I have put this idea in many of my solo booklets. The core of the idea comes from theatre. “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”
We are not writing plays when we solo game, but the idea is useful. As we solo play, we are likely to create elements such as NPCs, places, clues, rumors, and so on. These can be suggested by Muse questions/answers/prompts, or from random tables of ideas.
Over several scenes, you can end up with ideas that were created, did not get used or explored in the game so far, and are just languishing in your game notes or lists. These ideas are Chekov’s rifles.
If you keep simple lists of all these different elements, and you have something that has been introduced in the game but not developed, you keep half an eye on whether it will fit the bill for when you are prompted to create yet another element in your game. Can you reuse what you already have rather than making up even more stuff? Can you tie new elements back to these existing elements? If you made up a rumor when you were talking to the server in the tavern, can this latest bit of game lore you need to create hark back to that rumor?
If there is a mysterious figure, could it be an NPC you have already created?
Reincorporating elements from earlier adventures into the current one serves several purposes.
It can make the world feel more real. Not everything is used once and discarded; by bringing elements back, you are suggesting that they have a permanence beyond what your hero is doing right now.
If you have put mental effort into creating these elements, it makes more sense to reuse what you already have rather than expend even more energy creating a new version and trying to make it different from the one you already have.
A GM I play with has a habit of not describing elements that are not directly pertinent to the adventure. In our Traveller game, entire planets have all the distinguishing features of a bus stop. If they are somewhere we are simply passing through on our way to where we are supposed to be. But the planets we revisit are slowly becoming more fleshed out as we play more scenes there, and they get more of a spotlight. I learned from this, as I found it slightly disappointing to have so many bland worlds. When I write my Traveller/ Cepheus/ FTL adventures, I explicitly try to include cultural elements for every world, especially foods, and then use those foods in a scene. It is lore for the GM, but also a detail in a specific scene. For players, it’s often those silly little details that make a place memorable.
When I am solo playing, I often create entirely random clues for my investigations. It is often not possible to make every clue I have made fit the eventual solution. Some are simply red herrings, or things the character misinterpreted, but those odd clues could just as easily be clues to a mystery that has not yet been fully revealed. That is when they go from being a rifle on the stage to one that has been fired.
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