Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="J.Quondam" data-source="post: 9614878" data-attributes="member: 7030100">Tbh, I'm not too familiar with the history of it all, but like Duke_ said, I know the drive for solo play has been around since the beginning. Personally, I liked TolkeinQuest books as a kid in the 1980s; those were basically CYOA storybooks with a hex map to explore and stripped-down MERP engine to resolve encounters. The first somewhat formalized systemless "oracle" -based engine (ie, ask a question normally asked of a GM, and make a random roll on a table to answer it) that I was aware of was the Mythic GM Emulator, which first edition came out in <s>2008(?)</s> 2003. There were probably other similar systems before that, but that's the first one I encountered, and seems to be the most high-profile one; currently, Mythic in now in an expanded second edition.As for "why solo?", I imagine it's just a response to wanting to game but not having people to play with, which is a conundrum that's bedeviled a fairly large fraction of gamers since the beginning. That spiked during covid, of course; but I've also heard that, in a broad cultural sense, <a href="https://news.clemson.edu/america-is-becoming-a-nation-of-homebodies/" target="_blank">Americans, at least, have gradually been becoming more solitary</a> over the last decade or two (less eating out, less dating, less exercising, less theater attendance, etc), so that might be driving it too, at least in the US.In my personal case, I used to scratch my creative RPG itch with worldbuilding and designing adventures, even in times with no group. I'm kind of burned out on that side of things right now, so I'm exploring actual play via solo engines. I'm also trying to aim that effort at less familiar genres, just to stretch my wings a little.(Edited to correct and extend info regarding Mythic GM Emulator.)</blockquote>

Verification