Mon 27 Jun 2022, 19:33
The issue with Solo gaming without a true solitaire adventure (like the ones Flying Buffalo have been putting out for T&T for decades), is that when you use a pre-written adventure, you will know the answers simply because trying to run the module without reading it first will result in too little information to make informed decisions.
On the other hand, the dice rolling method of determining what happens next tends to take away any real agency, as the decision to turn left or right is (what we call in game design circles) a false choice: no matter how or why you come to make that decision, the result will always be independent of it. You are a Gumpian feather on the wind. Systems like Mythic include 'oracles' that tend to make it more of a creative story-telling exercise than just a random dungeon generator (like the first one found in the back of the AD&D 1E DMG), but you still are left with the possibility that all the clues you've investigated will result in an utterly false conclusion if that last die roll hits the extreme end of the probability curve.
As such, no matter how much the particular system gives you, mechanically, to help assuage these issues, it will eventually come down to you applying a commonsense application of what you believe should happen and will lead to the most interesting (and entertaining) conclusion to your session. In my investigation example above, you could just decide, whatever the actual rules, that once you have X number of clues in your investigation, the conclusion is settled, no matter how odd it seems or what the dice may tell you. Remember your Sherlock Holmes: "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" (and I would highly recommend reading some AC Doyle for really good examples of how a procedural detective story should work for an RPG).
In short, a solo RPG session should be treated the same way we treated the full-scale version back in the day: rulings, not rules, are what make a fun game, so you should be just as willing to abandon the mechanics to tell a good story when running your solo game, as you are when you GM...