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How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

dicebreaker.com

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Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#21

Post by checkyoursudo »

I played some AD&D and up through 3.5, GURPS, and TMNT RPG (yes, it was a thing^) in my teens and 20s. I ended up playing solo quite often. In my experience, solo play was for me like brainstorming for writing fiction (kind of like the fictional journal from TFA). It turned out that I also liked writing fiction, so solo RPG was pretty fun for me in a sort of way. I did like playing with others better, most of the time.

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-...

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#22

Post by Kostchei »

themodelplumber wrote: post #20
Kostchei wrote: post #19

I always view 4 players as quorum. You can have fun with less, but it is a much choppier experience- sometimes flat, sometimes good. Ans 6 is my limit - just based on divided tabletime. 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…

I'm curious why you think this method of social play has to exclude solo play, and can't exist alongside? Or am I reading this correctly as being mournful that people are turning to solo play? The thread is about solo play. It is starting, though, to seem like there's quite a bit of projection and look-how-social-things-can-be clouding out the fact that it's a perfectly great hobby to do this solo. Social play is nic…

I'm not saying they can't, I just found my own exploration of solo play not as effective.

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.

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#23

Post by themodelplumber »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #21

I played some AD&D and up through 3.5, GURPS, and TMNT RPG (yes, it was a thing^) in my teens and 20s. I ended up playing solo quite often. In my experience, solo play was for me like brainstorming for writing fiction (kind of like the fictional journal from TFA). It turned out that I also liked writing fiction, so solo RPG was pretty fun for me in a sort of way. I did like playing with others better, most of the tim…

Did you get into After the Bomb at all? I'm curious because I understand it's TMNT with filed-off serial numbers, but I find it a lot of fun to read. The publisher recently released a new hardback edition with a really nice full-color spread inside.

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)

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#24

Post by themodelplumber »

Kostchei wrote: post #22
themodelplumber wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think this method of social play has to exclude solo play, and can't exist alongside? Or am I reading this correctly as being mournful that people are turning to solo play? The thread is about solo play. It is starting, though, to seem like there's quite a bit of projection and look-how-social-things-can-be clouding out the fact that it's a perfectly great hobby to do this solo. Social play is nic…

I'm not saying they can't, I just found my own exploration of solo play not as effective. 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…

So more of a didn't work for you situation, that makes sense, thanks.

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#25

Post by ryanmercer »

Aren't the point of tabletop RPGs primarily the fact that they are a social experience though?

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?

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#26

Post by neetle »

ryanmercer wrote: post #25

Aren't the point of tabletop RPGs primarily the fact that they are a social experience though? 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?

The scope of what's considered a "table top RPG" these days is pretty large. A large number of them are more focussed on the creativity and drama aspects, rather than the tactical combat. I'm not surprised that a lot of them are able to be solo'd versus played collaboratively.

Hell, there are games like Microscope that would be incredibly fun playing solo.

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#27

Post by sdenton4 »

drewcoo wrote: post #12
bibliographer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it adds a lovely bit of variety to the experiences. Tried a journaling RPG for the first time recently — spending 4 hours imagining experiences, describing them, and guiding my creativity with the game's ruleset / prompts. The game allowed room for introspection, for overcoming internal obstacles, for writing / thinking carefully about how I phrase things. That was a profoundly different experience from my Tue…

You started with a goal and you took notes so the only thing different between your experience and Exploratory Testing is the debrief session. Oh, but you've started that here already, too. 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 tr…

Thousand Year Old Vampire is probably the best single player RPG.

https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/

Here's a gorgeous illustrated playthrough:

https://www.timdenee.com/A-Thousand-Years-of-Vampire

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#28

Post by simonh »

neetle wrote: post #26
ryanmercer wrote: post #25

Aren't the point of tabletop RPGs primarily the fact that they are a social experience though? 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?

The scope of what's considered a "table top RPG" these days is pretty large. A large number of them are more focussed on the creativity and drama aspects, rather than the tactical combat. I'm not surprised that a lot of them are able to be solo'd versus played collaboratively. Hell, there are games like Microscope that would be incredibly fun playing solo.

Right, choose your own and MUDs and such are environments created for you with pre-determined options. I play those, sure, but the pull of tabletop games for me is the creative aspect. Creating a character (in the senses of 'fictional character' as much as a stats sheet) as a player, or a world and (npc) characters to inhabit it, as a GM. These more freeform approaches to solo play open up a lot of scope for individual creative exploration, and some GMs use them to help develop a setting they later go on to use in a group game.

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#29

Post by VLM »

sdenton4 wrote: post #27
drewcoo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started with a goal and you took notes so the only thing different between your experience and Exploratory Testing is the debrief session. Oh, but you've started that here already, too. 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 tr…

Thousand Year Old Vampire is probably the best single player RPG. https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/ Here's a gorgeous illustrated playthrough: https://www.timdenee.com/A-Thousand-Years-of-Vampire

Ironic that in a thread about shaming how people should be permitted by others to have fun, the first page of that web page is a long rant about the author's demand to gatekeep his purchasers political views, dripping with hatred for his opponents.

Re: How to play tabletop RPGs by yourself: A beginner's guide to solo roleplaying

#30

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #14
asimpleusecase wrote: post #2

Seems like a bad idea for anything other than a bit of testing. Back in university a gang of us played all the time and many of us were the prototypical nerds and somewhere on the socially awkward spectrum. But role playing gave us social interaction practice because we did it together. We knew one guy who was so introverted that he would sit in his room and run a dungeon by himself. He did not do that because he was…

Counterpoint. The "nerdy" hobbies are dominated by gatekeepers who have played the thing they're into (e.g. DND, MTG, Warhammer) for a long time, who don't actually want to get you into it as well, but who want to flex their experience and skills. They don't want people to play with, they want an audience. You can be into social games but still be socially maladjusted. I prefer the single player experience over that.

If your goals, personalities or experience don't align, it will suck to play games with certain people. But that's the case for all social activities. But plenty of game groups exists with enough people that you don't have to play with the people you don't like playing with.
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