Solo Games, post the first
While writing this article I realized I was going to have to split it into multiple parts: dealing with solo games and the ways they work differently than group games and dealing with ways to work through that, looking at no-GM head to head games, and dealing with how to mainstream RPGs, specifically solo RPGs. If I cross over in this post, I hope you can forgive me, I’m still working on sorting it out.
Anyway, at this point in my RPGing life I’ve logged a significant number of hours in solo-player RPGs, and I am going to focus on them in this game. GM-less head to head games such as the awesome Breaking the Ice and the very interesting Operation Foole will be in the next post (or the post after that, this is getting long).
These are some of the issues that I have noticed with playing solo games, how they differ from group games, the ways that traditional RPG structure fails to fully support and maximize the solo experience, and some ideas for ways to start fixing that. Some of what I say will be in the “yes, that’s fucking obvious” category. This is because I am trying to get as much possible out and said, so that real analysis and work can build up around it. When you’re making cake you get out all of your ingredients, even the obvious flour.
Competence Issues: When running a solo game with a traditional “PC adventure and struggle” setup, one must always be aware of the limitations of the single protagonist. In a typical group RPG there is often a wide variety of skills between the PCs. A lot of games even build heavily upon this by enforcing or encouraging niche protection: what one PC can do the others can’t, and so no one character can hope to do everything. You then toss lots of different challenges at them, allowing each character in turn to shine (or at least have a chance to). The problem with this is that when you play with a single character you don’t have that range of abilities, and so the “lots of different challenges” can become a death trap real quick.
There are several ways around this. Increasing PC competence so that they can be either a jack or master of all trades is a common suggestion. Downplaying challenges so that they are easier is another. Focusing the game specifically on the abilities the PC has is a third. Not making the game about adventure and meeting goal based challenges is the usual nar-based advice. And I’m going to add troupe character play to the list. (Feel free to chip in with any that I missed.)
The issue is that all of these changes come with baggage. First up, increasing PC competence often requires some changes to the character generation system of the game. When I ran 7th Sea in a solo game with my wife I quickly found that I had to alter not just the number of points given to make her character with, but the interaction of some of the mechanics in order to make a character that could deliver the play experience that she wanted. Elements of the game that work well for niche-protection play suddenly became a handicap and a burden, and had to be reworked or jettisoned. I was, obviously, able to do the work — but the whole “you can change it so its okay” isn’t good enough here. I don’t want to look at things you can make do with, I want to focus on ways to make things work well.
This type of character can work well for a lot of stories. Anything pulpy, for example, often works better with the single PC than the group, because most of the pulp heroes where one man shows and master of all trades bad asses on their own. Remember all the times that Conan relied upon his thief to sneak past the guards? No? Or when Batman had to get his tough friend to help him beat up some thugs because he was a brain who could invent but not fight? No? That’s because they didn’t. The problem, of course, is that you can’t just make a master of everything if you’re doing a game in which you don’t want pulp or superheroic PCs. The very real tension of the “little man using what he has to overcome the big challenge” can go out the window if what he has is everything.
Second, downplaying challenges, can be a horrid mistake in many circumstances. First off is the “missing the point” challenge type that a mere reduction of does not remove the fundamental problem with. In 99% of the group RPGs I have ever played, no matter how focus on politics and social interaction and whatever, there has been one member of the group who was at least competent with violence. Thus the old RPG standby of “two guys with guns coming through the door” will result in some boom boom, and one of the players can deal with it in the violent way. In a single player game, however, simply reducing it to one guy coming through the door may not be enough — if the one player has no violence ability then they have no violence ability. There is no one else to cover for them.
The other issue with downplaying challenges is that a lot of players can tell when they’re being soft-shoed, and they don’t like it. This is a particularly sim concern, I’m sure, but there you have it — they don’t like it when they’re coming in to face the biggest of big bads who is smart and tough and well connected and he only has one guard who is a fat middle-aged retired donught eating champion. Nothing kills the tension faster than challenges obvious scaled down to compensate for the fact that there is only one of you.
Which leads us to method number three: tailoring the challenges specifically to the character. This method actually has a lot of merit to it, and can make for very satisfying goal-based play as well as being a good method for focusing the themes in non-goal based play. A good GM can do a lot of work to make every adventure hit the character where they need to be hit, after all. The issue, of course, is how the game’s design makes this easier, better, and faster. More on that later. The problem with this style of play is that over the long term many people can get bored with constantly facing the same problems, and many GMs aren’t fully adept at coming up with new and interesting variations upon them. (24 season 4 was fun, but Jebus, how many times can we see the world threatened by nukes and Jack resisting torture?)
Moving away from goal based to thematic and character development play is another solid solution. Games like Sorcerer and Trollbabe can be quite good at solo gaming for just this reason – the focus is on the why of what characters do rather than on the what they can do. The issue here being that not everyone likes narrativist games, and even games like this can have some issues with their play structure when it comes to solo games. The relationship map, for example, needs to be tinkered with when everything is going to circle around one character rather than around a set of them. This requires a PC who either has more contacts, the ability to get into more shit and draw more people to them, or a slight but important restructuring of the assumptions of the relationship map to better focus it down onto the PC – making it combine with the “fit the challenge to the PC” above.
An idea I have been toying with in how to get around this in a different direction is to have troupe based play in which the player plays the whole troupe. Why limit it to a single character? (This can also work well if you want to add shifting GM duties into the mix, or no GM at all.) This can be anything from multiple full PCs played by one character, or shared with the GM, to a “followers and sidekicks” system like HeroQuest and Nobilis use, where there are multiple characters under the aegis of the protagonist character that get controlled by the player rather than the narrator. For players that like this it allows for all the nice parts of normal group gaming: mixed challenges, player controlled characters getting killed, different perspectives and abilities, and so on. The weakness that I foresee is the lack of single character focus of a full troupe game will put off those with immersivist tendencies, or could just be too many characters for one player to want to keep track of. Still, I think the HQ/Nobilis sub-PC system has much to recommend it. (And this is before we even get into the section where I talk about destroying traditional PC/GM relations.)
So lots of talking about why things don’t work, with occasional pointers at where they do. Well, now, how do we chose which of these things we want for our game? The answer is focus. Figure out what, exactly, you want to do and which of the tools is going to get you there. If you’re looking for a wide-ranging pulp game with lots of variety and adventure (a Conan, for example) then you need a system that focuses on super-competent characters with lots of different skills. If you’re looking for a game where the big challenges are about whether your six year old can get his uncle to stop abusing him, then you need a system that focuses heavily upon the emotional vulnerabilities and strengths of the protagonist – to the point at which traditional RPG things like strength and intelligence are completely absent.
Any of the above methods can probably work, but you have to be sure you know what you are doing with them and build them direct into your game’s system.
Flow, Focus and Intensity Issues: When I play solo-player games I often find that the players have trouble with the constant attention and (from their POV) increased pressure and need for speed. In most group RPGs, even those in which the party stays together all the time, the focus will shift from one player to another as they step up to deal with their issue, be it a scene in which they are the specialist or just their turn in combat. In solo games there is no such downtime for the player to be able to sit back and figure out their next move. (This is probably particularly bad in my games, as I’m very fast at figuring out my stuff after years and years of GMing.)
As a result of this solo games tend to move faster, as there is no hesitation between characters, no character to character banter, and no one outside the two of you to talk about things, provide advice, and so on. This can lead to increased stress and tension (both the good kind and the bad) and so the flow of the game needs to be considered. Mechanisms that either hard-code break points, stress relievers, and the like or else deliberately play upon the constant movement and action of the solo game should be encouraged. In either case, a focus on shorter sessions of games would probably be a good thing to encourage. Get the game to hit it and quit it, rather than focusing on the traditional goal of the 8 hour session. 8 hours of solo play can be exhausting, and 4 hours is usually more than enough to cover the amount of story and “cool happenings” that would take a group game multiple 8 hour sessions to play out.
It has also been my experience that short-run games work better with solo-games. Even the long term campaigns I’ve played solo tend to get broken up into chunks. Because of that I’d suggest building games that use techniques to have a “beginning, middle, end” structure for a good chunk of solo games. It doesn’t have to be as hard-coded as “My Life With Master” or the like, and should probably allow for the possibility of multiple sequential “novels” – but something that gives the game some check and consistency to its flow is probably a good idea.
NPC Issues: Which moves us into the issue of NPCs. While often a smaller issue, my experience has been that solo players do not have the interest or focus to deal with as many NPCs as can get comfortably handled in a group game. In many group games NPCs often end up being unofficially classed towards one of the characters, and they deal with and remind the others about them. In a solo game you can’t do this, everyone comes back to one player. Even if you’re playing a troupe game with lots of characters you still have the fact that it’s one player dealing with all those NPCs.
My experience with this is that it is best to have a smaller number of NPCs who reoccur and who are played with more intensity than the average NPC. They should be almost quasi-PCs run by the GM with lots of personality and motivation and ability to hit the PC or help the PC on multiple levels. To many faces becomes drowning, but a few well defined faces stick well into a persons mind.
I feel that I’m coming up short in this area though, so let me hear what you guys have done/thought about this one.
The Hearing About Your Game Should Suck Issues: Now, to round the article out, I’m going to talk about something nice rather than something that sucks. One of the biggest strengths of solo-player RPGs (and no GM head-to-head RPGs) is that there is only one person playing with you. Only one person you need to communicate with, vibe off of, and deal with the idiosyncrasies of. With only two of you, who are able to communicate and (maybe) trust each other there should be more room to explore things that might not be comfortable in a group game. This can be romance and sex and violence and racism and any number of things, but it should be there – push the envelope of what you do, because you’ll never have a “group” you can vibe with as easily as you can vibe with a single person.
Of course, I noticed that in the post I made before this no one even touched the whole “solo games can lead to fucking!” point. Let me just say that I think this is a horrible mistake. People have been RPing in bed since Eve died her hair black and pretended to be her “evil sister” Lilith (some sexual RP that fucked up generations, let me tell you) and the fact that there have been only shamed faced stuttering such as “The Book of Erotic Fantasy” pointing the RPG hobby in that direction is pathetic. I’m a damn Mormon and I’m telling you people – leaving the sex and sexual aspects out of RPGing (OOC and ICly) is a mistake.
I know this is a point that can make people uncomfortable, so I’m going to move off it now and hit a related point. Read this post by Ron Edwards about his solo game of Runequest Slayers. See how he talks about a lot of things that would push a lot of people would get squirming around in game? How even in the thread itself there are things he can’t talk about as openly with the folks on the thread as he could with Jake? Especially in the reply “Unfortunately, “would” is a problematic concept. It’s very likely that I’m choosing my answers in order to convey an image that I’d prefer you to hold about me, rather than anything resembling reality.”
That is the kind of thing that solo gaming should focus on and push. It doesn’t always have to be nar based soul searching either. It could be that you’re gaming with the only other person in the world who still likes Robert Jordan novels, or that you’re the only two you know who really love a good dungeon bash with hard core gamism up and down in a city full of namby-Nar players. Whatever it is, however, solo games should encourage people to push it as hard as they can with another human being, to get the things out of game that you can’t get with a group because there is to much concern, focus, and direction going outwards.
Okay, that’s all that my brain is spitting out now. Please, add more!
Next Up: Head to Head GM-less games, breaking the traditional structures and assumptions of play for solo games.
In regards to your point of knowing your focus and picking your tools to emphasize your focus, I couldn’t agree more — but that will somewhat fracture the generalized discussion. I could talk about my choices for my game with my foci, but while the general goal (soloplay) is the same, it may not be the same specific goal (solo gamist soul-destroying play) of others. What applies to my specifics won’t necessarily apply to the generalities.
In Full Light, Full Steam I very lightly emphasize the troupe-based soloplay option, where the single “player” has a primary PC and underlings. It fits feel of the game — British Navy / Star Trek / Victoriana — to have one primary protagonist who has subordinates whose following of orders make the protagonist shine. I also dabble in lots of GM-power-destroying, which gradually turns every game into troupe-based play, so I’m looking forward to hearing your next installment.
A thought (regarding gearing challenges to PCs):
While a good GM generally considers a character sheet and the choices that a player makes in filling out that sheet to be a good indicator of the player’s preferences and expectations in the ensuing game, it might be possible to more explicitly tie in player expectations with the character creation process. 7th Sea’s GM Guide has a little form where players express what kind of game they want to play (rating Exploration, Combat, Intrigue, and a couple others 1-5); could this be elaborated on and made into the first step of character generation? Then the GM could make his adventure based on what is explicitly stated as the player’s expectations.
Hmm…
This is about the “one-on-one play can lead to fucking” situation. While I have had relationships that definitely started out of role-playing games, and I have played one-on-one games, the two really only overlapped once, and that was after there was fucking involved in the relationship, so I can’t really credit just the game for the nookie.
So that is just to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I think you have to be careful about your marketing in this case, because it is really easy to just make your two-player RPG just come off as a sleazy means to pick up chicks. I had a very serious negative reaction to “Breaking the Ice” when I tried to introduce it to my college game crowd “A role-playing game about what?! Dating? Sketch-o-rama!” And this is a group that regularly has characters have sex in games (and even has players hooking up with each other via characters. In-character. In LARPS.) so they aren’t exactly removed from the role-playing / sex connexion.
I think that this is an important thing to look at, in terms of designing for social context: Geek girls get awkwardly hit on. A lot. If they think that playing a two-player RPG with some guy is really just an excuse to try to get in their pants, I will bet dollars to donuts that unless the guy is a total hottie, they will say no. Since the guys who are total hotties don’t need more help getting some, the “it will get you laid!” marketing isn’t going to attract them to the game as much as it will attract the sort of people who will get rejected.
More social context: Geek culture is also somewhat homophobic. If you market a two-player RPG with “will get you the hot sexx0r,” it means that they are probably not going to play it with their male friends which, combined with the above, probably means they won’t play it. Which is sad, if it is a good game.
yrs–
–Ben
P.S. Somehow, the juxtaposition of the Ron and Jake thread with the “it will lead to fucking” statement made me think “Forgite slashfic! Whoa!”
La Lud,
You said: “What applies to my specifics won’t necessarily apply to the generalities.”
This is both true and neccisary. The “general theory” level is only good for outlining general areas of concerns — and I haven’t even gotten there yet. Right now I’m just identifying issues with traditional games taken to the solo level.
Once we actually get to the general level the discussion should fragment off of it, going towards different specifics. I would like to eventually get to a point where I (and others) can say, “These are some generalities about solo games, however…” That’s sort of the goal.
So if you want to fragment, fragment away!
Ben,
Ah, an interesting post with some real meat and solid points to it. Now allow me to dissect.
First, let me say that there was a chunk of my post (and replies to the previous) that was hyperbole. I’m known by all my friends as hyperbole boy, which is a mixed blessing at best. I wanted to get some replies to the subject so that we could actually start looking at it, so I deliberately pushed some buttons much harder than they needed to be pushed. (I also deliberately didn’t mention Sex and Sorcery, in the hopes that someone else would, but so far no dice….)
Next, let me say that I wouldn’t seriously create a “fucked by goth girls” game. The reasons for that are twofold. The fist is simple enough, actually – those games already exist. Perhaps I’m the only one that sees them, living in Downtown Toronto where there is a sex-toy shop every 2 blocks, but trust you me, sex based games with costumes and without are already out there and making money — they don’t need me to intrude there. The second is that, much as I pushed that button real hard, the point that I’m really trying to make isn’t even “sell games on fucking!” as much as it is “by not seriously thinking about the sexuality of RPGs we are missing a potential market, because the mainstream is interested in sex and sexy things, and possibly allowing the ongoing retardation of RPGs around sex to continue.” You get more honest talk about sex in a single episode of Entertainment Tonight than in the whole of the RPG hobby, and we wonder why people think RPGers are sexless geeks….
I, personally, wouldn’t ever make a game whose purpose was to pick up – that’s the kind of thing I was referencing with the shame faced-stuttering of things like the Book of Erotic fantasy. I am, however, interested in making games in which the issues of sexuality are openly addressed and dealt with in one way or another. Something like Sex and Sorcery, but taking the door that book opened up and actually going through to see what is on the other side, rather than hunkering down in the denial space that’s been the industry’s default.
Which leads me to one of your best and most solid points: “Geek girls get awkwardly hit on. A lot.” This is true. They do. Of course they do that when there aren’t games that deal with sex in any real way, and I think that is part of the reason for it. In a society in which the sexually repressed boys flip to the page of the Monster Manual with the naked succubus while the text says things like “succubi like to tempt men to kiss them” you have to expect that most of the sexuality encountered is going to be awkward, part sublimated, and generally fucked up. Hiding the sex in games doesn’t make it easier for girls to get into gaming, it just makes it easier for people to not face themselves in the mirror when the group of 4 guys with the male GM has the new female player’s character get gang raped. The game has no structure or advice or even admission that sex happens in the game, or that the people playing the game have gender, so there’s nothing there but sublimated crap that has a really easy time going sick.
Did you ever read the posts by StalkingBlue in the Forge’s Heroquest forum in which she talked with Mike Holmes about the screwed up things that had happened with her in game, and he suggested (and she came to partly agree) that one of the reasons was because all the sexuality in the game was hidden, and if it had been more open and out on the table the results may have been different? That’s the kind of stuff we have to think about as we go down some of these roads.
The other issue with this point is that it often gets extended to an unhealthy point. You didn’t do it, I’ve often seen this kind of a point become: “We, the powerful males of the RPG industry, need to protect the poor helpless female.” Here are a couple of observations to counter that type of thinking. First, most women who are past the early college age can take care of themselves. At least if someone is coming to them asking them to play a pickup game they and the boy (?) asking will have to be honest about what is going on. No lying, no evasions, and no ability to hide behind it. Walk up to a girl and hit on her and you have to have the guts to actually hit on her. The woman may well tell him to blow, but that’s no different than what happens every night at every dance club on earth. The second is that a lot of women do, in fact, like some sexuality in their RPG. Not being hit on and picked up by slobbering dorks who think that their +5 holy avenger is going to impress the female, or even by SNAGs (though even then you have to consider that in LARPs there is a heavy pick up ratio that many of the female players do not just enjoy but actively encourage) — but having an ability to express some degree of sexuality around the game without having to feel exposed or ashamed in doing so.
Plus, once we get beyond the culture of the basement and out into the wider world of post-college grown ups, who is to say that it will always be the guy approaching the woman with the proposition? I’ve had chicks hit on me through RPGing as, or more, often than the other way around.
Which leads us to this point: “so I can’t really credit just the game for the nookie.” Not for the fact that you were having sex in the relationship, certainly, and (IMO) happily. I wouldn’t suggest basing a relationship on RPG sex (of course that’s one of the things you can only say once you’ve started admitting that such things happen and thinking about how it effects the dynamic of the game), but really, if you’re playing an RPG with someone you are having sex with, why not use the sexual dynamic to make the game more fun? (Using it to make the sex more fun may be possible as well, but I’m not honestly going to tell people to do that - that’s hyperbole again) It’s like this thread on the Forge, recently, where they talk about sexual chemistry in Breaking the Ice, especially this quote from Frank T: “It was my character’s spotlight and he had a fight with his girlfriend, being a real jerk and hurting her feelings. The scenes were allright, but they really startet to burn when Nicolas handed the NPC over to a female player whom I always flirt with anyway.”
That, right there, is the kind of stuff I’m really talking about. And if you’re playing face to face with your wife after a scene like that and it leads to something more, well then hell…. And if it doesn’t, at least it did something in the game that novels, movies, plays, and even pathetic fan-fic writers have been using for years that RPGs have flushed and run away from, back to the basement where their Dungeon Master could tell them to ignore it.
Even without that level of things, however, the Ron and Jake post was there because it shows the ways in which physicality and sexuality can change a game. Ron and Jake are, so far as I know, straight as hell — but they used thier ideas of sexuality to make that game something they both liked. It wasn’t that they wanted to fuck each other afterwards, but it was that they both invested some libidinous energy in what they were doing.
Now, these things can happen in group games as well. I know that lots of sex happens out of LARPs, and they’re pretty big freaking group games. However, it does seem easier to get to it when there are fewer people around, and so when you’re dealing with solo games there is an increased responsibility to deal with the issue.
And now the last point, in which I’m going to be less than nice. You sid this: “Geek culture is also somewhat homophobic”" to which I can only point you back to the things I said in the “hearing about your game should suck” thread. I understand you were specifically vibing off the “play this game to get laid” angle, and that’s my fault for the hyperbole that I was using. However, even then I’m not interested in making a game that homophobes would like, and doubly so when I might be able to make a game that I could sell at Pride instead.
Is where I’m coming from clearer now? Still got concerns? Think I’m a prick? Let me know!
Brand –
That’s an impressive reply, there, both in size and scope.
The bulk of my response to it is going to be a series of posts to my own blog over the next week. However, let me clear up a couple of misconceptions, and give you a couple of my own confusions:
1) Are you talking about the sexiness of gaming as an act, sexual content in games, or both? I think both are important, but they’re different things. (To be all jargony: Sexuality of gaming as an act is Social Agenda level, sex in the game content is Exploration level.)
2) My point is absolutely not “We, the powerful males of the RPG industry, need to protect the poor helpless female.” In fact, it is quite the opposite. I want your hypothetical “leads to wild sex with hot goth chicks” game exist because, damnit, I want to have wild sex with hot goth chicks just by gaming with them! The problem is that I think you are addressing mechanics (two-player games) before you address social contract, social agenda, or social context. All of which have to come first.
Your point about who is to say that it will always be the guy approaching the woman with the proposition dovetails directly into this, and my discussion about Breaking the Ice with Emily. Given the pre-existing social context of the culture of gamers and geeks in general, it is probably better to sell such a game to women, and encourage them to “play it with their boys,” rather than the other way around.
Hmm… Homophobia waits until another post.
Ben,
1. Yes.
And thank you for pointing it out that way. I have a whole host of things going on in my brain around sex, sexuality, and sexiness in games and they are not all on one level and I still don’t have proper words for all of them. I now realize I’m going to have to do a bunch of work on it, probably a series of posts and replies to your posts, to get anywhere near clear on what I mean by it.
I like your initial breakdown, however there is something at it that doesn’t sit right to me. This is more than just social agenda vs exploration, though both of those are in there. I will have to think more about this.
2. Sorry, again with my overstatement problems. I did not think that was your problem, I was riffing off of your statement to make another point. It’s horrid post-ettiquete, I know, but it’s something that happens when my brain engages with a topic.
And yes, this post started out as a mechanics post, and pretty much ended there. A lot of the social context and contract is coming in the next couple posts. (I started this whole thing as a nice little one off on “wouldn’t more solo games be nice” and now I feel like I’ve fallen down a hole and can’t find my way out.)
Doing games of the type I and you want (I’m not sure if I can say “we” because I think we still have slightly different stances on the matter) will take a lot of analysis and work at many levels, and I’m still trying to work up towards where I need to be to get at it all. Despite my year or so on the Forge, I’m still more comfortable with mechanical issues, and so started there to work up.
As for selling to women: you are talking with my wife, aren’t you? She said the exact same thing to me after reading your post. Needless to say she is smarter than me and the two of you are correct.
Note to self: following up on last point — Ron said, in one of the infamous five: “3) Role-playing is most consistently enjoyable when it is carried out by people who like one another, who socialize together, and who can construct varying Social Contracts without breaking down. The common notion of defining a social group by the shared interest in role-playing, and putting “liking one another,” for instance, as secondary, is dysfunctional. ”
Right. Of course. That’s one of the big things I was talking about and not getting to. Start over from there — making games for people that are already friends (or more than friends), who already like each other, and exploit their social context in order to build the game from that healthy point rather than trying to do the inverse.
God I’m so fucking dumb sometimes.
Lightbulb moment.
making games for people that are already friends (or more than friends), who already like each other, and exploit their social context in order to build the game from that healthy point rather than trying to do the inverse.
That feels like one of those principles of game design Vincent’s talking about over at anyway. Thanks for drawing it out.
This post has been removed by the author.
As far as relationship maps, if you use the source materials Ron suggests — detective novels — then it works fine for solo as well as non-solo play. After all, such novels have one protagonist in mind. The key is just making that first link, and the player having the motivation to follow it.