Solo Rambling 2024: A year in review
The following post is just a bit of off the cuff thoughts about the games I've played so far. Regular sessions will continue next week with Dragonbane session 6. For anyone interested in my thoughts so far, here ya go!
Ironsworn
The game that everyone recommends to start with. I’ll admit,
I was somewhat talked out of starting with other games by the hordes of solo
roleplayers and Ironsworn fans that recommend people start here on their
solo journey. After reviewing many posts discussing a place to start, it
seemed that Ironsworn was the way to learn how to drive a narrative on your
own as a solo player. While in the end I really enjoyed my time so far in
Ironsworn, it certainly has more of a learning curve than people admit to
themselves. The key to successfully running the game for me was becoming
very familiar with all of the move options. While this seems like a no
brainer, the sheer amount of moves and options included could be quite
overwhelming to a newcomer. I feel that this is the biggest factor leading
to people struggling to become invested in Ironsworn when they first start.
It can be difficult to just come up with a story, and Ironsworn does demand
a bit of self direction that is more easily generated by other systems' use
of oracles and the like. Understanding that the right move is not
necessarily the right mechanical move for the situation, but the right
narrative move for the situation is imperative. Your character can end up
floundering in a spiral of failures and non sequitur actions if you don’t
put aside the game part and embrace the narrative nature of Ironsworn fully.
Overall I learned several important lessons from Ironsworn.
First, failing forward! The easiest way to kill a solo game is to let
failures end your narrative drives. This is a sentiment that is seen
throughout the solo RPG community, but it really hits home when you are
finally facing it in your own game. A failure doesn’t mean the thing you
wanted to do doesn’t happen. It means the door you wanted to go through is
closed… Better start looking for the window to get yourself out of wherever
you’ve found yourself. Secondly I greatly improved my ability to think on
the fly quickly. In several instances the game might give you two words that
seem like they have no connection to your character’s current situation.
I’ve found that these things are where the real creative drive develops for
me in particular. An oracle giving you something that seems disconnected is
an opportunity to truly let your creative juices flow. Connecting the dots
between your narrative and some confusing oracle result leads to a word
problem that really became the most fun challenge for me as I developed my
Ironsworn world and campaign. While its never wrong to roll again if you
really can’t figure out an oracle result, I learned that the extra time to
really stretch your brain to make the connections really drives the
narrative outside of the confined expectations that you develop as a player
and brings you to newer, more interesting places.
Runecairn
Wardensaga
A rules lite game based on the cairn system, this one was a very welcome change from the narrative focus of Ironsworn. While the rules are very loose, I found the return to the traditional “roll on a skill to do a thing” structure I’m more familiar with to be a very welcome shift from Ironsworn. Playing through a prewritten adventure for the first time by myself was the greatest challenge I found here . It was odd to try to play my character wandering through a dungeon when I already knew what was in the next room, the solution to the puzzle, and the outcome in general of the adventure. That being said, it became more of an exercise in playing the GM guiding my own character through the dungeon. Once I was able to play both sides of the coin, the GM with all the information and the character unaware of that skeleton hiding in the pond etc. , it became very enjoyable. Overall the “souls-like” structure of combat and adventure was very interesting and I did enjoy the danger that seemed ever present in the game. The adventure was also a good length, coming off the near-year that I spent playing Ironsworn! A quick character creation into two decent sessions was a great amount of time to spend in the system. Looking forward, I will certainly return to Runecairn. The solo system present to generate dungeons for your character to go through seems very intuitive and very fun. Having played a bit of the Dragonbane solo campaign now, I could see it playing out very similarly. A point crawl dungeon with lots of self generated problems for my character to overcome. Overall a great, yet very light system to play when I need a break from any longer campaigns.
Carved by the Garden
This
one surprised me quite a bit. At first I was very hesitant about how I would
enjoy journaling games. From what I have digested from community sentiment,
journaling games are a love it or hate it kind of game. The people that
really enjoy them cannot recommend them enough, while the people that
already dislike the feeling of solo roleplay being too adjacent to just
creative writing are generally rather repelled by these games. While I did
enjoy playing Carved in the Garden, I too fell into the camp that found
journaling games tobe too adjacent to creative writing. Why constrain
yourself with rules or a system if you are generating all of the story
yourself. What I found in Carved by the Garden was a very interesting
creative writing system. I really enjoyed the dark twists and turns that the
prompts in the game pushed me towards, but in the end I did find it a bit
too close to a creative writing exercise than an actual roleplaying game.
That being said, I do enjoy creative writing and so I did really enjoy the
afternoon I spent playing this game. While I may not make journaling games a
type of system I regularly return to, it was a rather compelling experience
that I thoroughly enjoyed. I would recommend that anyone who is interested
in solo roleplaying with more of a background in creative writing start with
a journaling game over Ironsworn. While Ironsworn certainly is more
narratively driven than other traditional RPG games, the fact that there are
so many rules to keep in mind while playing certainly could give someone
difficulty if they were not prepared for the “game” aspect of solo
roleplaying. Journaling games give just enough of a hint of game structure,
while presenting you with interesting narrative prompts to bridge the gap
between a more traditional game and creative writing that could be more
welcoming to people less familiar with the game aspect of the hobby.
More specifically on Carved by the Garden, I really enjoyed the
dark, twisted narrative that I ended up with at the end. I wanted to do a
fun halloween session and this game delivers in spades! It was creepy and
unsettling at times, but it wasn’t so dark that I felt like stopping at any
point. If you are interested in a horror journaling experience I would
highly recommend it! I will likely return to this in the future for some
oneshot sessions to experience a bit more of the prompts, but after a few
playthroughs I will likely shelf this with fond memories but not come back
to it. In the end I think that is the biggest limit to journaling games.
There is a point where you’ve seen too many of the prompts the system has to
offer. The excitement of new twists and turns will be gone and at that point
the game has run its course for you as a player.
Dragonbane
Dragonbane
was the first system I bought with the intent of playing solo. It was the
game I was excited to play from the start, and it was the game I shied away
from in fear that I would somehow do it wrong. Much of the community points
people towards more narrative and simple games to get started with and I
fell into the camp of people that was not confident I'd do it right. So I ended up starting elsewhere. I don’t regret starting where I did, I really enjoyed what I’ve
played in Ironsworn so far! But there was certainly some amount of discourse
that made it feel like I would jump into a more rules heavy game and fizzle
out because the practice in creating a narrative to push the game forward
would not be there for me as a fledgling solo roleplayer. Since I didn’t
start with Dragonbane, I couldn’t say if this would have been true for me or
not, but from the handful of sessions that I have played in Dragonbane now I
can say I am absolutely loving the system. It has enough rules that it feels
more game than narrative, yet it's light enough that I don’t spend an
egregious amount of my sessions looking up rules. From the limited amount of
time I’ve had in playing solo, it seems to hit the sweet spot for me in this
regard.
On top of that, the solo point crawl campaign that is
presented in the starter set, “Alone in Deepfall Breach”, feels like the
perfect combination of prewritten adventure and empty spaces to fill
in the blanks with my own narrative. Its a compelling story without having
the trouble of knowing what's behind every corner. Even then, how the
prompts are presented for each of the known points is loose enough that it
really acts like a guide and not like a GM telling you the adventure. It
allows you to fill in the gaps so that you can learn how to generate those
blank spaces for yourself successfully. Looking back, I think I would have
been perfectly content starting with Dragonbane. Further still I would
recommend that anyone who is just starting out begin with Alone in Deepfall
Breach! It gives you enough of the skeleton of an adventure, while giving
you room to create narrative moments as well. Its linear in its design, yet
flexible enough to give you space for the “roleplaying” part of the
roleplaying game. And I’ve come to this conclusion just halfway through the
second mission of five in the Alone in Deepfall Breach campaign.
The core system also gives enough tools to generate myths and
legends for your characters to chase, side quests to help out with in
villages you blow through, and drive to keep your character in the world
well after the solo campaign. My current plan is still to complete the solo
campaign and then move on to my next system, I will certainly come back to
Dragonbane for oneshot adventures, short dungeon delves, and maybe a longer
ongoing campaign one day as well.
In Conclusion…
I’m
overjoyed that I’ve been able to stick with this little experiment for as
long as I have so far. Its really opened my eyes to the diversity in the
wide genre of tabletop roleplaying games. And after this last year I’m even
more excited to continue on with this journey! I have several plans for the
next games I’d like to play written out on the blog in the Campaigns tab.
I’ve also got numerous more just floating around in my head for when I may
eventually have the time to put them in action. For now, it’s likely that
Dragonbane is going to take up the majority of the first half of 2025 for
the blog. After that I would like to try out playing a more old school game
focusing on a party of characters instead of a solo character (Dolmenwood
with Garden of Ynn). That being said, I’d also like to try out a system
outside of the traditional fantasy setting (Across 1000 dead worlds?). But
for now that’s quite a ways off. As we get closer to the end of Alone in
Deepfall Breach I’ll see what other ideas I’ve got fermenting away that
might need to take precedent! For now, I’d like to say thanks for reading!
This blog is mostly a way for myself to document my adventures in the Solo
Roleplaying space, but for anyone who has enjoyed the stories so far or
found inspiration to give solo roleplaying a go yourself from my blog,
Thanks! With that, here is to a 2025 filled with Solo Rambling!
Looks like you had a good year.
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