On Solo Play

"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone."
- Rudyard Kipling, The Winners

I've been dabbling in solo play since the late 1970s, but it was only in the late 2000s when I discovered All Things Zombie that the light bulb came on and I understood how to do it. I haven't looked back since, and as time goes on, solo gaming is becoming an increasingly important part of my hobby.

Why?

Let's begin by looking at why I do this at all. There are many reasons, but it's only as I write this that I realise I've been moving along an arc over the last few years; there were three main stages, although they overlapped quite a bit.

• Stage 1: Isolation. At first, I turned to solo play to deal with isolation. Local groups didn't share my availability, or my taste in games; that's still true, but since the COVID lockdowns created a surge in online gaming, it's less important, as with a little effort, I can find kindred spirits online and play using a VTT.
• Stage 2: Experimentation. The second leg of my journey saw me trying out all manner of games, rulings and settings before unleashing them on my players (or vice versa). As I grow increasingly set in my ways, this too is becoming less relevant.
• Stage 3: Convenience. The most important feature of solo gaming for me at the moment is that I can play what I like, when I like, without worrying about what anyone else thinks or whether I'm keeping anyone waiting. I can play 15 minutes, stop to look up rules for an hour, and then pause for a month, and pick up again where I left off.

Throughout all those stages, a further objective has been to avoid skills fade on those rules I don't use often enough to keep on top of otherwise, and that continues to be a part of my solo gaming, although it's more of a side effect now, as I don't care as much about not having the rules memorised these days.

What?

I've played a lot of solo games over the last couple of decades or so, and I divide them into these categories:

• First-generation RPGs, like Classic Traveller or AD&D. While these don't have rules for solo play as such, the random encounter tables and core gameplay loops - interstellar trade for Traveller, dungeon crawling for AD&D - make it relatively easy to do, and statements in the rules themselves make it clear the designers were aware of the solo option. While the mechanics are dated by today's standards, they still work surprisingly well as solo games.
• Skirmish wargames with RPG elements, which often refer to themselves as "adventure games"; here, you find the Two Hour Wargames and Nordic Weasel/Modiphius products, as well as One Page Rules' Quest games. These are characterised by relatively simple rules focused on combat, and little in the way of detailed settings. They tend to be especially good at NPC combat AI and creating emergent story arcs, but not all of them let me build the characters I want to play.
• Solo toolkits, intended as add-ons to another RPG of your choice. The granddaddy of them all is the generic Mythic Game Master Emulator by Word Mill Games, while Solo from Zozer Games is aimed explicitly at Traveller and the Cepheus Engine; but the current generation of RPGs tend to have solo rules either built in or available as a downloadable supplement. Such toolkits are usually built around two core 'oracles'; a simple oracle for answering yes/no questions, and a 'spark table' of random prompts for answering complex questions. Gameplay is simple; whenever you would normally ask the GM a question, you roll on an oracle table instead.
• Purpose-built solo RPGs, notably Ironsworn (fantasy) and Ironsworn: Starforged (SF). These are often based on, or adjacent to, the Powered By the Apocalypse game engine, which I find myself unable to use; I just don't think that way.
• Narrative solo RPGs, perhaps most famously Thousand Year Old Vampire. These don't appeal to me at all; if I want to write a novel, I'll do that.

I've used a variety of these over the years, and personally I find the "adventure games" have the structure that's easiest for me to work with, although I will often replace the character generation, character improvement, and combat rules with another RPG, most often Savage Worlds, which despite its numerous good points isn't really built for solo play, so needs to be supplemented.

Current Requirements

For the next solo game, I want something which:

• Makes use of the Savage Worlds rules, and is focused on combat encounters so I can practice the more obscure combat options.
• Has minimal inventory management, because I hate inventory management.
• Lets me experiment with something new for the NPC AI, campaign, and scenario generators.
• Has a defined end point, rather than gradually petering out as I lose interest.
• Has minimal setting detail, either published or procedurally-generated; I have a tendency to go down rabbit holes in either case, and then decide it's not good enough and start over. Repeatedly. That is not a good use of time.

Hmm. That all sounds like the zombie apocalypse should be up next... Enough pontificating, let's roll some dice.