Crestfallen

I ran the first session of my Solo TRPG game 'Journal of a Mixed Elf Mercenary Hero' using my homebrew system, 'Adventurers of the Enchanted Lands', a hack of Teenagers from Outer Space and the end result was...meh.

Honestly, I am really disappointed. I was so excited for this, as you can probably tell by how many posts it inspired. Not just the number but the frequencey! Unfortunately, after a little while of actually partaking in the endeavor I've almost completely lost interest. Seriously. Just *poof*, enthusiasm gone. It was way more fun to prep for than to actually run and play.

Why? Let's talk about it...

Damn. I hate to disappointed her.

Mechanically it worked just fine. The system was good but didn't do anything especially dynamic. That can be OK in many cases but here it contributed to a lack of things to get jazzed about. It was an easy-to-run, easy-to-play, functional set of rules. Yay? As someone who isn't overly hung up on rules they usually only get my catch attention and interest if they're something special or something awful. This didn't reach the level of either extreme. 

One thing I started to think about that I didn't expect to was the role of Roles and Classes. I really dislike them but they are a trope of the genre and if you are running this sort of Medieval Fantasy game without them it feels...I don't know...a little weird. It's off somehow. Not sure how to solve this issue as, like I said, I still don't like them. This was helpful though in a way as it gets me to consider some way of solving this problem if I run a long term Fantasy campaign in the future. 

I still find the tropes and setting of standard Fantasy kind of boring to engage with. This is my issue as a player, although it's related to what I'm going to discuss next. I'm just not looking forward to questing to find a magical item or slaying some mythic beast. These are the sorts of adventures that appear in a lot of Solo Fantasy RPG charts and with good reason - that's the genre. I find it really banal and mundane to the point where it's hard to maintain any interest. It goes back to one of my biggest problems with the base Fantasy genre, nothing feels fantastic. 

Sure, I could modify this by coming up with custom charts and tables and in fact I did but I also tried to stay firmly in a standard Fantasy vein and it just didn't work. Not for me anyway. D&D and Pathfinder are the most popular RPGs in the Western world so it's clear lots of people find this very fun but I've just never been one of them. 

In the end, another big reason for my disillusionment is the same problem I always (thus far) experience with Solo gaming; there is a very low degree of surprise do to its very nature. I am interacting with random charts, die rolls, and myself. Without other players, there is no back and forth of ideas I might not have thought of. No approach from someone with a different way of looking at things. Sure, it guarantees 'my kind of game' but it reinforces my general feeling that Solo RPGs aren't games but exercises in creative writing. 

So what next? Honestly not sure. I do have some other things I want to talk about but I think this project is going on the back-burner for now. If I come up with some new approach or have a gaming epiphany regarding it I will definitely let you all know. For the time being though, Raelyn's journey and her Journal will go on without us...

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