Learning to love solo play
It’s fair to say that I haven’t had the best relationship with solo RPGs in the past. For the longest time I saw them as a distraction at best, and a lazy reduction of the hobby by people who are too up their own arse to play with other people at worst. For the longest time, I have been wedded to the traditional RPG format – 3-5 players, a GM and a multi-session campaign – that anything different to that was greeted with a fair degree of scorn.
So what’s changed?
With age comes two things; perspective and a declining ability to pull people together into a group. The latter means that over the years my core gaming group has dwindled and I have a lot more gaming headspace than I have table time. I get bored easily and need to keep my creativity in almost perpetual motion – running games has done this over the years, but now that’s in lower supply I need something else to do, and trust me, I can only paint so many minis before that loses it’s attractiveness.
So with this in mind, when Guy (of the Burn After Running blog, Unconventional GMs and the Seven Hills RPG Con – quite a little CV you have there, mate!) invited me to a Discord for solo game play, I was intrigued at giving it one more try.
I’ve tried in the past to engage with this side of the hobby. I tried Apothecaria but bounced at the premise. I tried Captain’s Log but bounced at the solo part of the system. I have successfully played some Ironsworn but it frittered out for reasons. Not a lot has got my attention or, more importantly, been able to keep my attention.
That’s changed.
Why? I’ve thought about this long and hard and I think its down to two things. First, is an audience. I can share the record of my games with the Discord and I get an iota of feedback. That’s all I need. Clearly, roleplaying is about performance to some degree and performances need to be experienced. That’s clearly a side of the hobby that my hardcore extrovert self needs and now this little group provides that. Indeed, I don’t really care whether the games are being read, or even noticed. The fact that I can put them in front of someone is all the catalyst I need.
Second, I have embraced using digital tools to chronicle my games. When we played One Thousand Year Old Vampire, I tracked the game and the journal aspect in a Google Doc. I’ve just been doing the same with a game of See Page X – you can read that here – and I have resurrected my Ironsworn blog to house my games. The latter is an example of a game with exemplary online support. I use Pocketforge to do some gaming on the move, dump the results into WordPress, and get creative.
That interface between game and tech means I can do things on my commute, or lazing on the sofa, or when I have a spare hour in the evening to jump in front of a monitor. It’s very accessible, which is what I need.
Why have some games clicked and others haven’t?
So far, I think its down to prompts – the bits in the game that tell you what to write about and where the adventure goes. Without them, it seems to lean towards fan fiction a little too much for me. With them, there’s enough game to actually get some traction with the G side of RPGs in my head. So I have to pick my games carefully, but when I find one that works they’ve become a lovely distraction. And the characters that I have developed are some of my favourites – Edvin Blackwoode, redcoat turned vampire and his adventures in India, Zahn the Scourge and his ongoing saga of incompetency in the Ironlands and new to the game, Carly Cervantes aka Death Mask – the newest hero in ‘yet to be defined’ city.
What’s the moral of this tale?
I suppose it’s about not being so stuck in your ways that you don’t try something new, and being flexible enough to work out what works, and what doesn’t work and bending the experience to your benefit. If you do, you might just find appreciation for a new side of the hobby.
