Arion Solo Checklists

"Familiarity with the worlds, the stable of merchant ships and the NPCs that are being created begins to create a setting with an increasing level of depth. To skip out to the adjacent subsector does tend to spoil the effect, and to be honest you gain nothing new except the chore of starting the work of fleshing out planets and people all over again." - Paul Elliot, Solo

I thought it might be helpful, or at least interesting, for some of you to take a peek behind the GM's screen for the Arioniad, and see a consolidated version of how I'm currently running the game.

Product Set

First, the product set I'm using. RPGs as a hobby are half a century old now; in the early days, games had a lot of holes, and a lot of the fun for the GM was making stuff up to fill them in; but by this stage, any decent set of rules covers almost everything you might want to begin with, and if there are things missing, somebody somewhere has likely already written something you can just pick up and use.

• The basic rules engine is Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, my current favourite RPG. This generally works well, but does not include a setting, nor is it designed for solo play, nor does it include anything but the most basic rules for random encounters and events. So we need a few extra items.
• The setting is the Official Traveller Universe, Charted Space. I expected to use a lot of the background material, but it turns out I can do what I want just with the maps and world profiles, easily available online at the Traveller Map. At the moment the action is in the Jewell Subsector of the Spinward Marches.
• Zozer Games' Solo is a supplement for Cepheus Engine (cough Traveller cough) which adds solitaire campaign rules, generating random events and encounters which gradually form emergent plotlines. It actually works with any SF RPG so long as you have starport types and law levels for worlds, and some idea of what tasks the PCs are good at.
• Veiled Fury Entertainment's Trader Voyages, a supplement which adds simple, straightforward and setting-agnostic rules for trade to Savage Worlds. I've been using this as Charted Space relies heavily on trade to drive play forward in the stereotypical campaign, but Savage Worlds really doesn't have any rules for it, and Traveller's rules are too much like my old day job to be fun for me these days.
• One Page Mythic for when none of the above has an obvious solution for my current problem, whatever it is.
• Moon Toad's Quick Ship Files for the Gagarin class scoutship. These aren't strictly necessary but it helps me to have a clear picture of what Arion's ship is like.

Gameplay Loops

Next, the core gameplay loops themselves, of which there are two; one for time spent on-planet, and another for travelling between planets. Normally I alternate between the two, a week on-planet and a week travelling, but sometimes the story suggests a different pattern, most often several weeks in a row on a single world. These loops are modified versions of the checklists from page 53 of Solo.

On-Planet

• Roll for Starport Encounter on arrival.
• Roll for World Encounter, then Patrons, Enemies, or Colourful Locals as directed.
• Draw cards/roll for cargo.
• Roll for Starport Encounter departing.

In Transit

• Roll for Ship Encounter departing.
• Roll for Onboard Event.
• Spirit roll for everyone aboard; failure invokes their biggest Hindrance somehow.
• Roll for Ship Encounter arriving.

In both cases, I have a tendency to juggle the game chronology a little to tell the most interesting story; often, events make more sense if you swap a couple of them around, and the complication associated with a cargo might logically become apparent right away, in transit, or at the next port of call.

Key Lessons for Solo Play

Keep written records of what you decide and what happens; this is one reason I blog about my solo games. No do-overs, which actually helps you as much as it hinders, since mistakes in applying the rules are to your benefit as much as not.

Don't be any harder on your solo PCs than you would be on anyone else's as the GM. There's a temptation to treat yourself much more harshly than you would treat anyone else in the name of "fairness", but trust me on this one, nobody cares except you.

Don't roll dice if the answer is already obvious; save them for when you're uncertain. (Come to think of it, this applies to group games as well.)

Don't force it. One of the big benefits of solo play is that if you need to take a minute, or a week, to think about what's happening, you can. There is nobody else waiting on you.

For Further Study

Changing things up is the main way I keep my solo campaigns fresh and interesting, and messing about with the rules is how I most often do that, with setting changes a close second. At the moment there are three things on my mind...

First, is Savage Worlds too complex for solo play? Would it be more fun to use a simpler system, and if so, which one? To be reviewed at the end of 2025, I decided early on that 2025 was going to be the year of Savage Worlds and I'll stick to that for the time being.

Second, how much of the current product set can I replace with the Mythic Game Master Emulator, and would the first edition of that be adequate? I'll experiment with that over the coming months.

Finally, is Jewell Subsector the best setting for this campaign? Would I be better off moving into the Trojan Reach (where my current group game is set) or Foreven Sector (which has a lot less baggage)? Experience teaches that the settings I choose are the biggest and most frequent source of my regrets about my solo games, so this is definitely a case of measure twice, cut once.

And that's before we even think about changing genre; dungeon crawling is always calling seductively from the wings.

Stay tuned for more shenanigans.