Statuo's Guide to Using AI to Play Tabletop RPG's Solo

TTRPG

Introduction

When I first started my AI journey over a year and a half ago, I had one goal in mind: Get killed by a yandere AI waifu. I failed spectacularly and now here I am trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered dreams. With my first objective failed, I had to find something new to occupy my failure-ridden brain.

At first I contented myself with creating various worlds through which I could adventure in and have some kind of cohesive narrative. So before it had any say in the matter: Adolion was born. It was after I had started adding more content to Adolion that I asked myself a question I hadn't considered before: How could I get the AI to be a Dungeon Master/Game Master (DM/GM) for a Tabletop RPG?

As a guy who is my groups Forever DM (A term used to describe someone who is always the DM/GM in their group and never a player) I had longed to be sitting on the other side of the table. To be a player for once and not know what was going to happen next. My story is like many other peoples stories. Whether it's because you're playing a system not many people know or because you simply don't have the available time to sit down and play in a consistently scheduled game, people turned to what is known as Solo Roleplaying.

If you've never heard of it, Solo Roleplaying is a method through which you play your favorite TTRPG alone. To do this, you occupy both the seat of the GM and the Player at the same time, creating the story as you go along. Now, AI wasn't my first foray into Solo Roleplaying. I've attempted this beforehand and failed spectacularly each time. My problem was a lack of engagement. I couldn't get into the stories, I didn't want to spend hours creating battlemaps and encounters. I just wanted to play Pathfinder 2e and sit on the side of the player for once.

So, one day in the Chub Discord I boldly declared that "The moment I figure out how to make the AI be a TTRPG GM for me is the day you all never see me again."

...

And here we are.

Now you may be saying to yourself "Wait, he figured it out?" incredulously as if I had somehow unlocked Pandora's box. The answer is: Kinda. But there is a lot of things I - by necessity - cannot cover. Solo Roleplaying is a large, expansive community and I simply don't have the character count in a Rentry to give you everything. So I'll link to resources and by the fucking gods read them. Consider getting some of the paid resources I'll mention like Mythic GME v2, go to the Solo Roleplaying Subreddit and read up. My goal here is to (hopefully) get you through your first solo roleplaying session using AI.

Going forward, I'm going to be making some assumptions about, the player:

  • You are familiar with at least ONE TTRPG and can feasibly be the Gamemaster for a table of players. Rules familiarity is a must for this. While you don't have to be a straight-up font of knowledge for this, you do have to either be able to make a call on a rule in the moment or know where to find the rule in your Sourcebook of choice. If you've played a few games of your game of choice you're already qualified for this.
  • You enjoy writing or roleplaying.
  • You have some familiarity with LLM's (Large Language Models) and can access one reliably, preferably one that is uncensored. Censored LLM's tend to be dumber, will shirk away from violence, and will bring your game to a grinding halt. This includes models like ChatGPT/Claude/Gemma and as such they are unsuitable for our purposes in this guide.

You should also be aware of the following, however:

  • I am not going to teach you a system here. While my main focus will be on Pathfinder 2nd Edition because that's the game I know, you should expect to know your own system well enough to: Create characters, make rule callings, and know basic rules of your system. Not knowing the system you are playing is one of the biggest roadblocks to getting started in Solo TTRPG's. If I were to ask you what your move speed was in DnD 5e for example, you should know where on your sheet that is and how far that means you could move on the game board.
  • You will have to do some reading and chances are your first attempt at a solo TTRPG will fail. In fact, it's quite possible your second and third attempts will fail as well. This is actually pretty common in the community, with the number one reason being burnout or lack of interest. TTRPG's are a social experience for most people and the idea that you should

Getting Started - Expectations

The Getting Started section is meant to prepare you with the knowledge you'll need to set up your first Solo Roleplaying session, including tools, expectations and more. The good news is that while this section is pretty big, it's a one-time read. Once you go through it once you never have to do it again technically.

So before we actually get into the how-to, an important part of Solo Roleplaying is understanding expectations. Otherwise you'll come out feeling disappointed and frustrated because it's not exactly what you expected to happen.

You Can:

  • Play any RPG you want.
  • Use AI to roleplay party members and NPCs.
  • Use AI to be a Co-GM.

You Cannot:

  • Use AI to generate dungeons, monsters, monster groups, random encounters. At least not in any balanced way.
  • Use AI to be the "Full GM."

Let's dive into that in a bit more detail. So Solo Roleplaying has been around for longer than AI. In fact, many early editions of Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) came with solo rules to allow players to play the game that way. Games like Pathfinder and DnD have their roots in Wargaming, which is where you forgo the narrative and pit two forces against one another. So stripping out the narrative elements and simply playing as two sides in conflict is surprisingly easy, barely an inconvenience.

Now, Tabletop Gaming has evolved since then. In example, Warhammer tabletop has forces fight for objectives to represent a single battle in a large, ongoing war in example. DnD now includes more roleplaying elements to encourage players to get attached to the characters they create where before it was expected that you would lose characters frequently.

So I want you to view your TTRPG game as a war game with a narrative structure around it. Why? This is because whenever you are solo roleplaying you are going to occupy the GM Chair and the Player Chair at the same time. So if your question up to this point is "Can I get the AI to tell me the Rook moves to D4 and uses its multi-attack to eviscerate my poor wizard?" The answer is no. It's going to still be up to you to determine that, yeah, the Rook wants to eviscerate the wizard because the wizard keeps casting fireball and that makes sense for that character to try and stab the wizard.

However, this doesn't mean that you are taking the full burden of the GM. In the above example, we have a Rook and a Wizard (your PC). It's a fairly generic example, but let's add some more narrative to it. Your Wizard has just infiltrated a keep to expose Rook's corruption and embezzlement. Unfortunately, Rook has managed to catch you in the act and is now set on killing you to keep his secret from getting out. Specifically, there are documents in his desk that could lead to his arrest.

Now, you might say that in this case that Rook will still try to kill your Wizard. Maybe, but isn't it also equally possible he'll grab the torch off a wall and burn the room down to destroy the evidence? If he does that, couldn't he try to just lock your wizard in the room rather than fight you directly?

"Does Rook try to destroy the evidence first?" Is a question that is worth answering in this context. We'll go over how you can answer this kind of question later, but this is the cornerstone of Solo Roleplaying: The Surprise. Sometimes situations will play out as you expect, sometimes they will not.

What this also means - unfortunately - is that you will have to do some of the work yourself. Monster statblocks, enemy encounters, battlemaps. These are all on you to prepare. While there may be an AI model in the future that can generate a perfectly valid statblock that is usable for your system and is balanced, that kind of AI doesn't exist at this point and models are (Still) horrible at Math. So, at best your AI LLM is going to be your Co-GM throughout this experience, helping provide narrative context and roleplaying while you handle the number crunching.

So it will ultimately be on you to arbitrate the game using your GM shoes. For some, there is freedom in this. You get to pick and choose what rules to follow, ignoring what what you don't. For others, there is bookkeeping.

Getting Started - What Game System Should You Play?

We've done some talking above about game systems. But there is a fundamental question we need to answer before we can continue. That is: What Game System Should I Play?

The answer is: Whatever system you know the best.

One of the great killers of solo roleplayers and group games is the need to look up rules. Imagine you're in the middle of a pulse-pounding escape scene. You've stolen a horse and are being pursued by the town guards as you try to frantically escape the city before it's locked down. Now, you could look up rules for animal riding. Does your character have the animal handling skill? Can they make the check? What even is the check to make? Is there a riding skill? Do you have to make this check multiple times?

All of these questions are going to bring your exciting chase scene back down to earth, forcing you to pop open your book and find the rule. This is why - for your first forays into Solo Roleplaying at least - you pick a system you know well enough that you can make on the fly decisions like this. In the above example, knowing off-hand that you just need to make an animal handling check of about DC 13 is enough to keep the action going and to know if you get thrown off your horse or not. Conversely, you could just make the call that you don't have to make the check because narratively it is more satisfying to have a cool chase scene than it is to get thrown off your horse three seconds into the chase. Both of these require some knowledge of the system to make that call.

So if DnD 5e is your system of choice? Have at it. Pathfinder? Cool. Monster of the Week? Let's roll. Rolemaster? You're smarter than I. The important thing is that you know this system well enough to be able to keep the game moving. You don't have to know the exact damage you'll take per feet you fall, but you should know that you need an athletics check to jump over the gap created by the fallen bridge.

Getting Started - Tools: The Oracle

Okay, so now that we know what system we're playing and what we can expect, we need to figure out what tool we're going to be using to help us answer questions. In Solo Roleplaying circles, this is known as an "Oracle." So why do we need an Oracle? Well circling back to my previous example in the introduction about facing off against Rook, we asked a question: Does Rook try to destroy the evidence first?

The Oracle provides us an answer to this question. There's a simple oracle on this site here that you can reference. But I'm going to copy-paste the Oracle from the above site so we can reference it for this section:

  1. No, and
  2. No
  3. No, but
  4. Yes, but
  5. Yes
  6. Yes, and

So in this case here, we roll a d6 after we ask our question: "Does Rook try to destroy the evidence first?"

Presuming that we got a 2. The answer is No, Rook instead tries to kill us first. For 5, Rook tries to use a torch to burn down his office so there is no evidence.

But what about the other options?

Let's say we got a 1. No, and. In this example we have to think about what it means narratively and it's okay to feel a bit stuck here. "No, and" is a modification of the improv technique known as "Yes, and." This technique asks you to figure out what comes next by first agreeing with the statement and then adding onto it.

For our example, "No, and" might mean that Rook doesn't burn down his evidence and he calls for guards or cronies to arrest you. This could lead into another question: "Does anyone come when Rook calls for them?"

"Yes, and" might be that Rook tries to burn down the office and shuts the door to lock you inside.

These are just examples, but they're why we need an Oracle. Because these questions are - at their core - what you would ask a GM at a table with other players.

So you'll need an Oracle. My personal recommendation is Mythic GME v2. It's a well-built system that requires a good read-through, but it has a lot of things to help you keep track of and answer questions, along with a good number of reference tables.

It's important to note that an Oracle only answers "Yes/No" questions. It cannot tell you how many enemies are in a room, your system of choice tells you that.

While you can technically use your AI LLM as an oracle, I don't really recommend overly relying on it. There are situations where it could be useful you should keep in mind that the AI LLM likely has a positivity bias that will influence its answers to almost always be Yes.

Getting Started - Where Are You Playing?

So let's talk about the next thing you'll need to figure out. "Where are you playing?" This question has a few things to consider. Some people prefer the pen and paper style where you have a battlemap that you can physically see and physical miniatures. Some people like VTT's for their ease of use. Some people can use a technique called "Theater of the Mind" to imagine the battlefield/scenario.

My recommendation is that you at least have some method to track your character sheets automatically, preferably with a built-in dice roller that does the number-crunching for you. This is more important for number-crunchy systems like DnD and Pathfinder where there's a lot of math in the moment-to-moment gameplay. For my use-case, this is a Foundry VTT server I set up. Since I'm playing Pathfinder, it's important for me to have a place where I can set up a battlemap, move pieces around that battlemap, and track character sheets. Free VTT options do exist such as Roll20 which can let you create a game and access it anywhere. You could also just keep a binder with character sheets in them for play.

Whatever you decide to go with is up to you, personally. But one thing you should keep in mind is that since we're going to be using AI here, you'll want space for whatever you're using to chat with AI. Whether that's a laptop or your phone, so long as you have space for it.

Getting Started - The AI LLM Itself

So let's answer this question now: What is the best LLM to use? Well, there is no strictly 'best' LLM to point to and say "Yes, this makes the perfect companion for Solo Roleplaying. However, there are a certain set of features we will need for a good experience:

  • At least 8k tokens worth of context
  • At least 512 tokens for the Lorebook.
  • A 12b model or greater.
  • A prompt preset for facilitating NPC interactions.

That's not to say you couldn't make things work with less than what I've pitched above. A good Mistral 7b model could absolutely work for our use case and 4k context size could also work. But in order to have things work with the least amount of friction as possible the above is what I recommend. 8k tokens of context gives you about 20 messages of chat context so you don't have to keep repeating yourself and having at least a 12b model gives you variety in your posts for things you might need such as magic, enemies, etc. There's no completely getting rid of LLMisms, but the larger the model the easier it is to ignore these kinds of things.

For my testing, I used a few Mistral Nemo models. Lyra V4 and Starcannon V2 specifically. I tried it with Mistral Small models but I think the current iteration (as of late 2024) is not exactly the gold standard for a mid-tier LLM. Not that you can't use Mistral Small models if you want, but I just found it easier to work with Mistral Nemo oddly enough.

For Prompt Presets you'll want to use the Odysseus Preset or the Aegis Preset. The reason we're using these presets is that they're designed for facilitating NPC interactions and adding more to the story.

In my Discord I have a prompt set called "Wildcaller" which is what I'm currently using and what I recommend. But really anything you know won't shirk away at acting as NPC's is going to be your best bet.

In addition, if you haven't read through my bot-chatting tips guide, you really should read through it now. I'll be referencing a lot of the techniques mentioned there.

Finally, where you are chatting is also important. What you'll need is a frontend that can handle Group Chats, Lorebooks, and Authors Note/Chat Memory at the least. As of time of writing, I only know of two frontends that can achieve this: SillyTavern and Chub.ai. It's possible that there are others out there (or that sites will later update to include these features), but I don't know of them.

Getting Started - Additional Tools

You may also want to consider having generators. UNE (Universal NPC Emulator) can help you come with NPCs. This source from RPGBot can help you create random dungeons. You can even run premade adventures like Curse of Strahd or Wrath of the Righteous if you don't want to do the work on things like NPCs or dungeons yourself.

You'll probably want whatever you need for your system of choice. Whether that's a deck of cards ala Savage Worlds or dice to roll. You can probably find plenty of tools or apps to simulate this for you easily.

Getting Started - Final Notes

I'm not going to go into how to set up X system like Foundry, or how to sign in to Roll20. Most sites have guides of their own you can use or reference to get started, so you'll have to do some work on your own end to figure out how to make your system of choice work where you want it to work. It also technically isn't relevant to the guide at large, since this guide is about using AI to play your favorite TTRPG solo, I can't cover literally decades worth of content in the space realistically.

So, consider this a jumping off point. I'll get you started and - being realistic - you'll probably fail your first few times trying. Don't let that discourage you though. This is a journey and no one ever finished a journey on the first step. What I'm describing in this guide is how I personally managed to finally enjoy Solo Roleplaying using a decently complex system.

It is fine to get stuck for a while on a question of what comes next. Even the best Solo Roleplayers out there that publish videos such as Me, Myself, and Die admit that they'll do a lot of editing and retakes in order to make their videos as good as possible. There is going to be downtime like in a real game where you just need a moment to figure out the next step. Don't be discouraged when it happens, this is your story and you can take as long as you need.

The Glossary

Throughout this guide, I'm going to reference a lot of terms you may be unfamiliar with. So in an attempt to make sure you know what I'm talking about, I'm going to explain them here. I highly recommend you read through this at least once, but if you want to skip down to the First Solo Roleplaying Session part, you can do so by clicking this link.

Oracle

An Oracle is a simple dice table we reference when we need to ask a question. The Oracle is what makes solo roleplaying possible to an extent, because without it you would never be surprised by the roleplay. By rolling dice and asking the Oracle questions, we can inject not only randomness into a scene, but also take some of the "GMing" weight off of our shoulders.

Scene

A Scene is a section of a story. For our purposes, a scene crucially has a beginning and an end. In example, the opening of Star Wars: A New Hope features a small rebel ship being pursued by a Star Destroyer. The engine is then destroyed allowing the Star Destroyer to attempt boarding the smaller vessel. A firefight breaks out and it seems like the rebels might have a chance until Darth Vader arrives. Princess Leah records a message for Obi-Wan Kenobi and sends the droids off in an escape pod. We can split this opening sequence into smaller scenes.

  • Scene 1: Opens with: A rebel ship is being pursued by a Star Destroyer. The Scene ends when the engines are destroyed and the ship is caught in a gravity field, pulling it into the Star Destroyer's landing bay.
  • Scene 2: Opens with: The rebels get into formation at the door leading into the rebel ship, anticipating being boarded. The Scene ends with: A firefight that culminates in Darth Vader's arrival, at which point he massacres the rebels.
  • Scene 3: Opens with: Princess Leah recording her message for help. The Scene ends with: Princess Leah being captured but the droids escape with Princess Leah's message.

Now I'm sure some film buffs are screaming at their screen right now saying I've gotten this completely wrong, but this is right specifically for our solo roleplaying sessions.

Your First Solo Roleplaying Session

Hey, you didn't skip the part above did you? Nah, go back up and read. Even if you think it's fluff I need you to understand where I'm coming from.

Welcome back. So let's get started.

First off, make sure you have the following:

  • Your System of Choice, one that you know well.
  • Your Oracle, even if it's the one I provided above
  • An AI LLM and frontend that meets the qualifications listed above.
  • A place to play (a VTT, a space on your desk, etc.)
  • Something to keep track of your notes. Though theoretically this could be your Chat itself, you should still endeavor to keep track of story beats somewhere, such as in the Authors Notes.

Once you have these, we can move on to:

Setting Up Your Character

Alright, so your character in this is going to be very important no matter how you choose to play. This is for a few reasons, but the main reason is that the more your care about your character and are invested in their story, the less likely you are to drop out. So let's discuss how to make an interesting character for you to play as.

At a baseline, your character needs to have:

  • A Background
  • Character Threads
  • Goals
  • A reason to not walk away at the first sign of danger (unless your TTRPG is about running away from danger, I guess.)
  • A Character Sheet for the system of your choice
  • A token for the VTT or a miniature

Thankfully, the same tips that are good for botmaking also apply here to creating your own character. Let's discuss Baldur's Gate 3 a bit. Spoilers for the first ten minutes of the game, I guess.

In Baldur's Gate 3 you create a character that has been captured by an Illithid species and implanted with a mind worm that will eventually turn your character into a Mind Flayer. This is pretty bad, it means the death of your character and the birth of a monster that will wreak havoc on the world. This satisfies two of our requirements: Goals. Our goal is to get this damn worm out of our skull before it turns us into a mind flayer, we can't walk away because the alternative is death.

Using this as a baseline, we need to also think about our background. Not spoiling Baldur's Gate 3 anymore, let's take a generic DnD 5e background: Farmer.

Our character was a farmer, someone who worked to grow food in the farmlands outside of Baldur's Gate. We lived under constant threat of attack and eventually fled, at which point we were captured by the Illithids.

Now, we need the last checkbox on our list: Character Threads

A Character Thread is a part of your character's background that you can draw on to add random events and tie events in a story back to your character in some way. Our background is mainly where we will get character threads from, but we can also get it from the main story of the game we're playing. For now, let's expand on our characters Farmer background a bit: Why did we flee? What were we under attack from?

Well, for this character our sister was going to get married to her sweetheart when the local lord's son came and demanded 'Right of the First Night'. Now, we weren't about to let this lord have his way with our sister. So as they went into the room we tried to intimidate the Lords Son into leaving, but an accidental trip killed the Lords Son and now we're under suspicion for his death. We fled at the urging of our family, who knew we'd be executed.

This now opens up Character Threads:

  • The Lord of our Village: Probably still pissed at us, someone had to have ratted us out.
  • Our Family: What happened to them? During the rush, we never considered what the Lord would do to our family.
  • Bounty Hunters: A bounty has probably been placed on our head.

We now have several threads to call on to use if we need random events to be pulled into our game. Our character is ready on a conceptual level. If you're struggling with your background, think of one of your favorite characters from media. Where did they come from? What hardships did they face? Many writers draw inspiration from other sources, so don't be afraid to do the same.

Setting up the AI Characters

Now that we've set up your character, we now need to set up the AI's characters. Now I can't cover every system, but you should at least have one or two other players with you at a table when you're playing a tactical game like DnD 5e/Pathfinder/Monster of the Week/etc.

So, for your game you will want Two characters to be played by the AI. These characters should ideally fill in blank spots left by your player character from earlier. I.e. If your character is a tank, you'll want a healer and vice versa.

So you'll need the following:

  • Character Cards for these two characters
  • Character Sheets for these two characters in the system of your choice
  • Tokens for the VTT of your choice or miniatures for them.

Pre-written character cards are your best bet. A lot of characters from my Adolion setting can be slapped into any generic fantasy setting without much issue.

Once you have these that's the majority of your legwork done and dusted.

Actually Using the Oracle

Okay, lets get into actually playing. For this exercise we're going to forgo the VTT for a moment and participate in a "Theater of the Mind" exercise because creating battlemaps/situations for a variety of things is going to give me an aneurysm.

One of the hardest things to do in any game is actually bloody starting it. So let's address how we're going to start this test game. For this exercise:

  • We are not following a prewritten module
  • We are anticipating fighting human enemies between levels -1 to 3 (Pathfinder 2e system levels, but we aren't playing PF2e for this exercise)
  • You are expecting to play a War campaign, suitable to be played by any race/class combination.

You may notice that the information I gave you above is exactly the kind of information a GM might give you if you were joining their game. Keep that in mind for later.

What I want you to do is just follow along and ask yourself some questions. Then practice using the Oracle we talked about above to answer these questions on your own.

You awake on the ground, the smell of blood and gunpowder is thick in the air as people scream around you. A tired looking priestess clutches a diamond that fades to dust in her hands. Before you can ask her any questions she gets up and moves to someone else lying on the ground nearby. A grizzled soldier wearing dented armor grabs you by your shoulder and hauls you to your feet. "Congratulations, you've just been drafted by Lord Tallan to fight in this siege until the money we wasted reviving you is repaid! Go to the armory and suit up!" He shoves you towards a nearly destroyed building nearby.

I'm going to lead you through the first question here: Can we talk to the soldier?

Let's say our oracle comes up yes. We talk to the soldier (using our AI Narrator) and he tells us that the siege has been going for three days now. As part of an intimidation tactic, the enemy army has started lobbing the bodies of civilians and soldiers into the city. Lord Tallan used his treasury vault to start reviving those people he threw to get more soldiers in his army - which is why you're alive.

Let's say no. Instead, we can presume that the soldier told us to shove off and pushed us back towards the armory.

You enter the armory where a variety of weapons and armor await. It's not the best gear, most of the armor isn't fitted and the weapons were clearly scrounged up from the battlefield. But it's all you've got right now. As you're gearing up you notice several other people nearby doing the same. It looks like you're not the only one who got drafted today. An elf nearby tests the string on a shortbow with a grimace while a dwarf bemoans how his hammer is meant for smithing - not war.

Do you have any questions on this? Try to put on your player cap for a second and think about what you might ask for. What do you think you'll need and might find in this armory?

Personally, I'd ask if there were any potions in the room. As an example, let's look at what the Oracle might look like if we rolled for that question.

No - Nothing
No, and - No and you're mocked by a soldier nearby who tells you that supplies are short.
Yes - There are a few healing potions, but you can probably only grab one or two.
Yes, and - Yes and there are some magical scrolls set aside for people to use.

Right as you finish getting ready, a soldier bearing a Lieutenant's insignia bursts through the door. Several wounded follow behind him, carried by his allies. "Listen up you lot. I'm going to be blunt, this city is falling and you're still in it. So unless you want to die here you're going to help us evacuate as many civilians as possible before those gates fall. To do that, I need a few of you to go to the nearby Church of Boher and find our Court Mage." He pauses before eyeing you, the elf, and the dwarf. "You three will do. Get moving!"

By now you probably already know the questions you might want to ask. So take a moment to think of those questions and roll on your oracle. Try to figure out what a response may look like. But also, don't forget you have your AI. Prompt the AI to respond to give you what happens. If we do that, we can actually forgo asking the Oracle at all.

I ask the Lieutenant if we can expect any enemies on our way to the Church or if the roads are mostly clear. What happened to the Court Mage that they're stuck in the Church?

It's moments like this that allow you to really flex the AI LLM to help you in establishing the world and dangers you might encounter - and you should do this. The more you rely on the LLM the less you personally have to come up with and that element of surprise can help keep the game from feeling like you're reading/writing a book.

As a general rule of thumb, you should use the Oracle when:

  • It's a yes/no question
  • That you feel you can improv on reliably.

You should use the AI as the Oracle when:

  • It's a broad question
  • That while you could improv on, it would be more fun to ask the LLM to build it for you.

Now that you have a more practical experience using the Oracle, lets move on.

Jumping in: One-Shot or Campaign?

For your first game I recommend running a One-shot game. This is important because a One-shot will allow you to finish up a game quickly, giving you a W, while also allowing you to identify the areas you find most/least fun about this experience.

A good one-shot game generally follows the following guidelines:

  • Explores a single location
  • Has one plot thread
  • 1-2 combat encounters
  • 1-2 social encounters
  • Wraps up nicely by the end of the session.

Now we can always just use a pre-written module, let's instead do a homebrew one.

So for our testing purposes what I'm going to go over how to properly define and start your One-Shot game.

Designing a One-Shot

Alright, for our One-Shot Game, we'll need some things. Your list may vary, but going off of if you're playing DnD 5e/Pathfinder you'll need:

  • An Antagonist
  • Mooks for that Antagonist
  • A Battlemap to fight on
  • A Story Hook
  • A Reward

That's all we need to get started.

Starting with our Antagonist, I feel like fighting Vampires today. I ask my LLM Narrator Card for a vampire name.

Clint

Let's go with Isolde Bloodmoon.

Since we're playing PF2e let's look up a statblock for vampires. Since my character is low level, this Dhampir Wizard works fine with just a small bit of tuning and the Elite modifier to make it a Level 3 monster. A suitable challenge for this one-shot.

For our antagonists mooks, we have some things to choose from: Wolves are a mainstay of vampire minions, we can also go with Skeletal Wolves. If we go with the regular wolves we'll want to apply the Weak modifier to them to drop them down to level 0 so they make suitable mooks than not-mooks.

For a battlemap I found this free map on Reddit which we can easily import to our VTT of choice. For battlemaps on VTT's, our best bet is anything gridless for the least amount of PITA possible.

For my reward, gold is the most obvious option. The Treasure By Level table in PF2E gives me an idea of how much gold I should get. So I decide arbitrarily that the quest will reward 80gp, enough for a few more items and consumables. But let's also throw in a +1 Longsword for my character to wield.

Using the information we've gathered so far let's craft our story hook.

The battlemap shows an abandoned village with mist rolling in. We know our antagonist and their minions, so let's work off of that.

The coastal settlement of Gloamwood hasn't sent its monthly supply of lumber to its neighboring town. As part of a request formally made to the Adventurer's Guild, I've been sent to find out what happened to the villagers and save them if possible. The only information we have is that a strange woman has been sighted walking among the buildings, flanked by wolves.

Easy. Now that we've crafted our One-Shot, let's determine one last thing before we can actually start playing.

... What kind of GM are you anyway?

This is an important question to ask yourself. There's a lot of GM's out there with a variety of styles. You may already have an idea of the kind of GM you are but you should honestly ask yourself if you'd want to play at your own table. I'm not knocking you as a GM when I say you should ask yourself this, I'm saying that your own GM style may be incompatible with you as a player.

So, decide beforehand what kind of GM you intend to be:

  • The Cutthroat Rules Lawyer: You get only what the GM gives you at any time and anything outside the rules is forbidden. No homebrew, no "Can I do X", if it's not in the rulebook it's not happening. In addition, the dice rolls are final. If you die, you fucking die and that's game over, see you next week. There is no such thing as pulling punches with this GM. This is great for people who want a 'pure' experience of their favorite game, or for people who don't trust themselves to not break their own game in half.
  • The Easy-Going GM: Homebrew is allowed and encouraged. If there's some crazy stuff you want to do chances are you'll be allowed to roll for it. This GM is more likely to fudge dice rolls - in favor of the players and the monsters - in order to keep the game interesting. With this kind of GM you can generally allow yourself some leeway (1 off the DC? Fuck it, you passed) in your game. The Easy-Going GM will let you fail, especially if the dice roll against you, but death is rare in the game and they want you to make it to the end. This is great for people who desire a power fantasy in their games, as this allows more victories while keeping the players engaged in the world around them.
  • The Power Fantasy: While the Easy-Going GM is more about everyone having fun, the Power Fantasy GM is here to watch you win all the time. If one door closes, another door will open to get you where you need to go. This is your max "Oh but I really want to make this DC" type of GM. If you're the kind of person who sets it so that you always win the DC rolls for speech checks in Baldur's Gate 3, this could very well be the GM you want.

Why would this matter, you may ask? Well there's a problem with exploring the map. that I'll get into later. But for now what you need to be concerned about is "How much are you willing to bend the rules when the map says there is a secret room?" Pathfinder handles secret rooms by rolling perception checks on the GM's side of the screen to see if a player notices something. But since we are also the GM, how willing are you to let go that you didn't find the Magical staff in the secret room, or the major story beat? Remember, you will know that the room is there and likely what is in it. This is the burden of being the GM and the Player. Whatever you pick, you can always change it later so don't be afraid to just pick something for now. This is a guideline for your future rule decisions and can be changed at will.

Let's Explore Gloamwood

Okay, now that we've got our game set up I'm going to lead you through how I would do a One-Shot TTRPG in PF2E using what we've built above.

I start by setting up my group chat with my characters. For this, I'll be playing:

  • Statuo (Ranger)
  • Alarise (Cleric of Boher)
  • Leila (Wizard)

I add in these characters to the group chat and add in the Adolion Storyteller.
GroupChat

Then I describe the scene from what we've decided earlier and ask the AI to generate the intro for our adventure:
TTRPGStart

From here we can get started. I can chat with Alarise or Leila about the quest if I want to, or I can describe myself going to investigate houses one by one. I don't know what exactly I'll find currently, only the information you see in the screenshot above. This intro might be a bit bland so what we need to do is consult our Oracle. What is a question you might ask yourself if you were a player who had been given this information?

For me, it's "is anyone alive in the houses?"

ST has a built in dice roller so I'll use that to keep things mostly visually consistent:
STYes

So I know I find someone. But who? Let's get the AI to do that for us.
OracleResult

So we've come across an old woman, but if I had worded my response differently there's an equal chance I'd have happened upon the vampire Isolde herself. For now, we've got an old woman here who is clearly terrified. This can be handled by our rules system because our next question is: "Can we calm down this woman enough to get her to tell us what happened?"

Using Alarise's Diplomacy skill, I set the DC at a reasonable rate for my level and succeed.
Alarise1 Alarise2

Now we have some more information. There's some kind of ritual going on which wasn't in our initial pitch. It sounds like Isolde is planning to sacrifice all of the villagers which means we might be able to save them if we're fast enough. Now we need to find this ritual site, wherever it might be. But we also have to deal with this terrified woman.

Now while I could continue going on for a moment, let's dive towards the next pillar of the game: Exploration.

Skipping ahead a bit, we've found the Witch's lair. It's in the middle of the forest and there's a stone altar decorated with eldritch symbols that the witch plans to sacrifice everyone on.

Part of exploration is the unexpected so let's ask some questions to figure out more about Vampire here.

We know that based on our statblock we chose for Isolde that she is a Wizard, so she can cast spells. Extrapolating based on that: It's likely that any traps will be arcane in nature.

Let's ask our Oracle again, are there any traps?

NoAnd

So, we got a "No, And" result here. In my mind this means one of two things:

  • No, and the Vampire is currently in the process of performing the ritual. If we don't act now, we might be too late.
  • No, and we are too late, several villagers have been killed for the purposes of the ritual: A monster is being summoned!
  • No, and the wolves are sleeping nearby offering us an opportunity to sneak in without being seen.

Flipping the script a bit, let's say I got a "Yes" here. This is where our GM pick from earlier comes into play. We roll against the standard perception check for this level and fail our rolls. However, Leila fails by 1 or 2. Does the GM let Leila see the trap before it's triggered, or do they let it go off? This is why we picked the GM style earlier because this informs the decision in this moment. I'm going to say I picked the cutthroat option, the trap triggers. However, I don't have a good idea for a trap right now so I'm going to ask the AI to figure this out for me:

TrapRune

In Game terms, the roots are Restraining me (preventing me from moving or acting unless I break free) and Damaging me (Probably about 1-2 HP per immediately and per round I'm restrained, since it's already restraining me). In addition, the Vampire has been alerted to my presence. I was honestly expecting a fireball trap or something so this was surprising.

The fight itself plays out basically normally as per traditional rules. For the guides sake, we'll say I won this fight and was able to free the prisoners.

Woo, one-shot over! Now I skipped over a lot here, like integrating the characters more. What happened to the woman? How did we find the ritual site? Etc. These are all questions you can ask yourself as you attempt to stop the vampire witch Isolde in Gloamwood.

Let's Talk...

Okay, there's more I want to say that may help you or not help you. Especially when it comes to longer games. So to start...

Lorebooks!

For long term games especially you'll want a lorebook keeping track of important locations and named NPCs. These are relatively easy to set up and should be set up similarly to how you would set up a normal bots lorebook entry. You can find the Lorebook creation part of my guide here. You should create a lorebook for any long term game you plan on having for sure. Speaking of...

Prompt the damn bot!

It may not feel natural to directly prompt the bot, but if we don't it does random things as is it's bot nature to do. Just prompt it off the bat and save yourself the trouble of fighting it for a response you like.

Long Term Games

Long term games are going to be rough. I highly recommend going through a few one-shot games before dedicating yourself to even a small adventure (Such as a Level 1-4 adventure). Only when you're ready should you tackle the campaign because it will take work and you will burn out easily if you haven't prepped.

That being said, for a Long term game you'll want a lorebook for your game so you can add in relevant information, authors notes to keep track of your games summary, and probably some notes. Long term games can go on for a long time so my advice is that you try to space out your games. Once or twice a week/biweekly is often enough for most players who play games and you should strive for that when playing as well. Setting a consistent day/time for you to play will help you avoid starting a game and never coming back to it.

In long term games you'll have more freedom to explore not only your characters backstories, but also our group companions backstories.

Pre-written Modules and Campaigns

Alright, so pre-written modules and the like come with the huge benefit that you don't need to prepare anything. Maps, encounters, etc. All you need to do is prep your characters and have them roll in to it. The downside then is that since the story is focused on a particular path it can be rough to have any leeway. What if the AI decides something different is happening?

In a Pre-written Game, you have to make sure the AI Co-GM doesn't veer off the rails. Use the prewritten scene settings to help guide the bot and make sure it stays on topic.

The biggest problem you'll run into with Pre-written games isn't the AI GM though. It's that you'll be reading ahead and spoiling yourself to what's in a room or who the villain is. So let's discuss real quick how to mitigate this as much as possible:

  • Start by only reading the current chapter synopsis. This gives you an overview to what will happen in the chapter so you have an idea of where the end point is and how you'll get there, but not what happens in the interim. In our example above with Gloamwood, we knew we'd fight a vampire i.e. but that didn't cheapen the method of getting there.
  • Use your Chosen GM style to help dictate what your character is aware of/able to react to when it comes to traps/secret rooms/etc. It's important to be consistent here, but be flexible if you feel it will be more fun.
  • Try not to rush through a chapter in one night. Split it up into sessions like you would a real game. Give yourself downtime to chat with your favorite bots.
  • Don't be afraid to swap out characters. If you're done with a character or want a different party member, swap them out.

Long RP Style vs Medium RP Style

When using chatbots for TTRPG's, there's obviously going to be a lot of writing for you. You'll have to get used to it. But what if you don't want to write all that much? Well, that's where these two styles come in.

The Long RP Style is taking everything to its extreme. Is there a dinner scene? You play it out in its entirety. If there's a fight? You fight it out in RP and in the game. Every action is detailed.

The Medium RP Style involves skipping over stuff. You don't need to RP out the fight because you just did the fight in the game portion. Gloss over the fight in the chat and move on.

The two styles can be used interchangeably technically, so try to find out which one suits you.

FAQ, Tips and Tricks

The Three Pillars of a DnD Game - Social, Exploration, Combat

While this is not applicable to every game at face value it is applicable to our purposes here. Maintaining a steady flow is important to keeping your game from dying out. So having a four long roleplay chat as you move from room to room in a dungeon is going to quickly kill all of your momentum and result in you quitting.

There are some things you can do to keep your flow going. Put on some headphones and play some playlists for downtime music during tabletop games. I can almost guarantee that no matter the genre you will find some playlist on youtube that goes for three hours that will have your specific genre in mind. Try to also make sure you're sitting down to play this particular TTRPG.

The Social Pillar

So my advice is that you use the chatbot for what it's meant for: the Social pillar. It's going to require you to play by ear a bit, but skip over lengths of the dungeon by handwaving it.

Stalking through the hallways, {{char}}, Leila, and Alarise make their way to the grand hallway where an ogre chants in a strange language...

In the above example, the Ogre is an NPC the players are expected to engage in diplomacy with. So that'd be a prime spot to bring out the AI Chatbots for the social pillar.

Keep your game moving and you'll have more success. A good Gamemaster knows not to linger too hard on something that is boring the party.

Notes About Sitting in the GM Chair

Earlier I noted that being a Solo Roleplayer means that you're playing as both the GM and the Player. So what does it mean to be occupying the GM chair? Well it means you're the arbitrator of the rules. You decide if the enemy hits, if your character is compliant with the rules, or if rocks fall and everyone dies.

You should follow the same kinds of rules you'd set for yourself if you were a GM at a table with other players. You should be fair, but focus on a fun narrative over the rules. Enemies and monsters should react as appropriate rather than what is convenient. After all, the Monsters Know What They're Doing. This doesn't mean you should take an adversarial approach to... well, yourself. A bad GM thinks the world should be realistic to the point of drowning out fun. A good GM knows when to ease off the gas.

Providing specific guidelines beyond that is hard because every table and player is different. What works for me may not be what you're looking for. But my advice is this: If you find that the rules are blocking your fun, then consider just fucking ignoring them.

But also, don't put yourself too far into the GM chair. You're not the only GM in this game, you have your Oracle to help out and you should make use of this Oracle frequently. If you answer too many questions yourself, then you're never going to be surprised in the game and that's going to affect your enjoyment.

But on another note, don't be afraid to say "This is where the story is going." Part of the GM role is to keep your players moving towards the next story beat. It can be fun to get sidetracked occasionally, but the world-ending Lich threat has to be dealt with and eventually the players need to start heading towards it.

Notes About Sitting in the Player Chair

Conversely, you're also the player. You'll have a character you are leading through the adventure and I want you to think for a moment about what it means to be a player. As a player, you never have the full picture of what is going on. It is by necessity that you ask the GM questions. "Can I approach the console?" "Do I see any traps?" "Can I try to persuade the Guard to let us through the gates?" These are all standard questions you'll see players asking throughout a typical play session and I want to stress that it is important that you ask these questions as if you're a player.

Part of the problem when I first started Solo Roleplaying was that I retained too many of my GM tendencies when I was playing. I knew where the story was going, if the room had monsters in it, and where the monsters were. Because I never asked questions I was never surprised. In essence, I was reading a book and rolling dice occasionally. But that's not what we're going for when we're solo roleplaying, we want to be surprised. We want to piece together that Rook is corrupt and if we don't deal with him, he's going to be the death of not only us but the city.

You should be careful though of asking too many questions. There's no hard and fast number for this, but as a rule of thumb, if you're asking three questions to the Oracle in a row you might have gone too far. Let's give an example. Let's say I'm a mercenary about to break into a room. Since I've previously established this is an enemy base the chances of enemies being inside are high. But I'll ask the Oracle anyway.

  • "Are there enemies in the room?" Yes
  • "Do they know I'm coming?" Yes
  • "Is there cover I can hide behind inside the room?" No

At this point I have enough information about the room to get going. I could keep asking questions though.

  • "Is there another entrance I can go through?"
  • "Is there a grenade lying around?"
  • "Can I convince them to surrender?"

But after a certain point we're asking too many questions and getting stuck on this room and a dungeon can have dozens of rooms to go through. As you might imagine, these many compounding questions can make a single room take forever and bring your game to a grinding halt. Ask enough questions to get a picture of the scene and then move forward.

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Pub: 19 Nov 2024 03:21 UTC
Edit: 19 Mar 2025 22:23 UTC
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