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I decided not to hijack the GMless gaming thread to ask about this.  I know I started with Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books before being introduced to D&D.  I recall many different variations of them in the 1980's, including some that required an actual character sheet and dice.  One even had a seperate spell book if you wanted to take a spellcaster through the adventure.  Tunnels and Trolls put out a few solo modules, and I believe Basic D&D did this once too.  You don't see this sort of thing too often that I recall, except for video RPGs, which I really have to put in a completely different category.  Not much creative input comes from the players.  Which is, of course, one of the problems with this kind of setup.  Any ideas of any RPGs that allow this sort of thing in any new ingenius way, or thoughts on how this might be done?

Hello,

Here are some older threads to check out:

Questioning Jack Spencer Jr.'s view of solo play
Non-electric interactive solo entertainment
The limits of role-playing: solitaire
Waxing solo
d20 solo adventuring
Solo RPGs?

Best,
Ron

There are also lots of sites on the web about "interactive fiction."

You can start here: http://www.gamebooks.org/

Also important in terms of interactive fiction I think is www.skotos.com

Mike

An older, though poorly titled thread idea...

Here's a very well-organized links page, a thorough tour of all forms of interactive storytelling (except tabletop RPGs...):

http://www.quvu.net/interactivestory.net/links.html

- Walt

This is one of those topics that crops up every now and again. Most of my thoughts are in the previous threads.

I did find a different application recently with a D&D interactive DVD called Sourge of World. The wife played it for a bit, but put it down. She said that it gets boring after a while. That is, once you find all the possible story combinations, what do you do? So replay value is way, way down.
I imagine similar to CYOA books.

the only thing I have to add to this thread is that I think GMless gaming by all means should include solo gaming as an option, so I'm certainly going to look at some of the resources mentioned here and think about approaches to solo play. I've tried the CYOA books myself (although I thought that acronym meant something else at first, Jack...) plus I remember playing a bunch of solo dungeon crawls using the random tables in the back of the 1st  edition AD&D DMG.

Mike Holmes: didn't you test some kind of solo play option for Fungeon? how did that work?

When I saw the title of this thread, I immediately recalled the debate Jack and I had some time back, in that wonderful first thread Ron cites; and I also realized that I've probably moved closer to him, as I've reconsidered the definition of role playing (a definition which I think did not clearly exist at that time, as that thread, I think, predates the Lumpley principle).

If I am correct that the definition of a roleplaying game (as presented on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9793">a definitive definition of roleplay?) requires the mutual creation of events in a shared imaginary space, then Jack is correct and I am mistaken: you must have to persons actively involved with each other to have a genuine role playing game.

I concede the point. Solo play, CYOA books, and other forms of individual imaginary activity don't fit the model. Either you can't play roleplaying solitaire, or there's a flaw in the current definition.

--M. J. Young

I guess I'd have to say that begs the question of why a participation of multiple people is a necessary part of the definition of a role-playing game.  I'm not saying that I disagree, I'm just curious as to why it only seems to fit if there is someone else to share it.  One person has a character and reacts to a world presented by a GM, who causes the world to react to the character.  But you can also have one person who presents the world to react to a character of his.  This is basically what is done when someone writes fiction.  But this doesn't transfer to a game well.  So is it that having a witness for the "shared imaginary space" legitimizes it, making it something more than just something in your own head?  Is it to give the game some of that unpredictable spark of life that can only come from other people and their personalities instead of dice-rolling mechanics?  Or is it because we're taught that if you play with yourself, you'll go blind?

Quote from: M. J. YoungWhen I saw the title of this thread, I immediately recalled the debate Jack and I had some time back, in that wonderful first thread Ron cites; and I also realized that I've probably moved closer to him, as I've reconsidered the definition of role playing (a definition which I think did not clearly exist at that time, as that thread, I think, predates the Lumpley principle).

If I am correct that the definition of a roleplaying game (as presented on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9793">a definitive definition of roleplay?) requires the mutual creation of events in a shared imaginary space, then Jack is correct and I am mistaken: you must have to persons actively involved with each other to have a genuine role playing game.

I concede the point. Solo play, CYOA books, and other forms of individual imaginary activity don't fit the model. Either you can't play roleplaying solitaire, or there's a flaw in the current definition.

--M. J. Young

Funny, one of your examples in 'Questioning Jack Spencer Jr.'s view of solo play' seems to address that. Specifically the start, where you mention a PBEM game.

Okay, start with one GM and one player. They start posting an equal amount of posts.
Now say the player posts more than the GM.
Now say the GM has only ever posted a few, huge posts, and the player gives many.
Okay, now say that the GM, having talked with the player at length before the game, only ever gives one huge post.
And finally, say the GM never talked with the actual player, but he has experience of making shared imaginative space with other players in the past, and makes a huge post/book designed to cater to someone who might like X genre, for instance.

The last one isn't as easily picked at as you might think. All GM's vaguely cater to what their players want, even when they've had a good discussion with each other. Even when their across the table from each other, it's still just one person trying to push something good/something that might fit in someone elses direction, just like say the author of a fighting fantasy book. If someone wants to draw a line in the sand somewhere between face to face and distant author and say one side is roleplay, that's shakey ground. It's hard to measure and personal preferences is going to differ.

Basically it sounds like your definition relies on shared imaginative space. As if there's a connection by which to share it. I'm suggesting no such connection exists even with GM and player standing toe to toe. The GM merely emits material verbally/visually (that attempts to forfil player desires) and the player recieves it. The players material return is typically what he wants to explore, in as much as he can guess what he can explore and which will fit within the current sessions framework as determined by the GM.

Where all just guessing what each other wants, roughly. A fighting fantasy novel, for example, is one big guess. The two and fro of table top gaming between GM and player doesn't change this...a table top GM can guess ahead on what a player might want to enjoy in the session just as much as he is guessing what they currently might want to enjoy.

Edit: One percieved difference might be this: The GM has made one guess on what they will enjoy latter...but activility they are asking for now suggests to him that his guess was off and he should provide another guess, latter.

But although this seems like it can only be achieved face to face, a flow chart is the same thing. Essentially when creating one guess/entry, one is 'told' that their taking that means they like elements of that and to change/use a different guess latter in the chart.

Then again, perhaps I'm speaking in 'only half my sentences make sense' speak, again. :' Sorry, slight twitch of mine from recent PM'ing with someone else.

Further edit: This all revolves around believing that we can only approximate/guess what others want. This, rather than believing that after a good chat or while listening to players at the game table, we can deliver and/or adapt latter material to what they want, with perfect/99% accurately. I hope we have common ground in the belief of the former.

Yeah, I'm for changing the the definition from talking about a "Shared Imagined Space" to talk about an "imagined space that has to be shared amongst all participants." If that's just one, that's fine. Might be stretching the definition a tad, but I think solo play has enough similarities that it counts.

In this case, you have to find a way to distinguish the Imagined Space, from what it's like to imagine a book. For example, there's distinctly a difference between the space created by a novel and a choose your own adventure, IMO. Much less a game with full exploration enabled.

Mike

That distinction is an interesting one.

Here's an odd example. Say a GM has super mind reading powers. He mind reads the player and then goes away and writes. Then he hands over a bunch of pages to the player.

The player reads the starting scene, looks away and thinks for a moment about what he'd like to explore. He then looks back to the page, reading on and finding that the mind reader GM has written next just what he'd like to explore. He continues, and every time he wants to do something, it's been anticipated and already written.

It's really just a novel he's reading though. Yet it's been ultra customised to the particular exploration desires of that player.

More down to earth examples include flow chart like choices, which help customise material to the readers exploration desires (not as good as mind reading, but hey). More sophisticated methods involve having someone there to shape material at the moment rather than use a flow chart...GM and player, in other words. But it's all the same in that it's just customising material. The only difference is refinement of the process.

I was just interested in expanding on the idea, briefly. :)

Thanks to Callan and Mike; those are good points.

I agree that at some point the problem is going to be distinguishing role play from reading a novel, but since the definition of role playing game is still very much in the formative stages around here, it may be premature to insist that anything is or is not included based on that definition.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: Mike HolmesYeah, I'm for changing the the definition from talking about a "Shared Imagined Space" to talk about an "imagined space that has to be shared amongst all participants." If that's just one, that's fine. Might be stretching the definition a tad, but I think solo play has enough similarities that it counts.

the thing is, it might not matter. I think the "solo gaming is not an RPG" people sort of have a point, in that they know there's a qualitative difference between playing solo and playing in a group. to them, the social aspect of group roleplaying is so different from computer games or interactive fiction that they define "roleplaying" in terms of social behavior -- a definition which may be debatable.

but I don't care so much about that. the title of the thread is "Solo Gaming", which may be an unintentional insight; solo gaming may not be roleplaying, but it's still gaming (or perhaps a passtime,) with techniques it shares with roleplaying in groups. Scourge's question then becomes "which RPGs can easily be adapted to use in solo gaming?" which I think is an interesting question, as is "what techniques are best for making such adaptations?" and, in reverse, "which solo gaming techniques could be brought into group roleplaying for enrichment or variation of play?"