I self-apologize too much on this blog. I do, but who cares. That is part of me finding out who I am and how I play.

Make More Art, Design More Stuff, Focus on Game Motifs, Etc

I like making (bad) art for my games. Bad maps. Bad character sheets. I like my campaigns (and arcs) to have their own style. I want to spend more time working on those little bits. I often avoid making my own art and own visual tools because I worry of it is good enough. It is good enough. I am the only person that has to be my own fan.

Just make sure I give lots and lots of credit as I go. A lot of people make things that help me tell the stories I like.

Build Up a List of Graphical Resources

I use a lot of stock art (most free, some paid) and a lot of illustrations and stuff to visually build up my blog. I think it might be nice to sit down and list some of those tools out in a way (probably a new page for the sidebar) so that others can find them.

It will also save me some headaches.

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CREDITS

The art used to head the resolutions section is a CC0 licensed photo by Jeffrey Paul from the WordPress Photo Directory. According to the alt-text, it depicts the mysterious “O” rest stop (aka “Cerchio dello Staccioli”) outside Volterra, Italy. It summed up my feelings of looking forward fairly nicely. I have edited, as usual, using GIMP and several filters to give it a kind of video-game like feel. A motif I am thinking about adopting for an upcoming series about many tiers of reality.

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