That was a profoundly different experience from my Tuesday afternoon RPG campaign where the social aspect, on-the-fly improvisation, "yes, and"-ing and the collective storytelling dominate, but would not discard the solo game as a bad idea — it's just built for something else.
When I was in high school, I despised the writing assignments and I believe I'm worse off now for never developing that skill.
If all manual testers played games like you, there would be more respect for that profession. Likewise, if more game testers did . . . anywho . . .
What, may I ask, did you play?
As if I'll look back here again! Seriously, I'll try to remember. That sounds like the kind of exercise James (not the seagull son) Bach would do. ;-)
You can be into social games but still be socially maladjusted. I prefer the single player experience over that.
I agree with you that social interaction is important, needed for a sane life, but at the same time, I consider this as not a bad option for those cases you cannot meet with friends.
On the other hand, there are good, well made, solo-rpgs, aven though many are more of a creative-writing exercise than the monster-smashing/dungeon-delving/hex-exploring many of us associate with the genre.
Gentleman Bandit is great! Thousand year old vampire made me feel things!
The introverted guy you mention maybe could use some more people in his life, but that seems orthogonal to the existence of this interesting genre. Maybe if he didn't run his dungouns, he would be writing schlocky fantasy fanfic, or solving infinite number of sudoku. And while I might still slightly judge him as an introverted weirdo, I wouldn't judge him more, or less.
I've done some solo roleplaying (1000 year vampire is a great system I played recently) and its fun. It's also easy to do while traveling instead of trying to coordinate an entire rpg group.
It also makes me think about the huge variety of games that used D&D style stats, back in the day (many still do). I was reading the manual for Sea Rogue for DOS recently (treasure hunting scuba game) and mechanically it's transparently TTRPG behind the scenes for character actions.
I am curious about the online professional GM/DMs. But also afraid it would be more of that. Because that's what people expect.
Even with just board games, I've had groups who've been able to explore new ideas together. Historical, social, political. We've played out how to run counter-insurgency and how to be war profiteers and how to seize power and how to play Kingmaker (AH joke!). We've behaved in ways our work and school lives would not tolerate. Heck, we even spent some time exploring how games have evolved like the roots of MTG. And I'm planning some series on different takes on similar topics by game designers of different eras - just for the fans of design(ers). But we have been playing games. Together. To experiment and learn and grow. Individually, but also together.
I own some solo games, but I could easily write more challenging code than the game bots. On that topic, I've been wondering if there's anything chewy there - any reason to try to do code for those. What if I have 2 other people and we want to play Diplomacy? What kinds of game-stupid AIs are interesting for my favorite train games and how could they be balanced for difficulty? Can anyone build a truly challenging ASL bot? Etc.
Also, another comment in another thread reminded me of Choose Your Own Adventure games that were popular in the '90s and I suppose they were popular among the same crowd that played D&D with each other.
Without a group, and without the time, I ended becoming kind of a single player role player. More like developing stories for some character concepts and the corresponding world building. It is a distraction, after 8 hours plus clued in front of a screen watching a movie or gaming is not as interesting most of the time as it used to be. And it helps in developing story telling skills, which are helpful as well. And fun, not that I ever want to become an author (my ability to create unique worlds suck, I'm much better working with existing stuff), but I do like it a lot.
I agree that this is me balancing a solo, creative activity against social interactions. For someone struggling with social interactions in general I'd not advice it as a main activity.
perhaps, but if you can't find that interaction (sometimes not in fault of a lack of trying), you gotta do what entertains you.
Extroverted activities can be helpful at times but will naturally cause introverts stress; growth stress sure but it's still stress. It's silly to treat such a person as if they are broken, when they may be doing their best work by themselves. There are other ways of looking at such a situation that are more helpful.
And overlaying a simple "get out more" model on them is ethically questionable to say the least...
I have craved TTRPG experience when covid and living overseas prohibited it, and things like "solasta" were ok, for a day or 2, but, the social aspect is much better- there is more fun to be had in groups.
I am a bit disappointed that folks (@Cthulhu_52) feel old gamers to be exclusory- I guess it must be true, I hear it now and then, but I am running a game at work with 4/6 new -as in never played before, specifically because I think it is fun to get people in. "make new players"
I'm 49 and been playing/running games since I was 14. I have run games at clubs (thehitpoint), did conventions- where you GM for complete strangers and now I am just running a gygaxian campaign- that is- folks should be able to drop in with their character and not turn up next week, no problem.
Despite great strides in computing roll20 etc, the online is just not as snappy, nowhere near as much cross-table repartee. Maybe it's the way the audio is handled- can't distinguish 2 folks talking at the same time in most systems.
anyway, I'm back at it, in full swing, post covid, and nothing comes close to running a real campaign with interested players. Great fun. And I hope that's not because I want an audience. (although some great players treat it as performative, never mind GMing)
One of the parts I particularly enjoyed was developing strategies to compensate for the fact that I always knew what "the other guy" was going to do. I did quite a bit of research, liberally stole ideas from sharper eggs, and came up with some of my own. It actually turned out pretty satisfying. The system I used, "I Ain't Been Shot, Mum", incorporates a 'blind' mechanism that worked really well.
My wife called me the Patron Saint of Lonely Nerds.
Given the size, detail, the depth of the rules, the long playtime, the interest of reading or otherwise learning about the history as you play, etc., it works out well. Pretty much all wargames by the major publishers have listed a 'Solitaire Suitability' rating on the box for decades.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/359909
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/125685
Plus the hobby is easily one of the best ways to write fiction I've found. Especially when one's typical writing session can sometimes end up producing one big metaphor for where the author's life is at, it's great to be able to produce something that's both true to a favorite genre and also really unique and open-ended.
Finally, working with world-building tools in this way also helps you create a well-organized framework that supports hundreds of novels without a problem, if that's what you want.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_%26_Trolls
We used to joke that it was a gateway drug to making friends who played real games. Together.
Because we were geeks. Back when a game master with some recipe cards full of encounters was a better way to spend a Friday night than playing Zork.
T&T -> D&D -> nothing else, really, just D&D
It was great in a time/place where public transit wasn't a thing and the only way to "voice chat" was to monopolize the only land line.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenaries,_Spies_and_Priva...
It's a fun book to read and from what I understand the mechanic is awfully familiar to T&T players.
I wrote a couple oracle scripts I use with it, but the CYOA style adventures in the series are really fun as well.
I wasn't a loner or nerdy or anything. Solitaire is not just for loners, after all. I just liked rolling solo sometimes.
^ https://screenrant.com/tmnt-tabletop-rpg-bizarre-game-wrong-...
The become-a-psychiatrist trope mentioned in the article is one I've heard from psychiatrist friends too, so it's funny to see that...
(BtS 1e also has some uncomfortable things inside...Still, I haven't come across as many TTRPGs with egregious issues as I have novels from the same era)
I've also enjoyed Me, Myself and Die[2], where a voice actor plays Ironsworn, a game mentioned in the article.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/GeekGamers01/videos [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVxJ3exjfgI&list=PLDvunq75Uf...
Wouldn't it be easier to just read a Choose Your Own Adventure, or play a solo text based adventure game? Or just log on to a roleplaying leaning MUD and still get the benefit of others?
Is Solitaire sad? Are single-player games? When did using your imagination become sad?
Social play is nice but solo RP is also nice...solo is also the underdog, as are many solo hobbies. So projecting the "that's too bad" onto it is not really looking very triumphant or self-secure or whatever it's supposed to be.
Could we even set aside space for considering the coolest things about solo that people aren't talking about, maybe out of embarrassment?
- One's imagined fantasy-self can help day-to-day self feel relief from the grind
- In solo RP there's no need to converge on a single best-self model in the same way social frameworks push people to do (sometimes dangerously so)
- Imaginary friends are cool, even awesome
- Playing with yourself is as fun as you make it
Any other embarrassing stuff to get out here?
I was trained by some awesome psychologists and made a career out of coaching extroverts and introverts--there's really no reason not to put this silly social-private dichotomy behind us.
(Some of the highest-CHA socialites you know are also dying to be more introverted...)
Perhaps this is my fault, but for someone who spent the last 2 years enforced solo, if I could have got solo rpgs to work, that would have been great.
And I think the reason is the same as why the online versions don't feel as good. Actual interaction is a part of most RPGs and to people like me, what makes them so good.
For my personal solo stuff, - I wanted a particular set of mechanics, I wanted the "crunch" part (character optimization)- which something like solasta can replicate, and I got it. It was "ok". It's just it didn't get a second play. It turned out, for me, that the crunch, exploring the fluff etc- even though you can replicate it solo, feels like a poor shadow.
I mean, for the last 2 years I would have been ecstatic to find a brain release /decompress mechanism that worked as well for me as in-person RPGs.
Not meaning to cast solo stuff as "not real" or lesser in any way. I did a bunch of solo dungeon runs in Adnd 30 years ago. But if someone is running solo and haven't tried groups, don't have the confidence to reach out to a group, I'm not sure what re-assurance can be given. RPG.net, enworld and other forums seem much more prickly than the folks I have met in RL gaming. Not sure how to help with that.
The boundaries have always been fuzzy between RPGs that are a "social experience" and ones that are not. "Social experience" isn't necessarily a part of the definition of what an RPG is, even if you restrict it to just table top RPGs and not the equally long history of CYOA RPGs and Computer RPGs.
Between indie developers on sites like itch.io and elsewhere there's been a lot of interesting exploration of solo RPG adaptation (playing existing RPGs with their sometimes decades of lore and tools) and new solo RPG development. Which yes, to partially answer your questions: an RPG designed for a solo experience is likely always "easier" to play than playing an RPG designed for a table full of people, especially if you have to also do the work adapting it for solo play. (That said, again, there's an interesting growing market for "professional" solo adaptations of well loved table-top settings.)
Someone who enjoys solo role playing would probably enjoy role playing with others.
Why is solo role playing any different than playing a video game alone?
Hell, there are games like Microscope that would be incredibly fun playing solo.
In the middle era, the trend was obvious with games like Vampire: The Masquerade and its Storyteller system, coupled with the LARPing fad and some diceless games.
Since that era, the trend has continued. Many games now have little or no crunch at all, and focus almost entirely on world-building, storytelling, and improv. Some games, like the mentioned Microscope, along with Ex Novo and The Quiet Year are almost entirely crunchless world-building and storytelling.
You can go quite far with just oracles and no system at all, and then if you need one, easily pull in something modern and light like FATE, Mythic, or Fu RPG that just adds a few die rolls to your otherwise creative campaign.
And it can be more soloable than crunchy games because you don't need tons of rules and stats and dice rolls. You instead have creative prompts and oracles and source material and can just go with it, reading, interpreting, writing wherever your imagination takes you.
I did also do a lot of solo wargaming, so crunch is not un-soloable, but less crunch is easier and can feel more rewarding.
That's valid, I guess I never really thought of them that way.
https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/
Here's a gorgeous illustrated playthrough:
Ie, don't be a fascist.
I see little wrong with letting people experience a bit of what they, if they could, would force others to experience.
One thing I have learned over the years is that politics is extraordinarily complex. Painting with wide strokes and making caricatures of the "others" isn't useful or accurate. Nuance is just too complex for our monkey brains, so tribalism reigns. We must demand better every time this kind of drivel appears, regardless of the level of agreement with anything being said.