Agreed Differences - A Look at Asymmetry

Shellhead wrote: I demand solitaire playability for Twister, Stratego, Battleship, Clue, and Rock'em Sock'em Robots.

You are joking but i have an electronic version of battleship that does have a solo play mode. It is TEDIOUS to say the least!

And solitarie twister, that's called yoga is it not?

Shellhead wrote: I demand solitaire playability for Twister

Got you covered.

Download the Twister app and it will do verbal call outs on a timer so you don't need anyone to spin. See how many turns you can last and try and beat your previous score.

Done. I accept bitcoin as tip.

I'm sure the pandemic made it much worse, but "will there be a solo mode?" is one of the rallying cries of the KS comment mob. Along with "does the box fit sleeves", etc. etc.

As a rule, I don't care for solo board gaming. So it's rather odd that I'm making one right now. Just screwing around with it, not sure it will go anywhere.

Shellhead wrote: I demand solitaire playability for Twister, Stratego, Battleship, Clue, and Rock'em Sock'em Robots.

One of the more contentious recent threads on the (normally staid) RPGgeek was about whether solo RPGing is a thing or not. There are a variety of tools out there to produce semi-random elements into a narrative.

I am in the “not” category pretty firmly. To me, an inherent part of RPGing is the interplay between the people at the table. “Solo RPG” is a creative writing exercise using RPG materials as inspiration. It’s like claiming you had a “solo conversation” because you imagined talking to your closest friends over coffee.

That said, I don’t care what other people do, and if it makes them happy and doesn’t hurt anyone, then I enthusiastically support it. But there’s a weird insistence on the part of the “solo RPG” community that what they are doing is just as much a part of the RPG hobby as your typical game, and they get very offended if anyone says it’s different in some fairly fundamental ways.

I think a solo rpg can be a thing, though a far less freeform version. The DM just did all their work first, separated from the player by time.

Solo RPG sounds like the choose your own adventure books or the Lone Wolf series. Not really what I would consider 'role-playing', but a fun pastime.

Kids solo RPG all the time with cars, Lego, action figures.

I was thinking more of the Fighting Fantasy series. Some of them allowed for a somewhat wide lane of choices through the adventure. There is dice rolling, stat building, narrative consequences, all the rpg basics.

jason10mm wrote: I was thinking more of the Fighting Fantasy series. Some of them allowed for a somewhat wide lane of choices through the adventure. There is dice rolling, stat building, narrative consequences, all the rpg basics.

I should have made that clarification. That was what I was thinking of as well. I had way too many of those.

Lots of great discussions here. Thank you, everyone.

the_jake_1973 wrote:

Shellhead wrote: It's not specifically a FoD problem, but the one-against-many format can sometimes put the one in a position of feeling persecuted, in a way that wouldn't likely happen in a co-op or multi-player or team game.

Isn't that the whole point of a 1 v many game? In FoD and Whitechapel, both antagonists are being 'persecuted' by the protagonists. The only other option is to have the One be a much greater power level than the Many a la Dead by Daylight.

Yes, the 1 vs many game pits one player against the rest of the table. My problem with that format is when one or more of the many make it too personal and gang up on the player above and beyond the confines of the game in an aggressive manner. Sometimes they can even swing the whole table hard against that one person in a very personal manner that makes things very unfun for the single player. Accusing the single player of cheating, repeatedly. Arguing in a very petty way about a variety of the rules, always seeking an additional way to screw over the one player. Even actual hostility. One time, I saw this dynamic getting out of hand when I was one of the many, with a single player who was honestly having trouble keeping track of some complex rules because he was new to the game. The players sitting on either side of him kept escalating with aggressive, hostile remarks until I finally slapped the table HARD enough to make the components all jump, and said THAT'S ENOUGH. I was the host, and I told them to tone it down or I would throw them out.

Shitty people will wreck any game. It's a bummer that group went off the rails like that.

the_jake_1973 wrote: Shitty people will wreck any game. It's a bummer that group went off the rails like that.

That's true. Shitty people can ruin any game. But I think that the one vs many format is the most vulnerable to it, because every other format leaves the players on a fairly level playing field. Solitaire is of course immune. Co-op games don't have this problem because the players are all working towards a common goal. One-on-one games require a certain degree of civility, because the players are theoretically equal and either one of them can tank the game early by quitting or flipping the table. Multi-player competitive games offer more potential for conflict, but the rest of the players at the table may tend to be neutral about a specific conflict between two players. But in a one vs many game there is a built-in social dynamic with a majority and a minority, and that majority could end up oppressing the minority in an above the table manner.