Keeping solo roleplaying interesting?

 Now that I am back running my Scarlet Heroes solo game again, I got to thinking about my approach to solo role-playing and how to keep it interesting. I've read a few pieces on how to do this in the past, and these musings do draw on what I have read, even though I cannot remember where I read it any more. The question is how to roleplay when you have full knowledge of the environment.

Scarlet Heroes is designed around the idea that the game will feature just a single character. D&D scenarios can be very easily adapted to these rules on the fly and still run with one character instead of a full party.

I'm running old Basic D&D modules for the nostalgia of it, so there is nothing for me to discover as I send my character into them. I already know what the modules contain. I have to. I can't run the modules without knowing. That means that I know the secret doors, the traps, and anything else that would be hidden DM information.

This really puts my role in the game into perspective. I have DM-level knowledge, so really I have to be the DM in these games. That means that I have to programme the character, not the dungeon. Realising this changed my view of how satisfying solo roleplaying could be. It is still my character, but the satisfaction lies in seeing who they become as a result of the rolls I make to decide how they act.

I created the character at the start of the campaign, and have a vision of the type of person they are. I use that vision to decide how likely they are to act in certain ways. Scarlet Heroes has a series of oracle tables to roll on when making decisions. You rate how likely the character is to act in a certain way and then roll on the table that corresponds to that probability. In all likelihood the character will act as expected, but there is always the chance for an upset.

My character is a young man of Lawful alignment. He is most likely to obey authority if it tells him to do something. However, the table could tell me that he does not obey that authority or that he dithers about it. The table can also raise complications, so he obeys but does something or sees something that makes his obeying problematic. When the character acts unexpectedly, there is the opportunity to explore him in more depth.

Another example would be a decision based on his age. Does he continue further into the dungeon despite being badly wounded or does he stop to rest up and patch himself up? The sensible choice would be to stop, but he is a young man of 16. Young men are not renowned for their sense of self-preservation, so I rate his chance of stopping as unlikely and roll on the appropriate table.

The roleplaying element then lies in how I rate his chances of doing something, and I can amend his character traits as he responds to events. If he lives, he may grow to be a cynical warrior, perhaps even shifting alignment to Neutral as he learns that authority cannot always be trusted. The dice will help to tell this tale.

For other hidden elements, I also resolve those as rolls. If there is a hidden door, I always roll to see if he spots it. Likewise, if there is a trap, then he gets to roll to spot it. When finding something hidden is essential to progress or completion of the dungeon, then I make it an automatic spot. I might roll to see how the character spots the item but I ensure that they do. Likewise, if specific actions are required to make progress, then I find a way for the character to do them. Dice rolls can fill out the details here but the action has to happen. There's little point coming to a full stop when you are solo roleplaying.

Black Streams is a free supplement from Sine Nomine Publishing that details how to adapt D&D-alike games so that a single character can run through a dungeon designed for a party of characters

I find roleplaying as the DM more satisfying than the random dungeon method I have used before. It required a shift of focus and emphasis, but that was worth it to return to these old modules that have such nostalgia value for me. I have also found that using a system designed for single characters keeps things simpler. I'm not sure I would enjoy the game as much having to keep track of everything for a party of characters.