In this video I give a whirlwind demo of using my condensed player emulator. You can find the rules in the Mothership solo rules “Lone Star”.
I see no distinction between a virtual player and the character the virtual player is playing.
The first step is to create a personality for each player character. This requires rolling 5d10. You read the results off of the Personality Tables. Record the Personality with its number such as in this case it was Driven (8). Build the results into a coherent personality, and describe them in a paragraph of text. You will need to refresh yourself of their personalities each session.
Do this for each player character.
During play, at the top of each scene, you roll 1d10 for each player on the Behaviour Table. If you roll above their personality number, such as Driven (8) you move your result down by one. If you roll below their personality number you add one to the result. This means that their behaviour is always biased towards their most dominant personality trait.
In our example any roll of 7, 8, or 9 would all be read as an 8.
You look at the final result on the behaviour table and it should emphasis some element of their personality. You now use this to describe their behaviour in this scene.
Player Emulation
I did not create player emulation. I found the Player Emulator with Tags [PET] very complicated, unnecessarily complicated. This was my attempt to strip it down to just the parts I needed.
I think it works well in games where a party is a thrown together group of individual. A ship’s crew could be such a group or a bunch of adventurers that meet in a tavern. At the moment I am playing Ghost Ops and the team is supposed to be an elite unit of hand picked specialist. Randomly rolled personalities and behaviours do not sit well with me in this situation.
It is a useful tool to have in your toolbox.