SoloAi Third Edition

Also known as "ESL-Anon Guide to Solo RPG with Novelai 3: A New Hope

Introduction

Hey you! Yes, you! Do you want to play rpg, but have no one to play with you? Do you want to write a story, but have no inspiration on how to continue it? Do you want to play a really long text adventure, but struggle with a beakless AI that can't keep your story coherent? Then, my partner, you have come to the right guide!
In this guide, I will show you how to take advantage of both the textual and technological worlds to have the best Solo Rpg experience available on the market!

This is an updated version of the last two SoloAI guides, hopefully the last one, updated to take into account the last AI technologies in the market, but focused on Novelai and Koboldai. Chatgpt? What's that? We don't use that sort of thing here, sorry.

What is Solo RPG?

From the /srpgg/ FAQ: Solo role playing is a form of role playing where you play completely by yourself as both the player and to a certain extent the GM. Many solo RPG systems use oracles, which are tables of words and ideas, to answer questions and give inspiration to the solo player so that they can focus on playing instead of being the GM.

With SoloAI, you mix the traditional way of playing solo rpg and automate its most tedious parts with Novelai or Koboldai.

Requirements

Before you begin, you will need some "ingredients".

Novelai/KoboldAI

Of course, you won't be able to use AI in your solo rpg without having an AI. You need, most importantly, an AI focused mainly on story writting that has the feature to add lorebooks/world info and configure them, and also some sort of Instruct feature. If you want a easy-to-use interface, and are not afraid to pay a few bucks, you can choose Novelai - the latest AI, Kayra, is simply amazing for what we are about to do now.

If you're a bit more tech savy, and want to spend less money, check KoboldAi. It's a bit harder to set up, and the interface is quite clunky, but if it works for you, great!

Mythic GME 2E

You will need a good GM Emulator to continue this guide. The most famous and recommended would be Mythic GME 2E, but if you prefer, you can use any other you like, or even just ask directly your AI with Instruct. Take a read of the Mythic manual to learn how the GM emulator works. It is quite simple, and shouldn't take too much of your time.

You may ask, where's the Solo Roleplaying Toolkits section? Well, it's github page is down, but Tana Pigeon, Mythic GME's creator, launched her own android app that works quite well. Give it a try!

RPG System

Choose an rpg system that you are familiar with to use in your adventures. I recommend that you choose a system that is simple enough so you don't break your immersion by looking for rules in books, but at the same time has a strong focus on storytelling over realism.

More Optional Things

Obisidian
Obisidian is something like a text editor with a lot of features that works with markdown. It can receive various plug ins, such as dice rolling or character sheet creation, which makes it an excellent tool for keeping notes on your solo games.
Read more about it here: https://obsidian.md
And how to use it for rpg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLMcRiacY3g

Instant Game
Do you want to play some setting, but are not sure which one? Ah, you already know the setting, but don't know which plot you will play? Novelai, with any scenario and plot generator, is your solution! But if you want to try the more traditional way, you can go for the Instant Games alternative! This manual contains tables for automatically generating scenarios, stories, and even characters. It is extremely useful to start your adventures if you don't know where to go.
https://www.nerdprideradio.com/Content/Downloads/InstantGame.pdf

How to Play

Step 1- Preparations

Once you have all the necessary material, you have a little bit of work ahead of you.
First, it is highly recommended that you have written down in Lorebook any relevant information from the scenario you will play in. I recommend that you choose or create a small scenario so as not to overburden yourself in this part, or even choose an already created scenario that you know well.
Second, you will need to create a sheet for your character if you have chosen to play with an rpg system. Even if you do not use an rpg system, you will still have to write down in Memory or an entry in Lorebook the most relevant information about your character. Focus more on his story and what he is capable of doing. Also write down the most relevant part of the plot so far and the mission you are on.

Third, if you are playing in a already established setting, create in your Characters and Threads list (as explained in the Mythic manual) and maybe, a special Character and Thread that takes you to another list, this one containing important characters and plothooks from the setting you are playing in.

Step 2 - The First Scene

First, you need to start the first scene, according to the Mythic rules. Once you have decided how your adventure will start, you need to create this new first scene in your story. Be careful to establish your main character and the tone of the story.

You can do this in a couple of ways

1- Write it down yourself, in a narrative way, like writing a book. It requires certain writing skills, because after that, the AI will probably follow the same writing style as yourself, so if you have poor writing skills (like myself), it will write poorly back to you. I suppose this shouldn't be a problem if quality doesn't bothers you. Personally, it bothers me, but if you want to go more simplistic style, your choice.

2- Use the instruct features to guide the AI on how do you want it to begin, literally asking it to "write the beginning of a history where X happens in Y way" and editing what you don't like. You don't even need to do this part on Novelai/Koboldai, you can ask ChatGpt to do it for you if you really need it. The important thing is to have the jumping start ready so you can play.

Once you have your first scene established, and your character is set to start your adventure, you are ready to begin your story.

Step 3 - Play It

This time, we will play Solo AI differently from the previous editions. We will no longer use the AI as a simple inspiration tool, but as our ghost writer.

Simply, play your game as you would normally. Ask the questions you would ask to your oracles, roll what you want to roll to your rpg systems, but every time you need write down what happens, instead, use instruct in the AI interface you picked, and ask the AI to write and describe what happened.

This way, you will have the AI transcribing the outcomes of the oracles + the RPG system, more or less, in a narrative way, creating, for all intents and purposes, a book based on what happened in your game.

You can decide how much you want to depend on the AI to decide what happens on your story, and how much you want to depend on the oracle, on the rpg system, or on your own interpretations, etc. With Novelai's Kayra, for example, I like to let it go wild with descriptions, dialogues and creating characters, so I end up just using the oracle to steer the wheel a bit.

Tip: When using Instruct in Novelai, I recommend either writing the instruct one paragraph before the last output of the AI, or make your command very specific that you are requesting the AI to write what will happen next, or there is a chance that it will consider the instruction as something that has already happened, and move on from there, giving you a bad result.

Step 4 - Other Uses

Here some few tips on how to use Novelai/Koboldai to their full capabilities on your Solo games.

Pocket Notes

You may have noticed the absence of the Pocket Notes section here. The fact is that with Instruct, it has become deprecated. In Novelai, however, all Pocket Notes commands are, in a way, integrated into the AI dataset itself, with different levels of success, so if you want to continue using the old format, feel free, it still works.

New Scenes - Novelai

When creating New Scenes, on Novelai, use the following

***
[Scene: (Describe what is supposed to happen in the scene); Location: (Describe where the scene will happen)]

With this, the AI will create a small time-skip directly to the scene that you want to create without you having to write it yourself or think to much about it.

This is really useful with the way Mythic works with scenes. You can even add activated random events to that template or even which characters/objects you want to have in the scene, and the AI will try to add them eventually in the story!

The Oracle

As mentioned above, you can, instead of using an oracle like Mythic, ask the AI directly and get answers about elements of your story. The upside of this is that it will take into account the context of your story, although it may be less interesting and surprising in the long run.

Another way to use the AI as an oracle is to replace Mythic's complex question tables, i.e. for those questions that don't fit into yes/no questions, such as questions about the appearance of places/characters/objects or general actions.

The way to use this is simple, just use instruct by asking the AI directly as if it were a chat. It will answer in natural language, using the context of the story as a source. However, remember to delete this answer before continuing to write your adventure.

Opinions

In the last issue, we recommended using Hypebot to generate ideas of what you can create next. With the arrival of Instruct in both Novelai and Koboldai, this is no longer necessary. You can do a lot more now with instruct.

You can ask the AI for its opinion on your actions in the story, or on what has happened so far. You can ask for recommendations on what your character would do next based on their personality. You can ask for a brainstorming of possible paths to choose. There's a infinity of things to do with it now!

Actual Play

Book 1 - The Epic of Sigurd

Sigurd

Conclusion

If you think there is anything to be changed, added, or removed in this text, please let me know. Oh, and if you want tips involving Solo RPG in concrete, you can always visit the /SRPGG/ thread at /tg/.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of stories you'll have using this.

Have fun!

Edit
Pub: 09 Aug 2023 03:07 UTC
Edit: 22 Sep 2023 15:53 UTC
Views: 2193