Interview with PJSack of Solo RolePlayers Podcast and a Wasteland Story

My first fate question to mythic was ‘Is the boy alive’. Mythic said No. And I sat there and thought wow, I really am out on my own here both in the fiction and in my first major solo roleplaying story. (favourite moment)

Throw in the addition of not being held up by other players schedules or character spotlight desires and it has become the single most satisfying creative endeavour I have experienced in a lifetime of creative endeavours. (solo appeal)

An interview with podcaster of solo actual plays, interviews and more. Latest in series of solo gaming interviews.

Disclosure - I'm a DriveThru RPG affiliate.

Chat with PJ Sack of Solo RolePlayers and a Wasteland Story

PJ Sack is the creator of A Wasteland Story podcast a Fallout solo actual play. And also the host of the Solo RolePlayers Podcast, featuring interviews, new games and trying out solo ideas.

We have Wasteland Story background, starting Solo Roleplayers, getting started in solo, favourite moment and the interesting projects coming up. Among other questions.

What was your gaming story before finding Solo RPGs?

I came home from school one day at about 12 and my Dad had set up a Windows95 PC. That school holidays my half brother installed half life, diablo, and fallout 2 on the day he went home.

I then played video games for 20 years before craving more analog and moving into solo board games, which led me to solo roleplaying games and where I am now.

How did a Wasteland Story come about?

Around the time I was beginning to get disillusioned with video games and screens in general.

I read somewhere that there was a fallout ttrpg coming out and got immediately excited to potentially revive my love for fallout and analogue activities. At the same time however I was a little disheartened because I didn’t think I would realistically be able to get a group together to play it.

Then I learned about solo roleplaying.

When listening to a few of the high quality solo rpg narrative podcasts out there I thought they were fantastic but found I was always craving to hear the thought process behind the narrative decisions and not just the outcomes. So, as I have often done in life, I set out to create the thing I wanted to see.

And with my background in audio engineering and profession in creating audio content that tells a story, it was a natural stylistic choice for me to make without thinking too deeply about it. It was only later after talking to some of those other creators that my accidental method had a heap of unintended benefits for my enjoyment and workflow.

It has been such a rewarding experience.

What's the big appeal of solo games for you?

I love the incomparable experience of writing and reading a story simultaneously, while also getting to play with game mechanics. It’s just the best.

Having my narrative preconceptions challenged by the dice and watching seemingly unconnected words or concepts form coherent story ideas in my head.

Throw in the addition of not being held up by other players schedules or character spotlight desires and it has become the single most satisfying creative endeavour I have experienced in a lifetime of creative endeavours.

What was the motivation for a 2nd Solo Podcast (The Solo Roleplayers Podcast)?

This was a total accident. I wanted to do something that ‘gave back’ to the community by interviewing some of the content creators who helped give me the confidence to take that weirdly difficult first step into actually playing.

Originally I had intended to just drop a couple of interviews into A Wasteland Story but ultimately I wanted to keep that self-contained and so I decided to make it its own thing.

Since then Solo Roleplayers has blossomed into something completely different and I realised it is a platform, not just to provided entertainment through its interviews and actual plays, but (hopefully) a useful and encouraging resource to help others get off the fence and start to play.

And for me personally it has become a push for me to actually play all of these fantastic games I have on my own shelf.

What has been your favourite moment playing Solo?

That's really difficult for me to pin down as there have been so many excellent moments.

If pushed though, I would have to say that it was the very first mythic question in my very first session of A Wasteland Story. I intentionally didn’t have much in mind for plot but I did have an assumption that the main character (SosKaid) would team up with the young Brotherhood of Steel member who had saved her life in the moments leading up to the first scene.

My first fate question to mythic was ‘Is the boy alive’. Mythic said No. And I sat there and thought wow, I really am out on my own here both in the fiction and in my first major solo roleplaying story. (Mythic GM Emulator - also interviewed creator)

The feeling was a little scary but packed full of potential and opportunity, and I realised that this narrative could actually go anywhere, and Mythic was going to constantly challenge my assumptions and force me to be creative every step of the way. The 20 hour plus plot of the first season would have been completely different if that first dice roll had been different and that idea is so exciting to me.

How do you recommend to people to get into solo games?

Just start. I feel like the slight anxiety and misgivings about starting and somehow ‘doing it wrong’, like I had, are incredibly common in this hobby, especially at the beginning.

What I have now learnt is that the perfect way to solo roleplay is unique to you, and might even differ from game to game, session to session. That fact is both the most exciting and most daunting part of the whole hobby.

Treat your first few sessions as a tutorial or ‘character builder’ for you the solo roleplayer. Pick a game world/system you really love or always wanted to try. Pick any oracle or gm emulator. Try stuff. Switch up the system or they way you record your plays if its not grabbing you.

As you play, lean into the aspects you find most fun and abstract out the others. If that means writing full blown narrative or just scribbled dot points while you really dig into a particular mechanical system you enjoy then so be it. There is no wrong way. If it is fun you are doing it right.

What Solo Games are you most excited for that you haven't yet played?

There are just so many enticing games out there that are begging me to play them. The One Ring, Heart: The City Beneath, Coriolis, Pendragon, Wilderfeast are all games on my shelf that I am really excited to get to the table soon on the show.

As I said one of the great accidental things that came out of The SoloRolePlayers project was me getting brave enough to start pulling books off my shelf and just playing them without having fully committed to learning the rules and working things out/fudging things as I go. This means that those piles of unplayed books now represent actual potential of being enjoyed and not some kind of shame emitting substance.

I hope that my playthroughs on the show help others to get the courage to do the same and explore more of these fantastic worlds and stories that are just waiting to be told

What are your next big projects that you can talk about

The biggest ongoing project has been the launch of my Patreon.

It was something I was really unsure about doing and didn’t know if I was providing any real value to people. What it has done however, is actually allowing me to create more value, not only for my fantastic Patrons but also for me.

Now that I have a loyal audience and a channel to connect directly with them on our discord, I have been able to bring some of my wild ideas into reality.

We have launched a SoloRolePlayers BookClub where we choose an rpg every month and commit to getting it played before meeting up online and discussing. We have the Celebrity Lounge where we get content creators like Tana Pigeon, Shawn Tomkin (also interviewed on Rand Roll) and Alex T (of BlackOath Entertainment) in to the discord for 24 hours to interact and answer direct questions.

And perhaps most importantly for me, it gave me a reason to keep playing all of the games that I start on the main channel and continue their stories. I just wouldn’t be able to justify that editing time otherwise and it is so rewarding for me.

As far as upcoming big projects outside of the Patreon I plan to do a new show with the A Wasteland Story (AWS) treatment in ‘A Witcher’s Story’ but that is a good bit away yet.

I have an interstitial (in-between) season for AWS planned as well as starting playing for Season 2 of the show but that is a slow moving beast with how much production work it is. Don’t get me wrong, I love every minute, I have just had to accept that its going to be slow.

In the more immediate future there is a big collaborative project I’m working on with fellow audio solo rpg creators such as Tale of the Manticore (RR Interview), Legend of the Bones (RR Interview), The Lone Adventurer (RR Interview) & Errant Adventures (RR Interview) which should release sometime in May, but we haven't officially announced it yet (and it’s not quite ready) so I won’t go into to any more details other than keep your ears peeled on all of those channels, especially Manticore, for an announcement soon.

Where can people find you online?

I’m not really online much but you can email soloroleplayerspodcast@gmail.com, find me PJSack hanging around the Solo RolePlaying reddit thread, announcing episodes (when I remember) on BlueSky and most actively of course over on the (SoloRolePlayers) Patreon Discord

Is there anything else you would like to talk about?

I want to thank you Rand Roll for reaching out to people like me and helping spread the word and the ways of this fantastic hobby.

I really have never experienced any other hobby and community in general, that I have found this fulfilling, creative, fun, and downright friendly as solo roleplaying, and without people like you spreading the good word and encouraging people to get started playing, I just might have missed it.