Your Character Is What They Do (and What They Regret)

No character sheet ever prepared me for regret.

I realized this gradually and with some stubbornness while playing Loner. Not because the game punishes you for your missteps, but because it holds every decision up like a mirror.

In traditional RPGs, characters often start as fixed lists: traits, stats, abilities. You spend twenty minutes crafting these details, hoping they’ll hold up ten sessions later. But solo play, especially with a tag-based system, offers something different.

The character evolves, or better yet, you uncover who they truly are by what they do, and more poignantly, what they can never undo.

Tags as Mirrors

In Loner, there are no attributes, no XP, no leveling up.

Only tags.

Concept, Skills, Frailty, Gear, Goal, Motive, Nemesis. At first glance, they seem simple. But these tags aren't mere labels; they're signposts, fragments of identity, emotional debris.

Your character isn't born fully formed, just sketched. As the story unfolds, these tags twist and shift. You cross them out, rewrite them, contradict them. Some players jot down all these changes in the margins, leaving a personal record of their character’s evolution. It's messy, but it's exactly right.

Because in Loner, your character isn’t who they say they are; they’re who they prove themselves to be. By betrayals, rescues, and all the losses left behind.

When a Concept Turns into a Lie

A favorite moment for me in any session is when the Concept tag becomes obsolete.

You might start as Disillusioned War Courier. But soon enough, you’re burning maps, lying to allies, stealing tech, and you realize disillusionment doesn't describe you anymore. Now it's sabotage.

That's when the tag must change. Not because the rules say so, but because it feels inevitable.

Perhaps you cross it out entirely, or rewrite it as Saboteur with a Broken Compass. Either way, the story breathes deeper. It doesn't just move forward; it echoes who your character has become.

Regret as Gameplay

There’s no explicit rule for regret in Loner. But it slips in all the same, quietly reshaping the story.

You make your choice, roll the dice, get exactly what you wanted, and something else inevitably breaks. Suddenly, a new tag appears: Reluctant Killer, Lost Face, Burned Bridge.

These aren’t penalties; they’re texture. They push the story forward, opening new possibilities. A character without contradictions is flat; contradictions create depth.

Letting a tag shift, sour, or break apart means letting your character stop being just a role and become someone real.

Memory as a Scar

The Character Builder’s Guide explores this brilliantly, offering lifepaths, flashbacks, and hallucinations, not just to clarify your character’s past, but to let the past haunt them.

You aren’t writing their backstory; you’re digging it out, half-remembered, uncertain, sometimes wrong. The Oracle may reveal a memory never really happened, but you live with that anyway.

It shapes your next action. It becomes a new tag.

The Self Is Fluid

My favorite idea woven through Loner, something I only fully appreciated after numerous sessions, is that a character’s identity isn’t fixed, stable, or predictable. It’s emergent.

Your character can lie to themselves, contradict their motives, switch allegiances, lose faith, or fall apart. The game doesn't just allow these shifts; it thrives on them.

Each new tag, each concept scribbled out, each regret etched in the margins moves you closer to something rawer, truer, stranger.

You're not playing a character.

You're watching them become one.