FOREST CRITTER

Recently, I was playing a solo game of Delta Green, and I ended up disappointed because I was more concerned with the dice than having fun. I forgot an important tool for solo gaming: if you don’t like the outcome, you don’t have to stick to it.

Lately, I’ve been looking at games using the 24XX system developed by Jason Tocci. There are a number of great games using this system available for free, namely 24XX: Breach , a game by Adam Schwaninger. I pitched the game to a couple family members, one of which was entirely new to RPGs, and ran it for them. The game is based on the 24XX system, which is fairly rules-light and is designed to be easy to get going quickly.

I think a lot of solo players get tripped up for the same reasons as new GMs with large ambitions. You start a game and you get ready for a game that you're going to show off to your other nerd friends who exist in this niche within a niche (such as myself). You go out and buy a whole new notebook, set of pens, and dice, and maybe you have a banger of a first session. But then you come back to it and you're not really feeling it. What's wrong with you? You bought this notebook and everything, why can't you just keep coming back to this game? It could be that your expectations are too high and your scope is too large. And I think that is the number one reason why many solo players end up abandoning a game.

Perhaps you need to take a step back and take a look at your game - you could be having an issue with scope. Imagine yourself in this situation. You’ve got some people together who want to play an RPG, you’ve plotted out a whole campaign already full of detailed worldbuilding and lore and NPCs, and you’re ready to run a legendary game that your players will talk about for years to come after the campaign wraps up. A few sessions in and you’ve finally left the first little village after a goblin raid, little Timmy was saved from a well, or a cave full of bandits was cleared. Now the players are heading to the next town, but you’re not having nearly as much fun as you were hoping. Things move so slow, and at this rate, they’ll never see all your cool worldbuilding and your neat BBEG, Malagus the Gray, Dark Wizard of Thunder Mountain. This isn’t what you were hoping for at all. Or, alternatively, all this GMing is a real slog. It’s like a full time job keeping up with the campaign, your