“L’amore tra i mostri” (Love among the monsters)

After selecting the genre and system for my solo RPG campaign, it’s now time to identify the “style” of the game, to articulate the feel and tone of the narrative and the dramatic expectations of the action to come.

Choosing a clearly defined style that emulates aspects of a familiar paradigm benefits the solo player in two ways:

1. It will augment the quality of the interpretations of the results of the random idea generators used. 
2. It will offer another conceptual toolset from which to draw concepts, maintain interest, and direct development. 

Too much randomness often leads to a complete mess. Sometimes, boundaries are a good thing, and I believe that a pre-chosen style offers extremely helpful boundaries.

For this project, I want:

• humor 
• cheeky pathos 
• inflated and satiric dramatic moments 
• a justifiable reason to make Charisma important 

Therefore, as my guiding style for the entire campaign, I’ve chosen Italian comic opera!

Think Figaro meets Frodo and you’ll get the idea.

The title of the year-long campaign will be L’amore tra i mostri - Love among the monsters – and for good reason. The PCs will all be searching for their “true” love (for one of them, it’s silver) and will become involved in the usual D&D shenanigans directly because of their desires. As I use the 9Qs and random idea generation, the style of Italian comic opera will help to guide my inspirations when random elements need to be interpreted.

Programming note: Arias will be replaced by combat.