How has Solo gaming impacted your "standard"/group games?
I was talking with one of my GM's the other night, and I realized that how I view my character and his roll in the game has changed lately. I'm more interested in what his goals are, what his morality is, and his actual break points are. I'm not as willing to force to the character to do what I (as a player) WANT him to do, but instead am more interested in seeing what he (the character) comes up with.
In our current game, the GM (through a powerful NPC) is slowly corrupting our characters, based on what we want. My characters "vice" is the Greater Good--he's willing to work with evil and do horrible things because he thinks the Ends Justify the Means. Last session, he was put to the test, to kill an innocent captive to prove his "friendliness" with a group on monsters. All the other players thought I should do, it would have made the most immediate and long term sense, but I wasn't sure. He hadn't fallen so far, yet, to be able to casually murder someone for no real cause.
So, I had him roll. I made up a quicky "PC Emulator" and rolled for it, and he barely "failed" the roll, so he couldn't bring himself to actually do it. Ended up making for a great and dramatic scene, with some really cool fall out both within the group and to the world at large.
How have other people melded the experiences of the two?
As I have no social group that I want to play with at the moment, I can only speculate. My feeling is that I would probably be a better GM or player now than I was before. I feel like I'm able to improvise better now.
ReplyDeleteI do not play in any group at this time. Playing solo rpgs has not changed my style of play but it certainly encouraged me to look for new methods and to simplify as much rules as possible while trying to keep the fun intact
ReplyDeleteI have a regular in-person game where I'm the GM (Savage Worlds, Sundered Skies). I've found that solo tools and techniques I've learned recently have greatly improved the way I approach planning for an running a game. It makes it a lot more fun, too.
ReplyDeleteI've started using Mythic for my session planning, using the scene structure and oracle to build a web of scenes that I can connect together. I also use the Location Crafter for making "dungeon" type sites. At the table, I have a few sets of Rory's Story Cubes and a software program that does oracle stuff, complex questions, and UNE NPCs.
My players really like the changes as well. It's always exciting when they meet someone new and we roll them up on the spot. I also like to defer questions I didn't specially plan for to Mythic. It often takes things in unexpected directions, and that's a great thing. Plus it's a lot of fun to get everyone involved interpreting the results during play.
That's a great example, Todd Rokely!
ReplyDeleteI recently GMd at the FLGS and played it as I do my solo-game: interpret icons to see what is going on (more people to interpret icons) and use the game mechanics to determine outcomes, whether combat or knowledge rolls. It was fun to see the adventure develop organically along with the players. The players really got into it, and I think it was a different technique than some of them were used to.
I think solo gaming has certainly improved my ability and confidence with running one-shots for our gaming group when we're short handed.
ReplyDeleteSolo gaming actually ended shared gaming for me, probably for the foreseeable future. Just can't go back to consuming GM-created content when collaboration (even if it's just with myself) is so much more fun!
ReplyDeleteAlto Dizi have you tried collaborative/GMless group playing?
ReplyDeleteNo, though I've read quite a bit about it! Even considered maybe doing a collaborative pbem type thing if I could find a place to host it and a system that appealed.
ReplyDeleteI should clarify that I don't think gm-preps-players-consume is a "bad" model, it's just not my thing. Unfortunately, it is my gaming group's thing. They're not even comfortable with mechanics that let them spend resources to change minor aspects of the world. Can't really argue with preferences when it comes to how peeps spend their leisure time!
Alto Dizi I have a similar situation. My game group consists of very mechanical gamers. They want to fight the power curve and overcome challenging obstacles within a rigidly defined system. They're much more tactical and much less narrative. In the past, they have rejected playing anything that the see as "arbitrary", such as most of the new-school PbtA or Fate style systems.
ReplyDeleteThey do, however, really like me adding in random events from Mythic and even asking the oracle yes/no questions at the table. I think they find the interpretation and unexpected results fun, and I guess because the events are coming from the dice instead of GM fiat, they feel it's a bit more fair.
In any case, it might be something for you to try with your gaming group. Get the GM to try using Mythic (or some other system) as a sort of co-GM. I've found it really spices up the session and adds collaborative play without mechanical gamers feeling like it's turned into a story circle.
Ha, that's a lovely idea, but unfortunately I've already tried it (great minds think alike?) -- in fact, I wrote Pythia explicitly to support random content generation at the table for a group sandbox game!
ReplyDeleteIn play, my players felt that this on-demand content was somehow objectively less "real" than prepped content. They also did not like collaborative world building, feeling that this was infringing on the GM's prerogative.
On the plus side, my former regular GM liked some of the techniques and has incorporated a simple yes/no/qualifiers oracle for questions he's not sure of the "fair" answer to. He loves it and the players accept it as "fair" which is nice!
I know exactly what you mean about the perception of "arbitrary" for PbtA! I had to really work on my former regular GM for weeks before he "got" that it wasn't arbitrary because the GM has rules too!