Solo roleplaying

I enjoy solo board games but don’t enjoy solo roleplaying games. What’s going on?

(Quick aside. I’m not criticising anyone who enjoys solo RPGs. This is me gazing at my navel and trying to work out why they don’t work for me.)

Saving the world in Thunderbirds

Solo RPGs

I have little experience with solo RPGs, but that’s because I don’t enjoy them. The two I’ve played to any extent are Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged. (And even then, I had a guide to Starforged.)

I’m also not a massive fan of the “lonely fun” some games come with. For example, I don’t want to build spaceships or subsectors or star systems in Traveller. And I don’t enjoy creating stat blocks while preparing RPG adventures. (I’m a big fan of Fate Accelerated’s simplified approach to NPC stat blocks.)

(I admire the mechanics of solo RPGs. Both Thousand Year Old Vampire and Starforged seem good at what they do. They just aren’t pressing the right buttons for me.)

Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

What about Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, such as The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and its successors? Well, while I enjoyed The Warlock of Firetop Mountain when it came out, I tired of the later books.

A few years ago, I found some in a charity shop and revisited them, but I found them as frustrating as I remember. I was annoyed at the lack of clues – sometimes, the means to success was finding something completely at random. I also didn’t enjoy the fights – typically, I would ignore them and assume I won.

I also skimmed the text to get to the decisions – the bit l liked.

The only gamebook I honestly enjoyed was Dave Morris & Jamie Thomson’s Can you Brexit? I found this monster of a book (865 paragraphs) both educational and entertaining, and I played it all through (I even managed to reverse Brexit!). Can you Brexit? has an advantage over the fantasy fighting gamebooks – it’s meaningful, which maybe made a difference.

(So does this mean I would like “interactive fiction” more, as the bookish/less-gamey hobby calls itself? Apparently not – I’ve tried a couple and found they have the same problem as gamebooks – I skim them to get to the decisions. I think the problem is me.)

Solo board games

On the other hand, I’ve played many cooperative board games, including The Lord of the Rings, D-Day Dice, Pandemic, Thunderbirds, Space Hulk: Death Angel, Escape: The Curse of the Temple, and Ghost Stories. In addition, I often play competitive games with an “AI” such as Wingspan.

So why do I like solo board games but not solo RPGs or (with rare exceptions) fighting fantasy gamebooks?

Plot and role-playing

In an older post (Why I roleplay), I explained that when I roleplay, I like three things:

• Plot: I like games with a plot and a purpose. I’m not a fan of sandbox games.
• Characters must be important: Characters tied into whatever is going on. Session zero is important.
• Players talking to each other in character: I love it when the players talk to each other as their characters. They need not be speaking as their characters but simply interacting as their character with each other.

The solo RPGs I’ve played seem to be sandboxes. As I recall, Starforged felt like one. We went places, and we explored. And Thousand Year Old Vampire was similar – it was about existing as a vampire rather than being involved in a grand plan. But, on the other hand, a solo board game isn’t a sandbox – there’s a definite problem (storming the beaches on D-Day, saving the village from Chinese ghosts) to solve (and win).

Characters may or may not be important to what’s going on in a solo RPG. As I recall, the characters from Starforged were rolled randomly – they could have been anybody. On the other hand, in Pandemic, your character is someone from the CDC, fighting infectious diseases.

Of course, neither solo RPGs nor boardgames solve the problem of someone to talk to…

I like solo board gaming because I like solving the puzzle and winning, but I find it interesting that they tick more of my roleplaying boxes than solo RPGs do.

But I’ve not explored solo RPGs in depth, so perhaps the game for me is somewhere out there somewhere…