Passage - A Storytelling Exploration Game for Exactly One Player

About the Game

Passage is a bit of a weird one, as the subtitle probably suggests. I began designing this game (or brainstorming tool, or abstract divination system, or whatever you wish to call it) as a sort of challenge, an experiment to see if I could (I did ask myself whether or not I should, and ultimately decided that yes, probably, why not, what else was I going to be doing with all that finite time).

Passage is certainly not the first "single-player" tabletop rpg ever made, and I am sure it won't be the last. Still, you don't see a lot of them out there. Ultimately, the game ended up being focused on storytelling, journaling, and interpreting symbols (not unlike the Tarot or the I-Ching, except applied primarily to the generation of fiction and the exploration of personal mind-spaces). There are no win or lose states. Rather, the game aims, simply enough, to facilitate structured make-believe. 

While it's certainly a pretty niche experience, it can be fun to explore your own brain for a while. Additionally, I have found it a useful tool for developing and improvising adventures, scenarios, "dungeons," and encounters when I am GMing, or getting ready to GM, other games with other players. Ultimately, I am pretty excited about the whole endeavor, and about potentially mining the ideas and possibilities it presents in future projects!

Note: While this kind of goes against the main point, I did end up including one short and simple variant / hack of this game for multiple players at the end of this document, just because why not.