Overview

I previously worked as a professor of Arabic before changing careers. I wanted to keep up my language skills, and writing is a great way to practice less frequent vocabulary, sentence and paragraph connectors, and paragraph-level speech. 

I found solo games to be a fun way to practice language while also having all the fun that comes with a game. 

Solo Approach

I write a novel-style, full-prose account of the action on one side of each notebook spread. It is a first-person narration, with everything through the eyes of the narrator. This can mean that nothing 'gamey' will happen sometimes for pages at a time. Since this is a language-learning exercise, I'm ok with this, but sometimes the pace is rather slow. 

On the facing page of each page of narration,  I write any game-related information: rolls and their outcomes, oracle lookups, ongoing clocks, etc. 

At the start of a new notebook, I set aside a section in one part of the notebook for NPCs/world truths/etc. 

For character sheets, I've been using a printed character sheet, but I recently got wooden trackers that I have been trying out instead. 

I use an online dictionary with a built-in flashcard feature to lookup and store helpful vocabulary.

Play Example

In the play example above, my character and my companions stumbled into a library peopled by ghostly librarians composed of iron tablets. There's a tracker for impeding the librarians on the game page, and prose descriptions of action on the facing page. 

Context of Play

I primarily play during my child's activities (like piano lessons, etc.) For that reason, I prefer a lightweight, portable approach that can be carried in a bag or a hoodie pocket.

I prefer notebooks with elastic closure and pen holder. I use the elastic to hold the reference books for the game I'm playing. Here's the components of my playkit:

And here it is collected and read to go: