This was a quick one-shot with Solipsist, David (Hituro) Donachie's game. There were four players: David (not the writer, a friend of mine), Jessie, Sarah, and my wife Adrienne. I will focus on the in-game efforts of David and Jessie; I'll explain why later on.

Character creation was not smooth. I'll take the blame for that, I had a few beers. Plus, it's not a traditional character build. But nevertheless, Jessie (who was convinced she had psychic powers of superheroic proportions) and Dave (who believed he was a combination rock god and the Pope) seemed to glom onto it pretty quickly, whereas Sarah and my wife did not until they saw David's and Jesse's character come together. (David and Jesse named their characters "David" and "Jesse"; I was not alone in consuming alcohol that evening.)

One of the big problems was that everyone initially had problems getting into the proper headspace for this game. The mechanics behind the idea of solipsism left them kind of scratching their heads: they kept asking why the characters couldn't use their "superpowers" to erase or at least work around their "flaws" (the Limitations), or why there weren't experience points so that they could use their solipsism better. (Traditional gaming backgrounds, don't you know?) I finally explained myself well enough that the Limitations kept them tethered to common reality, that the animacules were basically sub-atomic "scriptwriters" who rearranged reality for the characters because something about the characters amused them enough to bend the rules slightly (but if they were too demanding in "script changes", they got sent to their own "spin-off series"), and that Limitations were locked into place by the same ability that allowed them to change reality by wanting to so badly. "Have you ever accidentally ironed in some wrinkles into a shirt or a pair of pants? And no matter how hard you struggled to iron them out, it didn't quite work? That's what Limitations are like: you can't just rearrange them out of your way, it takes time, which is where the animacules you accumulate would come in if we were making this a longer game." (This analogy seemed to click.)

"So is it bad that we took Limitations that are kind of the opposite of what our powers are?", from Jessie. I said, "Nope. In fact, it makes it easier to distinguish what your character believes, or wants to believe, from what everyone else sees."

The game consisted of me getting these four solipsists together, and I used the easiest way I could: a Shadow had hit their hometown. (The thought of four Solipsists in one area kinda disturbs me, on reflection.) I used the suggested benchmarks that David D. had written on his forum, which aren't included in the ashcan. It was designed so that there were four things that had to be repaired before the Shadow got banished. (I used NIN's Year Zero as the basis of it, and had huge hands coming down from the sky and removing NPCs at random intervals, among the totalitarian/survivalist infighting going on in the streets.) Each break in reality got progressively harder, until the last one, which needed a 10 to close it. They succeeded, and found a young woman with a pair of headphones on her ears, listening to NIN's "Year Zero", who was obviously a solipsist who had lost her Limitations and "gone over" into her pocket reality.

Based on how this played out, I'm going to offer a few suggestions:

1) Get all the characters created at the same time, and get their working together into a communal backstory. Have them come up with how they succeeded against their first Shadow together. The reason Sarah and Adrienne couldn't get into the game, along with the "weird ideas" behind it, was because they couldn't make sense of the idea that such self-absorbed people would be working together in the first place. Also, advice on how the other players can be involved when the individual stories of the solipsists come up would be nice. Luckily, I didn't have to figure that out for this game.

2) This will obviously not be a game for everyone. All the players thought it was "interesting," but they mentioned being disappointed at the lack of dice or cards, just something to make them feel like they were in conflict. (Maybe something involving poker chips?)

3) This game is good for one character up to, I think, about four. And I think it has to be a long-term campaign before the currency of the game becomes obvious and something that will motivate play. One-shots won't do it: in my game Jessie went nuts with her psychic powers, and the threat of Tears didn't slow her down. She was willing to go out of control to get enough Infestation for future conflicts. Also, I did decide to boost the difficulty by one point or even two if the stuff being narrated by the players was really something more suited to a comic book or anime. That made sense to the players, especially when I mentioned that, as far as everyone around them remembers, that really did happen, and is going to cause some problems down the road.

4) Shadows, in my opinion, and for how I played them, should be treated as a "reality virus." They are able to react to the actions of the solipsists, by arranging scenery and situations that play directly to the solipsist's Limitations. Shadows do not need to be limited by a consistent narrative, because they are narrative inconsistency embodied. Plus, having your surroundings conspire to attack you and drive you out or consume you lends really well to a horror vibe, which got the players engaged.

5) I recommend that the Obsessions and Limitations start with the words "My" or "I". don't ask me why, but it seemed to help both Jessie and Dave get into character better.

Any comments or feedback?