I’ve recently discovered that there is a moderately large community of people who play roleplaying games completely alone. This allows someone to be both the GM (somewhat) and the player at the same time. By using a system called an Oracle, one can still be surprised at what is comes up during play without anyone to specifically to guide the plot. This idea was mind blowing to me and I just have to try it.

The plan is to create a character to play on my new setting of Meera. This will allow me to do a couple things. First, it will allow me to create a country or three organically using some of my other tools, such as Aria Worlds from the bottom up (not the top down if I’m not running a group of characters). Second, it will allow me to playtest some of the ideas I have to see if they make any sense from a player perspective. Third, I think it will be fun.

For the Oracle system, I’ve decided after much research to use a system call Mythic. It seems both straightforward and robust, which is just what I was looking for. For the roleplaying system, I’m planning to use Pathfinder 2e (revised), which is the system I’ll be running Meera in. And one of the things they suggest is writing the results of the game, which I plan to do here.

So there are some questions you may have about what I’m doing and why. First, and most obvious is why not just turn this idea into another novel or series of novels? While I obviously think that a roleplaying world can make a good setting for a novel, I don’t think a roleplaying game makes for a good novel’s plot. A great novel has structure, subtexts, subplots, and characterization. A great roleplaying game will have random encounters, side quests, and characterization. That lack of structure would end up making the novel feel like a rambling mess. But as a game (and a blog), that structure isn’t a problem, it’s the point.

Second, why do you need another writing project? Why don’t you just focus on putting out your novels? I don’t need another project, but I feel that I have too many characters running around in my head to not have a different one. I want to do this.

Another reason is that I really hope to drive some traffic to my books through my web site. In order to do that, I need to drive traffic. Consistently posting something people read may get some people to buy those books, which will fund me writing more books. Overall, it’s a win-win. You get more content, for free, and I get advertising.

I’m looking forward to seeing people’s reaction to the story. Let me know what you think.