Small Post on Solo Play & Motivation

 

This is gonna be a free-written process/analysis post. Probably loose and rough. Troubleshooting. We're talking arts and crafts!

[Header image by me, thrown together in Affinity Photo with the League Gothic and League Spartan open-source typefaces from the League of Movable Type, published under the SIL Open Font License, some True Grit Texture Supply Brushes, which are excellent and I highly recommend, and public domain flowers off wikimedia commons, from the now-defunct educational publisher Pearson Scott Foresman.]

 

[Author's note: this is NOT actually a small post. It was supposed to be! It escalated. Anyway, I'm keeping the title because I like it, but it's technically false. Just want to manage expectations.]

So, I've been reflecting on solo play a bit, because it's one of the main ways I've actually managed to do the gameplay part of ttrpgs lately, and I've been meaning to throw together a post about how I play Mothership solo, since it's kind of cobbled together but has worked well so far (this is NOT that post). And because I think solo ttrpgs are a fascinating (and slightly bizarre) artistic medium which warrants (at least casual) study.

Except: I often lose interest a couple short sessions in.

Same as coming up short when writing short fiction, I find myself coming to decision points, being unsure where to go next, and then ... stopping. Some of this, let's be honest, is just schedule and forgetfulness. But also, I think it's a lack of investment. I could put in the work to find out what happens next. But often I don't, and I think it's because I'm not interested enough in finding out what happens next. 

Which I think is a solvable problem, but before we get to possible solutions, I think the problem itself is interesting, and potentially instructive. Certainly about my habits and wiring, but also the medium at large, Mothership as a specific game system, and horror in a tabletop context.

Uh, oh. This isn't sounding like that small of a post anymore.

background

One of the big things here is that I started playing solo as a purely mechanical exercise. At first, just rolling attacks and damage for Mothership monsters and characters, to get a feel for the damage model. Then, wanting a more complete simulation, ran a (fairly generic) crew through Dead Planet's excellent self-contained derelict-dungeon "Screaming on the Alexis." What was just meant to be something of a fact-finding operation ... actually turned out to be really fun. And here was an opportunity to play games that didn't require some combination of scheduling, videoconferencing software, or meeting new people. Just me, some dice, some rules. Which sounded ideal, and still does.

I think part of the reason I want to dig into solo play to work out what makes it tick (for me at least), is that I'm not particularly good at it, and would really like to be. I love that it's something I can play with pencil, paper, and dice. It's tactile and reflective. That's cool. I like that. 

running drills

I started running solo as a very literal test run, and I haven't entirely stopped. Obviously, getting started with anything is a learning experience, and one of the reasons I'm fixated on ttrpgs as a medium is that they've remained challenging over the 10+ years I've been running them, and I almost always feel like I've learned something by playing. Which is cool! I like that!

But there's a (significant) difference between something you learn from and something which is relegated to being a "test," or "experiment," especially in a creative context. Not to say that studies, experiments, and practice aren't valuable, because they absolutely are. Case in point: by playing games solo, lingering "test run" feeling or not, I'm learning how the form works, what works for me, how to improve, etc. And it's something I've been getting better at. 

depth

At the same time, I'm not getting the depth out of it that I want out of it. And one of the big differences, I think, is commitment. Not leaning far enough in. I want immersion, which by definition means being all-in, entirely covered or submerged. Which isn't really something you can get by just dipping your toes in the pond.

The water is cold, dark, and welcoming. It's a vulnerability thing. I'm not very good at vulnerability.

Caught at cross-purposes here because I want to write something useful and informative, a workable analysis of the form or something like that, but also, the particular problems and dynamics I'm working with are heavily informed simply by the way I'm wired. Maybe this is a personal essay. Maybe there's value in that.

empty hands

In A Choreographer's Handbook (Routledge 2010), Jonathan Burrows writes, "Empty hands means you don't hold so tight to the thing you're trying to make that you crush it" (154). This was part of assigned reading at school, and I think about empty hands a lot. I got the book because of this sentence, and really ought to read more of it than I have. It's a brilliant, sparse exploration of creative process.

"Empty hands," is part of a discussion of chance processes in choreography, attaching a "gamut," of shapes, moves, results, etc. to some kind of chance element like dice or coins. Sound familiar? To paraphrase Burrows: chance gives you empty hands.

I use Alfred Valley's Combined Systems Semiotic Standard oracle from Thousand Empty Light (something else brilliant and sparse I should read more of than I have), and a heavily cut and modified form of the Necropraxis Hazard Die, both converted into cardstock-and-sharpie card decks. And the rules for Mothership itself, which are tense and brutal. These help empty my hands, which I've found really critical for feeling surprise and uncertainty playing solo; where, otherwise, I have all the decision making power.

How do you surprise yourself? 

Specifically, I found that planning too much detail took the tension out. So in practice, I've been throwing together simple flowchart maps with the station generator in A Pound of Flesh, and leaving them without internal descriptions, to be filled out in play as the characters discover them and oracle/encounter cards are drawn. For the most part, this works well, and recreates much of the engaging tension of both playing and running games.

But it feels like there's a piece missing that I'm trying to pin down.

Why do we care? How do we genuinely resonate with the story? Am I playing because it's exciting and uncertain, or just because I feel like I "should"? How much can you be immersed in something that isn't real? Is that even safe? Do I want something that isn't really possible to get out of the medium? Or am I the limiting factor?

handholds

If the advantage of playing loose and leaning into chance is that it helps empty my hands and create surprise, the disadvantage is that it maybe doesn't give me enough to hang on to. To return to the pondwater metaphor, it feels as though I am too buoyant, always being pulled back to the surface.

For the most part. In the most recent solo game I'm running, I slowed down for a sessions for the second operation. Played into atmosphere. Played with downtime. There were only a handful of rolls, and not much action, but it was easily the strongest session I've played solo so far, and felt like welcome proof of the medium's viability for me. For a moment, I felt alongside the character I was playing. And that was really neat.

I think that's one of the core appeals of role-playing games, after all. Being somebody else for a bit.

You can check out the unedited log here, if you're curious. Operation 2 is towards the bottom. Don't know that reading it gets to the same experience as playing through did, which in itself is fascinating. Specifically, there was a crit-success rest save that felt great.

Then, next session, it got all fucked up.

fubar

Okay, reading back, that's not entirely fair, but it does feel like that. I picked up some really dramatic random oracle results midway through a scene [Disaster, Steep (Suddenness/Change), and rolled a "leak" encounter after having established the ocean beneath the outpost was a carnivorous organism, whoops] plus some unfortunate rolls meant things went from work meeting to FUBAR in a single mechanical round.

And this is very in keeping with Mothership, but not necessarily what I was hoping to play through, at least, not without more build-up. The resulting situation felt a little arbitrary and unearned, largely because it was, and I haven't returned to it for more than a month. Not an unusual gap, by any means, but not what I was hoping to set up, which is a small solo campaign I want to return to.

Small scale, there are easy solutions to this:

• Option A: Press on, play through the consequences, honor chance, and see what happens. 
• Option B: Roll back the scene, and hang out in the steady-state world for a little longer before things go horribly wrong. Maybe adjust how frequently disasters occur (1-in-10 is a lot!).  
• Option C: Ditch the campaign and start over with something more suitable. I haven't put that much work into the setup, and the campaign frame (corporate investigators working their way through encounters with UCR entries) isn't quite what I want to sink my teeth into. 

I'll probably go with Option C, for reasons I'll get into later, though I do think it's worth highlighting the others. 

A: I think with harsh games especially, I sometimes feel a desire to ... not have bad things happen. Which is a lot of the point of a game being hard! Otherwise there's less tension! And I think it's very easy with role-playing games as a story-adjacent medium to get the feeling that success or survival is the only way forward, even though there's lots and lots of interesting ways to fail, and interesting things that can come out of disaster. Certainly, I could play through the rest of the scenario and see what happens, and who survives, and what comes of it, and where the characters are forced to go.

B: on the other hand, when we talk about ttrpgs or games generally, we're talking about a medium for desired experience. Maybe that's fun, maybe that's catharsis, maybe that's tension. Whatever floats your boat. So taking something back because it doesn't create the experience you want (or creates one you don't) is aligned with the core objective of the whole fucking exercise. Which is good. Don't be afraid to play video games at the difficulty you enjoy, engage with media in ways that work for you, don't stick with choices you don't like, and so on. That's more of a General Media Literacy note, to be honest.

Hey Kid from Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast (Jay Dragon et al, Possum Creek Games, 2023) refers to this idea as "take-backsies," in the YB&B's excellent safety tools section, which is where I first (or most clearly) encountered: "If you have an idea and then realize later that you don’t like it, you can always do take-backsies." It's one of the clearest and simplest expressions of player agency and consent I've seen, and a useful technique for your toolbox. 

I picked up a digital copy from itch in order to confirm that's where I'd seen the concept. (It was.) Good call. Yazeba's is 500+ pages, and on skiming, through, looks beautiful. The safety tools section is can also be found in the free ashcan version, if you're curious. It's worth a look. 

"Take-backsies," in came up in the last group session I ran of a homemade horror game, and I think it may have averted a real bummer of an ending. At the very least, I made an unfun decision as referee, and we reverted it rather than let it ride, and the game was better for it. Anyway, rolling stuff back can be really helpful.

I uh, haven't talked about motivation much here, have I? Better do that.

the boat anchor

My brain has the approximate inertial qualities of a fucking boat anchor. This is because I don't have enough of a specific kind of tiny particle floating around in my body. Or I don't make enough of them? I still don't entirely know. 

The boat anchor is a metaphor. Just so we're clear.

If I'm not moving, it's hard to get moving. Once I'm moving, it's hard to stop. This is great for getting ttrpg blog posts written or props fabricated or game prep done, but not so great if I need to then shift to doing, say, my actual job. Unfortunately, the boat anchor is a metaphor, and I am a person (more complicated!), and unlike a boat anchor, I have preferences. Needing to do something, wanting to do something, and having enough motivation to actually do that thing are distinct quantities.

There's the rub.

anchor chain

I think we're back down to that thing about commitment, immersion, vulnerability from earlier. I spend tons of time, thinking and reading and writing about role-playing games, but I don't put that kind of time or energy into putting together solo games. Some of this is to stay loose, and because it opens up the field of play to explore later, and that's all fine, but it also means I'm often working with a setting and characters I neither know or care much about.

Now, I'm a big believer in taking things a session at a time, even when it means there's no useful prep for me to spend time on. But I think, in solo play, I may have found the limit to that. And maybe it isn't a question of "prep more," so much as "prep better," and by better, I mean, "more like myself." 

What I've been playing has been largely generic. Which is to say, it isn't personal. I'm not digging into the stuff I'm really interested. I'm leaning a lot more on random tables than handcrafting. And I could talk a lot about how valuable that externality is for driving unexpected creative decisions, but often? I'm not following it up with the creative decisions. I'm playing solo casually when I don't want a casual game. 

I want something I can get lost in. 

And be excited about.

Over the last week, I wrote up a bunch of setting possibilities for Mothership, and they're not all my speed, but a lot of them are based on stuff I'm interested in: culture, body horror, sexuality, sea voyages. And it got me thinking about how much farther I could push the world and characters towards something I find really juicy. Which I haven't been doing. 

Don't get me wrong, I like Mothership's default setting a lot. And its relatively grounded baseline makes it more accessible to players. Playing alone, though? You don't really need it to be accessible to anyone but yourself! I can use my KSP-level understanding of orbital mechanics if I want, or incorporate weird synergies with Herman Melville's discursive symbolfest Moby Dick. Will I? Hard to say. But I could, and for the purposes of discussion, that's what's important.

Play is about possibility, among so many other things. And it's a personal act. So make it personal.

roadmap

okay, great. tons of theory.

but how do I actually get there?

I think a bigger, more dramatic campaign framework is needed: something that anchors the game outside its fragile characters. A ship could work, but that might even be too small-scale as a through-line, given how easily Mothership's spacecraft can be reduced to hollow, irradiated derelicts. Centering on a conflict or antagonist as it moves through a few jump clusters is probably the way to go.

(Or maybe just jumping into one of the big modules, like A Pound of Flesh.)

Then, maybe multiple characters, from the very start! Gives me some flexibility to bounce around if I'm not feeling like a particular area or gameplay. Maybe they link up, maybe they don't. Characters become little POV cameras for the bigger show, (whatever that is). 

Flavor, and lots of it. Knock out some conceptual writing and put together some mood boards. I do this for scenarios I'm writing, modules I'm running, and pretty much any creative project I start up now, why not for solo play?

Some detailed sandbox maps, some factions, some important NPCs. Previously, I've tried putting everything in a single logbook, which works great for portability, but in play means I'm flipping back and forth between the active log and the scenario map or any world information. Should probably separate the two, either with loose maps and play materials, or a notebook or binder that has all the setting and scenario information in it, that way I can reference both at once.

Leaning into the way I usually approach creative projects, with visual research, auxiliary design work, and experimental free-writing might be helpful as well. Keeping it multi-disciplinary. 

Running a game strictly in a logbook, which has been my procedure up to this point, I think risks reducing the medium to a linear modality. Which role-playing games aren't. They can move in different ways, operate on chance and interaction, unfold new layers.

I think that's it!

in closing (feat. more theory)

I don't know how this will work out. Might update if I find out. Might not! I think a some of the trouble with the latest solo campaign is that I ran it partially with blogging and community engagement in mind, so there was an invisible audience in the back of my head. Made me self-conscious sometimes, which is sort of the opposite of what you want for play. 

One of the big differences in solo play, I realize, is that there's little-to-no performance component, to the point that it may actually be a separate-but-interrelated medium from group ttrpgs. I don't know how useful a taxonomic distinction is, but the difference between the presence/absence of performance/audience is nontrivial. 

Ritual is still very much involved, and I think there is an open question whether or not individual play and ritual practice includes or constitutes performance by-and-for a combined cast-audience of one person. Hardly the first person to make this observation, I'm sure. Something to chew on, though. 

Certainly, I already think ttrpgs aren't precisely a medium in the same way as like, oil painting, but rather a collection of symbiotic media. Granted, this is true of a lot of ritual and performance media, which tend to incorporate a wide variety of disciplines, from accounting to juggling, while still widely and, critically, functionally being considered a single "medium." Maybe media stack. 

There is multiplicity in whatever it is. All is manifold.

In future, I'd like to put together a shorter, more practical post about how I've been playing Mothership solo, and how to get started, since I think it might be helpful for some folks, and that'll incorporate any discoveries I make in upcoming play. There's some good solo-play resources out there already, like Thousand Empty Light, and RV Games' Advanced Rules, which I recommend checking out. 

We'll see how it goes!

Finally, if you've made it all the way down here, thanks for reading! I hope there was something helpful in here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you'd like to share!