Long Story Arcs in Solo Roleplay (Shadowdark Solo Pt. 4)

And a first look at a simple solo hexcrawling tool from my notebook

Jan 19, 2024

Aiwar is having a rough time of it in the fog-shrouded city of Ygg.

(Can anyone read my handwriting? Is showing my notebook pages an annoying way of doing this? Should I keep posting them for you? Please let me know in the comments!)

After a short stint as a criminal, then trying to redeem himself on a dungeoncrawl for a brotherhood of holy warriors, he decides to take his redemption arc further by righting some wrongs…and holy shit, does it ever go “wronger.”

All of this started with a weird roll on the Shadowdark carousal tables - an excellent example of how any little thing can turn into a story arc.

In the beginning of this game, after returning from a rather heroic stint, I decided to mine a little extra XP with the Shadowdark carousing rules. Immediately, my character was doing some jail time over a simple arson charge.

I leaned into this, because I found it interesting - and this one little table entry colored the rest of my sessions so far, leading the character from being just some numbers on paper to emerging as a conflicted, and seemingly deeply troubled individual.

The arson seemed like something very out of character for him at first, and then I thought - maybe the story as its coming to me up to this point has been “unreliable narration?” I don’t know anything about Aiwar’s background - who is he? As it seems to be turning out, he is someone dangerous, and perhaps unstable…

Next, Aiwar kills a member of the city watch…at this point I’m really interested in his extremely conflicted nature of wanting to be seen as a hero but acting like a sociopath a lot of the time, and it's starting to get baked into his character.

I begin to see him essentially as a cruel and selfish opportunist who thinks of himself (or wants other people to think of him) as a hero in his own story. He is impulsive, violent, and may have the blood of an ancient race of evil interdimensional elves running through his blood.

This next development came about as a product of sketching I was doing (included in the spreads below), and realizing his face was similar to the elf on the worldbuilding page, and I decided to go with it - he looks like them, because he has the blood of ancient human lineage showing through, and the ancients had the blood of the elves still heavily present.

All this begins to explain why the world of Tarvannion is fallen from its former magnificence.

Aaaaanyways, he runs from the watch, sleeps in an alley and decides to leave the city for now.

Then things get dark again as he’s on the road and starving, and meets some farmers. Things get even rougher.

At the end of this session, he has done what so many disenfranchised runaways have done in poor times and bad luck - joined the carnival.

The point is: when playing solo, it’s very important to go with your gut and see where it leads. Whatever feels fun and excites you to keep throwing the bones and seeing where the story goes is the real juice here…I’d love to hear about some of your weirder or more random rolls or impulses that took you somewhere fun.

I’m also taking the opportunity here to show a little of what I’m working on for a small zine (probably the next issue of Black March), which is a small, contained system of fast-flowing nested d6 tables to run a hexcrawl with. It’s currently called…Hexcrawl. (I was tired.)

I hope you enjoy this latest update on Aiwar’s conflicted life, and the art and custom block stamps I’ve been doing lately, too.

Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed it, or do me a favor and share with anyone you think might!

PS, thanks for 500+ subscribers, a major landmark - if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see me write about or draw about, drop a comment.