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The Lone Toad - Ribbiting Adventures Issue 5

Welcome to Ribbiting Adventures Issue 5!

You’ve been reading, watching or listening to all these solo RPG actual plays and been thinking - ‘Hey I reckon I could do that!’

Well, the deep dark truth is…

Yes, you can! You can make a solo RPG Actual Play that is interesting, engaging and that people love to read. In this newsletter, I’ve compiled some tips and tricks from my favourite Solo Actual play creators, and lessons from my own experience writing over 100 solo AP posts over a couple of years.

Want to see the Solo Actual Play creators I enjoy? Check out this post below:

Now let’s get stuck into some Actual Play tips. These tips are great for Solo Actual Play and are also great for anyone wanting to work on any creative activity.

Follow these tips and you’ll roll a 20 on your Actual Play! (Not a guarantee) - Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

Pick a Good Platform for Publishing

This is where I made some fundamental mistakes, so don’t make the same mistakes I did! I didn’t do much research on publishing actual plays, but just jumped into it. Originally I started a substack (that eventually transitioned to the Lone Toad, so any of those original actual play subscribers that still read this, you are awesome!), then I started a blog using a terrible platform (Blogger - it’s old, not well supported and a bit ugly, but free and connected to google).

I don’t know much about podcasting and I suspect the only real option for actual video plays is YouTube and maybe Twitch. Either way, you’ll want a platform that allows subscribing. Subscribing is so powerful, as it actively pushes your work to people who have elected to see it. Without that, you are out there every week/month trying to get those people to remember your actual play.

For written Actual Plays, Substack is a good option (I don’t get paid by Substack. I wish). It not only has subscriptions, but it also allows discovery (it shows your newsletter to others who may be interested) and has a powerful recommendation tool where other writers can drive traffic to you.

Launching your Solo Actual Play And Maintaining Motivation

Alright, so you’ve decided to throw your hat into the ring, you’ve found a platform and are ready to publish an Actual Play. Seems scary. Well, you shouldn’t be intimidated. Instead, plan things out and you’ll nail that launch.

Here is Steve Morrison of Errant Adventures talking about preparing for launch.

My best tip comes in two parts: 1) make sure to create a backlog of material before you start releasing and 2) create a production schedule that keeps the project moving forward without stressing you out. For instance, I usually give myself one production day a week that is set aside for writing because I need that focused creative time. I can record and edit in fits and starts, but writing a script for an episode takes dedicated time. When I miss those writing days, the whole production gets slowed down and my motivation lessens. So, figure out what part of the process keeps you motivated and protect that time! Go forth and create!

Eric Dill of The Dragon’s Den offers similar advice.

My recommendation is to hold off on posting any content until you’ve created at least four fully written entries before posting the first one. This gives you a whole 3-4 weeks to continue making new content without the stress—which, for me, is the death of motivation—of a rapidly approaching deadline.

Picking the Right Tools to Play With

Your Solo Actual Play will hopefully be going on for quite a while, there may be dozens of NPCs, several factions, many locations, and a character or two to keep track of. Maintaining good organisation will be essential to crafting your actual play, ensuring threads are maintained and there aren’t any major plot holes.

Here is Eric from The Dragon’s Den talking about tools to use for playing Ironsworn-based games.

The majority of my solo APs have been played and written using the Ironsworn RPG system; either with the original Ironsworn or with Starforged. When playing those APs, I’ve consistently used NBoughton’s Iron Journal and Stargazer web apps (you can “install” them to your phone/desktop, but clearing your browser history will delete any content you’ve put in the app).. They come complete with a text editor, all of the moves and oracles, as well as an in-app dice roller specially set up for Ironsworn’s action and challenge dice. For anyone looking to play Ironsworn/Starforged, whether for fun or for writing APs, I can’t recommend this set of web apps enough.

Whereas Steve Morrison loves to use Roll 20.

The tool I most often use when creating my actual play is actually Roll20. This might seem silly since I’m working in an audio medium and don’t really have a need for a grid and map space, but I use Roll20 for the character sheets. Roll20 has fillable character sheets for a lot of different RPGs. For my Traveller AP, I have a game setup in Roll20 with character sheets for each of my PCs as well as for their ship. This makes it easier for me to track progress, skill levels, and other details without having to worry about trying to maintain form-filled pdf character sheets!

Write Firster of Playing With Myself prefers to use tools that let him play and write on the go.

Any digital cloud way of tracking/journaling, whether that be Google docs, Google Keep, etc. I used Notion to track my first Starforged campaign. It's super helpful to be able to use any device at hand to update and play for a few minutes when I find some time.

I once completed an entire Thousand-Year-Old Vampire playthrough in Google Keep, playing on my phone. Be able to access the pdfs, dice roller, and my own tracking app, (I typically use Google Docs now), I can play pretty much anywhere when I have spare time. I find the act of getting all the physical materials together before playing to be a real hindrance, so the faster I can access my stuff and get playing, the more likely I'm going to actually play. I know many players prefer the physical aspect of journaling but for me, digitally just makes everything easier.

SGH of the amazing Play to Find Out actual play likes to use Miro for his play-throughs:

The tool I use most often is Miro, which I also use as a brainstorming and presentation tool for my professional work. When I'm playing through a session, I write out 'beats' on Miro notecards, and stack them up in one column, and then when the rules trigger, I record the roll and its context in a second column alongside the events. I find that this allows me to increase or decrease the amount of detail I'm putting into a scene while I'm playing it so that I can keep up my pace. Sometimes, I'll write my beats very broadly -- i.e., "Aldo and Rian sneak into the Billhook's headquarters, using their underground maps and passkeys to bypass the security." and then a Prowl roll in the mechanics column. Then, when I'm writing the post for my Substack, I flesh it out with descriptive detail. Other times, when I'm on a roll, I'll write the prose exactly as I intend to publish it as I'm playing through the scene, and other times I add a lot of detail to one card and then very little the next. It's a very flexible system that allows me to keep up my creative momentum even if I don't have the headspace to fully flesh out the prose as I'm playing.

When I was writing and publishing actual plays I played purely digitally in Notion also. I found it a lot easier to write (I type faster than I write), to edit and eventually publish if it was all online.

Use the tools that work best for you but maybe clean up your pencil shavings? Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Story Telling Techniques

Whatever the medium you pick, RPG you use, and the world you play in, there are some storytelling techniques that can go a long way to keeping people coming back for more.

Tavon of Thunderfang suggests you plan out your solo story so you end up with a coherent narrative at the end.

When I sit down to begin preparing for a solo game, I have to think of something towards the end. I have to plan out a big bad, or an answer to a burning question my character will have. This helps me contextualize my oracle rolls and push me in at least one direction, as opposed to floating aimlessly. This is not to say that the thing I planned out has to actually happen that way; a lot of times, what happens during play will end up changing my plans in some way. The goal is to just have something to aim for, which helps push me along.

Eynowd, who is currently writing an actual play in the Electric State world, reminds us that actual plays need to be entertaining.

It needs to be entertaining so that you hook people into your story and make them want to come back next time to see what happens to your characters. This means you need to write it in at least a semi-prose kind of way, including dialogue, and descriptions of what the characters do, see, hear, feel, and so on. It doesn't have to be perfectly novelised, but it needs to more than just dot points summarising the scene.

But he also suggests that you are making an ‘actual play’ and you can’t forget that.

It also needs to be informative , so that people can see how you worked the mechanics behind the scenes: either your main game system, or the solo engine that you're using. People often look to AP threads to try to understand what a new gaming system is all about, and the more you can educate them about the underlying mechanical processes you're using, the more they're going to learn. When you're writing the mechanics side of thing, it's good to style it in a visually different way to the main text of the thread, so that people can easily see which is story and which is game mechanics.

SGH suggestion always focus on the conversation of the game if you are ever stuck.

For Solo APs, the 'conversation' becomes the text you're writing for yourself or your readers, that's the thing that matters the most. Whenever you get stuck, and are unsure what should happen, don't go to the rules of the game -- go to the conversation, and what would make for an interesting, compelling, flavorful, and dramatically uncertain outcome. And then figure out how the rules support that outcome.

Protecting Your Motivation

Creating an actual play can be a rewarding experience. It is an outlet for creative energies and a place to show off your writing, storytelling, voice acting, miniature creation, whatever! But, it can also be draining. There will be weeks you are sick, busy with work (or kids, or family or whatever) and stressed out.

Steve tells us that motivation is the most important part of creating an actual play and something that you need to guard like your dragon and motivation is your horde.

Whether you’re writing or recording a solo AP, there’s plenty of prep time and post-production work to be done. So, one of the most important things you can do is protect your motivation. When you’re making a solo AP, you often don’t have friends or partners to help keep you motivated, so it’s really important that you find ways to maintain your own motivation.

Eric recommends not leaving your actual play writing and production to the last minute.

My biggest issue with any kind of creative endeavor is motivation loss. I’ve learned that trying to play the upcoming post in the week leading up to release is a recipe for disaster, at least for me.

I’ve added this generic ‘motivation’ picture because I believe in you! Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

And there you go. A ton of tricks and tips that can be used to create your own Actual Play today. And if this inspires you to create an actual play, be sure to drop a line at The Lone Toad once it launches so I can help spread the word!

Next Month - Creating Amazing NPCs in your Solo game

Want to level up the NPCs in your solo RPG campaigns? Next month I’ll have several tips for how to make NPCs memorable and impactful! Until then, enjoy your solo adventures.