To those who have played solo with several different RPG rule sets, have you found any pattern as to what sorts of game mechanics offer you the easiest solo play experience? Dice pools vs. additive systems? Fixed spell lists vs. off the cuff spell creation? Etc...
To be clear, I'm not asking about oracles or idea generators here. Strictly RPG rule sets that you're pulling into the solo paradigm.
I love Dice Pools. Not sure what systems use off the cuff spell creation though.
ReplyDeleteJames Smith For example, imagine a Fate game where you have a Pyromancy skill without any kind of spell list. The player might propose what he's trying to accomplish with fire magic (throw a fireball, raise a wall of flames, blind someone with a smoke screen), and the GM would reply with a difficulty, charge a Fate Point, or tell the PC that the proposed action is outside his scope.
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan Ah. Yeah, that's pretty simple to do.
ReplyDeleteJames Smith But that aside, why do you think you favor dice pools for solo play? Is there something about them that's great for solo, or do you just prefer them in RPGs in general?
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan I tend to prefer them in general. Just adding in different kinds of dice then proceeding to roll them just feels pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteMy broken record answer would be: Trollbabe. The reason being that NPCs have no stats at all, and that your PC has only one number that handles three different types of action (combat/social/magic).
ReplyDeleteI would personally favor fixed information, and general. It’s a little less difficult to deal with then something which requires heavy improvisation without many guidelines. Maybe that’s why I like GURPS :-)
ReplyDeleteI have a preference for one kind of throw only. Be that PbtA 2d6, FAE 4dF, Trav/CE 2d6, Talislanta d20, Otherkind dice, etc. Once you have your game brain configured, it's easy to see everything as roll +/- mods and you spend less time on the mechanics and more time on the play.
ReplyDeleteI find D&D derivitives easy through both long familiarity and the millions of (often freely) available supplements. Also, fantasy is really forgiving of having lots of disparate elements in the same world (it's magic!), and it's super easy to switch focus from courtly intrigue to wilderness exploration to dungeon crawling without breaking the paradigm.
ReplyDeleteBut I also really like skill-based rulesets, especially ones that incorporate social skills. It takes a lot of the work out of dealing with NPCs if my PC can make a Persuade or Intimidate check. I also find it easier to move beyond combat-intensive adventures if there's something else I can be rolling for.
For solo gaming, any system where resolution is a single roll or very few rolls period.
ReplyDeleteI prefer mid-to-heavy systems when GM'ing with friends, but solo, I find that too many rolls tends to make me not want to play, since I always have to manage "the system".
Thanks for all the perspectives so far, all. The "one kind of roll for everything" camp is selling me on it. I'm currently working with Stars Without Number here and am finding I'd like something simpler. Your advice is helping me concretely narrow the field of candidates.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting, especially for solo-gaming, you can always use the character creation of a more complex system, then throw the rest of it out :-)
ReplyDeleteSometimes having a list of skills to roll against can be a good inspiration for how to solve a particular situation or encounter.
Ivan Sorensen Funny, but that's why I've never pulled the trigger on B17: Queen of the Skies even though it sits at the crossroads of three things I love. I took one look at the system and decided it was not for me.
ReplyDelete[Note to self for the mighty to-do list, make a game that I would play on that theme.]
Maybe this is too obvious, but I tend to favor systems that have "player-facing" rolls (rather than opposed rolls). I love a lot of things about Fate, but as simple as the math is, I still find it tough adding the respective levels, dice results, and invocations for both side and keep it all straight in my head.
ReplyDeleteFU (Freeform Universal) is probably the golden child of solo play for me, not only because of the player-facing bit, but because the conflict resolution resolution system is essentially an oracle, so you don't have to switch gears between the mechanics and the GM emulator. Every roll is really doing the work of both.
That said, I love dice pools. Loooove them, almost without regard for reason... like a high school crush you still feel warm about even though you realize you probably would have made a terrible couple. If I had to justify it, I'd say that I vastly prefer throwing physical dice in and out of the pool for every factor that affects it--as you enumerate them--rather than tallying up a modifier that you apply to one measly little die roll. The latter just seems like more work with less visceral gratification.
ReplyDeleteDice pools are hugely satisfying and counting dice up is a more visceral way of judging degrees of success.
ReplyDeleteOne of these years, I will try rumning one of the Burning Wheel games solo. They all have a delightful dice pool system with d6s, which are more accessible to me than 10-siders which WOD and similar tend to use. I speak as someone who has a grand total of… 3 10 sided dice that I can actually read :)
ReplyDeleteEasiest solo play experience for me is Fate Accelerated followed by FU. Not only does Fate offer multiple outcomes, it's also basically Powered by the Apocalypse. Pick and choose playbooks, aspects, moves, etc. at your leisure with a built in oracle: 6-, 7-9, 10+ or <0, 0-2, 3+. Your choice.
ReplyDeleteI haven't soloed that many systems, so my opinion is less informed than others. Recently I have been playing Ironsworn, which is explicitly designed to support solo. I guess it's greatest advantage for solo-playing is that it is inspired by PBtA (which I have never played, so I cannot go into details). Anyway, the game has a single roll resolution (when you roll at one time a "challenge" and the character's "action) which always is "player-facing". These rolls happen in the context of a fixed but flexible list of "moves" with three possible outcomes: miss, weak hit, strong hit. Similarly to what Jeffrey Kelly wrote for FU, the outcome is in some way "oracular" - it is not just a success/fail, but a more detailed direction towards which the story moves. If you want to have a look at the game, you can freely download it here:
ReplyDeletedrivethrurpg.com - Ironsworn
Gerard Nerval You also answer another interesting question: which setting is best for soloing and why? I never thought that some settings might be intrinsically more soloable, but it must be so!
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteI believe there is no absolute answer to this question. Instead, it is something individual, for the most part.
If you like a system/approach, you will have an easier time using it for solo play than if you have a system/approach you dislike in general. As you have extra-weight on your shoulders while soloing by doing player and GM at the same time, the better you know the RPG you use, the easier it gets to use it.
This being said, there are a few aspects you might consider.Strong contenders are those systems that come with the solo engines (so Mythic Roleplaying, Libre, or Ironsworn, THW titles). They are designed to support the solo gameplay right from the start, so there are no extra considerations or rules interpretations you need. Using Mythic Roleplaying, you even get to use the fate chart for both the GME as well as the RPG itself, so there is some saving of resources.
However, I think there are some combinations that are not as happy. For instance, Libre needs the potential for long scenes where a single scene may take place in various locations. Xenoscape, for instance, doesn't have a real concept of scenes, but you have a map/board you move on, and events happen at locations, which at least initially goes against the extended scenes of Libre. So, when selecting your combination, my advice is to look as to what your GME requires and what your RPG offers - some seem like natural matches while some will not go together.
Yours,
Deathworks
I've been using solo roleplaying as an outlet for campaign ideas I can't gather enough people to the table for, as well as practice with systems that interest me, so I've been sort of casting around with different things. I started off with Flying Swordsmen, which is a simple variant of 2e for the wuxia genre, hopped over to The Black Hack for a couple of other experiments, and am now dabbling with FU: Freeform/Universal. I sense a pattern.
ReplyDeleteFor my purposes, I've found the systems with the least amount of friction between setting a task and resolving it are the ones I enjoy the most. Flying Swordsmen is about as complex as I'd probably like to get, though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to go perhaps one step beyond into something with a bit more bookkeeping.
Sam H. Can you unpack what you mean by "friction between setting a task and resolving it"? I'm not sure I understand.
ReplyDeleteRobert Wiesehan I'm thinking along the lines of how many rolls, or how much bookkeeping, I have to do between deciding what I want to have happen, and finding out if it happens. In the case of Flying Swordsmen, for example, I have the usual roll, plus damage, subtract from enemy hit points, plus (maybe) checking morale, followed by any reciprocal attacks, then repeat until combat is resolved in however many turns. The Black Hack isn't TOO much simpler than that, since you still roll most of those things, but it's streamlined just a touch. Then you have something like FU, which can be simplified to the point where you can determine the outcome of an entire battle with dozens of participants in a single roll.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think sometimes I actually WOULD like the additional granularity. I'm doing a Terminator thing right now, experimenting with various combinations of Fudge Dice, Mythic and the FU ruleset, and while FU definitely creates a frictionless resolution experience, it lacks the grit one might want from a guns 'n' guts robot war.
Sam H. Thanks for diving a bit deeper. I get it now!
ReplyDeleteEvandro Novel I wouldn't say best, just easiest. I think the less one worries about things making rational sense, the easier it gets. There's nothing actually stopping me from deciding my MI-5 agents should be sent to the Peruvian jungles to investigate a lost pyramid, except that my willing suspension of disbelief rails agianst the idea. But I can think of 50 reasons to send my court wizard and his knightly friends on a similar quest.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I cannot help this time. I think one of the best advantages of using solo engines is the ability to play with almost every tabletop RPG.
ReplyDeleteRegarding solo RPGs is a matter of personal taste.
One of the things I love about Blades and some other PtBA games is NPCs not having hit points.
ReplyDeleteIt makes it so much easier to scale combat. 1 vs many? An elite antagonist? No need to stat up each NPC, handle it with one roll.
And speaking of Blades/PtbA:
CLOCKS
I love me some clocks. You can take a situation that can't be handled with one roll and make it approachable from numerous positions. Every success matters. You can go in guns blazing one second and decide parlaying might be the better option the next second without sacrificing progress or losing your opportunity to affect the situation. (This is something I like about IndexCard RPG too except they use different terminology: ATTEMPTS & EFFORT)
Omari Brooks I loved the clocks when I read through Blades too.
ReplyDeleteReally one of the biggest speed bumps to any off-the-cuff GMing is the need to have stats and difficulty numbers for so many things. Blades, PbtA, ICRPG, and others have really opened my mind by showing off designs that work around these problems.
There are lots of great points in these responses. I try to stay out of the game engine and stay in the question engine as much as possible. Question engine could be CRGE, Mythic, So1um, etc, and the character engine framework (mostly some sort of OSR D&D for me).
ReplyDeleteIf I wanted to make a skill roll in the game engine, I'd take their skill on the character sheet and mentally translate that into the odds of them getting the right answer with their skill, and ask the question engine instead. That transponds well into a system where I'm not keeping track of the game engine and I'm keeping track of the story instead.
Gerard Nerval I definitely agree that we are discussing what is "easiest" :)
ReplyDeleteOn the basis of your MI-5 example, it occurs to me that "tone" also matters, in addition to setting. If you play it "pulp" enough, it's easier to go with randomness. In fantasy too, Dying Earth could be easier than the Lord of the Rings.
I like the PbtA idea of;
ReplyDeleteYou roll high, pick some stuff from the "good stuff happens list."
You roll low, pick some stuff from the "bad stuff happens list."
You roll in the middle, pick some stuff from both lists.
"Blades in the Dark" is what I'm using now. It also uses clocks instead of tracking HP, suspicion, alarm, faction status, etc...
Evandro Novel Absolutely! Pulp, fantasy... the less rigid the setting's base assumptions, the easier it is to fit in disparate elements.
ReplyDelete