Good conflict is a driving force for a story. It is part of a GM's job to introduce such challenges to an adventuring party. But what do you do, when you are yourself the GM?

It is really hard to surprise yourself, when you know what is coming. This was the core of the Czege Principle, and it was believed that Solo playing is nothing more than a writing exercise and not fun. On top of that, you have to come up with everything yourself. Which sucks all the energy out of it, you get bored and stop playing before it even started.

But in recent years, solo game design has evolved. I often bring up Ironsworn as a prime example. Part of its success is probably, that it had a solid core game loop, that is always creating more conflict for you to explore, without having to prepare it all beforehand and still be surprising enough.

Core Game Loop

Every game has a set of actions that get repeated over and over - the Core Game Loop. It can range from very simple to very complicated. At it's heart you could summarize a core game loop as: Challenge, Solution, Reward.

A TTRPG is no different and you might already have encountered a game loop in it - Combat. But that is just a part of a bigger loop. You see, the core game loop can have multiple game loops.

In Solo RPGs we need some sort of framework, guidelines to tell us what we should do. It structures the question: What should we do next? It doesn't remove all the heavy lifting, but should give you pointers.

This is were the S.C.A.R. framework comes in.

S.C.A.R. Framework

I do not invent the wheel here. In some parts this is very reminiscent of my previous work. Others have come up with similar ideas as well. I condensed it down to four single letters: S.C.A.R.

(S)etup -> (C)onflict -> (A)ction -> (R)esolution

The framework is dividing all the action into individual scenes (like a movie).

At the beginning you Setup your scene. What do you see? Where are you (location)? Who is there with you (characters)? And most importantly: What are you trying to achieve (objective)? If you have no objective, you don't need a scene. You can just imagine an outcome and that is what happens. No need to act it out.

Once you're finished, you add Conflict to your scene. This is basically the antithesis that wants to hinder you achieving your objective. Again: If you don't have any conflict (or even no objective), you don't need this scene.

You then define an Action the (player) characters in the scene are going to take. This action should reflect a way to achieve the objective, resolve the conflict or both. Of course, the characters that are against you, will take actions accordingly to oppose you.

In the end, you Resolve all the actions. This is typically were you roll some dice, to see who "wins" (i.e. is able to achieve their objective). You will most notably also record this resolution somewhere - some form of note. You will also interpret the outcome of this resolution. What are the consequences of your actions?

After the last step, you have now a new situation. Either the scene has changed, because an action changed the environment for example. Or the objective was achieved - or not. Or even the conflict changed. So you see, now you are right back at the beginning and can start all over again.

But why are we doing all this?

Progress Tracks

Every character tries to achieve some sort of goal. They might be shared by others or can be quite individual, like their motivations and secrets. They can also have multiple goals. Everything that this character does is to get one step closer to achieve one of them - find a long lost sibling or bring peace to a region for example.

You need to keep track of what the status of these goals are. Are you at the beginning or just a few steps away? This is were progress tracks come in. Again, Ironsworn did a great job in introducing me to them. My system is also inspired by the Underclock.

The progress track starts at 0, it's score. It also has a rank. Whenever you hit a milestone in your progress you either roll (dynamic) or add a static number to the progress score according to your rank.

Rank	Dynamic	Static
Trivial	1d10	5
Easy	1d8	4
Normal	1d6	3
Hard	1d4	2
Extreme	-	1

Once you reach a score of 20, the progress track is full, which concludes the track.

Hierarchical Progress

Where I always struggled was to determine what would constitute as a milestone and what not. Especially for far away goals, such as background motivations and the like. It gets easier if you think of progress in a hierarchy.

At the bottom (or top, depends on how you look at it), you have your long lasting goals. This is typically an extreme ranked track. It's very slow moving.

But you are not directly advancing these progress tracks by actions. Instead you decide on threads or quests that could bring you a step closer. The rank of these tracks is generally lower (so easier) than your goal, but still somewhat hard.

The way you get progress on these, is by following S.C.A.R. The objectives become the milestones of your thread track. When you succeed you increase the progress score. If you fail, you might add another thread - to overcome a new obstacle for example - or you have to think about a different approach. Maybe change the thread altogether.

Once you conclude the progress track of a thread, you increase the progress score of its associated goal track. Then you can start all over with a new thread.

Goal -> Thread -> Objective

So if you need to come up with an objective for a scene, look at your active threads.

Of course you can also create threads as part of threads. Such as when you're looking for information, a NPC may give you a task to complete before they will talk to you (which could be an example of a consequence for a failed objective in the first place).

Variable Outcome

Another neat trick you can do, is to have a variable outcome for the progress track as well. Instead of just accepting that you succeed once you reach 20 on a progress track, you can roll for it.

Roll two d20, and then...

• if both rolled strictly under the score, it is a full success
• if one rolled strictly under the score, and one above or equal, it is a mixed success (yes, but)
• if both rolled above or equal, it failed
• if you rolled doubles, add a twist

Naturally you always want to get to a score of 20. But this might not be always possible. There are multiple ways you can mix things up.

Add a clock to the progress track for example. When it is full, check for the outcome. This is best done for time-pressing tasks and goals.

Or the conflict of a scene, could be that somebody threatening to bring a thread to an early close - for example the big bad is trying to get to a witness. If you fail that scene (by not fulfilling your objective), the associated thread comes to an end and you would roll for the progress to conclude.

Getting Started

You need to jumpstart this process at the beginning. But this shouldn't be a big problem.

Your character starts with a goal. The motivation, why this character has taken up arms and is doing these adventures. It should be of significance. The adventure life is not easy, so it must be a very good reason to put ones life on the line. This goal has a rank of Extreme.

The adventure will begin at a location. Why is your character there? Link it by creating a new thread from your goal to this location. There must be something that drew the character here after all. Give that thread a rank of Normal.

The location will also have a problem itself. A village that is overrun by bandits, a cursed temple, etc. This will be another thread with a rank of Normal.

This should give you enough material to start the process. Pick a thread and start the S.C.A.R.