I Was Wrong About Solo RPGs

I have long been dismissive of solo RPGing.

Sure, I played some old Tunnels & Trolls solo-dungeons back in the day, but those things were designed like Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Modern solo RPGs? They’re just writing prompts aren't they? Not really an RPG.

Friends, I am here to say I have wrongly maligned solo RPGs. Turns out they are really dang fun. Or at least the one I played is.

At Gencon this year I picked up Kyle Latino and JP Coovert’s Star Borg game--their legally distinct Star Wars hack for Mork Borg. It's delightful. It is very much not a “grim black metal” version of Star Wars. It’s upbeat and heroic with wonderful cartoon art. I ordered all the supplementary zines when I got home, including the “Solo Borg” rules by Perplexing Ruins.

It's a thing of beauty.

Solo Borg plays very much like a regular one-one-one RPG session, except the GM is a series of random tables, oracles, and affirmation charts.

• “Is there a cantina in this settlement?" <roll> Yes.
• “What's this Cantina Like?” <Roll roll roll> Loud. Illness. Betrayal.

Then it's up to me to interpret what that means.

• “The cantina is currently in an uproar because a patron lied about carrying the Dathomir Plague, and now several patrons lie vomiting on the floor.”

So it's not not like a writing prompt. But when things get uncertain, I'm still rolling skill checks and making attack rolls. This works pretty well with a *Borg system since all the rolls are player-facing. You are encouraged to keep track of events in your game, but I'm mostly writing just bullet points, not full-on narrative prose.

Of course, I quickly realized that this is exactly how I've been playing my multigenerational Sim 4 game for the past year. Play the game, let a RNG generate unexpected things, respond, and keep track of everything in a Google Doc.

I have run three solo sessions so far, and have enjoyed each one. I am constantly surprised by the unexpected twists the oracles create, and how cohesive the narrative grows to be.

So yeah. solo RPGs. Turns out it’s cool. Nuts to me.