Have you struggled to get your game party together at a set time?
Since the pandemic, I haven't been able to play D&D or Pathfinder very much.
Strangely not just because of the lack of face-to-face contact, it has also impacted all my RPG friends' "adulting" responsibilities due to our opportunities to at least have quick one-shot or Skirmishes reduced as everyone's kids and spouses had fewer activities.
This has meant even remote systems such as Discord and Roll20 didn't help. The problem was getting folks together at the same time, with the energy and enthusiasm to play. We need a solution that works on each party member's schedule, not one date and time that fits all.
Late into the pandemic, I kept hearing more and more about other ways to play RPG and wargames. Things like solo-play, asynchronous online play. And this was both around converting existing game systems and also playing new, made-for-purpose game systems.
I was intrigued so decided to give it a go.
It turns out that as well as solo games and computer games, there is a whole world of games played one on one, many-to-many, both co-operative or player + DM.
First a little context and history of the genre.
Choose Your Own Adventure
Apparently, Choose Your Own Adventure is trademarked, but we all know that is a category as well as a product line, just like I say "I am going to hoover" but I mean I am going to vacuum.
Fighting Fantasy books were my gateway drug into roleplay and so I shouldn't be surprised this genre still exists.
Players playing against a book, and you against a computer, was especially popular in the 1980s, but the game form even in digital goes back to the earliest computing.
While these games were more decisions-based than improv style roleplay, you still often generated a character and chose how that character behaved, with your fate decided by rules and random chance.
Play By Mail
Many people who got into RPGs after the early 1990s will probably have not experienced using the postal mail system to play adventure games, but it was a big thing for a while there.
In fact, Computer & Video Games magazine used to even report on the scene, which even at the time was a little bit outside their scope but a welcome addition.
My cousin ran a Sci-Fi PBM game from his bedroom, juggling multiple players in a futuristic world.
Of course, people long ago right up to today have played chess by mail. A slow wargame for sure, but I imagine still a fun way to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. Or enemies.
With the advent of email and Multi-User Dungeons, and then MMOs like Ultima Online, play by postal mail withered a little, but it still exists out there.
PlayByMail.Net and Suspense and Decision list a bunch of games that are still active today.
As well as play by email, Usenet groups, Bulletin Boards, and Forums sprang up expressly or as a side quest to allow the members to interact and play games via conversation threads. Today this happens on Discord, but still not intended as real-time but asynchronously.
Persistent Browser-Based Games
The successor to PBM for many people is the browser-based game. They can be diplomacy, war games, RPGs, or entirely new. They can be graphical, text-based, automated, or manual.
Each time you log in and play, your character and the environment are persistent, allowing you to progress over multiple sessions, and potentially interact or make alliances with other players.
While this might sound like an MMO, the main difference is you just need a web browser, no software to install.
Of course, there are a lot of BAD examples out there. Many seem designed to elicit the maximum page views (grinding to mine ore or fight a torrent of low-difficulty monsters is common), but lately many seem to be designed also to extract as many "pay to play" donations as possible, or to serve as a market driver for NFTs "just one bitcoin will buy you half of an old axe!".
Pen and Paper Solo or 1:1
To play any RPG solo, or any wargame without a human opponent, you need "AI".
Now, that AI might not be digital, it could be a set of rules. Today it could easily also be a dedicated app.
For a skirmish or any combat encounter, the simplest rules are things like "these units always move toward the closest visible enemies and make ranged attacks when possible".
Doesn't have much tactical depth, but you might not need them to have necessarily if the alternative is your minis sit in their box.
You can add a random factor ("1D20, a roll of 10 or below and the unit takes cover"), but that necessarily slows play as well as adding a dynamic element.
Most of the solo game systems add even more by using look-up tables.
For example, in a dungeon setting, you might roll a dice and look up to see if there is any loot, any hidden doors, where the exits are, if there is an NPC/monster, and then look up the specific instance of those things.
Looking to the Future
I'm playing with some ideas right now for how we might play some games utilizing the Hive blockchain (not for profit but for game integrity!)
Would you be interested in testing out some ideas with me?