There is an interesting product on DriveThruRPG called simply SOLO. The way that this product works is that it takes as many variables as you think of and turns it into a black box and spits out the end result of the entire action, right down to character deaths.
Once it has produced a result, you then have to rationalise how you ended up at that position.
The difference between this approach to more traditional oracle based solo is that you are not interrupting your play with dice rolling. Solo playing Traveller/Traveller can be a lot of rolling skills, rolling oracles, and rolling for opponents actions. That can add up to a lot of rolling of dice and very little role -playing.
I can see how the author [Paul Elliott] feels about the slew of dice rolls.
What I am trying to work on is player facing solo rules. The difference between most solo oracle systems is that they presume that the solo player has some experience as a GM. All GMs need to be comfortable with spontaneous improvisation, when the characters go off-piste.
Read Down for how to get a discount on my take on solo playing Cepheus System/Traveller
The barrier to entry is a pity. Once of the great attractions to solo play is for players that cannot find a GM that runs anything other than 5e.
So, I am trying to make my supplements more player friendly. I am trying to do this by not assuming that the reader and player has any experience in adventure building, hoping from character to character as GMs do with all the NPCs and even creating locations and settings on the fly.
This is harder than it sounds. It is stopping and thinking, what do I actually have to spell out to get to this point.
Hero Kids for Grown Ups
The first set of rules I did using this player facing approach was a Hero Kids Compatible solo set. This was not aimed at kids. It was built for adults that want to use Hero Kids as a rules light d6 system. It is a cool tool for that purpose. I did not write it to be used by children unsupported.
Cepheus/Traveller will be the second set to use this approach.
The main feature is to cast the adventure into the 5-Room Dungeon structure. I can explain how these work and the purpose of each stage. Over the top of that I am layering a question structure, asking the player questions about what can their character see, hear, feel. What does the location look like, where does it connect to, and that sort of thing. By explicitly asking these questions I want to push the player into thinking about the world around their character.
What I am not abandoning is my approach of wrapping the solo rules around the original game rules. I want to keep that unified feel.
You will get to see more of this over the next week.