Moving From Digital to Dice!
Trying Something New, By Doing Something the 'Old' Way!
Over the years I've been mostly doing my gaming on the home computer. It has been mostly shooting games played in the first or third person, but when I have tried out Role Playing Games - again - it has been in the form of computer titles.
So, what has changed? Well, my 'man cave' is in the attic - two flights of stairs up - and aside from the mobility issues I suffer from since my stroke I also spend a fair amount of time being the Grandad to a needy old dog! 😆
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| Above: Needy pup! Cookie does NOT like me to do anything else other than to sit with her and cuddle! |
I have 'pup sitting days' when My daughter is working and Cookie - bless her - neither likes the stairs or my attic as she likes the comfort of a sofa and access to the back yard. This curtains my time on my computer, which is setup in the attic.
I do have a laptop, but I just don't get the same enjoyment out of using that to game - particularly as I mainly prefer the triple-A power hungry battlefield shooter type games. I do have access to console gaming on my Big Telly in the front room which is nice for casual gaming, but I miss playing games that I can loose myself in, games with a lot of detail and have a rich story (games like Fallout which merge shooters and RPG)...
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| Above: I have made attempts to do some of my other hobbies downstairs but Cookie makes her disapproval obvious! So I gave up. |
Enter the Pen, Paper & Dice Games
Because the dog likes to nestle down next to me - and DOES NOT like it if I move - I decided to have a go at games that I could play on my lap... And this is where paper based RPGs piqued my curiosity.
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| Above: There are several RPG solo adventure books which are easy to learn and nice and compact, but I wanted something that had a *little* more complexity and that was expandable. |
In truth, I've been wanting to get into analogue solo role playing for quite a while - and indeed had a bit of a false start a couple of years back when I bought the 'Call of Cthulhu' starter set - but between pup sitting and other tasks actually getting time to sit down a learning this new type of gaming has been a problem for me.
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| Above: At the other end of the spectrum are full blown RPG systems like 'Call of Cthulhu' which offer solo modules within the sophisticated framework of their gaming rules. I wanted - however - something between 'overly simple' and the complex. |
But lately, the amount of pup sitting time has cut back a bit which has allowed me a couple of days a week - bearing in mind my other housekeeping tasks - so I decided to have another go at getting into solo RPG games.
I did buy a lovely looking game called 'LOVECRAFTESQUE' which initially seemed right up my street, but this turned out - I think - to be a *little* too ambitious for the complete beginner to solo RPGing. So I stepped back a bit and decided to try out a simpler 'beginner friendly' alternative and found what I thought might be the idea game while trawling YouTube...
Getting Down To Business
Always the great procrastinator - as well as someone who is easily distracted and then goes off on a tangent - I *really* had to force myself to sit down an STUDY how to play one of these pen & dice games...
Typically, once I actually plonked myself down and started trying out the game I chose - LITTLE TOWN - I really started to enjoy the imaginative and creative level of play that was involved!
I had a bit of a false start where - typically for me - I got a bit too ambitious in the how I approached this new hobby, and went far too over the top. My first test game - which I titled 'The Silence of Azure Gorge' ended up with me writing so much background material for the adventure that I more or less composed a short story with all the plot lines worked out prior to rolling so much a a single die!!! 😖
To give you an idea of how carried away I got with my first go at Little Town, here's a 'little' introductory synopsis I wrote to help me frame the mystery of 'Azure Gorge' that I started developing...
The Silence of Azure Gorge
In the remote town of Azure Gorge, nestled among the red rocks of the Sonoran Desert, Sheriff Elena Martinez discovers a young boy wandering at the eastern edge of town one dawn
. The child is injured, suffering from amnesia, and bears a strange symbol drawn on his palm that matches ancient markings in the nearby cliff dwellings. With no reports of missing children and the nearest town sixty miles away across treacherous terrain, his appearance presents a disturbing mystery in a community where the wealthy farming families, local Navajo, and seasonal migrant workers maintain an uneasy coexistence.
As Elena investigates, she uncovers connections between the boy's appearance and troubling reports of disappearances among the migrant worker population—cases dismissed by authorities but which left behind disturbing inconsistencies.
The boy's drawings of coyotes, caves, and terrified figures point to locations on the vast Weston farm property, leading Elena to confront the powerful family's ruthless practices, explore sealed chambers within ancient cliff dwellings against the warnings of a respected Navajo elder, and protect the vulnerable migrant community whose fear has kept them silent about ongoing abuses.
What begins as a search for a lost boy's identity transforms into an excavation of Azure Gorge's darkest secrets, revealing an underground spring with remarkable properties hidden deep within the caves—a natural treasure the ancient cliff dwellers sealed away and that the Weston family has rediscovered and killed to protect.
The boy, Miguel Vasquez, son of a disappeared worker, has formed a connection with an ancient guardian spirit taking the form of Coyote, a trickster entity that seeks to restore balance to a land where cycles of exploitation have persisted for centuries, setting the stage for a reckoning that will forever change this desert community built on silence and injustice.
A bit too much information, eh? 😄 (And this was only some of the stuff I spent time writing, including research note on the geography and economy of the town and region, plus information on the folklore and mythology of the Arizona desert and it's inhabitants!!!)
...And so, last Sunday (my allotted 'RPG day') I decided to have a second bash at Little Town, but this time I controlled my tendency to get *overly creative* before getting the basic game mechanics worked out! And it kinda worked!
I not only managed to actually play through some of the initial game generating - in a new adventure which I called 'The Mystery of Bear Cave' - but completed my very first 'scene' successfully (though - obviously - there were a couple of predictable beginner's mistakes)
Important note: LMAO... I just watched back through this video and realised that I didn't mention one of the most important initial rolls you do - the 'case' roll, which described the central incident which sparks the mystery! Du-Oh! 🙄 ...My case was that 'someone had been kidnapped'. And from the other information I decided that that person would be Darren's younger sister. Ooops! Still learning. Hee hee.
Overall, I was very pleased with myself and am now keen to proceed, though what I might do is return to my first attempt and try and play through that so that I have not wasted all the background research that I did for that.
In the end, this is another example of where one of the best ways to learn something new is just to do it! 😏
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