Why did you start solo roleplaying?

[Solo RPG Gamer]

Why did you start solo roleplaying? 

[Solo RPG Gamer]

For myself, I just couldn't find people to play the games I was interested in, in the way I wanted to play them. Nowadays, I also lack the time to commit to group play. 

[James Smith]

Because I want to play games that no one else has played and no one would be interested in playing. Just to try out and see if they're good.

[Jeff Bernstein]

I found Metagaming's Melee, Wizard, and Death Test in the hobby store at the mall when I was a kid. None of my friends were into it so I played the microquests which were solitaire adventures anyway. I bought all the rest of them eventually and played them over and over and over.

At summer camp one of the counselors played The Fantasy Trip (Advanced Melee, Wizard, and GMs guide, picked this up at some point, can't remember where) so my warrior dueled his wizard and got slaughtered. So much for non-solitaire play!

[Alto Dizi]

My long-term gaming group (15+ years) is firmly entrenched in D&D-style gaming -- 5e mechanics, chronological order, medium-length focus, experience/loot, purely rules-based play. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much over it. Partly because I have so little interest I can't retain the rules (not that I'm good at that anyway) and partly because I know I am not going to get the story or spotlight I want out of it.

When I game solo nobody shares the triumphs or defeats, but I also have the luxury of spending an hour playing out an interchange with a foregone conclusion blow by blow if I want to see just how badly my hero is damaged by the experience (in D&D the only damage is to your HP), or skipping ahead to the next interesting bit, or deciding by fiat that some horrible but interesting thing happens out of the blue.I can swap systems if I want literally mid-session. I can bring in the elements of story that appeal to me, even if they'd break my group's "social contract".

I also love that moment when I'm playing and there's a rush of "wow, this is getting intense" and it's just pure story guided by dice, snowballing towards a conclusion, win or lose. When I'm swapping between gm-hat and pc-hat and giving both my best. It doesn't always happen every session, but it happens a lot more than it ever did with group play.

[Adventure Girl]

I started collecting D&D Miniatures having no idea what the game was (or that there was a game attached to them).  After some noseying around online, I ended up getting the roleplaying game starter set.  No one else I knew was interesting in reading through and learning to play.  I don't think they could be bothered, or see the point in roleplaying tiny pieces (miniatures), they'd rather play online games / video games instead.  I like those two, but the more I read into D&D and other solo roleplaying games, and MYTHIC GME, I got very very excited!  I loved the fact, unlike conventional games and video games, you could do anything you could think of.  And then roll dice to see how that turned out.  When I first started to play, I was very pleasantly surprised to see even if my dice rolls turned out bad, there could still be a lot of humour and joy of seeing things turn out badly for your characters.  I remember a couple of strapping male heroes attacking orcs (a human warrior and a human cleric) bolding shouting they would save the day as they charged at the evil orcs, only to find they both missed!  It took a female elf and a female halfling to both take out the bad guys in their first attempts!  

For me, solo roleplaying is like freeform adventures, where anything can happen, I get to choose what my characters will try to do when presented with a situation, but thanks to MYTHIC and a few dice, who knows how it will turn out?  Great fun for my imagination, I love it!

[Jmz Haz]

On Friday, January 6, 2017 at 7:08:23 AM UTC-8, Solo RPG Gamer wrote:

Why did you start solo roleplaying? 

At first, I became the GM for my group because there wasn't anyone else.
Then I got other games, and because I'm hands-on, I played short little scenarios as a means of learning how the system worked.
Now I Solo because there isn't anyone else around me who plays, and I *still* don't know how online gaming works. :)

[James Buildwell]

On Friday, January 6, 2017 at 7:08:23 AM UTC-8, Solo RPG Gamer wrote:

Why did you start solo roleplaying? 

My parents were caught up in the Moral Panic of the 80's and made me burn all my tabletop RPG books.  So I went with gamebooks such as the Lone Wolf series until computers came along.  Lately I've been dissatisfied with seeing the same computer game infinitely replicated with gratuitously different GUI, so I'm looking to design something straightforward that can work analog with playing cards or online using Twine.