GaME - Solitaire RPG Editor

This page contains a tutorial for GaME as well as a somewhat lengthy introduction. Both parts together should explain the (intended) usage of the editor and its components and the motives of approaching the problem that way (and not in one of the probably very many different approaches possible and thinkable).

Tutorial

What is it?

GaME is a text editor which supports game master emulation for a somewhat personal style of solitaire role-playing using a computer that runs some incarnation of Java 11+.

The software is modeled after some more or less unique kind of solitaire role-player (well, me) and might not make sense for most people reading this or having tried it, so I want to make it as clear as I can, what kind of play GaME is intended to support and what mental state led to its development. I will go through the bold terms of the above definition to explain my intentions and thereby hopefully the gestalt the software took.

I guess that everyone who might read this is aquainted with the fine art of Role-Playing. To make it short and subjective (there are literally hundreds of discussions on the internet about this topic, so DuckDuckGo it, if you mind): role-playing is a recreational activity where two (yes: there are beautiful role-playing games for two persons) or more players embody (ideally) interesting characters that create a common story with the help, guidance and wickedness of a special player, a game master. The game master controls the game world, provides information, creates complications and populates the path of the players with exciting non-player characters, riddles, combat and strange encounters which have to be overcome by the player characters in order to behead an evil dragon, become a pirate in a somewhat marginal sector of the galactic empire or start a worker's revolution in a ficticious Balkans state. Everything is possible. As for me, that is the true beauty of it.

Solitaire Role-Playing means that a single player creates the same story, non-player characters, riddles and other encounters that she experiences. This sounds suspiciously lame: How can you surprise yourself? Which kind of riddles do you invent that are fun to solve? This is where Game Master Emulation comes into play, a method to harness and expand, at the same time, the fantasy of the solitaire player for the sake of a good gaming session.

Game Master Emulation, as I understand it, is a toolbox of methods to facilitate and enhance the solitaire role-playing experience. I once stumbled upon the publication Guide to Play Alone by Kenny 'the Solo Roleplaying Sage' Norris (that is exactly, what the impressum says, see here). Besides other things, his advice was to make lists to startup your imagination and to first keep it simple and play something like Rats in the Basement. Exactly this topic led to a furious chase through an (not so randomly chosen) old Tuscan house towards a finale where I was confronted with rather frightful, definitely non-standard rats chasing me down the beautiful hills of the Casentino (no, there was no heroic conclusion to this game). I used a very simple D6-system and had more fun than I had ever imagined possible. An important part of what made it fun was Norris' recommendation of the Mythic Game Master Emulator (GME) by Tana Pigeon (the blue book). Mythic provides a framework for running solitaire role-playing games by

• providing a mechanism to initiate and update Threads
• providing methods for handling non-player Characters
• providing methods to create variableScenes
• providing a means to let a Scene's outcome influence the ongoing session via manipulation of a number called the Chaos Factor
• providing a method to determine facts of the situation around the player via the Fate Check (a method to determine the answer to Yes-No questions based on a combination of the probability of its answer, the Chaos Factor and a die roll)
• providing means to add rather random details when your imagination is jammed (like the Detail Check).

In the meantime, the toolbox around Mythic has grown even more (see Word Mill Games for more details). Just to be clear: I am aware that there are a number of publications about the matter of solitaire role-playing! I simply focus on Mythic because I started out with it and liked it from the beginning. Maybe you dare to try the search terms "solo roleplaying" on DriveThrough-RPG to get a glimpse at what else is out there for the lone adventurer.

GaME is intended to support a somewhat personal style of solitaire role-playing. During my later youth until maybe the mid 1990th I used to (among other things!) write short stories and play role-playing games. Sadly, both habits got lost along the way. A few years ago I first rediscovered role-playing but, for my taste, did not find enough opportunity to play. Then I discovered solitaire role-playing and gave it a try. From the beginning, solitaire role-playing for me was writing a story by means of an RPG-system and the GME. This is exactly the situation that GaME is intended to support: A player who plays by writing a story and expanding his experience with the help of an RPG-system of his choice and some mechanism to create the story, structure its development and become surprised by where it leads. Without being distracted by using a mouse or having to do paperwork besides what's on the screen.

So GaME supports game master emulation by implementing features from the Mythic (blue book) and one of its highly recommended successors, the Mythic Variations II'. Currently the features are:

• Support for Sessions and Scenes (including Random Events, Altered Scenes and Interrupt Scenes).
• Support for the Chaos Factor and its bookkeeping.
• Support for Threads and Characters in a probably non-intuitive but hopefully understandable and helpful form.
• Some 'realtime' perspective on the session: The bookkeeping section always shows the state of the session at the current position of the cursor.
• Support for Fate Checks and Detail Checks.
• Some support for General Rolls to generically support a number of possible system-checks.

The implementation of GaME follows the logic of a text editor: You type up the progress of your story, engage in scenes and dialogs and as soon as you reach some GME-point, you call up the functionality you need: You interact with a small dialog to determine the details, hit OK and the editor renders the result as highlighted unmodifiable text at your current position in the session document. I really like to see the interaction of my story with the GME-mechanics and the influence that the employed RPG-system (at least in forms of die rolls) had on the outcome of my quest. Of course, everything can be changed later via a special command but no inserted GME/syste-unit gets lost accidentally by typical text input or deletion.

Finally, the name of the editor, GaME: This is a spur-of-the-moment solution when I had to find a name for the source code packages. It obviously epitomizes Game Master Emulator which might not be that original. But after using it for over a year, I got used to and will stick with it for now.