#ttrpgtag

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

starts making something like this but for solo RPGs

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

thinking about two subtypes of player agency, and how to incorporate them into the looser parts of solo play where they tend to just be waved off by most solo systems and advice. (and by that i mean they're two of the subtypes of player agency, not that they're the only two subtypes, to be clear.)

one subtype is: this choice will affect the game going forward in ways that i am roughly betting on now; how it plays out in practice remains to be seen, but i'm tipping the scale in advance. making a character with a high strength stat or specific backstory, making them a paladin, choosing a scifi setting, choosing a game with rules that facilitate horror, etc etc.

the other subtype is: i am seeing a specific outcome looming in front of me that i don't like, and i am going to change it (or try to). these are your rerolls, your brindlewood bay crowns, your abilities that you activate to turn a fight your way, and so on.

and like... it's pretty normal to have both of those baked into a game with, say, crunchy combat rules and pass/fail scenarios. not every game fitting those parameters has them, but it's pretty common and a good way to make the game fun by letting you strategize toward an outcome you want, and you're unlikely to have people lecturing you about being flexible and listening to the dice if you use one of the rerolls or abilities afforded you by the rules.

the thing is that there largely just... isn't any such thing for games where the outcome you're looking for, or trying to avoid, isn't necessarily a matter of pass/fail? there's either 'if you don't like it then just ignore it,' which--while good to have as a backup--can erode the enjoyable parts of the structure and kind of suck the fun out of trying to play a game, or there's 'just take whatever the dice give you and consider it a challenge to roll with it.' and unlike the advice and support given for pass/fail-type outcomes, which tend to have a big emphasis on the failures a) giving successes meaning and b) making for a fun story in their own right if you're willing to embrace them, the failure mode of 'this part of the story doesn't gel with me' is... part of your story not being fun. not just not being fun, even, but being wrong. your reward is 'this sucks now i guess. if i'm lucky it might grow on me, but in all likelihood it'll probably just be a rock in my shoe for the rest of the game.'

and the real bitch of it is that it's not always easy to see it coming, either. you can generally avoid doing stupid stuff that's likely to get you killed randomly to no reward, if you don't want to lose your PC in your average adventuring game (at least when that isn't the whole point), but it can be hard to know when some assumed detail like 'the PC's cousin is outgoing but mysterious and thinks they're pretty cool' is load-bearing to your game in the same way until a random oracle roll wipes it out. there's no contingency built into the rules for that, no real way for you to plan ahead: any random dice roll could do the equivalent of turning your PC to a smear on the floor without any warning or opportunity to avert it.

and some people enjoy playing games like that, sometimes or all the time! but like. if that's not your jam then that is the stuff DM horror stories are made of. i do not enjoy playing games that are like that about the fleshier, more individual bits of a narrative.

and the thing is that i'm sitting here talking about contingency plans, but i'm not even just talking about this as a contingency plan--i want games where this is part of the game! a lot of the tone of the advice/in-game support for this kind of thing is 'do it if you must' (to differing degrees of judginess), but making use of rerolls and abilities and whatnot in, say, a dungeon-crawler is part of the fun! i would LOVE to play games that are in actual conversation with me as a player about this kind of thing, that are doing the dance of 'is this right? is this compelling? could it be?' with me instead of stomping all over my feet and demanding i either knuckle under and deal with it or sit the dance out completely. i don't even really know what that would look like (it doesn't look like pbta games for me, i can tell you that much; if anything that brand of fiction-forward tends to be the exact opposite of what i need and make it worse), but god, man, i want it. i want it so much.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think probably one of the biggest struggles i have with playing (especially but not exclusively solo) ttrpgs is: what order do i need to learn the details of this campaign in? what order do i want to learn the details of this campaign in? what order are this system's rules built to develop or reveal those details in? is that at odds with what i want out of it, and if so will the system still be playable if i try to bring it more in line with my needs?

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

trying to get a better handle on the difference, when interpreting prompts and oracles etc in solo play, between 'i'm picking up what the prompts are putting down and i'm down for it' and 'i can see the story that's shaping up here, it's Coherent and it'd make a good story and i might even be interested in it under other circumstances, but it's not what i want.' there's a lot out there about avoiding triggers and whatnot, but less about how to facilitate chasing your bliss when a Good Story(tm) starts to take shape in front of you that also fills you with dread because it's boring and every new clarifying roll/draw you make seems determined to railroad you away from every attempt you make to interpret the prompt in ways you'll enjoy. maybe it's just me, but i wouldn't be surprised if that's a common obstacle for people trying to do solo stuff tbh.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

discovered lenormand cards through a table someone made out of them for solo prompts and oh holy fuck this works SO MUCH BETTER than tarot for the kind of play i like to do. three-card spreads with card 1 as the subject, card 2 as a modifier, and card 3 as an opposing element is absolutely god tier for both generating new stuff and keeping things moving along wtf

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the things that makes me feel so simultaneously saddened and rubbed the wrong way by how starb handles its continuity is that like. there are so many things about it that have what i can only describe as the air of Playing Toys. in ways that would be anywhere from 'mildly annoying, but harmless' to 'a necessary aspect of the medium' to 'actively part of the fun,' if they were being done with honesty in the right context and good faith.

(in particular i am reminded of the kind of grace and leeway you need to be willing to give the continuity of, say, a tabletop session/campaign, and the magic that happens when you strike the right balance of working with what you've got vs retconning or moving away from what doesn't work.)

but with starb they AREN'T being done in good faith, and they AREN'T an unavoidable necessary evil of the game's medium, and they AREN'T being honest about the fact that that's the approach they're taking.

starb isn't going 'hey so we're trying to find our footing here, and we might change things up a little if something fun occurs to us or we realize we fumbled the direction we were going, bear with us. :)' it's trying to pretend the things it retcons were The Plan All Along, either as a way to discredit criticism of its previous writing (see: 'noooooo you've got it all wrong that bit wasn't about hating jews, it was about hating capitalism!'), or warping the symbols it's using to obfuscate the nature of the commentary it's making on them (see: the constant, CONSTANT bait-and-switch between symbols of oppressors and symbols of the oppressed, in the style of 'actually the homeless guy this cop beat up was ELON MUSK IN DISGUISE planning to SIPHON ALL THE JOBS OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, and the cop is Akshully a saint and tireless champion of queer and worker's rights who spends all his time off the clock running a soup kitchen, and he turns off his bodycam before beating up homeless people because he respects their digital privacy. bet you feel like a real idiot right now for jumping to conclusions instead of waiting for the information you didn't have (because i just now made it up to run PR for cops) uwu').

like. i cannot express how much this game's view of its ideal good-faith audience is 'gullible moron who will eat slop out of my hand and fawn over me for it.' it is a wildly insulting game that is oozing condescension out of every pore, and it tries to punish you for not being the gullible idiot it wants you to be by doing things that are actively designed to undermine your faith in your own judgment--make you look and feel stupid and hysterical--for not giving it the benefit of the doubt. it is one of THE most unpleasant fucking experiences i have EVER had playing a videogame and i hate that it weaponizes one of the basic pillars of multiple art forms i love, Playing Toys with Loose Continuity, to be like that

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think a critical driving incentive for me in playing ttrpgs is curiosity, and if that beast isn't fed and encouraged to exercise itself properly in tabletop contexts then i get bored and frustrated and not only lose interest but develop an anti-interest. i feel like a lot of tabletop advice and norms these days center way too much around corralling play within a narrow predetermined fence, instead of giving people ways to break the boundaries joyfully without making the game Literally unplayable, and that sucks!!! the entire appeal of tabletop is that you can bend and break and stretch and reinvent and go right off the edge of the map without being forced to stop, why are you trying to suffocate that!!! embrace unexpected joy!!!

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i feel like everyone who dabbles in ttrpg design should get to experience, at least once, the joy of creating an incomprehensible abomination of a home-cooked oracle which you could not explain the function of to someone else to a usable degree if you tried