What are your opinions on both 1 player 1 gm and true solo games?

[Ameraaaaaa]

So yeah basically here's my thoughts on the matter. Feel free to share yours.

I've noticed both of these types of games are growing in popularity. In the various rpg spaces online i am in I've noticed that it's not uncommon for people to ask questions like "what's a good game for me and my friend to play" or "my daughter likes my little pony. Any rpgs to scratch that itch" or "my wife wants to play rpgs because she wants to spend more time with me"

It seems that with the popularisation of rpgs many people with smaller or non existent friend groups are turning to one on ones and even true solos.

Afterall many people who watch stranger things or actual plays might want to get into rpgs but not have more the 1 or 2 people that are also interested rpgs in their lives. Maybe none at all.

I predict that regardless of what happens to dnd in the future as the market dominant rpg whether they stay on top or wotc goes down under or whatever that groups might start to get smaller overall.

This can be argued as part of the loneliness epidemic tho personally i don't care too much about the details.

Essentially both because casuals are getting in rpgs and roleplayers start getting in relationships and having families i see a lot of rpg demographics shifting from large nerdy friend groups and dedicated hobbyists to a quintuplet of smaller nerdy friend groups, solitary nerds, nerdy couples, families who want to play a game together (the former demographics will still be there and i wouldn't want it any other way.)

So that's my thoughts on the rise of these games. What do i think of them in general.

I've had a few fun one on one one shots in the past (they were also my only in person games) and I'm currently in a online one on one as well. They are pretty fun to be honest. I don't hate group games (i love both the interactions between player characters and also the variety and chaos it brings) but there's something fun about being the main character of the story. + there's the benefit that they are quicker by nature of both not needing to make group decisions and also that you don't need to wait for the turns of players.

True solos on the other hand i can't get into. It's pretty boring without outside input to make the story more exciting. I like that the collaborative nature of rpgs make games exciting and fun. A gm emulator can't replace it.

So what do you guys think on either of these two topics or any other topic relating to one on ones (also known as duets) and true solos alike.

[Marcloure]

I played a handful of co-op games, and I loved all of them. Well, it was Ironsworn, which is an amazing co-op game that made all the heavy-lifting. Solo games... I don't know, I would rather play video games I guess.

Now, an interesting case is streaming solo games and playing it together with the chat. I used to participate on a solo game a streamer played with his chat, and it was a pretty chill interaction since his view count wasn't too large. Basically, he would ask chat about the situation and discuss the next steps of the story, so it was more collaborative than a purely solo game.

[Pauly]

True solo, haven’t played an RPG, but have played several solo wargames. Yeah, it can be done and can even be fun, but it isn’t the real thing.

Haven’t done any solo RPGs, if it is just me and another player I’d rather play a miniature wargame or boardgame or even a CCG.
I think certain genres will have more appeal as a 2 handed. Horror and Superheroes come to mind. Traditional party focussed games such as D&D as well as games with heavy niche protection such as Shadowrun strike me as games I’d take a lot of persuading to try as a 2 hander.

[Hrugner]

One player and one gm I've done a couple times for a session or two. I enjoy it, but it never really takes off or captures my imagination when we aren't actively playing.

For true solo games, I'd probably write a game without expecting it to be played instead. The game rules are there to facilitate play, but if it's just me then I can write a story and not worry about players, so why would I need rules? I do have a story I've been working on for awhile which I'm only writing because I don't think anyone I game with would enjoy it as a game, and that's what I work on when games are canceled.

[Ameraaaaaa]

True solo, haven’t played an RPG, but have played several solo wargames. Yeah, it can be done and can even be fun, but it isn’t the real thing.

Haven’t done any solo RPGs, if it is just me and another player I’d rather play a miniature wargame or boardgame or even a CCG.
I think certain genres will have more appeal as a 2 handed. Horror and Superheroes come to mind. Traditional party focussed games such as D&D as well as games with heavy niche protection such as Shadowrun strike me as games I’d take a lot of persuading to try as a 2 hander.

I agree with the genre points. My dream one on one would either be a solo horror or solo supers (especially call of cthulhu for the former.)

I remember multiple people elsewhere suggesting that superhero games are great for duets because heroes typically work by themselves outside of team up books.

Personally given m&m's bad guy and setting books i can imagine a long running campaign of just facing the villain of the week with them. Especially if the player had a particularly versatile power.

Or the progenitors book for wild talents for all the alternative history lovers.

[King of Nowhere]

A solo fame is basically a videogame? What's the difference?

[Ameraaaaaa]

A solo fame is basically a videogame? What's the difference?

Doesn't a video game have to be digital? I guess a true solo has the advantage of absolute freedom compared to a video game.

[llama-hedge]

For me, ttrpgs are fundamentally a group experience, so I have genuine difficulty grokking the appeal of solo games beyond 'I want to play d&d and there's no one else around'. I don't doubt you could do it, but there's the opportunity cost of not doing something that's supposed to be solo. You could be playing a video game, or reading a book, or planning out builds and campaign ideas for when you finally find a group, or playing one of those Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, or doing literally anything else.

But even then, my fondest memory of Fighting Fantasy was with a friend, drawing maps, comparing routes we'd taken in the past, and discussing what to do next as we tried to beat it together. We did the opposite of what you're describing.

It's possible that AI GMs might become a thing eventually, but what the general public has access to at the moment isn't going to cut it for two main reasons. The first is that they have pretty poor object permanence, so while Chat-GPT can run a scene fine, it can't fit it into a broader narrative because it can't draw an association between what just happened and something from last week unless you explicitly tell it to, and even then it may get it wrong in a way a human never would. This leads into my other point, which is that the chatbots don't seem to do much of anything unless you tell them to, which is reassuring if you're worried about robot uprisings, but isn't conducting to keeping the game moving.

[Pauly]

I agree with the genre points. My dream one on one would either be a solo horror or solo supers (especially call of cthulhu for the former.)

I remember multiple people elsewhere suggesting that superhero games are great for duets because heroes typically work by themselves outside of team up books.

Personally given m&m's bad guy and setting books i can imagine a long running campaign of just facing the villain of the week with them. Especially if the player had a particularly versatile power.

Or the progenitors book for wild talents for all the alternative history lovers.

Thinking some more about the features that would attract me to a GM/single player game
- Investigative, which puts the focus on the player to solve problems rather than the character.
- Strong enemies that you need to defeat with smarts not just by skull bashing. Again the focus is more on the player to come up with clever tactics.
- lack of specialization. i.e. there is a variety of problems that can be dealt with by a generalist, not the same problem presented in a variety of ways.

In addition to the horror and superhero genres you might find some success with
- monster hunting. This can be set in fantasy as per Monster Hunter, Historical as per The Tsavo Lions or Sci-fi as in Alien.
- Police procedural. just don’t think this has much crossover appeal to an RPG audience. Although it might cross over to low level superhero genre such as [Short form of Richard] Tracey.
- Espionage/infiltration.

[Ameraaaaaa]

Thinking some more about the features that would attract me to a GM/single player game
- Investigative, which puts the focus on the player to solve problems rather than the character.
- Strong enemies that you need to defeat with smarts not just by skull bashing. Again the focus is more on the player to come up with clever tactics.
- lack of specialization. i.e. there is a variety of problems that can be dealt with by a generalist, not the same problem presented in a variety of ways.

In addition to the horror and superhero genres you might find some success with
- monster hunting. This can be set in fantasy as per Monster Hunter, Historical as per The Tsavo Lions or Sci-fi as in Alien.
- Police procedural. just don’t think this has much crossover appeal to an RPG audience. Although it might cross over to low level superhero genre such as [Short form of Richard] Tracey.
- Espionage/infiltration.

I remember a one on one beast hunting rpg called beast hunters. Sounds like your thing.

Personally I'd also like a investigative game in a sense. Would be pretty fun to look for clues in either a horror or superhero game. Would be pretty fun.

[Pauly]

I remember a one on one beast hunting rpg called beast hunters. Sounds like your thing.

Personally I'd also like a investigative game in a sense. Would be pretty fun to look for clues in either a horror or superhero game. Would be pretty fun.

Just starting watching the old English TV series The Sandbageers again and I think it would translate well into a 2 handed game. The main character is essentially M from the James Bond films and has to select, plan and oversee missions for the black ops operatives all on a limited budget with limited resources. Lots of issues such as whether it is MI5 or MI6 area of operations, political and economic consequences and so on.

[Easy e]

Solo Wargames are pretty popular right now, as are board/card games.

I am having a hard time imagining a solo RPG, as the social aspect is critical for my game experiences. That said, there are probably games where you "play the role" of like a planetary administrator where you are actually playing against the bureaucracy, but I think that stretches the definition of "playing a role" to me. Your mileage may vary.

[Ameraaaaaa]

I think people are really underestimating the popularity of solo roleplaying. Checkbthe subreddit solo_roleplaying to see that it's a solid niche.

[Psyren]

I love love love solo and co-op boardgames. Elder Sign is one I keep coming back to, despite how nightmarishly hard it is. (My friends and I implemented a few houserules, such as item-trading and slowing down the clock, to simulate difficulty levels and minimize the impact of dice-screw.)

[KorvinStarmast]

One of my favorite co op board games is Pandemic.

There's another one whose name I forget, but it was a tactical game with mechanized vehicles. Played it with my son a few years ago.
Will edit in when I get the name.

[Easy e]

I think people are really underestimating the popularity of solo roleplaying. Checkbthe subreddit solo_roleplaying to see that it's a solid niche.

I know I am for sure!

The very limited Solo RPGing I have seen has been mostly dressed up solo-wargames or "Dudes on a board" style experiences. The other experiences I had was a choose-your-own-adventure book type of experience.

I would love to hear about more options and I know there have been some very cool options out there, but I have not personally had a chance to play them.

[Ameraaaaaa]

I know I am for sure!

The very limited Solo RPGing I have seen has been mostly dressed up solo-wargames or "Dudes on a board" style experiences. The other experiences I had was a choose-your-own-adventure book type of experience.

I would love to hear about more options and I know there have been some very cool options out there, but I have not personally had a chance to play them.

Typically if you want to play what's basically a normal rpg game you use what's called a oracle.

Examples include the mythic gm emulator, one page solo engine, tarot cards or even the classic solo 1d6 yes/no/and/but table. As well as system specific oracles like ironsworn.

What they all have in common is that they exist to basically be the gm. So let's say you need a quest to go on. You might use a oracle specific to generating quests for example.

Other popular methods are using modules, choose your own adventure books, ai gms, journaling rpgs (basically a mix of choose your own adventure books and writing prompts), basically war games/combat simulators ect ect.

Personally in my few attempts at true solo i went the oracle or module routes. I had some fun but i definitely prefer either group games or one on ones. Tho i have seen people say they prefer true solos before.

[animorte]

My wife and I take pride in our board game collection. Most of them are cooperative and it's been a staple in our relationship. Of course kids don't make that easy so it's been a few years since we could legitimately get invested.

We had a particular status of games that we would refer to as hold the table. We would get a new game and try it out, experiencing the natural trial and error of learning new rules. Each game would stay on the coffee table for a certain amount of time and we would play it just about every day. The longer a game stayed out on that particular table was a good indicator of how much we enjoyed it. A couple games managed to hold the table for about a month.

Anyway, onto table-top role-playing games (probably the point of the OP initially)...

About 3 years ago when the game Pandemic, reared its noggin and broke the fourth wall, a lot of people experienced more time in their own four walls (funny how that works). My wife and I made it a point to run 1-on-1 games, taking turns as DM depending on who had the next one-shot idea. A lot of times there would be a DMPC. Sometimes we would run the same characters (no more than 2 each at any given time) and other times we would use the opportunity to try out various builds/concepts.

This was a great experience that we brought to our friends, the idea of one-shots being prevalent where the DM could swap out much easier and characters could come and go as necessary. A game could even have an over-arcing story happening, but it requires a lot less commitment (accounting for those less-than-reliable players).

We would play 1-on-1 as least once a week. Though more recently it's been less, we still enjoy that time to hang out, try new characters/levels, and most important of all the kids can't lose all the pieces/cards/tokens/whatever from the other table-top games.

[Ameraaaaaa]

My wife and I take pride in our board game collection. Most of them are cooperative and it's been a staple in our relationship. Of course kids don't make that easy so it's been a few years since we could legitimately get invested.

We had a particular status of games that we would refer to as hold the table. We would get a new game and try it out, experiencing the natural trial and error of learning new rules. Each game would stay on the coffee table for a certain amount of time and we would play it just about every day. The longer a game stayed out on that particular table was a good indicator of how much we enjoyed it. A couple games managed to hold the table for about a month.

Anyway, onto table-top role-playing games (probably the point of the OP initially)...

About 3 years ago when the game Pandemic, reared its noggin and broke the fourth wall, a lot of people experienced more time in their own four walls (funny how that works). My wife and I made it a point to run 1-on-1 games, taking turns as DM depending on who had the next one-shot idea. A lot of times there would be a DMPC. Sometimes we would run the same characters (no more than 2 each at any given time) and other times we would use the opportunity to try out various builds/concepts.

This was a great experience that we brought to our friends, the idea of one-shots being prevalent where the DM could swap out much easier and characters could come and go as necessary. A game could even have an over-arcing story happening, but it requires a lot less commitment (accounting for those less-than-reliable players).

We would play 1-on-1 as least once a week. Though more recently it's been less, we still enjoy that time to hang out, try new characters/levels, and most important of all the kids can't lose all the pieces/cards/tokens/whatever from the other table-top games.

Nice to hear. One shots do seem to be very convenient and it sounds like you have a good time with them. Your seem to be living the one on one dream. Stable, fun, variety filled, and with a loved one.

Bravo.

[icefractal]

I've tried solo games, but they always peter out after a bit, usually pretty quickly. Interestingly, despite my liking crunchy games in general, and solo theoretically being well suited for high-crunch, I've found it's the lighter ones that lasted longer.

I think that's because most crunchy games put a fair amount of their crunch into tactical combat, and doing tactical combat against yourself isn't very interesting. If there was a system that had crunchy character building but combat was just "let's determine what the outcome is", that might be perfect for it.

Well, that and the fact that a light system is easier to play at random times when the opportunity might arise, since all you need is an oracle of some sort, like a die-roller app.

[gbaji]

1 on 1 can be a lot of fun, with the right person. But to be honest, roleplaying is always most fun the more people there are (ok. up to a certain number I suppose then it just gets silly).

I also lean pretty strongly towards the concept that there are a lot of fun solo games out there, but I don't know if I'd really call them roleplaying games. They end up more like problem/puzzle games, or "find your way through the maze/choice-path" type things. And sure, there can be roleplaying elements in there, but they too are often just part of the problem/puzzle to be "solved" and less an end of itself as it tends to be in group play.

And frankly? If I'm playing by myself, I tend towards either the more mindless stuff, or serious hard-core puzzle stuff, and anything that's actually trying to put rp stuff in there often just gets in the way of that. It's maybe just part of my personality, but I find myself asking "what's the point?" when it comes to roleplaying when there's no one else around to see/experience it.

[Eldan]

I also lean pretty strongly towards the concept that there are a lot of fun solo games out there, but I don't know if I'd really call them roleplaying games. They end up more like problem/puzzle games, or "find your way through the maze/choice-path" type things. And sure, there can be roleplaying elements in there, but they too are often just part of the problem/puzzle to be "solved" and less an end of itself as it tends to be in group play.

There's actually solo games that go entirely in a different direction. There's an entire spectrum there, up to the Journaling games, which are often a lot more like creative writing prompts than dungeon delves. I quite like them, you can find a lot of them online. They tend to be structured around first creating a character, then just generating situations for that character to be in, sometimes with an overarching story, sometimes without and the game mostly just telling you to play the scenes out with yourself. Or write down what happened as a journal entry, hence Journaling Games.

[Lacco]

I'd also say that there are some nice 1 GM (no player) games. I specifically like How to Host a Dungeon, which plays as a GM building a dungeon with its own history in 2D.

It's basically a resource management game with some basic emergent gameplay and lots of stuff that can go wrong. My first attempt resulted in a megadungeon, with dwarves and dark elves battling it out and killing each other in an all-out war which lead to a great collapse, a goblin-infested dwarven city, hobgoblins taking the dwarven hold and a vampire claiming a domain in dark elven colony. Also, a lake monster and few other strange things.

It has a nice, simple chassis that allows for some flexibility, and can be extended a lot. It works well.

[False God]

I wont address the shifting status quo due to forum rules, but I run a lot of solo games so....

I like that you can cover a lot more protagonist-centric genres. "The Chosen One", "Master/Padawan", "James Bond" are all so much easier to do with one or two people than it is to do with a group. I like that you can cater a game specifically to someone's interests, include topics they enjoy and tune the game to the maturity level of that player. They're great for side-adventures to existing groups as well, for players who want to accomplish something during downtime or for someone who has temporarily split off from the group.

I've found group-based systems however usually require you to give the PC a boost. An individual character isn't intended to be a solo act by design, and I've usually found that they need about 1/2 more than what they normally get to start with. You can substitute a side-kick NPC, either temporary, from a rotating cast (like those JRPGs where you get to pick your party before venturing out), or in some cases like the "Master/Padawan" the DM can play a character alongside the player. Simply leveling them up doesn't work, because the expectation is towards specialization and most characters who generalize will fall behind, assuming you don't simply adjust the challenge level for everything.

I really do think these need to be played with the right person though, someone you are very familiar with, are good at roleplaying with, and I don't think this works as well for PUG setups. But I've never tried that so thats just untested opinion from someone who isn't by nature a social butterfly. There's a level of direct interaction and intensity when there are only two people in the room, you can't "pass your turn" if you're not feeling up to the interaction today or shy away from the table. There is a very different dynamic when there are only two people in the room and one of them is in a position of power.

I generally find that solo games are a lot faster. Sure, you can keep going on infinite adventures, but more importantly, you're only dealing with situation-resolution with one person. There's no table chatter, there's no side-conversations going on, there's no pausing the game while the party debates things in and out of character. So you cover a lot more of the game in a shorter amount of time. By that token the games also end faster but I don't think that's a bad thing. A lot of one-on-one session time can be strenuous and getting to "take a break" between games more often I think helps with that.