I have done a lot of fantasy gaming recently, where my real spiritual home is in science fiction.
I could do the solo rules for Coriolis. It would scratch that sci fi itch, and the game mechanics would be pretty simple to brush up, but that would be too easy.
Another longer term project is to write for PonyFinder, for David Silver. I am nibbling away at those rules in the background, but that is more fantasy.
I have been a long term advocate for Gumshoe and I bought Ashen Stars (pictured) at Christmas. I have my own personal solo rules for Gumshoe. What I am very tempted to do is dust them off, play a bit of Ashen Stars and weave the setting into the rules.
Pelgrane Press are a forward thinking publisher and they have made it easy for fan based publications. There is a Gumshoe Community Content Programme and Ashen Stars is one of a handful of permitted titles, along with Esoterrorists, Fear Itself and Timewatch.
Gumshoe, in general is perfectly formed for solo play. You don’t need to know who ‘did’ the deed in an investigation. You can determine that when you have all the clues. The oracle is your friend. All you need to do is come up with intriguing mysteries to investigate.
Even as I am writing this, I think I have decided to read the Ashen Stars setting book and see if this is the healthy dose of science fiction that I am looking for. It will make a pleasant change to play something that is so light on the dice for a change.
I’m intrigued. I have quite a few Pelgrane titles (including Ashen Stars) but I’ve never really read far enough into any of them to know much about Gumshoe. I think I picked most of them up as part of a Bundle of Holding deal a while back. The one I’ve been dying to try out is Night’s Black Agents. I love the idea of playing as Jason Bourne trying to take down the shadowy cabals running the world behind the scenes, only those shadowy cabals happen to be vampires.
Ashen Stars is written like a movie script for Fire Fly.
It is very solo friendly. You build your character from a pool of points either before play or as and when needed.