THE DISAPPOINTMENT IN YOUR SOLO GAME COULD BE A SCOPE ISSUE

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.

I talked about scope in a previous post, but to reiterate, scope is just the current focus of your game and the guidelines you're hoping to play inside of. One of solo’s greatest strengths is that you can change the scope very easily and you don’t need buy-in from others. There is a great degree of flexibility to solo play and scope adjustment, and you can potentially change scope a few times per session. In addition to the tools you have for managing scope for group games, such as skipping scenes that aren't relevant and aren't interesting, there are some tools I’ll talk about here that lend themselves better to solo play than group play.

Bodyswapping is something that is far easier to get away with in solo gaming than in group gaming. This is a way of moving the scope, instead choosing to focus on a different character. It could be the people you were just in direct conflict with, or a different member of your team. It could be somewhere completely unrelated. If you’re not interested in playing the character you’re using, it’s simple enough to stay in the same setting and play as someone else.

Scoping down to a specific character in your party is something that can be accomplished in group play by running one-on-one sessions for players. However, in a solo setting, it is very useful if you find managing a whole party to be too difficult, not fun, or overwhelming. This is also helpful if you decide that you don’t like your current mission. Maybe you don’t want to play a game about fighting a robot that’s going to eat the Earth’s core - you really like this little town you found and want to spend time playing in that community.

You can also scope up to characters with more influence or to groups that will have a strong effect on the narrative of play. Some group games are designed with this kind of higher level play in mind, such as The Quiet Year. However, many GMs running campaigns may be a little hesitant to expose players to worldbuilding at that level because of the potential for metagaming, so I think it’s normally a bit better suited for solo. 

In addition to these, it's important to remember that as a solo player, you control time and space, and you can get away with a LOT of shenanigans to reshape the game into something you'll enjoy. You can undo major story-changing events, which can be a bit jarring, but likely wouldn't even be possible in a group game. You can undo and retry a scene several times, if you like. Does the scene location make you uncomfortable, or maybe you just don't like the layout? You can break down walls and add more cover without anyone's criticism. If you want to note these changes when you make them, that's up to you. However, it could help in the future to examine those notes and keep in mind what you do and don't like to create a better solo experience. 

The classic thing for heroes to do when returning from defeating the Big Bad is to come home and live a quiet life. But if you decide halfway through that you don't really want to fight a major villain, and instead you want to go straight to the homecoming and happily ever after, you can do that by changing your scope. Remember that there are no mistakes in solo play, so there's plenty of room to experiment with what you want to focus on.