Solitaire: All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl

There are secrets to discovered and mysteries to be resolved in the Pacific Northwest under the Douglas firs. They are what brought you to this town, a hotbed of the peculiar and the unexplained, with a windfall to tide you over and time to investigate, staying in a small, rented trailer, and setting up office in a booth at the back of the town’s diner, the Midnight Owl. From there, you plan to scour the town’s surrounds for answers amongst its worn out factories, fading trailer parks, and abandoned railway yard, and beyond under the deep pine forest that runs over hilly and valley as far as you can see between the sky and mist. What you will find you do not know, but whatever it is, you plan to make a podcast from it, and so reveal the secrets and mysteries to the wider world. Every day you will go out and investigate and interact and interview and every night you will return for ‘All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl’, perhaps for a damned fine cup of coffee and a slice of cherry pie that could you kill you, but also to collate your notes and write the script for your podcast!

This is the set-up for All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG inspired by television series including Twin Peaks, The X-Files, and True Detective. Published by Critical Kit, Ltd, a publisher best known for Be Like a Crow: A Solo RPG. To play, a player needs a set of polyhedral dice and a deck of ordinary playing cards with the Jokers as well as a journal in which record his investigation. The roleplaying game suggests additional items, including the means to add photographs to the players’ journal, a smartphone or audio equipment on which to record the player’s podcast, and an atmospheric soundtrack, but these are optional and the player is under no duress to produce podcast. (Indeed, the author admits to not being an on podcasting and suggests writing a script in bullet points instead if the player does not want to proceed as far as making a podcast.)

A Player Character in All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is simply defined. He has three Skill Ratings—Investigation, Physical, and Social—and a source of his current income. To create a character, the player assigns a ‘d8’, ‘d10’, and ‘d12’ to the three Skill Ratings and draws a card from the deck to determine his source of income. The player also gets to name his character and give him as much or as little background as he wants.

Madison Morton

Investigation d12 Physical d8 Social d10

Where Your Money Came From

Wire Fraud: You skimmed a bit of money off your former employer’s transactions without getting noticed. No one knows… right? And, even if they did, how would they ever find you?

Mechanically, when a player wants his character to act or as prompted, he rolls the die for the Skill Rating appropriate to the situation. A result of one is a failure with consequences; two to five, a failure without consequences; six to nine a success; and ten or more, an outstanding success. There is also a table for resolving other certainties, whilst the style of game suggests that the Player Character avoid combat. However, if it does arise, the Physical Skill Rating is checked as normal. Unfortunately, if the result is a failure the Player Character is injured and left for dead, and has to go to hospital. This means that they lose a turn also. If this happens a third time, then the Player Character is dead!

All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is played in three acts— ‘Act One: The Lead’, ‘Act Two: The Investigation’, and ‘Act Three; The Podcast’. In ‘Act One: The Lead’, the player draws cards to determine the source of the lead and its information. For example, ‘A local detective whose leads have gone cold’ or ‘An anonymous e-mail has landed in your inbox’ and ‘1d4 hiker(s) went to missing two weeks ago. The FBI are poking around and angry families are looking for answers’ or ‘A human-sized winged creature has been reported flying over the outskirts of the town.’

In ‘Act Two: The Investigation’, the Player Character takes it in turn to visit different locations in and around the town, between six and twelve depending on how long the player wants the game to be. These are generated by drawing cards and there is a chance of an event happening at the location as well. If a successful Investigation Skill Rating check is made, then the player can draw a card to determine a clue which if related to the investigation.

For example, Madison Morton is in Eden Junction investigating incidences of townsfolk falling sick and being hospitalised, but after miraculously recovering, are no longer communicative, which she learns about from listening a caller to a talk radio show. On her first day, she goes into a grocery store in the town to talk to people. She talks to Seth Wilson, an impatient, if jovial Paramedic about the situation. Madison’s player rolls her Investigation Skill Rating and gets a ten. This is an outstanding success, and instead of giving her brush off because he is in a hurry, Seth promises to meet her later, perhaps at the Midnight Owl or a nearby bar, when he will have an actual medical report that she can look at! Madison’s player counts this as clue pertinent to her investigation and increases the Clue Count by one.

‘Act Three; The Podcast’ begins once the player has played through the number of turns he set for himself at the start. He scripts the podcast (or notes everything down in his journal) and rolls not necessarily to determine if he has solved a mystery, but to what degree the podcast finds engagement and builds an audience. The outcome is rolled on the ‘Engagement Die’, the size of which is determined by the number pertinent clues gathered. The better the roll, the more followers the Player Character gains who will continue listening should he decide to return to the town and investigate another strange case. There is certainly scope for this with a total of twenty-six leads given in the book.

Physically, All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is nicely put together. It is well written, but what grabs the attention is the artwork, particularly the cover. It is all done by Simon J. Curd and captures the type of Pacific Northwest mystery stories that the solo roleplaying game is asking the player to explore, even right down to depicting the damned fine cup of coffee and slice of cherry pie. If there is an issue, it is that there is not enough of it to enjoy.

All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG is about solving a mystery with a definitive answer as it is telling the story of that investigation and making it compelling enough for people to want to listen to it and engage with it, and ultimately to make them want to come part for the next season. There are plenty of extra leads to make that possible. The investigative process is gentle in style, but does have some sharp edges as the Player Character closes in on a solution. All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl: A solo investigative podcast RPG is engaging and atmospheric, underplayed in comparison to other solo journalling roleplaying games, under the trees where most never see.