The oracle I am using
Life has overwhelmed me at the moment so I don’t have a solo play post today. I have some scheduled time off coming up so I will have one next week. Instead today I will just bring you up to speed on the oracle I have been using to solo play.
I am using a combination of Matt Jackson’s Red, White, & Blue Oracle with a bit of the Recluse Oracle mixed in. Finally I have a dash of Ray Otus’ Oracle as well. This is a work in progress and I am refining it as I go.
I am using one red, one white, and one blue die. If blue is high the answer is yes, if red the answer is no. White is always rolled but only counted if one or the other is more likely, so if yes is more likely I’ll use the higher result of either the blue or the white die. This is all straight from Matt Jackson.
Doubles on the two dice you are comparing means you are not asking the correct question, some presupposition behind the question is wrong. If both of the dice you are comparing are 3 or lower (on d6) add “but” to the answer and if both are 4 or higher (on d6) add “and” to the answer. This is borrowed from the Recluse Oracle.
Finally we need to determine if events or interrupts happen. Ray Otus’ Oracle has tables for these, I have been playing with making an event table which would advance a story or plot thread and an interrupt table for unexpected things but at the moment I’m just making both up off the top of my head when the rolls come up. What rolls you ask? If you get doubles using the discarded third die and either of the other two dice resolve the question as normal but it also causes an event to happen. This is when thread or plot line advances. Ray has this happen if all three dice are odd numbers and that also works, it just depends on how often you want events to trigger. The other way to adjust how often things happen is to increase the die size, if you go from using six sided dice to eight or ten sided dice you will get doubles or triples less often although I think the chances of getting all odd numbers remains the same.
Speaking of triples I am doing what I call an interrupt if all three dice come up with the same number. The difference between what I am calling an event and an interrupt is that the interrupt is a totally random thing such as the bank across the street being robbed. The interrupt isn’t directly related to any current story thread or plot line.
I like the idea of having a table or chart for events, such as the one Ray Otus has in his oracle, but I also like the ideal of not needing any charts to play. So far in my personal solo games I haven’t had too much trouble deciding how the plot advances but I think the randomness of a chart would remove a bit of control from my hands and that bit of randomness could definitely add to the game.
That is all I have this week. I highly recommend checking out the oracles I reference, all three are free or pay what you want. Until next week be excellent to each other!
Matt Jackson’s Red, White, & Blue Oracle https://youtu.be/qRGEoRFx9iw?si=TM4swnMKaWDZh9XX
Recluse Oracle https://gravenutterance.com/2019/03/24/recluse-solo-engine/