Adept Play
Adept Play
Category: Solo play
Single person play which is really play, not merely following textual cues and options, has been developed since the 1970s, but became a dedicated design topic in 2010-2011. Share experiences and help investigate its properties.
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Blackbrain Tea
I’m not completely certain, but I think this is in the realm of our activity. Whether it is or is not is a valid topic of discussion for this post. Some way or another, a year or two ago I became aware of the existence of a book called Top 10 Games You Can Play…
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Alone In The Dead House
I recently acquired Desperation which is two games in one by Jason Morningstar. Both games work the same way; they just differ in subject matter. Both games are about groups of people desperately trying to survive a horrible situation. The two different situations are represented by a unique deck of cards. There’s a setup phase…
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Studying in Super-Villainy
I recently took some time to play the 2020 version of Supervillain You, which has had several newer versions, the most recent one dating to May 2023. (I discussed whether the 2023 version was an RPG or not with the designer, and I agree with him that it isn’t.) The process of playing this game,…
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Taken by the hand to the downward spiral
Introduction Several months ago I had a chance to play The Plant, the solo rpg created by Jason Morningstar; if you would like to see what kind of results it can bring in terms of fiction, I attach the journal of my play, in Italian and English*: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AKoRiJ2CfjnBtwXC2ZrXP1HkYfWVIVYM/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SoyfjmISC0NLBQv6vhLjeMcDd89JL3pN/edit For those unfamiliar, the game is…
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I’m just a teenage gunmage, baby
I did three solo-play sessions of Ironsworn. The audio is here, but be warned that no editing has been done; thinking silences are preserved as well as physical and mental coughing and hitching. I didn’t use Ironsworn’s sketchy Norse frontier setting, but rather used the Iron Kingdoms, a magitech-meets-WWI kinda thing. I played a seventeen-year-old…
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Sebastian D’Auvergne: 600 Year Old Vampire
Over the last couple of days I played the solo game Thousand Year Old Vampire. Attached to this post you will find two documents. The first document represents what the character looked like after setup. The second document contains what the character looked like by the time the game was over. The second document is…
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The Tragedy of Kaivan
I had no idea what kind of character I wanted to make for a solo Ironsworn game, so I left as much of it as I could up to the oracles. The result was Myrick of Lostwater, a guy who was both relaxed and hostile somehow. Lostwater itself is in the Tempest Hills, and the…
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A Rifleman and A General
Back in 2020 one of the first games I played fully online after the lockdowns went into effect was Bleak Spirit. It’s one of those games that’s trying to tap into themes of the Dark Souls and Bloodborne video games. I don’t have any familiarity with those games but I have a lot of sympathy…
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Fallen Angels
I had a chance to try this game as a homework assignment for the Phenomena course taught by Ron during this period. If I’m sharing the game’s journal, first and foremost, it’s because I found a particular pleasure in the imagery that developed around this apocalypse, and a particular sense of fondness for the characters…