Solo GURPS: Agor Widepalm, Session #1

Solo GURPS: Agor Widepalm, Session #1

I bet that many of you have heard about solo roleplaying, but not many have tried that. The most well known "GM emulator/oracle" probably is Mythic GM Emulator, but there are many others, such as the Adventure Crafter. They all have their upsides and downsides, so it's up to you to decide which one to use. It's your game after all. Here, I am going to use MGME with one of its modifications - Variations 2, and maybe use additional toolkits. Hopefully, this will show people what this entire thing looks like.

Session #1 - link.

Setting

I am going to use a setting of my own - Karilan. It is a fairly generic D&D/PF-like fantasy kitchen sink setting - just how I like things. I let the dice determine what character I am going to play (at least the place of birth and race), and then determine the other details with Central Casting: Heroes of Legend.

The game is going to take place in Kes, a kingdom of humans and dream dwarves that is experiencing some border tensions with the kingdom of New Aventus and some internal trouble with the spread of an exotic drug - pleasant sleep, that causes ecstatic dreams, but is addictive and has a chance of producing a maddening nightmare instead.

Character

Agor Widepalm is 81 years old (quite young for a dream dwarf). He was born in the town of Gravolm in Kes, into a middle class family with one older sibling and two younger ones. His father is a slaver. Thanks to the mercantile father, Agor learned Aventian and Kerin - two major non-dwarven languages in Kes. His mother is a military veteran, now working as a chef for a noble human household. She is very proud of her military past of a medium infantrywoman, displaying her old, tarnished helmet in the common room.

When Agor was 16 years old, an old military friend of his mother came for a visit, staying at their household for a few months. Being an experienced warrior, he told Agor many stories of valor and adventure. This made the young dream dwarf become enamored with adventurous tales, but Agor was too young to do such deeds by himself at that time. In addition, this experience taught Agor to be respectful of older people. Later, he would ask his mother to teach him some basic combat skills.

When Agor was 20 years old, he tried pleasant sleep for the firs time. While his parents successfully managed to stop him from taking more, the addiction to ecstatic dreams still settled in, and even many years later Agor feels the need for this substance despite it sometimes causing him to be scared of going to sleep due to the nightmares it occasionally induces. He also became miserly, because saving money for another dose of the drug was a problem.

When adolescent Agor was 54 years old, he got to know Sib Graygulf, a dwarven mechanic who was an expert on various contraptions, from traps to automata. Agor learned some of this art from Sib, but clockwork devices were far from commonplace in the town, so this skill was mostly useless to him. His parents disapproved this endeavor of learning a useless skill. Agor still was a burden financially, unable to earn money by himself.

Several years later, when Agor was 67 years old, Sib Graygulf decided to take him to a religious service of Oracle, the deity he worshiped. While Agor did not share Oracle's values and dogma, he still became interested by the deity's teaching due to Oracle's patronage of artificers and mechanics. Agor studied some holy texts, but did not become any more involved with this religion.

The result is the following character sheet: GCS, PDF. It's outside my zone of comfort to play a drug addict with a bad temper, but why not try?

SESSION #1

I don't have a starting scene setup, so let us roll a random event to have something to start with.

Event Focus: Introduce a new NPC

Event Meaning (Action): Communicate Evil

Scene 1

Setup: While Agor is walking outside, he is approached by a strange man who offers him money in exchange for a task - removing the lock from an unholy-looking tome.

CF: 4

Character List: Agor Widepalm, Sib Graygulf, unknown man.

Thread List: N/A.

Chaos Roll: Normal Scene.

[Let's immediately roll a description of the man, using the descriptor table. I got Cautiously Average.]

While Agor was going about his own business on the streets of Gravolm, he noticed a hooded figure following him. He waited for a moment when there wasn't that many people around, then confronted the figure. The hood was not concealing the man's face completely, but Agor found the stranger's face quite nondescript, just an average human male. If a town guard asked Agor to describe this person, he wouldn't be able to do it (he probably has the Forgettable Face perk).

"Why are you following me?" - Agor asked, turning around to face the man.

"To offer you a deal, I've heard about your skills," - the man replied, revealing a black tome locked by a brass mechanism. The tome's cover bore no title, but had a vile looking ornament of runes and bones.

[Roll for Curiosity. Result is 10, so Agor will resist inquiring about the contents]

Agor did not really care about how the man found him and how he knows about his interest in locks and gears, but he could use some money, especially considering his addiction.

"How much do you offer?" - Agor asked the important question

Fate Question: Will he pay a lot?

Modifiers: None.

Fate Check Result: No.

"Fifteen silver pieces," - the man replies. This is $150 in GURPS currency, enough to interest Agor.

"Deal," - Agor says, taking the tome. "How do I find you and when?"

Detail Check Table Result: Disfavors PC.

Meaning Table (Action): Inquire Inside.

"You will find that out when you open the book," - the man smiles creepily, then leaves, blending in with the crowd. That surely will make things complicated for Agor. Agor thought about immediately going to Sib Graygulf and asking for his help, but decided against that. The reward is not big enough to share. Agor went home, to inspect the locking mechanism in a calm setting with his tools.

Chaos Factor: The scene wasn't really in Agor's control. We will bump up the Chaos Factor to 5.

Scene 2

Setup: Agor went home to inspect the book and its locking mechanism.

CF: 5

Character List: Agor Widepalm, Sib Graygulf, unknown man.

Thread List: Deal with the book.

Chaos Roll: Altered Scene.

Change of plans. Before starting to work on the book, Agor decided to indulge in his addiction. He takes a dose of this herb ($5 = 0.5% of starting Wealth). After a long fit of pleasant, dreamy visions, Agor comes back to his senses, ready to work (but I will assign a -1 penalty here). First, Agor decides to check the locking mechanism for traps.

[Roll against Traps-10 due to the penalty. Result is an 8].

Fate Question: Is the lock trapped though?

Modifiers: Likely (+2).

Fate Check Result: Yes.

Ther lock is indeed trapped. First, Agor will try to disarm the trap.

[Again, a roll against Traps-10 due to the penalty. Result is a 10].

Luckily, Agor managed to disarm the trap even when his hands were shaky after the euphoria. Now, it's time to tackle the lock itself.

[Roll against Lockpicking-12 due to the penalty. Result is an 8]

Easy task! The locking mechanism clicks, and Agor opens the book, interested more in finding out how to find the employer than in the book's contents.

Detail Check Table Result: Focus Thread.

Meaning Table (Action): Recruit Evil.

In the tome Agor sees pages upon pages of arcane formulae that are incomprehensible to him. However, the text on the first page detailed in layman terms a ritual to summon some unholy entity. Agor understood that he has signed a deal with, perhaps, a literal demon or a similar being, not with a normal person. That was either an accident, or he was carefully chosen.

[Roll against Curiosity. Result is a 13].

Innate curiosity took over common sense. Agor had to see if the ritual works! He decided to perform the actions next evening outside the town. Who knows what this ritual could cause, so it's better to do it far from home (and from sight of others).

Chaos Factor: The scene was in Agor's control. We will decrease the Chaos Factor to 4.

Scene 3

Setup: Agor went to the outskirts of the town to perform the ritual.

CF: 4

Character List: Agor Widepalm, Sib Graygulf, unknown man.

Thread List: Deal with the book.

Chaos Roll: Normal Scene.

[First, let's make a Nightmares (12) roll. Result is an 8, and that means that Agor did not suffer from nightmares that night.]

Agor Widepalm goes to the outskirts of the town and enters the wilderness - a sparsely forested hill. Nobody should see him there, and no wild beasts should come this close to the settlement. Opening the unholy tome, he begins the ritual.

[I will treat it as an IQ-4 roll. There are Religious Ritual and Ritual Magic skills, but none of them allow for a default. Let's say that the book allows for something like a default roll. Agor's IQ is 11, so the roll is against 7. The roll results in a 12.]

Of course, Agor fails to perform the summoning ritual properly, but probably does not even realize that.

Fate Question: Does something happen even with the botched ritual?

Modifiers: Likely (+2).

Fate Check Result: Yes.

[I will roll an event to see what happens.]

Event Focus: Move away from a thread.

Event Meaning (Action): Punish Weather.

A lightning strikes the tome, causing Agor to drop it. The pages upon which the ritual was described were now burned clean. Agor still remembered some parts of the ritual, but the exact routine was now lost to him. When he looked up into the sky, he saw that the sky was clear - the lightning clearly wasn't a natural occurence. How does Agor find the person who promised him $150? He had no idea, but he probably could find this book a different use.

Agor thought about keeping the book to himself, but since he botched the ritual and almost got struck by lightning, he decided to find somebody to sell it to. A sage or a wizard, somebody like that. He tried to remember anyone in Gravolm who fits that criteria.

[Roll against Area Knowledge-12. The roll results in a 5.]

Yes! Agor knew just the person to sell this book to.

Detail Check Table Result: Favors NPC (Sib Graygulf).

Meaning Table (Description): Awkwardly Healthy.

Meaning Table (Action): Politely Abandoned.

That person is Nurataer Thunderchest, a dream dwarf who studied at the Academy of Arcane Arts in New Aventus, but was expelled after something he did (he doesn't tell many people about that). This socially awkward, but physically very tough wizard probably would be interested in this arcane tome, despite its seemingly unholy nature. He is a friend of Sib Graygulf, so it should be easy to find him.

Chaos Factor: The scene was not in Agor's control. We will increase the Chaos Factor to 5.

Scene 4

Setup: Agor goes to Nurataer's house.

CF: 5

Character List: Agor Widepalm, Sib Graygulf, Nurataer Thunderchest, unknown man.

Thread List: Deal with the book.

Chaos Roll: Normal Scene.

I'll leave that for the next "session".