Couple. This is a funny writing prompt, but every solo player is more than capable of taking a completely unrelated keyword and making something out of it.
One latest fad, and I go through many fads in my playing is body hopping.
Body hopping is when you put your regular character aside, just for a scene or maybe slightly longer, and play an alternative character for a bit.
I want to show you just a couple of examples (did you see what I did there?).
Couple 1
You start of playing a Space Marine, you play through the briefing for your mission into bug controlled territory. You kit up and ship out, marching into the open belly of a dropship. You now jump into the body of the pilot of the dropship and, genuinely roleplaying it, using oracles as randomisers as the pilot avoids incoming fire, deploying surface to ground missiles, chaff and ECM as you go, getting updates over comms about a swarm of flying bugs zeroing in on your location. When you are over the drop zone, there is a sergeant yelling “Go! Go! Go!” as you each throw yourself out of the back of the ship and HALO down towards the bug caves far below…
Couple 2
You are in a tavern and you reach to your belt to take out a few coins and you find it gone. You have been the victim of a cutpurse. You think where and when did that happen? The last time you spent any money was buying rations in the market. An oracle roll confirms that you were robbed shortly afterwards. But what would life be like for a cut purse in this town? You jump into the body of that young cutpurse who cannot believe their luck as the purse of gold they picked up today. You follow them through the town and discover that they are unlicensed and avoid the guild. It is in a garret just back from the docks where they meet their fence, leaving that appartement a dark figure detaches it self from the shadows and slips a knife between your ribs…
What I am not talking about is trying to solo play an entire party. I play just one person, in their own story, but I do take a moment to play someone else in the world. In the right game, in the right setting, it can feel like something halfway between Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Frank Millar’s Sin City. It is a moment in a non-linear story.
I first used this is the Dark Streets & Darker Secrets solo rules Dark Stalker but I started doing it with Ashen Stars, although it didn’t make the book. In the upcoming Eldritch Tales solo book it gets a bigger role again.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Is this hopping from character a good thing? I think it is if you are genuinely interested in the other character, hopping for the sake of hopping is just going to slow your game down and possibly break your creative flow. Doing it when you are genuinely interested should enrich your gaming experience.
Not that I am biased or anything, but it is also something that we, as soloists, can do that a regular group would struggle with. We, or course, are awesome.