Solo RPG Oracles: How They Work and How to Build One
In a solo tabletop RPG, the oracle is the thing that stands in for the games master. You ask it a question about the world, roll some dice, and it answers. It sounds like a small rule. It is the whole of solo play, because it is what stops you simply deciding everything and writing a story you already know. This guide explains how oracles work, the main kinds, the habits that make them work well, and how to build one of your own. If you’re new to solo play altogether, start with how to play a solo RPG, or the overview of solo tabletop RPGs.
The simplest oracle: a yes or no
Ask a question that can be answered yes or no. “Is the door locked?” “Is the barman lying?” “Has anyone followed me?” Roll. Read the answer.
You can do it with one die: odd is no, even is yes. That works, but it is blunt, because every answer is a coin toss and nothing ever gets complicated. Most oracles add two things.
Odds. Not every question is fifty-fifty. Is it likely the door of an abandoned mill is locked? Not very. Is it likely the guard dog is awake when you knock over a bucket? Very. A good oracle lets you tilt the roll towards the answer the fiction suggests.
Degrees. “Yes” and “no” are useful, but “yes, but…” and “no, and…” are where the story comes from.
A worked example: a 2d6 oracle
Here is the oracle from Foked. Roll two six-sided dice:
- 10+ — Yes, and something in your favour.
- 7–9 — Yes, but with a complication.
- 5–6 — No, but no worse than before.
- 4 or less — No, and the situation changes for the worse.
Then adjust: +2 if the answer is likely, −2 if it is unlikely, one adjustment per roll. Two dice give a bell curve, so the middle results (“yes, but”; “no, but”) turn up most often, and the extremes are rarer. That is what you want: most answers move things along with a little friction, and now and then something lands hard.
Say you are creeping through a mill and ask: “Is there anyone in the next room?” It’s night and the place looks derelict, so it’s unlikely: −2. You roll 9, which becomes 7. Yes, but with a complication. Someone is there — and they are awake. Or they are asleep on the only way through. The oracle gives the shape; you choose the details that fit.
Bigger oracles
The Mythic Game Master Emulator. Tana Pigeon’s Mythic, first published in 2003, is the best-known general-purpose oracle. It answers yes/no questions from a chart that weighs your odds, and adds a chaos factor that rises when things are going badly for your character and falls when they are in control. The higher it climbs, the more often the oracle throws in random events and the more the story lurches. Because it doesn’t care what game you are playing, it is the standard way to play a group RPG alone. A second edition is published by Word Mill Games.
Oracles built into the game. Solo-first RPGs build the oracle in. Ironsworn has an “Ask the Oracle” move with odds you choose, and a set of tables for names, places and actions. Foked’s oracle sits beside a Murk Clock that ticks up as you take risks and rest, and occasionally breaks into something worse.
Meaning tables. Some questions aren’t yes/no: “What does she want?” “What’s carved on the stone?” Meaning tables answer with a pair of words to interpret — an action and a subject, say, “betray / memory” — and you read them in the light of the scene. Many oracles, Mythic included, come with them, and every solo game’s random tables do the same job in a narrower way.
Habits that make an oracle work
- Ask one question at a time. “Is the room empty and is the window open?” gets a muddled answer. Split it.
- Set the odds honestly, before you roll. Deciding afterwards is just choosing.
- Accept the answer. The oracle is useful exactly because it can say what you didn’t want.
- Interpret, don’t just apply. “Yes, but” can mean a dozen things. Pick the most interesting one that fits what you already know.
- Don’t ask what you already know. If the fiction has made it obvious, skip the roll and get on.
- Ask fewer questions than you think. The oracle is for real uncertainty. Too many rolls make a session feel like a form.
Build your own
You can make a working oracle in five minutes:
- Pick your dice. Two six-sided dice give a gentle curve and are what most people have.
- Write four bands: “yes, and”, “yes, but”, “no, but”, “no, and”. The 2d6 table above is a good starting split.
- Add a modifier for likely and unlikely.
- Add one source of trouble — a doubles rule, say, or a clock that fills on bad results — so the world sometimes acts on its own instead of only answering.
- Write a meaning table of a dozen verbs and a dozen nouns that suit your setting. For a folk-horror game, verbs like bury, owe, follow, bargain do more work than attack.
Play one session with it and adjust. If nothing surprising happened, push the bands outward. If everything went wrong, pull them in.
Where to go next
The easiest way to feel an oracle working is a short scenario where you need it now and then: the free Postcard Adventures are built for that, and Foked, whose core rules are free, has the oracle and the Murk Clock described above. For other options, see the best free solo RPGs. If writing is more your thing than dice, solo journaling RPGs use prompts instead of oracles to do much the same job.
Books
