I'm curious about play without a group.
Technically, any RPG can be played solo so long as you have a decent GM emulator book such as Mythic. I would say the more crunchy the game, the more bookkeeping you have to do and the longer things take. Which means less fun. Mid to low crunch games are best for your more freeform games that are trying to emulate traditional RPG sessions.
I've played Call of Cthulhu solo. I used Heinrich's Call of Cthulhu Guide to Character Creation to generate my character. It's a bunch of life path tables similar to Traveller. You can go on some very cool and creepy tangents including whole mini adventures. That then generate plot hooks for your character to pursue. Actual gameplay is done via entries in a handwritten and timestamped journal and the Mythic GM emulator. It's all very simple and works out very well.
Other games I've played that have worked out well solo include:
Black Star
Savage Worlds
Star Wars D6
Lamentations of the Flame Princess(OSE and other B/X OSR games too)
Fabula Ultima
Exalted vs World of Darkness
You also have games like Four Against Darkness or 2d6 Dungeons. These are made specifically to be straight dungeon crawls more reminiscent of Warhammer Quest (considerably cheaper than the modern incarnations of these kinds of board games though) or video games like Wizardry. You don't need to GM them. You just go through dungeons, get loot, level up and repeat. More board game like than really RPG. But still very fun for lazy evenings. You can get the books for under £20 and have a really good time with them.
Quote from: GiantToenail on September 29, 2023, 07:37:43 AM
I'm curious about play without a group.
Scarlet Heroes i think have been designed specifically for just that scenario.
Scarlet heroes has a good DM emulator that can be plugged into other systems.
I lost interest in Mythic after they started the edition treadmill and some less than strllar attitude last year.
Not an RPG, but a skirmish wargame with RPG elements is 5 Parsecs from Home. It's sister fantasy (D&D) version is 5 Leagues from the Borderlands. Both give a campaign framework for procedurally generating scenarios. Might be useful for a solo RPG.
I did a short Basic D&D solo campaign with 4 characters and running random dungeons from the Dunjon website. Had to do a fair bit of back end work, but as a GM, that was part of the fun.
Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:48:43 AM
Technically, any RPG can be played solo so long as you have a decent GM emulator book such as Mythic.
I've been eyeing Mythic, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Have you used it/looked through it? Any opinions?
d100 dungeon is amazing. You can literally run a sandbox campaign with this system. Not only can you do dungeons but with additional books you can expand outward to randomly generate cities, forts, hex crawl maps, etc. This is as close to Pen and Paper solo campaigning as it gets. Very easy to run and play and I've picked up the d100 space series as well.
Four against the darkness is good for a dungeon crawl.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 29, 2023, 09:41:26 AM
Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:48:43 AM
Technically, any RPG can be played solo so long as you have a decent GM emulator book such as Mythic.
I've been eyeing Mythic, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Have you used it/looked through it? Any opinions?
I used Mythic extensively. All the RPGs I mentioned were played with Mythic. It's very versatile but I found I rarely needed more than the standard Yes/No matrix. You adjust the probabilities of a yes based on the likelihood of a yes occurring. And that answers pretty much any question you would normally have for a GM. I will say for CoC in particular I moved on to The Solo Investigator's Handbook recently. As a GM emulator it's got more specific monster and NPC generators for horror focused games. Mythic is fine for 99% of your solo gaming needs though.
Just to add a bit of clarity, Mythic GME (game master emulator) is different from Mythic the RPG (both by Word Mill.) If you are on a budget, there are other tools out there as well like CRGE.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145426/CRGE-Conjectural-Roleplaying-GM-Emulator (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145426/CRGE-Conjectural-Roleplaying-GM-Emulator)
I'm also a big fan of the GMA decks which come in a variety of genres.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/6395/Larcenous-Designs-LLC (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/6395/Larcenous-Designs-LLC)
The main advantage of these tools is that can be used with just about any traditional RPG. So, you're not just limited to purpose built solo games (although there are some good ones out there as well.)
If you like using tarot cards as inspiration and a randomizer, I wrote Four Houses in Chaos. It's a freebie along with my other solo tools...
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/9792/Tangent-Zero
It's probably something best learned by example. There are a number of examples here: https://www.rpgsolo.com/forum/forum-4.html, or if you prefer video: https://www.youtube.com/@MeMyselfandDieRPG.
As someone mentioned earlier, Mythic has a large number of supplements, and I don't recommend them. The base system is better as-is.
Just for fun, here are a variety of styles and systems that I have used in the past.
https://www.deviantart.com/zircher/gallery/85563109/solo-stories (https://www.deviantart.com/zircher/gallery/85563109/solo-stories)
Of course, if you like rabbit holes and drinking from the fire hose...
https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloActualPlay/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/SoloActualPlay/)
I'm personally not crazy about the system, but The One Ring 2e has a set of solo rules called "Strider Mode" that some people like. And Swords & Wizardry just released a solo module that's sort of like one of those old "Choose your own adventure" books. OSE is pretty easy to do solo.
Quote from: GiantToenail on September 29, 2023, 07:37:43 AM
I'm curious about play without a group.
I'm a fan of Mythic. But when it comes right down to it, I find the 1E DMG appendices to be the most useful in running a solo game. A key difference in approaches is the random tables in Mythic are populated with what I'd call the narrative meaning of an event (things like PC-positive, PC-negative, etc), and then you have to imagine what sort of actual thing fits the bill. Personally, I just find it more useful to randomly generate the actual thing with its narrative meaning to be determined when we see how things play out.
Beyond just the random dungeon, random wilderness, and random encounter appendices, the dungeon dressing tables are a great help. Even in a standard game with a prepared dungeon, sometimes you have those intersections or empty rooms where you have no particular reason to go one way over another. I would say this is especially so in solo-play when you're fully aware the dungeon is pretty much random anyway. So I drop in something at random from the dungeon dressing tables,, including a random direction. So you might spot a broken arrow on the floor of the western corridor. Or you might hear a muffled scream coming from the door to the north. This breaks up the symmetry of the situation, providing clues or even sense of urgency.
An excellent subject, and thread title!!!
I have run Four Against Darkness, but I didn't like the rules, so I just do the 4AD adventures with OSE rules instead.
In general, though, I am more interested to know if there is a good player emulator out there. I try to extensively test adventures before I use them with actual players, but I don't find Mythic very useful, unless it's simply to determine which path a party will take in a dungeon.
If you like Traveller, Zozer Games has a solo guide for Traveller in general (actually for Cepheus Engine, but it's basically the same) as well as one for the Hostile setting.
The Dragonbane boxed set comes with a solo adventure.
Quote from: Rhymer88 on September 30, 2023, 06:06:32 AM...If you like Traveller, Zozer Games has a solo guide for Traveller in general (actually for Cepheus Engine, but it's basically the same) as well as one for the Hostile setting.
Zozer's resolution system is interesting. Most GM emulators are geared towards answering a question with various degrees of yes/no with perhaps plot twists and such. It can be about anything and tends to be on the fly. Sometimes that introduces conflicting results or out of character behavior (for better or worse.) Zozer Solo and Hostile Solo (a wonderful book if you like crew based sci-fi survival/horror) are angled towards scene resolution. You front load all your mods, circumstances, and skills and make the roll, you then describe how the results came to be with descriptions, dialogue, actions, twists, environmental effects, etc. If you're a hopeless day dreamer like me, this can actually create much better scenes. Take something like the witty banter of the Princess Bride fight scene between Iñigo Montoya and Westley. Rolling that out round by round would likely come across as just another dice slog with both sides ending up as bloody rags. But, if the scene resolution roll was actually about information gathering flavored with sword play, you can get a very different picture. Of course, this style is not for everyone, but it very much works for me if I'm in a journal writing mood.
Drifting back to rule systems. It never hurts to check out IronSworn since it is a freebie and is a solid solo game built from the ground up for that.
There are actually a ton of solo games on Itch.io and DriveThru, although finding them is still a hassle due to the way each of their search engine (do or do not) work. If you like horror one-shots, look for hacks of the Wretched and Alone engine.
Of course, there's the grand daddy of them all Tunnels and Trolls. While the basic game is not solo, there are a LOT of programmed solo adventures for it. Paragraph based games are not everyone's cup of tea, and the super lethality of most of them can be extremely frustrating. But, I tried something different this summer and had a bunch of fun. Instead of playing it like a do or die RPG, I played it like a Souls-like video game with save points and such. The difference was night and day, I could explore the adventure locations more freely, I could quickly advance through the areas and puzzles that I had cleared. And most importantly, I actually had fun. [I gave up on T&T back in the day due to the high character turn over.]
Classic Traveller actually solos pretty well because it's map based, has random encounter tables, and reaction rolls. Roll a character and either hop on a ship or take your own if you got one. It works best for the merchant ship going world to world but can handle other stuff with a little imagination. What it really lacks is a rule for treasure and payouts. Most versions of Traveller since then have dropped the random encounters and reaction rolls.
QuoteDrifting back to rule systems. It never hurts to check out IronSworn since it is a freebie and is a solid solo game built from the ground up for that.
And now there's also Starforged - sci-fi variant of Ironsworn, according to system fans with way more polished rules and better oracular modes pushing solo play.
Now of course it's PBTA, alas very advanced and crunchy, so you've been warned. There are moves.
Storygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.
And I'm also very wary of calling "RPG" (which are a markedly group-oriented activity) something meant to be played alone.
Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on November 09, 2023, 10:31:01 AM
Storygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.
And I'm also very wary of calling "RPG" (which are a markedly group-oriented activity) something meant to be played alone.
You're entitled to your narrow definition. I'm more flexible on systems if they are fun to play. You can easily say that all solo sandbox gaming is creative writing with dice. And, you would not be wrong. There's still a game there, but some of it is more meta. Is world building and prep playing? Is witty word play playing? Do these each these as well as the various characters have roles? For me, all of the answers to those questions is yes. I wear a lot of hats and love each one of them.
Solo gaming varies widely from person to person and some people get more out of it than others.
Quote from: zircher on November 09, 2023, 12:27:32 PM
You're entitled to your narrow definition.
There's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".
I second with David's recommendation for Classic Traveller - especially if you play it in the style of Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series, moving from planet to planet using the random tables. There was even the old printed adventure Marooned Alone (Double Adventure 4) that encouraged solo play.
QuoteStorygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.
Vehemently disagree. But you do you.
QuoteThere's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".
Industry wholeheartedly accepted PBTA, FITD and simmilar engines as RPGs. Deniers are small minority.
Using effective industry standard as argument was bad shot man.
Anyway solo RPGs are old. Minority sure but present. Mythic RP most popular solo engine is 17 years old.
And I'm quite sure the RPGs where conflict/challenge resolution was interpreted in more wide narrative way, not simulationist one, also existed if you scratch around even way before AW.
Quote from: Wrath of God on November 09, 2023, 07:41:42 PM
QuoteStorygames, especially PbtA, are not RPGs.
Vehemently disagree. But you do you.
You are vehemently wrong, but it's not your fault.
Quote from: Wrath of God on November 09, 2023, 07:41:42 PM
QuoteThere's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".
Industry wholeheartedly accepted PBTA, FITD and simmilar engines as RPGs. Deniers are small minority.
On the contrary, the small minority (but extremely vocal and with a vast internet presence) are the companies that develop and sell these improv theater party games and their supporters. Evil Hat,
the most successful storygame company by a wide margin, it's a tiny speck when compared to RPG publishers.
Same goes for the player base for these things: we're talking about 4, 5%
at best when compared to the global scene. Of course, if you base your perception of adoption and acceptance for storygames on the average r/rpg or rpg.net response, they seem huge and the best next thing since the invention of dice. But the reality is different.
Quote from: David Johansen on September 30, 2023, 10:40:54 PM
Classic Traveller actually solos pretty well because it's map based, has random encounter tables, and reaction rolls. Roll a character and either hop on a ship or take your own if you got one. It works best for the merchant ship going world to world but can handle other stuff with a little imagination. What it really lacks is a rule for treasure and payouts. Most versions of Traveller since then have dropped the random encounters and reaction rolls.
The guy who wrote SOLO for Cepheus Engine (Paul Elliot) has a free download on his website for Solo using Classic Traveller and it does work pretty good (link below). I do solo play with Traveller and Cepheus Engine to flesh out my settings.
https://www.paulelliottbooks.com/traveller-freebies.html
Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on November 09, 2023, 12:39:37 PM
There's a thing called "prior art", that in RPG's case means a good 40+ years of history and customs related to the practice that contribute to form an effective industry standard for what "RPG" actually means.
Both storygames and solo play go against that standard --> they're not RPGs. It's not an arbitrary "narrowing of a definition".
My understanding of how AI works is, it would scan the message board, see another recent thread on solo gaming where it's characterized as a new trend, and so without needing to actually know anything at all about the "40+ years of history and customs" assumes that tradition could not include solo gaming. After all, that's a new trend.
Of course the problem with AI, in this case, is that it is factually incorrect.
We can talk about how far back solo rules go. Almost to the beginning.
We can talk about how it is included in arguably the two key D&D books that I would argue are the most quintessential books of the hobby period, but at the very least were the two most important and influential books of Gary Gygax's TSR, those being the 1E DMG (the most enduringly useful RPG book of all time) and the Frank Mentzer red box (the best introduction to RPGs of all time).
But what I'd really go to is that, in my experience anyway, before 1990ish, I never met a single other kid who played RPGs. I had to recruit and teach my players. After 1990ish, it became increasingly more common that every time I found myself in a new social circle (new school, new job, etc), I could always find at least one other gamer. Part of this was surely time, part of it surely my age and how that naturally impacted the sorts, size, and scope of the different social circles I interacted with.
The point is, you go back far enough, there was a sufficient scarcity of players that the ability to play solo was desirable, practical, and sometimes the best or only option you had.
Sure. Maybe you didn't experience that if you grew up in a college town in the mid-west. Or maybe you were the guy that was recruited into an existing group. Maybe you were just lucky. If that's you, consider it a blessing.
For the rest of us that go that far back, this was a thing, and it was an important thing. There's a reason it was used as a tool in the Mentzer introduction to D&D. There is a reason it was the very first of many appendices in the 1E DMG. It's because it is an important part of the "prior art."
So if that's an argument you really take seriously, you have no choice but to accept solo-gaming. You don't have to like it, you don't have to do it. But you do have to acknowledge and admit it is part if real RPGs.
Just to do the history thing, I grew up in Arizona and due to my proximity to Flying Buffalo Inc., I was exposed to Tunnels and Trolls and solo adventures (of the programmed kind) even before AD&D. That would have been like 1979.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on September 29, 2023, 09:41:26 AM
Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:48:43 AM
Technically, any RPG can be played solo so long as you have a decent GM emulator book such as Mythic.
I've been eyeing Mythic, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Have you used it/looked through it? Any opinions?
I used it till they jumped to 2e.
It is a VERY robust system and it works. But the robustness can be a but of a learning curve. I feel like some of the procedure could have used better explanation. But once you grasp it, the system works. And it can and eventually will throw curveballs at you that have to adapt and react to.
Quote
On the contrary, the small minority (but extremely vocal and with a vast internet presence) are the companies that develop and sell these improv theater party games and their supporters. Evil Hat, the most successful storygame company by a wide margin, it's a tiny speck when compared to RPG publishers.
Same goes for the player base for these things: we're talking about 4, 5% at best when compared to the global scene. Of course, if you base your perception of adoption and acceptance for storygames on the average r/rpg or rpg.net response, they seem huge and the best next thing since the invention of dice. But the reality is different.
No you missed my point. If we speak about market share then honestly there are 5 rpgs: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, WoD, Warhammer and CoC. The end.
But that's not my point - my point is that PBTA and FITD are widely accepted both by industry professionals - RPG writers and producers, and by community (well community willing to discuss RPGs - hard to count all those silent voices) as RPGs. Sure different subtypes but still RPGs. Voices of opposition are minority within minority. Way less than 4,5%. Even most people hating those games accept them as subtype of RPGs. And that's it - their popularity is less important then.
Although I gonna say 4,5% for movement so young in market so dominated by juggernaut and few big bisons does not sound so bad. Like whole OSR is probably less than 10%.
And that's it for my defending storygames day - I'm definitely much more d100 skill based guy.
And you missed mine, twice. It doesn't matter if they are "widely accepted", especially by the community: PbtA and the like are objectively something vastly different from RPGs and cannot be considered as such. Who does that is wrong.
It's like saying American football, Australian football and Gaelic football are the same game because they're all "football".
QuoteIt's like saying American football, Australian football and Gaelic football are the same game because they're all "football".
That's comparison that goes against you.
Because various RPGs even normie ones are different games, not the same.
So yeah - RPGs are like team-ball games. Every one with separate own set of balls and own shape of field and rules.
American Football is like D&D 4e, and Gaelic Football is like Runequest :P
QuoteAnd you missed mine, twice. It doesn't matter if they are "widely accepted", especially by the community: PbtA and the like are objectively something vastly different from RPGs and cannot be considered as such. Who does that is wrong.
It's you who used industry as marker.
And GURPS and OD&D are also vastly different. This means nothing.
Quote from: Wrath of God on November 13, 2023, 07:29:58 PM
QuoteIt's like saying American football, Australian football and Gaelic football are the same game because they're all "football".
That's comparison that goes against you.
Because various RPGs even normie ones are different games, not the same.
So yeah - RPGs are like team-ball games. Every one with separate own set of balls and own shape of field and rules.
American Football is like D&D 4e, and Gaelic Football is like Runequest :P
I was thinking something similar. That they're all different games but all sports. Nobody is claiming PbtA is the same as D&D. They're just saying it's the same sort of thing.
I remember about 30 years ago one of the issues of the day was "Is cheerleading a sport?" And the pro-cheerleading argument was that cheerleaders were athletes--not only that, but it's more athletically demanding than bowling or golf.
And I think the problem is it assumes that athleticism is the defining characteristic of sports. It's an easy mistake to make but clearly wrong. I mean there are plenty of jobs that are athletically demanding that we don't call sports. I think what actually characterizes sports is something that's hard to pin down but probably not unrelated to the word "sportsmanship" which seems to carry with it some implied values.
Similarly, with RPGs, a lot of people prematurely assume definitions that sound good on the surface but aren't so obvious when you start asking questions. And it may be difficult to pin down exactly what is or isn't an RPG.
I don't know enough about PbtA to render an opinion on that specifically either way as to whether or not it's really an RPG. But I would say, if you can do it (or something similar) in AD&D 1st Edition by the book, then you certainly can't say it's not an RPG. And 1E's got a lot of things in there that a lot of gamers just aren't aware of. And in my opinion, it's the big tent RPG.
In fact, I usually upset a lot of the indie people back in the day because just about every big idea the indie movement put forth, I know of at least some GM or group doing it back in the day with plain ol' D&D, and that if I really gave enough of a shit to do so, I could probably even track down documentary evidence of such things being mentioned in Dragon magazine or some third-party product.