Easy Oracle For Solo RPGs, No Charts Or Books Needed
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- čas přidán 14. 09. 2022
- Deathstalker V shows his Common Sense Oracle for Solitaire Roleplaying games. This oracle promises to not only speed up your game pace (if you are using oracles that utilize charts) but is also completely versatile and adaptable to any genre, any play style, and any rule system!
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Ive been thinking about running my own solo games for The Dark Eye because its always hard to find players for systems other than dnd or pathfinder. I really like your oracle system since its quick, easy, and universal.
The thing that stands out the most is the way you generate more info than just yes or no. Great way to supplement the role of the dm. Thank you for the video. This gives me a great starting point.
Ok so it looks like im an over thinker 😅 im removing my overly complicated oracle from my game and replacing it with percentile dice, thanks for this, it's the simplicity that I like, gives me more space to be creative 👍
Keep things simple and save the complicated stuff for when its needed.
@@RandomEncounterShow I agree, its mostly dungeons where the random tables come out for more specific things, this helps with the plot questions, npc reactions and settlements that sort of thing, I was using mythic for a while but as you say it slows the game down so I tried the d6 yes,no but system, abit better but I'm still pausing the game to check the result. This though flows great and is to the point, thanks again 🙂
I do this with a D20. I begun using it when a distant cousin forgot it in my house, back in early 2000s. At that time rpg dice was hard to come by, so all games used a D6s, and this D20 became a minor treasure in my collection.
Yes, I started doing something like this back in 1976. I love percentage dice. This can really confuse Fifth Edition players. They are so used to the d20. When you ask them to roll a d100 they give you a weird look. When a player rolls a 1 or 100 things really get crazy!
This video was perfect for what I was looking for, thank you! I’m planning to use your oracle system for some Cairn solo play and probably some Shadowdark solo play too.
Awesome!
A good addition to this is every time you roll doubles, something good or bad happens that interupts or changes the scene. That's in the Mystic emulator but it can be applied to this.
Thank you for sharing this. I've been dabbling in solo RPG for years and my tendency is to overcomplicate everything and then I get so bogged down in the details. It really can be simple, fast, and fun.
One thing to keep as a mantra that rpgs are games of limited information! Don't generate data until it is absolutely necessary.
Great tutorial. Hmmm, I'm thinking using GURPS's 3d6 randomizer with these outcomes; success, fail, ctit-success, crit-fail, tie, margin of success, and margin of failure. And I could use the margins as strength values for the encounter, situation, NPCs, etc. Thanks for the video
Best oracle system I've seen. Thanks for sharing 😎
Enjoy, there will be plenty more in the future!
Thanks for this info, gotta try it. Love your questing table by the way!
Thanks!
Thank you so much to have shown us, solo players, a very simple and easy to use Oracle. I will port it to my Oracle where I create variations of answers giving certain levels of informations. I was using a D20, but now, with this D100, I will have more answers for my play. Thank you again!!
Make sure to stick around, I am doing my best to cover alot of basics before really building into the solo play!
You basically helped me with my biggest problem and fear of designing my own solo rpg(mostly for my own use)! Thanks! 😄
Any other tips for solo dnd?
@coopkaboom I will be back soon with more tips on soloing any and all systems!
Love this, can definitely use on the fly when a DM but I also love the idea for a solo campaign
Thanks, I have some solo content and stay tuned for when I take the channel along for a campaign!
I've been looking for recommendations for an oracle system for several hours today, but this video just convinced me that I should just stop and not complicate things. I've only done a tiny bit of solo rping but I've been using my deck of tarot cards so far, which is pretty useful for generating monsters, npcs and such when using both the card's image and meaning for inspiration. I'll be adding this dice method, too, to help with probability. Thank you so much for this vid.
Fantastic! Stay tuned as we have alot more solo rpg content on the menu for 2024!
Hey there! Just found your channel, good on YT for recommending it. I know you from a guest appearances on ArtichokeDip some time ago
Glad you found us!
Pulling back the curtain on the creative process reveals good insights. Lower = Negative for subject of query; Higher = Positive; distance from decision value colors the results; compound spectrum query with binary with even/odd output.
A video suggestion. I'm new to soloing and have only really dipped my toe in it. One thing that I have read about is how easy it can be to ask too many questions and also not ask enough. Often when I watch a video of someone solo roleplaying they talk about the thought process and types of questions they ask themselves but then only narrow things down to one question for the oracle.
So a video on how to ask good questions to refine the question you want to put to the oracle. Over time this might get easier I guess. But it could be easy to not consider things which might make a scene more interesting, more tense etc. But then you don't want to get bogged down with too many questions and the story progresses slowly.
I don't know if there is an easy answer. I suppose we can ask ourselves a question and then ask what if while doing that action something else happens, like in this video you came up with what if someone comes along the street while looking through the windows. One could go through a list of questions, is there a dog on the property? Do I hear some noise inside the house? I think if its an important location such as a quest to get inside that building then its worth asking more questions than perhaps just looking for something in general or if trying to hide from pursuing guards you wouldn't have time to consider sounds and be mindful of time etc. Which also a time crunching event needs to reflect in the action taken, in real life we cannot pause and take our time how best to escape for example.
Without rambling on, another thing I have noticed is thinking like I am the story teller knowing things the character I roleplaying doesn't know or it would be cool if something like x happens etc. I think it is best to try and have the mindset of keep to what the character knows and doesn't know and try not to be like a director or writer. I like to do creative writing so this can be hard to do lol
So I guess the video could be about the mind-set to have with playing solo.
I will be putting out much more comprehensive solo videos in the future. Right now I am bogged down in the studio with projects. I highly recommend if you have facebook to check out the random encounter army. Lots of knowledgeable people there with years of experience that are happy to help!
Love that road terrain.
Battlesystems fantasy road and river set
I like using d6 for yes or no (2d6 and pick the biggest or smallest result if it's likely or unlikely). 1 - 3 (no) 4 - 6 (yes).
For open ended questions I use tarot cards.
I like the video.
You talk about the basic guidelines presented in the Mythic GM emulator here: asking yes/no questions, using inductive reasoning within the context of the setting and the story, and assigning probabilities based on that thought process.
While it is possible to come up with details and drive the narrative by answering yes/no questions, there's also the matter of our propensity to ask open-ended questions. This is where having oracle tables are very handy. Ironsworn: Starforged has great oracle tables that can be tweaked to be used for pretty much any genre not only to answer questions related to the meaning of events, locations, or encounters, but the description of those things as well.
Great stuff, thnx! So much easier than all those other resources slowing things down!
Between this and the d6 Yes/No/But, you could play solo for a really long time!
Adding in some charts for extras then would serve to enhance and not slow down the game rather than what they do, like you say here. 👊🤓
Here's an alternative for dealing with unknowns (or "unknown unknowns"): Roll two sets of percentile dice together; one represents the actual percentage chance of an event, the other is your roll against that chance. The idea behind rolling both at the same time is you do not know the percentage chance beforehand, like in real life. This is (of course) not apprpriate for everything, but for some circumstances should work just fine.
Wouldn't it just be easier to use a base line of 50% for the unknown? Equal chance at success or failure.
@@RandomEncounterShow As a rule of thumb, sure. But if you don't want to know what the percentage chance is, or if you want to take into account any number of unknown circumstances that may influence the actual percentage chance (either positively or negatively), then this could be one way to do it without undue complexity or tables. I see it as a "fog of war" type of mechanic.
@@Seafire-gy2hs yes but essentially you are building a blind chance of success or failure via precentage when having the 50% baseline is just that without the need of a second roll. I get the idea of what you are saying but I am a big fan of cutting out unnecessary mechanics, such as the advantage system of 5e Lol
@@RandomEncounterShow 50% baseline isn't "just that" because it gives you equal chances on success and failure. I love the idea of another dice deciding the chances of something happening because it adds a little bit of mystery to the mix. If I roll only a 20% chance of having success at something it raises questions. Why is that door so particularly hard to open? Why is this city so quiet right now? Why it seems so hard to please the people of this new town? If you just always decide the percentage beforehand (either 40 or 50 or whatever) then when will you ever be surprised? Having a 50% chance of something happening or not doesn't really tell me how hard or easy it was. It's not random, it's just making everything average difficulty. You roll a 49 out of 50 on a given task and you can say you barely did it. The same 49 can be interpreted very differently if the chances were 20% or 80%. Letting the dice decide the chances then and not you allow for the "unknown" to have a little say in your story. Add complications, advantages, mysteries, surprises. Not unnecessary at all.
@@nicoleabrahao1026 mathematically the best chance of surprise is at 50%. Why go through extra work to be surprised?
Now you're getting down to it 😄. Good video and gets the thoughts going about what's really needed & what's just in the way.
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For as simple as it is, this is a very helpful system. Thanks for sharing it!
I love yer easy oracle system. A solo RPG system that works very well for me is called D100 Dungeon by Martin Knight. I enjoy seeing vloggers playthrough D100 Dungeon.
I’ve been using One Page Solo Engine for everything, it’s great!
Even Dungeon Crawl and Hex Crawl?
Sold! After wrecking my head watching videos reviewing complex looking books to use as oracles for my solo RPG, this video is more welcome than you could imagine! Like you say, looks fast, fun and simple. Simple brilliant. Thank you :)
I'm new to this but so far I've been using a similar method that basically amounts to "how much?" So if I ask the dice "is it raining?" then 35 means no, 65 means yes and 90 means it's flooding. I have been having some difficulty tweaking the chances though, such as making it rain less during the summer and more during the winter. Your way seems to be possible solution.
I like the concept of (in appropriate situations) asking a yes/no question and rolling without a target number, using a “how much?” framework.
“Is it raining?”
84
“It’s a fairly sunny day with a few small clouds”
I'm def. going to try this during todays session. A question I have for you. I love Mythic's story threads and character lists. Do you do anything for matches or anything to introduce random events with your oracle, or do you prefer not to have random events etc.? How do you handle those if you do? Thanks brother!
You could easily assign ranges for random events and stuff, its all about making your game your own, as I said this is just a simple fast oracle that is only limited by the imagination.
I divide the results of the rolls in different prepared answers which give me various levels of information from any questions. But it wasn't so "open" in the end because I was using a D20. With this percentage roll, I can have now a complete range of answers to be used for to "open question".
when you roll doubles, something good or bad happens
Thank you.
You're welcome!
Rolling it old school! I've used this kind of system plenty of times in the past for low-prep GMing, but never used it for pure solo play. 🙂
Funny thing is your timing is perfect and parallels some of my thoughts for SGAM2022 (Solo Gaming Appreciation Month.) One of the weekly challenges I wanted to pitch was 'system-less' solo just as you described.
This is fascinating. I've always preferred crunchy rules and have steered away from oracle's because I have never really understood how to use them... Thanks!
You mentioned you had really in depth tools that include weather etc... Will you be sharing them in a future video?
Yes, gearing up to dive into some deep solo play soon here! You will enjoy it as I myself stick with deeper aka crunchy rulesets for the most part!
@@RandomEncounterShow looking forward to it! I really like your approach and am really finding my thinking shifting.
This is rad
Nice simple approach.
One thing I'd add is that you've gotta be careful about asking questions with only one good answer, or asking multiple questions per approach. You don't want entropy to win. e.g. if you ask whether there are people on the street (yes), whether the door is locked (yes), how strong it is (strong), etc you can roll yourself out of the most viable options. Better not to ask if there's anywhere to hide (there has to be!) or whether the merchant comes home (he better not unless the mission can plausibly be done while he's at home) etc. Asking anything that cancels the mission is mistaken use of an oracle because missions should be winnable with good decision making and average rolls.
In my style of playing solo (sandbox) there aren't unfailable missions. Just as in real life there must always be a chance things can go terribly wrong. It brings a bit of realism to the roleplaying environment that can be overcome by problem solving and creativity (player skill).
@RandomEncounterShow Yeah fair enough, for ad-hoc sandbox approach it's less of a problem. For the story approach where you are preparing particular scenarios that are likely to be the most interesting or apropos and just filling in some details with the oracle, asking too many or the wrong questions is more likely to waste prep and leave players scraping the bottom of the good ideas barrel.
@@dukereg Well yes in a group setting I agree, but this is for solo gaming. It might be a quick trick for GMs to use on nonimportant stuff like you said, even better it keeps the players interested as dice are being rolled!
@@RandomEncounterShow I'm not sure. I first encountered this problem when I first tried solo RPG with an oracle. Basically I kept asking questions and it would say "no" to reasonable ideas at awkward times and eventually I found myself struggling to come up with reasonable ideas and the oracle seemed to be naysaying me into a "give up and go home" direction.
My takeaway was to just go with ideas instead of asking the oracle if I thought that "no" would be creating entropy. I'm curious what your takeaway would be from that experience?
@@dukereg You let the game master you instead of you mastering the game. All rules, tools ect are to be used as tools, not supervisors. It sounds like at some points you saw something in your game you wanted to explore or go with, you should have instead of rolling it out. One thing I always give advice on is be as organic as possible so that you can actually enjoy roleplaying. The more mechanics you employ, the less you are playing, mostly just watching. When I use an oracle, its not to direct the game, its only to give me some information if and when I need it. Say for example the oracle says the window is locked, does that prevent me from entering it? Glass breaks quite easily, tools can be used to pry it open ect. Just because the oracle goes in a direction you didnt expect doesnt mean you have to change directions, you might have to adjust approach. See the end of my newest video on player skill, aka problem solving and creativity in gaming.
A really lazy wishy washy GM, me, asks the dice what's the chance, gets a target #, then rolls against that...
Frex, what's the chance this bit of world is land or sea? Just if I have absolutely no idea. Are there mountains to the East? Is there a river in this hex? If the dice beat the target, use that target again to ask if it begins here or flows through, does it branch? And so on. The dice are your friend, not your master but you can lean on them a little
Whatever works for you is the way!
Could you make a video of how you would handle combat using this system? I really like this method and i will soon try it in my first time ever trying solo.
Its not a system per se but a tool to use with an rpg system.
Quick! Gets you mentally involved. Oh yeah!!
That's it, exploring the imagination is the key factor!
What is your ranges for your system? you mentioned 1 is Extreme Yes, so where does yes start? is it like Extreme Yes 1-25 and Yes is from 26-to 50 and 51-75 for No and 76-100 for Extreme No? or is the target percentage you pick the line to divide yes and no, eg. with your 40% the player rolls a 42 would that be a no, so what about the extremes? Do you just use 10% eg. 1-10 or 90-100 for your extremes? or you just go with how far away from the target it is and just guess to keep it fast?
I just use common sense to be honest. Taking in the current circumstances, environment, characters ect going on at any given time I will just call a probability that seems reasonable. Lets say we have a very strong character and a weaker character both trying to pull themselves out of quick sand. The base percentage always starts at 50%. Without any other circumstances or things going on I could easily say well the stronger character should have an easier time at this so lets put their percentage at 60%, the weaker will struggle so lets put their's at 35%. As to the extremes it has to scale with the moving precent. At 50% I normally give the extreme range at 1-10 and 90-100 also the weak range at 40-50 and 51-61. This doesn't work so well if say we drop the percentage base line to a 20% chance. There I would probably go 1-4 extreme yes, 80-100 extreme no with 16-20 being a weak yes and 21-31 being a weak no. Like I said I just look at the situation and all the known factors to make a quick judgment call on stuff I wouldn't turn to a more lengthy oracle for. Hope this helps!
@@RandomEncounterShow Thanks for your reply. Math is not my forte. But I can see how lowering the base line could get complicated even if good at math working it all out on a calc. Which in the end perhaps the Mythic Fate chart would be quicker if you really want to go by exact numbers.
But as you say make a quick judgement call. Shrinking the Extreme yes number down if the chance is low that would make sense to what feels right.
And perhaps I will go with being in general with the gap between roll and the chance. If the gap is wider or closer to the chance, this will vary the intensity or whatever without being overly math accurate.
Okay I feel it makes more sense now. Thanks.
@@Daz30 my best advice I can give any new player is keep your game as organic as possible, not mechanic. RPGs shouldn't be glorified board games, its only going to limit your enjoyment from the full experience of a living breathing world you create.
Thank you for the tutorial! I appreciate a simpler, play tested oracle. I'm enjoying the mythic system, but this seems more straightforward than their chaos table.
Where's your accent from? It sounds very neutral but with a little twang on the back. It's a really enjoyable sound.
I have a mutt accent 🤣, I have lived in various places and no matter where I am I sound weird!
@@RandomEncounterShow I feel that! I'm from TN born and raised but I never thought I had an accent, then I move to New York and I've gotten everything from Alabama to Wisconsin lol
Is it okay if I use cards as my simply oracle system with a simple yes and no with and/but or random event?
Of course, this is a hobby gaming channel. Theres no better way to do something than the way you enjoy!
I still can help but be overwhelm by the many chart in solo while simply yes and no solo helpful. Do you think the simplest oracle is the best cause you got to use your mind?
@@nicolejohntahup5901 Whatever tools you may find, the best ones will always be those that activate the mind and imagination, thats what the game is all about! I see so many that have taken solo rpg down to basically a glorified board game level, that is definitely not what I think of as fun. We will continue building and working on things here so we can help everyone reach high potentials with their solo hobbies.
Do you use this oracle to resolve battles and combat? Is that is the case, how do you manage it?
@@ignaciojzam I don't, that's what a rule system is for. The oracle is there only to fill in the gaps.
I've used a Magic 8 Ball as an Oracle
Good stuff. An oracle system not based on some table, but on common sense.
Are those cardboard houses? What brand? And would you consider to give us your take on solo'ing published adventures in a future video? I'm especially curious how you would handle a more or less railroaded module.
The houses are from Battle Systems Fantasy range, I bought mine from www.chaosorc.com if you're outside of the USA www.battlesystems.uk is their website. We are just fueling up the rocket at this point, I will be covering solo rpgs in depth and how I go about things, much of it will be quite different from what has been shown on youtube. Yes I will be showing how I take published adventure modules, even the rail roads and turn them into stunning solo gaming material!
Ur accent rules dude. Its like buttaaa
👍
You have an unusual accent. Are you Cajun or something?
Its a mix but I have lived in semi cajun country for 14 years now!
I've been doing the same thing with 2x6d :)
Commercial oracles from the big oracle corporations
Living life on the fringe!
I'm really disappointed that you scrapped that perfect 100!
Stuff happens when you don't have a script, rolled before explaining 🤣
LOL, Just use a d10
Why would you want to destroy the percentage range to drop down to only 10 variable outcomes?
So why bother with a RPG system at all?
If you want your character to do something, just assign a probability and roll the dice.
Need to fight a troll with your Armoured Paladin, that’ll be, hmm, 30% chance to win etc.
Well that essentially becomes a rulesystem itself, but I do prefer the game mechanics for combat and such to be meatier than my oracle!
Well, instead of deciding the outcome of the battle in only one question, you could make it more detailed, like: 1) Does the paladin's attack hit the troll? DICE. 2) Is it fatal or does the Troll keep fighting? DICE. 3) Is there a rock or a tree near the Troll to be used as throwing weapon? DICE. 4) Does the tree trunk hit the paladin, or does he dodge it? DICE. And so on. Bam. Who needs a battle system when you can have a Battle Oracle ⚔️