Hi folks. I have noticed more and more buzz out there about solo RPGs, a genre that has technically been around for a very long time if you count solo introductory adventures and Fighting Fantasy books(and others). I suspect that COVID had something to do with, and I can totally see why some might feel it's a bit sad compared to getting together with a group of friends. A number of YouTube channels are now extensively covering solo games, such as Mythic. Anybody here with some experience with this? For me, I think it could be a great way to try things out if you're tinkering with a game that is interesting enough to hold your attention. Answering questions such as: How would I handle different situations in this setting or with this system? Or to foresee questions about setting and system before they occur, while perhaps fleshing things out at the same time. Thoughts?

Gygax introduced solo play in Dragon or SR very early on. And of course the AD&D DMG had extensive dungeon systems that could be used for solo play.

TSR put out at least 4 solo modules.

I think the recent upswing in interest is a few factors.
 
1: The advent of DM emulators like Mythic, FU and a few others. These alow alot of freedom and can be plugged into other games with little issue. They are not though everyones cup of tea though.
 
2: Difficulty in getting stable play groups, or groups at all, offline or online.
 
3: The growing problem of game baiting. Where people, mostly online, lure players in with the promise of a campaign. Then kick them from the group either after session one, or after a few sessions. Often with no explanation why.
 
4: Covid certainly got people looking for alternatives and got more eyes on solo play and the various emulators.

I've done a lot of solo wargaming with Five Parsecs from Home, which I think is RPG lite.
I also did a short campaign to test out my own D&D inspired homebrew system.
And I'm currently getting stuff together for a D&D (non-edition) campaign, because I have the itch to do it again.

I mostly like to do things procedurally. Light on the Role Play and more emphasis on adventuring/dungeon crawling and world building.
(I really wanted to like Gloomhaven, it looked right up my alley, but the actual game system turned  me off.)

I prefer to play RPGs in person, and I really dislike playing online. Solo RPing lets me get some gaming in when scheduling and getting a group together is an issue. And I do think it's a great way to keep in practice and test game ideas while someone is between groups.

Quote from: Trond on November 01, 2023, 12:12:49 PM
Hi folks. I have noticed more and more buzz out there about solo RPGs, a genre that has technically been around for a very long time if you count solo introductory adventures and Fighting Fantasy books(and others). I suspect that COVID had something to do with, and I can totally see why some might feel it's a bit sad compared to getting together with a group of friends. A number of YouTube channels are now extensively covering solo games, such as Mythic. Anybody here with some experience with this? For me, I think it could be a great way to try things out if you're tinkering with a game that is interesting enough to hold your attention. Answering questions such as: How would I handle different situations in this setting or with this system? Or to foresee questions about setting and system before they occur, while perhaps fleshing things out at the same time. Thoughts?

Yeah, I've had some decent experience with solo play. It may be a "new" trend, but way back when I first started playing D&D, none of my friends played. I had to get new people to give it a try. And even then, sometimes it stuck, sometimes it didn't. So my earliest days playing D&D were probably two-thirds solo. For many years after those initial ones, though, I was blessed with a lot of people to game with, so from age 10 to age 40 or so, my total number solo sessions was fewer than 10. Then I got hooked on 1E DMG appendix A. I've always used it as a valuable tool in dungeon design, whether to flesh out ideas, or to use it to kick-start ideas, or even for entire dungeons. But I found it to actually be fun for solo play as well.

I also happen to be a big fan of Mythic. It's easier to adapt outside of the dungeon. However the TYPE of the information the Mythic tables give I personally find to be less useful than something more like Appendix A. A random encounter with Elves is more useful to me than an encounter with "PC positive" or "PC negative." The latter doesn't tell me what I actually encounter and doesn't give me much to imagine. And especially if I'm playing solo, I don't necessarily know whether this encounter is going to be good or bad at first. Elves, on the other hand, is more specific and useful. Whether they are PC positive or PC negative remains to be seen. However, I can fall back on Mythic if the elves motives are in question.

Sounds great that I just cram all these different things together. However a big reality of solo play is bandwidth. DMs typically have a lot to do, and players manage their characters. Imagine having to do all the DM stuff and maintain characters in high detail. And then add to that working whichever solo generator you're using. That already begins to border on unplayable unless you simplify things. Anything you add to that means in a practical sense you're going to have to take something away. So I don't necessarily recommend using both Appendix A and Mythic. Though you can certainly learn some of the ideas from Mythic and apply those principles off the top of your head while using Appendix A.


That said, I'm big on Appendix A, including Appendix B (which covers wilderness stuff), and Appendix C being oodles of random monster tables. I also use Appendix I (Dungeon Dressing). Some of that stuff works outside of dungeons as well. I used Inspiration Pad Pro to automate Appendix A and sprinkled in some chances of dropping in some things from Appendix I. But where I found it to be the absolute most helpful is at corridor intersections and empty rooms, especially empty rooms with multiple exits, situations where you have no good reason to go one way over another, it's like dropping in a clue.

When running Appendix A solo, it may also be helpful to imagine there's some shit-pants gaming snob looking over your shoulder telling you how you're stupid to use a random dungeon and random dungeons make no sense and a dungeon should make sense, and blah blah blah, all that noise that sucks the fun out of a room and sounds smart, but when you dig deep enough is totally moronic. I look at the random dungeon like a Rorschach ink blot. If you map enough of it, it starts to look like something that makes sense. Sometimes that comes out in half a page. Sometimes you have to map like 6 dungeon levels before you see it. But when you find it, you shove it in that doofus's face, and say, "See. It made sense all along. You were just too dumb to see it in the beginning." They say as Robert E Howard typed, he imagined Conan was standing behind him, axe in hand, compelling him to write. When I play solo, I imagine Shit-Pants the Snobarian standing behind me wagging his finger compelling me prove him wrong.

The reason to do that is not to prove the unfun finger-waggers of gaming are idiots. I mean, they are. But that has nothing to do with what you're doing at your table. It's so that when you're in the moment of exploring, your mind is constantly trying to figure out what this place is. The same way you might be trying to figure out what any strange place is as a player who was playing with an actual DM with a planned dungeon so that your perceptions aren't poisoned by knowing the dungeon is actually random. And when you're in the right mindset, you're constantly going to be curious about what's beyond the next corner.

Whether dungeoncrawling or hexcrawling or sandboxing, the exploration itself should be fun. It's not about "density" of monsters, treasures, traps, etc. That stuff is fun, too. But if you can fall in love with the act of exploring itself, you'll never have a bad game. What I've found, though, is once I do figure out what the dungeon is, AFTER that, I start to lose interest in the dungeon. The odds of the continued random results conforming to what you figured the dungeon to be are slim. And that gives you a natural end time to these dungeon crawls when it's time to start over with a fresh dungeon.


One thing I'll note, and you'll get this as one of the general ideas from Mythic as well, if you look at the chance to find secret doors in Appendix A, it's 1 in 10 rather than the standard 1 in 6. And they only let you search dead ends and rooms with no obvious means of egress. The idea is they're compounding the probability of there even being a secret door there with your chances of finding it, for which the probability is rather generous in those allowable places.

Strictly speaking, that doesn't mean there can't be secret doors in other places. If Appendix I says you hear sounds of footsteps to the north and there's no way to go north, then you can conclude it has to be one of three things. 1) The sound is an illusion, 2) There's something invisible in the room with you, or 3) There is a secret door to the north. If you somehow eliminate the first two as possibilities, then I'd allow a chance for a secret door to the north, even if it's not a dead end or room with no obvious exit, and I'd even consider allowing it at the usual 1 in 6 chance to find rather than the 1 in 10 in Appendix A.

Because Appendix A does rely somewhat on interpretation, and the ideas implicit in Appendix A (and explicit in Mythic) means a clue can change the probabilities of future generated content, following Appendix I clues makes the whole thing much more dynamic, so don't punt on that. Keep photocopies of those pages handy if you need to.


That's all I've got unless you've got specific questions.


Edit: One more thing. For about a year I did this fun experiment where we had a group of players at the table but used the solo-play. Each of us essentially playing our own solo adventure, but it taking place on the same map. We used big ass graph paper like you would use with minis. And we could join up, or split up. In order to keep everyone coordinated timewise, we used a combination of hand counters (limiting the number of turns you could take so nobody got too far ahead) and a sand timer so no one player could hold up the entire group. And wandering monster checks were tied to the sand timer.

If you're playing solo, you obviously don't need to coordinate time with other players. However, by using a 10- or 15-minute sand timer and tying wandering monsters to it, it can help you stay focused. If you find yourself getting nowhere in your solo play because you stop too much to check your social media or searching for a song or movie to play for some background noise, or just otherwise have some kind of attention-deficit issues, using the sand timer can help A LOT in terms of keeping focused.

Quote from: Lunamancer on November 01, 2023, 02:49:05 PM
Edit: One more thing. For about a year I did this fun experiment where we had a group of players at the table but used the solo-play. Each of us essentially playing our own solo adventure, but it taking place on the same map. We used big ass graph paper like you would use with minis. And we could join up, or split up. In order to keep everyone coordinated timewise, we used a combination of hand counters (limiting the number of turns you could take so nobody got too far ahead) and a sand timer so no one player could hold up the entire group. And wandering monster checks were tied to the sand timer.

I never got to try it myself, but I heard of some groups doing a shared solo 5 Parsecs campaign. Everyone reported their campaign turn results to a an admin, who updated the sector with events and places and battles. It sounds like a really neat concept I'd like to try someday in any system.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 01, 2023, 03:16:01 PM

Quote from: Lunamancer on November 01, 2023, 02:49:05 PM
Edit: One more thing. For about a year I did this fun experiment where we had a group of players at the table but used the solo-play. Each of us essentially playing our own solo adventure, but it taking place on the same map. We used big ass graph paper like you would use with minis. And we could join up, or split up. In order to keep everyone coordinated timewise, we used a combination of hand counters (limiting the number of turns you could take so nobody got too far ahead) and a sand timer so no one player could hold up the entire group. And wandering monster checks were tied to the sand timer.

I never got to try it myself, but I heard of some groups doing a shared solo 5 Parsecs campaign. Everyone reported their campaign turn results to a an admin, who updated the sector with events and places and battles. It sounds like a really neat concept I'd like to try someday in any system.

At least when you play solo, the DM and players can all get along well......  So many people always have a chip on their shoulder.  It's too easy to offend people; and I don't care to cater to anyone's BS, either.  I don't want D&D to become solo play, but it does have some appeal.  It's a bit like playing pool against yourself, though.

I've enjoyed the solo RPG experience, using a mix of tools. I had enough success with it that I turned a game campaign into the basis for an entire fantasy novel series. Started off using random content and then as I thought about the logical reasons for this info, built up more of a world and used the randomness less and less until I was just plain writing books. On another occasion I did a solo RPG and then cleaned it up and turned it into a novel by itself -- not my best work, and nobody cared about that one, but OK.

For the novel series, I used a changing mix of tools. Godbound, Worlds Without Number, Mythic, Fate (phased out due to Wokist madness by its publisher), and cards called Gamemaster's Apprentice. Eg. I rolled up content for a first dungeon: a room with a prominent vertical feature, a guardian, and a protective measure that fails at a bad time. Interpreted that as the heroine finding a ledge overlooking a deep, slightly flooded silo, connected to a room with a barely functional magic crystal that can repel a hostile slush monster. Got a ton of mileage out of a roll involving a religious group that sealed away something evil.

My favorite random draw of cards: Heroine was in a seedy bar, and I decided I wanted her to bait some kidnappers, but didn't know how it'd go down. My card draw said various things and I saw the following among their content: "Beverages. Magic amplifies. Injure distant food. Strengthen brazen rage. Fix disappointing foreigner." So the heroine's playing with her water magic when suddenly the spell glitches and splashes beer all over a guy at another table. Bar fight!

I tried the solo thing way back in the Tunnels and Trolls day.  Programmed adventures did not grab me, you either thought like the author or died horribly.  On the other hand, modern day solo play with oracles and other solo tools is something that I am a big fan of.  I have sooo many dusty games that I never could find a group for and solo is one outlet that works for me.

Solo play also allows me to deal with more than tables and dice.  I also dig tarot decks and collaborating with AI art, these allow me even more visual inspiration for my games.  Dabbling with AI chat, but I have been so far underwhelmed with what I can do on my local machine.

I get a lot of request for solo rules for my games lately. So from my vantage point, it looks like there is more interest in this (I just honestly don't know enough about solo RPGs to really make anything at this point)

Quote from: zircher on November 09, 2023, 01:04:32 PM
I tried the solo thing way back in the Tunnels and Trolls day.  Programmed adventures did not grab me, you either thought like the author or died horribly.  On the other hand, modern day solo play with oracles and other solo tools is something that I am a big fan of.  I have sooo many dusty games that I never could find a group for and solo is one outlet that works for me.

Solo play also allows me to deal with more than tables and dice.  I also dig tarot decks and collaborating with AI art, these allow me even more visual inspiration for my games.  Dabbling with AI chat, but I have been so far underwhelmed with what I can do on my local machine.

I did the old Flying Buffalo play by mail adventures for that. It was interesting, but you had to wait a long time between things happening.

The leftist crazies invading the hobby are making the old guard all want to play solo.

I solo play on occasion, but not really as a full game.  I mostly do it to test drive the latest rulebook so I can get used to it and learn how it all fits together.  I say that so you know that I'm not talking out my butt, but at the same time I am no super expert at this stuff.

The advice I would give is this.

1.  Get a set of rules you like and know.  You're going to be the GM in a lot of the case, so you must know your rules inside and out.

2.  Find a bunch of random tables.  They don't even have to be from your game.  Hell, they don't even need to be for your genre.  I can run a Star Wars game and roll a fantasy table that has me rescuing civilian children, from a castle, in a desert, with the boss being a vampire.  In that case, we are rescuing civilian children from a cyber fortress, on a desert planet, with the end boss being a evil scientist who is extending his life by fatally harvesting cells from small children to regrown/regen/re-clone his own body organs to keep him alive, and has done so for FAR longer than a person ought to.

The random tables allow you to create the adventure.

Maze Rats is a good source for random tables.  Another one I use is from a single page Star Wars game called Interstellar Laser Knights.

3.  NPC reaction tables.  These are the core of a "GM Engine".  Essentially, a random table with four results.  Emphatically yes, mostly yes, mostly no, and emphatically no.  I would have 2 of these, maybe 3 of these tables.  You can make them yourself.  Example.  1%-15% = Emphatically yes, 16%-50% = mostly yes, 51%-85% = mostly no, and 86%-100% is emphatically no.

You use these tables when asking pretty much anything.  Does this NPC we just met know anything about my quest?  53% is rolled, so that is a no, but they do know something.  Is that something about the enemy, if not then its about the location?  16%, so mostly yes, so its about the enemy, but not the main enemy.  Ect, ect.  Just ask questions, and let the table answer yes or no.  Hell, a Magic 8-ball would work here.

The other table would be one weighted to one end of the spectrum, like 0%-5% = Emphatic yes, 6%-35% = mostly yes, 36%-50% = mostly no, 51%-100% = emphatically no.  You can use this same scale in reverse, just ask the question backwards.  Does this character like me?  Does this character hate me?  Some table, but one will probably be a yes, the other a no.

That is it.  I don't think you really need much more than that.

I use solo adventuring pretty often. If nothing else, it allows me to flesh out settings for later gaming.

Quote from: Bedrockbrendan on November 09, 2023, 01:15:12 PM
I get a lot of request for solo rules for my games lately. So from my vantage point, it looks like there is more interest in this (I just honestly don't know enough about solo RPGs to really make anything at this point)

If you want to give that a stab, take a look at what Part Per Million does.  He writes a lot of system specific solo tools and that might give you some inspiration.  In a nut shell, you want an oracle that uses the same dice and/or mechanics as your main game.  For example Traveller/Cepheus Engine uses 2d6 for everything, so a 2d6 based oracle makes sense along with d66 tables for encounters, events, NPCs/patrons, and such.

Quote from: Batjon on November 09, 2023, 02:21:31 PM
The leftist crazies invading the hobby are making the old guard all want to play solo.

Truth!  I tried online play and sites like Roll 20 are just rotten with disfunctional humans. 

Perhaps I need to add something like this to my game descriptions, "Warning: The GM for this game is not your therapist, personal secretary, or BSDM wing man.  The safe word is Alt-F4."