At the time, I was also using Juice to do "duet" style games with my young child, and he was able to easily understand that more "+" meant "good" and more "-" meant "bad" when we were playing little games with his lego people.
It felt like an extension of the "simplicity" aspect I was going for.
(from question about using Fate Dice as a Yes/No Oracle)
An interview with Joe, creator of Juice Oracle. Latest in series of solo gaming interviews.
Chat with Joe of Juice Oracle
Joe is the creator of Juice Oracle (free on Itch.io), a collection of random tables and emulator for solo rpgs. Juice Oracle was used in a recent solo actual play (Mythic Bastionland).
We have how Juice Oracle came about, appeal of solo rpgs, unofficial cheatsheet for DMs who are lazy, working on the Nimble rpg solo rules and the solo rpg community. Among other questions.
What was your gaming story before writing juice oracle?
I would say I sorta stumbled onto solo roleplaying by accident a while ago.
I was attempting to make a D&D 5e character for a group game, but I wanted to "test" it out so I was looking for a way to simulate combat. My searches lead to the Mythic GME by Tana Pigeon (it was still the first edition at the time, 2e hadn't been released), and the whole concept of an "oracle" was so intriguing to me.
I got sucked into the rabbit hole.
I already had the 5e DMG (Dungeon Master's Guide), and a few third party books such as Spectacular Settlements by Nord Games that I could use to build out portions of my own little world, but Mythic actually allowed me to play out that world.
I was amazed at how a simple tool and some structure could actually have my own imagination surprise me; I didn't think that was possible.
How did Juice Oracle come to be?
At first, I was using Mythic as-is, but honestly the whole "Fate Chart" always felt a bit clunky to me. I wanted something a bit easier.
I started tinkering, and applying my own little "hacks" and homebrew on top. I also was gathering other tips and tricks from the community and other supplements like DM Yourself by Tom Scutt. I found myself building my own tables by combining pieces from other tables.
And I wasn't the only one; Tana was putting out Mythic Magazines which really showed how individuals can customize their own little toolkit. I was building out my own using Homebrewery, and decided to give back by putting some PDFs out there for others to use.
The early versions of Juice were actually really lengthy, multiple pages of tables and stuff.
I fell into this "bad habit" of adding more and more until I got to a point where I was even having a hard time using my own tool in play; the flow would break as I would flip through looking for the "right table". I inadvertently caused my own decision paralysis.
At that point, I shifted gears, started leaning into a "less is more" mentality, and limited myself to a single page. It was a challenge trying to figure out what I considered truly necessary, and leaning on my brain to fill in the gaps, but for me this led to more fun and faster play.
What was behind using Fate Dice for the yes/no oracle?
I wanted a mechanism that was able to give a variety of results at a glance, no math.
I didn't want "modifiers" to keep track of, and I didn't really like the common single d6 method because I felt it left out some more interesting options like "false assumption".
At the time, I was also using Juice to do "duet" style games with my young child, and he was able to easily understand that more "+" meant "good" and more "-" meant "bad" when we were playing little games with his lego people.
It felt like an extension of the "simplicity" aspect I was going for.
That said, Fate Dice are not as common, and I do think if I put out another version in the future, I would switch to using d6s.
What's your favourite table from Juice oracle and why?
I would have to say the "Property" table, which is a bit ironic because there are other tables I spent a great deal more time and effort on.
It's 10 characteristics, you roll to select two of them and use a d6 to rank them low or high. For example, you might roll "low power, high durability" to describe a weapon you found.
I like it because it takes up so little space, yet is extremely versatile and can be used in almost any situation.
What's the appeal to you of solo rpgs?
When I first discovered "oracles", I was shocked at how I could surprise myself; at how I could play out a scenario or story without knowing what was going to happen.
I love worldbuilding, and this let me actually build out the world via play. I could use some random tables to "seed" a city, but then actually playing in that city
would naturally build out details I never would have thought to include just from a random table roll. In addition, my own character backstories and personalities felt
more refined as they "lived" the story, and I felt more connected to the character.
Everything was so much more freeform than something like a video game, where the rules / actions / dialog are all predetermined.
What was the process for creating the Unofficial Cheatsheet for DMs that are Lazy
(Link to the Unofficial Cheatsheet for DMs that are Lazy)
I really like Mike Shea's "lazy" philosophy of doing more with less, leaning into improv vs prep. I was trying to create a "visual cheatsheet" with a reusable map and various tables / tips to assist with spontaneous adventures and encounters.
It was more intended to be a GM tool than a solo tool, and I keep one stashed alongside my notes for a session.
What has been your favourite moment while solo gaming?
I was playing a party of two. We were traveling from one town to the next, following the river. Everything was rather normal, until the dice threw a curveball during a battle with some bandits, and my main character fell into the river and was swept downstream while the sidekick was subsequently captured by the bandits.
Suddenly, a mundane battle became a rescue mission where I had to track down the bandit camp to save them.
This particular game was pretty early on in my solo discovery, and the reason it stuck with me was because it was one of the first times where the oracle results really made my game pivot and surprise me; I likely would not have had that happen all on my own, but a few dice and some table rolls completely changed my expectations.
It was that "aha" moment that really showed me how solo play works.
What are your favourite solo games to play?
I started with 5e, because that was really the only TTRPG I knew.
But as I got into solo more, I came across Ironsworn (actual play on RR) by Shawn Tomkin (as I'm sure everyone ends up discovering), and really enjoyed how it flipped the game around, by having the narrative trigger "moves".
Still, I wanted to utilize the 5e books I owned, so I ended up devising a hybrid where I would use Ironsworn rules outside of combat, and switch to 5e rules during combat.
Later on, I discovered Nimble, and have almost completely switched to that.
What are your next big projects that you can talk about?
Well, speaking of Nimble, I am currently working with Evan Diaz on the solo rules for Nimble, bringing in a lot of the concepts from Juice into his new Monsters and More book.
I am pretty excited to have my work featured in an actual book! I never thought that would happen.
The Nimble community is great and have been helping with ideas and feedback.
I plan to take all the things I have learned from that and create a more system agnostic updated version of Juice focused on streamlining things.
I do all this during my limited free time, so its rather slow, but I already have a good amount of material to incorporate into the next update. I look forward to getting it out there.
Where can people find you online?
Juice can be found for free on itch.io.
I try to respond to each comment there.
I tend to lurk in the solo_roleplaying reddit and the "Solo Tabletop RPGs" discord.
More recently I have been active in the Nimble discord.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
It almost sounds like an oxymoron, but the solo community is thriving a lot more than one would expect. There are lots of people out there that are super friendly, sharing their thoughts / ideas / tips.
I think it is so cool that people end up creating something so personal to them, then being brave enough to share it with the world.
And there is no "right way" to do things, no one is gatekeeping the hobby or trying to make a quick buck, it all feels so genuine to me. That was the main reason I felt motivated to contribute back, and it is one of the reasons I give away the tools I make for myself for free.
Finishing Up
If you haven't tried out Juice Oracle it's available for free. There are many random tables to use as part of the oracle or separately.
There are many more articles on Rand Roll. Plus a Rand Roll Discord and instagram of Random Tables. I also create Generators at Chaos Gen and have a monthly random tools Newsletter.
