Solo Gaming and Story

Solo Gaming Does Not Require Choose Your Own Adventure Mechanics

Yesterday, I released the above video about solo gaming and its perceived stigma among hobbyists. Essentially, my argument is that solo gaming has been inherent to the hobby from the very beginning, with examples from Classic Traveller (1977) and Dungeons and Dragons being presented in the video.

I received a comment and want to focus on this particular claim made in the comment.

Unless everything you encounter comes from a die roll, there is no real surprise waiting around the next corner. You could not run an adventure like Tomb of Horrors because there is no way to determine what you encounter before encountering it. The very first entry is titled 1. FALSE ENTRANCE TUNNEL, which gives away the whole encounter. For a solo game to be good, it needs to specifically be built for solo gaming, which means it needs to be a choose-your-own-adventure book, and while I've read many of those during my time. They have many restrictions, especially regarding who you choose to take on the adventure.

- @chameleondream

There is a lot to unpack, but right away we see a couple of fallacious points. And I want to say that I’m not trying to pick on chameleondream here. His comment is a sentiment I have seen over and over again in the online discussion of the hobby. This conclusion assumes a couple of things:

1. Relying on dice and tables is bad. He mentions this as an option but throws it out and assumes it is bad because…

2. The story is assumed to be the focus and cannot arise naturally from play in real-time at the table during a session. If this was not believed, the use of dice and random tables would be the best option instead of what he puts forth.

3. Thus, we must use modules. However, modules won’t work because titles and other factors make surprise impossible for the solo gamer.

4. Therefore, we must choose your adventure-type modules for the solo game, but these are limiting and confining—they are railroads. Therefore, the inference is that solo gaming is inferior to the conventional group game.

I can’t fault this person. Since the late 80s and 90s, via products such as Dragonlance and Vampire the Masquerade, we have been told that story is paramount and must be prepped before a game session starts. This is a false presupposition proven untrue by the kind of games I and many others run (and design): zero/low prep gaming.

This is a presuppositional problem. A presupposition is an antecedent implication on which we build our worldviews. Presuppositions extend well beyond trivial things like elf games into religion, theology, philosophy, epistemology, and politics. Again, we develop worldviews and entire ideologies on presuppositions. If a presupposition is faulty, then that entire perspective is defective and probably false. That is what is occurring here.

The false presupposition is that pen-and-paper role-playing games MUST be story games.

In reality, the commenter provided the solution but chose to ignore it because he has this faulty presupposition that the story is of utmost importance and cannot and will not organically arise out of play. It must be predetermined. If this was not this person’s presupposition, then modules and eventually “choose-your-own-adventure” would not be this person’s conclusion as the solution.

But dice and random tables do work. You only have to put the false presupposition aside to see it.

One only has to look at Appendix A in AD&D1e to see that random monster encounters, traps, treasure, and everything else are determined via the procedures and rolls and that solo gaming is explicitly mentioned as a use for Appendix A. So, already we see that this commenter’s (and many others like him) presuppositions are proven false. Classic Traveller has rolls to determine random encounters on a planet or in space. It has rolls to determine what cargo would be available and how much. It has rolls to find a patron who can give a player jobs and missions. On top of that, without offering “choose-your-own-adventure,” it explicitly mentions the solitaire game at the very beginning of Book 1.

Scarlet Heroes offers a complete solo game toolkit at the back, including a yes or no oracle, descriptions of places, dungeons, monsters, and NPCs, and tools for conducting investigations in urban environments. This is not a railroad with limited choices but perfectly fine tables, which you, as the solo gamer, use to adjudicate your actions as a player adventuring.

This false presupposition regarding solo games comes from the Chaosium solo modules for Call of Cthulhu as well as the BECMI adventure. These are all “choose-your-own-adventure” modules. So people see these supplements and adventures and at the same time, do not read or understand the tools in the rulebooks they purchase, and build faulty presuppositions about what solo gaming is and why it may or may not work. Well, if your critique of solo gaming is built on erroneous assumptions, your critique will likely be faulty and incorrect. That’s where so much of this misunderstanding with solo gaming and, by extension, zero/low prep gaming comes from.

Make sure to check out Atomic Punk 2240 on DTRPG!