Listen to this episode here.
It’s the solo games episode! Hopefully the first of many. I’m joined by Seb Pines, designer of The Awards winning game Dwelling and haver of MFA in basically solo games, to talk about prompts in solo games.
This is a broad survey of solo games. We talk about a bunch of games (listed below) that all behave differently. If you’re curious about this side of the hobby, this is the primer for you.
Further Reading:
Dwelling by Seb Pines
Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings
Horse Girl by Babblegum Sam
Artefact by Jack Harrison
Project ECCO by Elliot Davis
Notorious by Jason Price
Void 1680 AM by Ken Lowery
I Eat Mantras For Breakfast by Maria Mison
The Ink That Bleeds and an excerpt on the Indie Game Reading Club
My response to The Ink That Bleeds
Socials
Seb Pines on Bluesky and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and visit it in its lonely lighthouse by the sea. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co host this week is Seb Pines.
Seb is a games designer who I first encountered through their game Dwelling, a solo game about walking through your new haunted home, and a winner at the awards in 2022 when I was a judge. They're a co founder of Good Luck Press along with Will Jobst, which puts out a lot of weird and experimental games.
Let's not beat around the bush. This is the solo games episode. Solo games were, for a long time, mysterious to me. If the point of playing RPGs is to tell a story with your friends, then solo games are telling a story with your friends without your friends? I didn't get it. But they're so popular, I wanted to understand, and so I invited on Seb.
Seb brought in the mechanic of prompts in solo games. They wanted to use that to basically survey the current scene, and that is just what we did. Seb gave me a short list of games to check out, see the show notes for the full syllabus, I took a few months to play them, and then we dived headfirst into recording. I feel like I get solo games now, and hopefully this is just the first of many episodes about them.
In addition to this episode, I wrote a monster of a blog post with a lot of my thoughts on playing these games over the past few months. And in particular, my thoughts on The Ink That Bleeds, an almost memoir zine by Paul Czege, talking about his experiences with solo games and his best practices for getting the most out of them. You might remember it from when I recommended it in the 2023 Year End Bonanza episode. Anyway, if you want more from me about solo games, you can find that at diceexploder. com or in the show notes.
Alright, let's get to it. Here is Seb Pines With prompts in solo games.
Seb Pines, thanks so much for being here.
Seb Pines: Thank you for having me.
Sam: Yeah, what a delight. So we are here today to talk about solo game prompts, but I wanted to start a little bit with like, what is a solo RPG, and how did you first encounter them in the world?
Seb Pines: Well, solo RPGs are a fun little space in that they are essentially any role-playing game that you can play by yourself. A lot of solo RPGs are built to be solo RPGs, but there is a very creative cohort of folks that like to hack games to make them soloable.
And my experience with solo RPGs, I kind of got a little bit in before the big groundswell of solo stuff. So I've been making solo games for about five, six years now which feels weird to say that, like, that's a long time, but I guess trends of things, it can be. But I started in finding A lot of these kind of like, smaller, a little bit lyric game solo games that were like these very small, intentional, solitary experiences, and I was like, okay, this is very cool, this is very cool.
And then there were more games that were coming out in the structure of solo games that we see now that are like, here's how you build a story. Here's a collection of tables here how you do some maps or dungeon delving, that kind of stuff.
And so I was just really interested in this space and I was like, okay, what can I do here? And so I just started immediately rooting around and designing things both big and small in that space. So I've done a bunch of very small little solo experiments and a lot of that led up to my big game, Dwelling, which is a big part of a master's thesis and research that I did for an MFA I have in game design, which a lot of it was focused on solo game design.
Sam: Master's thesis in game design, we want a hundred of those and congratulations. Incredible. I didn't know this about you until two minutes ago, and it is super cool.
I also, like, came to solo RPGs, I think, coming out of that Lyric Game world. Like, the wave of solo RPGs that has become, like, there's this huge community of people playing these things now, and I have not been particularly interested in solo games for a long time because so much of what I get out of RPGs is playing them in community with other people.
But I read The Ink That Bleeds last year after you wanted
Seb Pines: Ooh very good.
Sam: Yeah I, I recommended it on the, like, end of year episode for this show, and it really reframed the idea of solo games to me as a journaling self reflection exercise, rather than a, like, storytelling experience in community but without the community.
And, like, like, solo reflection journaling is something I'm really interested in, in a way that, like, community storytelling minus the community is a much worse pitch. So I, I, I have a lot of more detailed thoughts about that too, but like, that is kind of where I'm coming from on solo games, like, you know, being blown away by Thousand Year Old Vampire when it kind of blew up, and then slowly hearing about more and more of these other games that we're going to talk about today, and being quite new, only been playing for a couple of months now, after a bunch of recommendations from you, really.
Seb Pines: What an exciting couple of months for you then.
Sam: God, this is the thing about, to continue to tangent, like, l every time I sit down to play a solo RPG, and I actually play it, I'm like, this is the best thing that I've done all week. I love this, I need to do this all the time. And then every time I start thinking about playing a solo RPG, I'm like, eh, I'll like, watch some TV instead.
Like, I I'm just tired all the time, it's so hard to sit down and actually pick one of these things up and start playing it, but it's so rewarding every time I do.
Seb Pines: Yeah, it's, they're really great to play, like, you can get a variety of experiences.
So sometimes maybe you don't want to sit down and write a small novella in your notebook and there's games that will just have you like, okay, you can just do some dice rolling on your phone and then jot some things down on a character sheet and there you go.
But a lot of solo games love to lean into the journaling and the prompt because they are great for building up this story in this world and I like to think of them uh, It's a collaboration between the designer and the player. So you both have this idea of like, what kind of story, what kind of world do you want to be in, and you're kind of at this nice little agreement point by playing the game of being like, okay, we're gonna go into this strange world together, and we're gonna have a either good time, we're gonna have a weird time, we're gonna have a bad time, but we signed on to have that bad time, and we're gonna have a fun bad time.
Sam: It's almost like a two person play by post game, but like, the designer made the first post, and you make the second post, and that is the entire game experience.
Seb Pines: Yes. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, and sometimes you do just want to, like, write a novella, right? Like, sometimes that is just actually a fun thing to do.
I was stuck in a airport terminal sometime in the past few months, and just, like, sat down and played Artefact for, like, four hours, and filled up a notebook,
Seb Pines: nice.
Sam: we'll get into that, but I, I think this solowness gives you a lot of flexibility in how you approach playing these games. Like you can just roll some dice and like get through the game and like get a good experience, but you can also effectively use them as like a tool to do your NaNoWriMo project, you know?
You can make these things as big as you want them to be.
Seb Pines: Yeah, I am actually currently trying to design a game to, because I'm like, I want to write a book. What if I can make a game that will help me write this book? And so that's what I'm doing. I was just like, I want something that helps give me those kind of like seeds of like, all right, here's how I want this chapter to go based on all these different prompts.
So. And there's like a really cool space in solo games that I've seen a few times now where people will take the playthroughs of their solo games and adapt them to like a short story or there's been actual plays that turn into like radio dramas.
And it's like it's solo games are really cool because like when they do things well they understand that the people that want to engage with them are deeply creative excitable people, and they know how to give you exactly what you need to go wild with it, and then they get out of your way, because they know that you can take it from there.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Okay, let's get into actually talking about prompts in these games. We've sort of like said this a couple of times, but I just want to say it again. The default solo RPG is very much a journaling experience. It is one where you are given a writing prompt and then asked to write a little bit.
And obviously not all solo RPGs work like that. But. I think that is the expectation that many players have coming into solo RPGs for the first time. And I want to like start us there as we start talking about prompts.
Seb Pines: Yeah. We have a pretty neat little survey of a few different games that we both looked at, and I think the interesting thing about that is there's at least two games on here that I think don't fit that form factor. Like Notorious has some journaling elements, but it is largely, like, exploration, it's got some really cool little combat things. And you're exploring because you're bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe, essentially. Very fun thing to just be.
And so, you get to go through things and where the prompts show up. I find that they are so wonderfully focused of what they want you to get out of that prompt because they're like, we know you're not here to write a novel. You're here to be a really cool bounty hunter in Star Wars land.
And so they know exactly like, okay, what are you getting to? Like, how are you having this interesting interaction with a person? How are you having a moment of introspection after you come across something that doesn't seem right to you? So it really picks these important moments that you would have and poses them to you, be like, okay, now, how do you deal with them?
Sam: Yeah, something I was talking to you about as we were, like, planning this episode was I'd really love to have, like, some kind of basic, like, standard kind of prompt for us to look at as an example to start from and then, like, go from there. And, like, I looked through this survey of, games that we did and I was like, none of there's none of that in here. Like, they just all work really differently. They're all really bespoke to their experience.
Which, I mean, speaks to RPG design at large, right? This is something I've been hammering on in the Forged in the Dark world forever, is, like, People will come in and like make their own version of Blades in the Dark and not really change any rules, just give it a new set of paint, and then none of the mechanics they work fine, but they were made to do ghost heists steampunk thing, right? And so when you start doing something else with them, how do they hold up? And I, like, you really want your mechanics to be tailored to whatever the experience is that you're trying to provide for players.
And that's really true here in solo games too, like, as you're talking about with Notorious, as yeah, I kind of want to start with Thousand Year Old Vampire here because I think it maybe is the closest to, a baseline, a lot of people are familiar with it.
And, in that game, the prompts are not asking you about how you're feeling, they just , declare something that happened. Maybe they have a couple of, like, related mechanical things that you mark down, like you lose a memory, or you gain a new character, or whatever, and then it's, like, you Do with that whatever you want. You can answer the question for a couple of sentences in your head, you can write a chapter of your novel, I don't care, come back when you're ready for the next thing.
And find that really Interesting in Thousand Year Old Vampire of like, so many good prompts, I think, in like, a Trophy Dark kind of world, or like, For the Queen is one of my favorite games, like, a thing that makes them good is that they declare something is true about the world and then kind of ask you how you feel about it.
And I find it so interesting that Thousand Year Old Vampire is like, I actually don't care how you feel about it. Here's just a thing that is true about the world. Yeah. Okay, what's next? And like, leaving the asking you how you're feeling about these like really horrible grotesque things that can be happening, up in the air, like it's implicit. It leaves all of that implicit for you to respond to however you're going to respond to.
Seb Pines: Yeah, and I think Thousand Year Old Vampire is very clever in how there, it is just a wealth of prompts that you go through, and how you kind of skip through the book. Everything is built up to revolve around these prompts. The, like, resources, the characters, anything that you have that you're supposed to be keeping track of, they only interface with the prompts, but in this interesting way in that by the time that you get to the end, none of this has ever really mattered.
You In my experience with Thousand Year Vampire, it feels like a very funny thing, and like the true to being the life of a thousand year old vampire, it's like, oh, I did five prompts and I forgot that I was supposed to lose a memory. And it feels so funny to be like, oh, I totally forgot that I even had these memories, and so it really, through this just kind of like inundation of like, oh, you just have experience after experience after experience, and oh, you get all these things and you meet all these people, but all of them feel kind of like nothing, like ash in your mouth because you're like, I've just experienced so much that like, none of these have any consequence to me.
So it's very clever in that way, and that it just gives you so much that it kind of overwhelms you a little, but in a way that's not like, oh, I Don't want to play this game anymore, this is too much. It's just like, wow, I really only care about myself. By the end, I'm the only person that mattered in this whole world. And I feel like that's how you would be if you were a very old vampire.
Sam: I love, you know, a thing that I just love in games at large is when you can find ways to express the theme of a game, of art in general, the theme of whatever you're making in the like, tiniest little details of the thing, and
Seb Pines: Mm
Sam: it's Thousand Year Old Vampire Works is, there's this enormous list of prompts, they're all numbered, and when it's time for a new prompt, you roll a d6 and a d10, and subtract the d6 from the d10, and then move that number of prompts forward or backward in the book to get to your new prompt.
And that, by necessity, means that there's many, many prompts that you never see. In fact, every number has three different prompts underneath it in case you land on the same prompt more than once. So, you're gonna get to the end of this book and have only played 10 percent of the prompts? Less? Something like that?
And that in itself, like, the fact that you are missing so much hashtag content in this game, like, feels like getting to the end of your life and being like, oh no, I could have done all these other things, and I've forgotten so many things. Like, the fact that so much of the game is unexplored feels exactly the same as, like, your character often feels in that moment at the end of, exactly as you're saying, I don't care about any of this, it's all gone, I missed it, I'm just here and selfish with ash in my mouth.
Seb Pines: Yeah, that's a fantastic thing that like a lot of solo games can offer you is just like this feeling of Uh, I'm missing out on all the extra stuff that could have happened. Of like the games that have that element of randomization and element of like jumping from prompt to prompt to prompt that's like a lot less structured, you have this element of being like, wow, everything could have gone so differently.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Seb Pines: but it's also, I love the idea that just the sequence of prompts you get creates a mindset in a series and a story that cannot be replicated.
And yeah, just the thought that like, then what does that mean for games that want to be incredibly tailored? Of like, they want to bring you through a story, or they want to bring you through an experience. Cause there's some games here that like, they do bring you through an experience. It has that level of randomization, but there's like an intentional story that we want happening here.
Sam: yeah. Think Thousand Year Old Vampire has a particularly odd relationship to that, too, where the game's prompts are so much about making it impossible to plan or set anything up. Like, for whatever work you do as a player to try to like establish an ongoing storyline or like, have this interesting love affair with this, you know, artist who's painting you all the time or whatever, the next prompt could always just be you go into a cave and 100 years pass. Like, the game is so invested in
Seb Pines: Yeah.
Sam: destroying your plans. And I think that that is so particular to the experience of that game, but also can be really frustrating and does not translate to most games and most stories and experiences very well.
Seb Pines: Yes. Yeah, that's one game that like, the strength of the randomness and the kind of, I wouldn't say lack of care for what the player thinks, but like the game has its own agenda, and it's just kind of hooking you by the arm and taking you along with it.
Whereas I find sometimes with games, if there is this idea of like an escalation in prompts, for example, if you have like, are using a deck of cards as like an oracle, and you're like, okay, well, the, two to five cards are the kind of intro questions, and then the king is the worst thing that's ever happened to you, and then on the first pull you get a king and you have to be like, okay, so I'm starting off the game talking about what is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. You want a little bit more of that maybe filtering of like what your experience is going to be.
Sam: Like, hand
Seb Pines: Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, can I try on a theory about solo games I've been putting together and see how you feel about it?
Seb Pines: Oh, I love theories. Please go.
Sam: Great. So, I read The Ink That Bleeds, and Paul Czege talks about how like, he didn't have a great experience with Thousand Year Old Vampire because the game's own agenda was so strong that, like, he didn't, he plays solo for the experience of self-reflection and like the, the act of that. And that because a Thousand Year Old Vampire's agenda was so strong, he was not able to engage in that because it kept coming in and cutting off his plans.
And I have this theory now that there are two kinds of solo games because I, I agree with him, but also love Thousand Year Old Vampire. And my theory is that like some solo games are trying to be an experience closer to a movie. Like, they might be interactive, but it's like, I have an authorial intent here. I want to like, guide you through a museum, right? Like, I want to bring you through my campaign kind of thing. Like, something closer to experiencing a novel.
Whereas some games are doing the thing that Paul is really interested in of I am providing a space for you to get in touch with yourself to do reflecting on your own experience a little bit more.
I think of Void 1680 AM as a game very much like that. That is a game about being a radio DJ just listening to music, and like, thinking about yourself and your relationship to music. And the game does not have an opinion, well, the game has a very soft opinion. The game is like very willing to get out of your way and whatever your opinion is about your relationship to music and is more interested in creating a container for you to explore inside
Seb Pines: yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think Void 1680 does a really interesting thing too, in that I think it has a little bit of its own agenda, in that it creates this interesting, I don't want to say timeline, but, cause part of the thing is like, you're building your playlist and you're doing your radio show, but you also, you're getting Callers. And they can sometimes call back, and you're forming a relationship with them, and you're also getting more information about them as they call back.
And I really like that, especially as someone who grew up listening to a lot of talk radio shows, where there were sometimes people who were like notorious regulars. I listened to a lot of Coast to Coast AM growing up that formed way too much of who I am now.
But there's this interesting idea. It's like, yeah, it's these moments of self reflection in that how you relate to music and how this music makes you feel or how you connect to the song, or what you feel like you're putting out there by, like, playing the song. But then it's also kind of pulling you out of yourself a little, being like, hey, you have to relate to this strange person that's calling you, and it's gonna get way too personal with you on air right now.
And I think it's a very cool thing of, like, having that kind of tension of like, okay, you're being self reflective and you're doing an activity that feels very solitary. Like you're just talking to dead air, what you think is dead air, and you're playing your songs, but it is always going to be interrupted by someone calling in and being like, so I gotta tell you some hot goss today. And you're like, whoa, okay.
Sam: Yeah.
Seb Pines: And so it has this very fun tension of like, maybe what you want out of it, which is a really reflective playlist building experience. But then also it kind of pulls you back a little bit and like, hey, some weirdo is going to be listening to your playlist and is going to call you later about your music choices. So just maybe keep that in the back of your head.
Sam: Well, I think you gotta have some of that, or what's the point of a solo game? Like, why am I not just go writing my own vampire story, or making a playlist on my own? It's like, I'm coming to a solo game because I do want some amount of pushback. Like, I want some external source to help me avoid blank page syndrome, right? Like, I need something to come in and give me new ideas so that maybe I can see myself in a new way.
Seb Pines: Yeah, I think solo games do this really great thing where I think a lot of people assume that it's just journaling about yourself and your feelings. But largely what I see solo games do in a really amazing way is they put you in a world or a situation or a context. And they're like, okay, think about yourself in relation to everything.
I think like Horse Girl is an amazing example of
this Horse Girl is an amazing solo game. I believe it is a Wretched and Alone inspired game. So that involves pulling things from a tumbling tower block, but also you're pulling cards from a deck to build out this story of, in this case, you are a young, beautiful woman, and your life is kind of bad. And then you meet this handsome, enigmatic, rich doctor who is willing to take you in and love you and solve all of your problems... if he can surgically turn you into a horse.
and that, game is so strong of like, understanding what it's about, and it's about lack of agency, and unfortunately, but very interestingly, about abusive relationships and control and manipulation. So
Sam: and body horror.
Seb Pines: and body horror. Very, very intense body horror. So you don't get a say in anything that you do. The most that you have agency in in the game is remembering your own past, but unfortunately, inevitably, even your own past is used against you by Him, this enigmatic doctor.
And so the game is so clever and strong in that It puts you in this very interesting, complicated situation of you feel like your life is hard, and you so desperately want love, and to feel loved, but at what cost? And so you're constantly keeping track of like, Am I going to give in to him? Am I going to commit to this relationship? Am I going to just give up? Or am I going to fight for myself and maybe get out of this situation?
But because of the way that it's structured to be about being in a very controlling relationship, when you're given prompts, you just have to think about how you feel when things happen. Because you don't get to do anything, things just happen to you. And it's a really great way of thinking of like, okay, how would I be in this situation? But also, what does me being in this situation mean in like a larger thing of like how I would react to things?
Sam: Yeah, the thing that I find really fascinating about Horse Girl, I mean, I love the content. Like, I'm all about emotional repression and body horror as a human being, so I am into this game. But like, I was fascinated just thinking about the writing of the prompts in this game, in that this is the only game on our list here where the prompts don't involve questions for you. They're just statements most of the time. And you draw a few cards, you're just given a few different quote unquote prompts that are like, here are true things about how you feel, and like, things that happened to you, and then go journal about it for a little bit.
And I find that like Thousand Year Old Vampire, like, it's so tailored to this game. Like, in a game about manipulation and control by other people, in a game about not really understanding your own feelings, and not understanding your own body, and submitting to someone else, this game where the prompts just declare things to be true is really on point for what the game's doing thematically.
Seb Pines: Yes. And it's also very clever in how it structures play in that a lot of play is just the actions of you doing things, of like the drawing of the cards and the pulling of the box. But like, one thing that I really like to think about in designing solo games and playing solo games is the majority of play happens in your head.
And this is very true for one of these games of like, you're gonna read that prompt, and you're definitely gonna sit there, and you're gonna think about it, but it doesn't often tell you to do anything about it. And so it's a very embodied, very introspective experience of, well, how would I exist if I was in this very strange fucked up relationship and this guy is turning me into a horse? Like you have to sit with your body and think about, well, what would happen if it suddenly was being changed like this?
Sam: Yeah. I think this also speaks to a power that solo games have to really get inside your head in a way that I think it is harder to do so quickly in group RPGs. Because in a group RPG, if someone was like, we're gonna play this game, and the game is about how I'm turning you into a horse, you'd like look at each other as players and be like, ha ha ha ha, what? Like, this is pretty fucked up, right?
Like, people I think often talk about how running horror games and RPGs is really hard because the players at the table, when they start to feel anxious will just like cut things with humor and that's really natural. I think that's really fun. I think those games are often really really great and really good.
And also solo games don't have that. There's no release of community with other people and so they can get into how you are feeling and stay there more than group games can
Seb Pines: Yeah. And I think especially for like a Horse Girl that can touch on some very taboo topics, it also puts you in the space of, well, I would never say this out loud, playing even a group with my closest friends, but in a moment of introspection by myself, do I really have to sit with maybe I might be okay with this? Maybe I might even like this?
And that's like the interesting tension with solo games, is like, playing on your own, you, there's no element of like, I don't know, I don't know, I performance for a group, and you don't have to even perform for yourself. So it can be this, you can push yourself to go to some interesting places.
Sam: Your filters are all down.
Seb Pines: Yeah, and the really good games will like, all right, go for it. Where are we going to go? I'm going to lead you there.
Sam: I think that also, means that solo game designers, especially when covering these more difficult potentially dangerous topics, have like more of a responsibility to handle with care than usual.
On the one hand, like, because I think these things can be more bleedy, for lack of a better term, than group games, like, designers have a responsibility to care for their players.
Sam: But it, simultaneously, like, it's a lot easier to control the content of your own experience because you're just by yourself, and like, you don't need traditional safety tools in the same way because you don't need to check in with someone else. You don't need to like, quote unquote rain on someone else's fun or whatever. You don't have to check in with anyone or deal with any kind of social baggage, you can just change stuff because you're by yourself.
And that's a difficult tension, I think safety tools are just so hard in general. I don't think a lot of designers have really put a lot of thought into how to make good solo game safety tools.
Seb Pines: Yeah, solo safety tools are very tricky. I actually did a whole mess of research about this for my master's thesis and also in designing Dwelling 'cause I really wanted to think about, okay, what does bleed look like in a solo game? Because I feel like that is the experience where you're going to experience that a lot more.
And it definitely stuck with me after like, I one day took a, a whole morning and just sat and did like a five hour game of Thousand Year Old Vampire. And then for the rest of the day, I was like, whoa, I feel weird. And that was not even like I have gone into like really dark stories or anything. It was just like, I got so into the headspace of playing that game that once I was out of it, I was feeling a little funky.
And so safety tools are very interesting thing. Cause like, I think solo games are great for asking players to like lean in. But then, also at the same time, you have to think about, well, what happens when people lean in? I know Thousand Year Old Vampire has this very cool section in it that is play hard, play safe, and it basically says like, hey, you're in charge of the story, but also, take care of yourself. And there is a pretty nice like, safety tool that was a bit of an inspiration for how I did Dwelling safety tools at the back that's basically here's how you kind of check in with yourself to make sure you're still having an okay time.
And so, like, something like that is just a pretty easy thing in Dwelling, I just put it on the little bookmark, so if you check in with yourself and you decide, actually, I'm having a bad time, then you can just take that bookmark and put it in the book and take a pause. Kind of really serves its purpose as a very literal safety tool. Just, I'm gonna mark my place and come back to that if I want to.
But, yeah, it's such an interesting tension because you want to ask people to like, lean in. Like, come on, let's do something vulnerable here. But then what happens afterwards, once they're done playing the game?
That's where I think for solo games, I really like games that have ending prompts or an ending built in as a way to ease players out of play. That's a really great way to kind of just put a little bit of a cap on it. It's not gonna really bottle up the whole experience if it was, like, a potentially emotional playthrough of a game. But I think things that have that little aftercare effect of just like, alright, we're gonna ease you out of the game. The game is over and we're gonna walk through the ending together, so that way, when you're done and you close this book and you put your your notebook away, you're not feeling like, woof, what was that? What do I do now?
Sam: One of my favorite parts of The Ink That Bleeds, to come back to it, was paul talking about a couple of safety tools he had invented that work in the fiction?
Like, one that I used that I really loved was like if you need to stop a conversation because you need to let go in real life, or because the conversation's becoming heated or whatever, just imagine that the other character that you are talking to in the game has to go. And like, have that character tell you, hey, can we talk about this later? To like, provide you a little bit of a break and an easing out, as exactly the way that you're saying, of the fiction, while not like cutting the fiction off entirely, not like totally disrupting the thing.
Used that a couple of times in real life and it's been super helpful.
Seb Pines: Yeah, There is, like, a number of the games that we looked at that have that level of, like, here's how you wrap things up, or here's, like, how you do an epilogue to your story.
I'm a big fan of epilogues, at least in, like, solo games. It feels like not a lot of people do them but I think they're just such a great thing, because it's a great way to, like, wrap up your game, but then kind of also ease out by being like, and here's a little bit after also. Because like I think a lot of games, especially games that want to have like big stakes with like, okay, the world ends or you know, something really bad happens. And it's just like, okay. Well, how do we ease out of like pull back that shot in that scene?
Sam: Yeah.
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would be interested to hear more from you about Notorious because I never actually got around to reading it. I know basically nothing about it except what the Itch page had to say.
Seb Pines: Yeah, Notorious is a game that has a I think, balanced amount of procedure, and I think that's a funny word to say with solo games, but I think you maybe know what I mean.
Where it's just like, there is often a flow of play in solo games, and sometimes it's very simple and you don't think about the flow of play. So, the flow of play might be You get your deck of cards, you separate them into suits, and then you pick the card, and then you do the prompt, and you do the writing, and then you pick the next card, and you do the That's like the flow of play, that's the procedure of play.
Where, this does this kind of flow chart y thing, where it's like, since you're a bounty hunter, you're gonna be chasing down leads till eventually you get your target, and either you get your target, or you die trying. And so, it kind of helps you spider web out into this larger universe of you meet people that can be allies or assets, people that can give you leads, you can search the environment. And in all of these things, sometimes things just happen, sometimes you're like, well, no one saw anything, so I guess that sucks.
Or you'll interact with things like, oh, you are trying to search a lead and then where your lead was, you find instead a burned out city and you're like, oh, no. But then that gives you clues because someone else is on the same trail as you for the target.
And so it's kind of fun for people who are like, what if I could be Boba Fett for a day? And it just kind of has this thing, like you create this weird character that has all these quirks and then that will change like how you can interact with other people, especially on like different planets.
And so the game feels really big because it is spread over planets and there's a whole bunch of different like humans and aliens and different people you can talk to and places you can go but it's pretty simple in in a sort of choose your own adventure way of like, okay, you do this, and then this, and then this, and eventually you lead to your target, and then, well, once you're done your mission, then you're done your mission, and then it leads you into this nice little epilogue about like, how do you feel being a bounty hunter? How do you feel about your job? You gonna keep doing it?
Sam: Well that's,
Seb Pines: Maybe, maybe
not.
Sam: so interesting, because the thing I was gonna say, listening to you talk about it and having read the few prompts that you put into our outline ahead of time, was Like Thousand Year Old Vampire, it does not feel like this game is doing a lot of asking you how you feel. And I think that the less asking you how you feel that a solo game does, the sort of quicker pace you can move at with it.
Seb Pines: Yes, yeah.
Sam: if you just want things to happen, you can just talk about the things that happen, then, like, ask you where you go and what you do next, and, like, If we don't pause until the end of a session to sort of reflect, then we're not gonna get into that long, contemplative, journaling, other sort of self reflection kind of mode that a lot of these games are gonna put us in.
Seb Pines: Yeah, and it's also a great way of framing, like, if you wanted to come back,
Sam: Yeah.
Seb Pines: love how epilogues and something that puts an ending to it, if you decide to come back, if you decide to replay. Like, in Notorious, you have the option to replay as the same nomad, as the same bounty hunter, and how that first playthrough can dictate how the next one is going to go.
And so that's the thing that I find I really like with games that think about replayability and also think about like, do you want to continue existing in this world? I think some games, the easy thing is like, okay, you're the thousand year old vampire and then eventually you die, and it's like, well, that sucks. I can't come back, again, because I'm dead.
But sometimes maybe you do want to come back, or in the case of , Void 1680, I want to keep doing that radio show. I actually want to find out next week what Carla has to say when she calls in. Like, you want to have these continued connections with the world, and that's a interesting place for solo games to be.
And you have to be really considerate as a designer of like where replayability factors into that, because I love, love, love solo games that are this like perfectly encapsulated little orb that I get to exist in, and then the game is done and the orb is shattered and I will never play that game again, because it's just meant to be one very specific kind of experience. But ones that are like, okay, what happens when you come back?
How are things different? How are things the same?
Sam: Yeah, yeah, totally.
I did want to check in on Project ECCO which I got to play a little, a couple of weeks ago which is a game that you play in a day planner, like a year long day planner. And you are a person who works for The Agency, and you are a time traveler going through this year, trying to stop The Entity from eating all of time? From destroying time? This is one of the only years that's left? I don't know, it's a weird and intentionally ambiguous premise.
But I love, first of all, just the marriage of what if time travel game you played in a day planner? Like, A+, I'm in from the get go. But it then you start with a particular time machine, which can send you through the day planner to different days in different ways, and you gradually unlock more time machines that go through the planner in different ways, and each time machine has within it its own set of prompts that are sort of bespoke to how that Time machine works, and what kind of emotional experience that kind of time travel is gonna have for you.
And,
Seb Pines: Yeah.
Sam: I found playing it this is what happened to me. I started playing on Christmas Day. And one of the things in the game is that don't remember a lot about yourself, your name is just the like, month and then day that you started playing. So, I was agent
Seb Pines: 1225.
hmm. Mm hmm.
Sam: And another thing that is true about the game is when you land on a date of note, such as an important holiday, such as Christmas, there's a custom prompt that you're given, and the custom prompt for Christmas is that Agent 1225 shows up and gives you a gift.
So the very first thing that happened to me was that I showed up and gave myself a gift. and And like, on the first prompt, it said, your prompt is like, you've landed on whatever day it is and you know you're supposed to get a package from the agency that has the watch, which is the first time machine that you are given, and some instructions, and I showed up and I was like, alright, myself from the future shows up, steals my watch, and gives me a different time machine, and then fucks off, and, that's it. And so I, because I just wanted to like, I didn't want to play with the watch, I wanted to play with one of the cool time machines right away.
And that, on the one hand broke the game, because like the watch is how you're supposed to like start the game, and I started with the season shuffler, which is not the way you should be playing this game.
You just like draw a random deck, or card from the deck. Anyway, you take a deck of playing cards, you draw a random card, and that sends you to like one of four days that you get to choose, and it gives you like a weird prompt that is, like, reflective on your past, and immediately, I was flung into randomly flying around this day planner, as opposed to if I'd had the watch, I would have had a lot more control over how I traveled through the game.
And, so, future self has come back and completely fucked me, and, like, why is this happening? I don't know what's going on, I'm completely unmoored from time, but this turned into a wonderful experience of like, immediately it was obvious that like, my future self hated the agency that I was working for. I was like, pulled back into the agency, and they were like, what the shit is going on? What did you do to yourself? And I was like, I don't fucking know, let me out of here.
And like, my experience was weird, but that like, became the story of why has my future self fucked me in this way? And I love that magic of solo games, that like, the weird, coming together of three different odd prompts in this game just happened to create an obvious, weird story and experience that's unlike anything anyone else is going to have playing this thing, and like, that's really cool, that's beautiful, that's like the magic of story er, of solo games of RPGs at large.
Seb Pines: Yeah! That is so fantastic. Solo games have this great power, but that all role playing games have this great power, that I love to talk about sometimes that I just call emergent design or emergent storytelling, is that things just happen when they happen, as you play. And solo games are very cool, because you can't play them wrong! You could do whatever you want with them, if you're having a good time, you're having a good time, and that creates a very interesting connection with the game, and your own storytelling comes out of it, like, I love that.
Because the funny thing is, with, like, the different devices and the associated prompts, they're kind of structured in a way that, like, the watch is supposed to ease you into the story and the world with, like, a little bit more open ended ones, a little thing that helps be a bit more establishing. And then like as you get some of the more, like, intense or, like, esoteric devices, it gives you some very specific, granular prompts.
And so, that's so funny, it just immediately started off with, like, okay, I'm having a weird time gifted to me by myself, literally and figuratively
Sam: you training wheels, get out of here! I'm like, going to do
Seb Pines: yeah, and so, this is like that fun example of like, games that have that kind of like, authored pacing, where you have all these Prompts that don't fit where a beginning should be, and then prompts that later in the ending feel like beginning prompts, and it's just like, it creates a very interesting, weird experience.
And this one, I think, is a little bit more forgiving for that kind of thing, cause like, the fun thing about time travel is that everything's a mess and nothing makes sense, you can always feel any time at any point, and on any day, because you're just kind of jumping through, and that lack of linearity helps in like, a story way make up and smooth out any edges of like, well, of course things feel weird now because, you know, wibbly wobbly time stuff.
But with like, other stories that want to be more structured linear stories, if you're jumping out of order, then it starts to feel weird.
Sam: yeah. Yeah, I just loved my experience with this game as an example of that conversation between designer and player, and that, like, as,
Seb Pines: Yes.
Sam: as players of solo games, we do get so much from the designer. Like, I never would have, done all these things myself without the prompts from the designer. But I also then immediately gave the designer the bird and got out of there and like did my own thing and like that's, that's, I'm sure that the designer would love that, you know? Like the whole point of playing these games is to find your own weird unique experience within them. And I love that push and pull between player and designer.
Seb Pines: Yes. Yeah. I have to say, as someone who designs solo experiences, anytime anyone tells me about them, any playthrough they've had of my games, I'm like I never thought of that. You're a genius. I love that. Thank you for telling me.
So if you play solo games and you love them, tell the designers the weird stuff you're doing in their games, because I am certain they will be delighted.
Sam: Listen, you can take solo out of that sentence. Just like tell designers about the experiences you've had playing their games. I've never had a designer not be thrilled to hear from people.
Seb Pines: Yeah, but solo games are great for that collaborative storytelling between a designer and a player. It's something that whenever I design, I like to think of like, Okay, I'm a designer, but I'm also a GM right now. And that I'm leading someone through this experience.
I try my hardest to do the best of both worlds of the two theories of, of solo games that you have, and that I like very authored, very here's the story I'm presenting to you thing, but also I want to give moments for self reflection in those very authored moments. And that is very hard to do. I like to think I'm doing it okay. I'm pulling it off. But yeah, I love these like different experiences. And I think the mix of the two of like any mix is so exciting. And that's why I love looking at solo games and seeing what people are doing. Like how much do you leave up to the player? And how much do you want to communicate to them?
And And how much, how, just how much do you give them? Do you give them an interesting prompt or do you give them a whole world to run through? And then the prompts tell them, well, how, how do you run through the world?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, so can I ask, how did you approach thinking about those questions and answering them for yourself when you designed Dwelling specifically?
Seb Pines: So when I was designing Dwelling, I played a whole mess of solo games. So just kind of think of what do I like? And I think that's a really strong thing for any designer to really establish before you get into doing things, because I think I sometimes have these whims of like, Oh, I want to make this kind of game and then I start making it and I'm like, I actually, this is not the kind of game I like to play. And so at the end of the day, I'm making what I want to play.
And I do like pretty authored stories and I like things that kind of lead me through an experience, but also give me a creative box to just go nuts in. Because I have this funny interaction sometimes with solo games if they're too open ended and they're too vague. I'm like, this is cool, but I kind of wanted a little bit more from like the world or the prompts or the writing or something.
Because I have this funny, funny thought in my head, I'm like, I'm creative enough as is, I don't need the game to write something interesting. I kind of sought out the game to have an interesting collaborative moment through playing it with the designer. And so I was like, what can I do that offers that to other people? To bring them into my weird little world, where I'm like, I'm telling you a story, but then sometimes you can whisper in my ear, and then I'll say what you just said. But then it's still, I'm gonna, then I'm gonna continue the story.
And so that's the thing that I did with Dwelling, where it's an interesting format in that it's a first person story, and that you just kind of read, and then as you go through, there'll be prompts in the fiction of the text that you will stop and you'll respond to, and then you'll change the writing in the book as you respond to them. Writing in your own words to the story, and then the story just continues on, being like, alright, that was interesting. Now let's go to the next room and meet the next ghost.
Sam: a very interesting cousin of choose your own adventure, of
Seb Pines: Yeah.
Sam: pause and reflect here, as opposed to like make a choice, it's like, think about what you're reading and how you're feeling.
Seb Pines: Yeah, and it's a nice thing, because it kind of gives you a bit more than the choose your own adventure thing, because in Dwelling, I encourage people to write into the book. You don't have to do that. A lot of people don't. Not everyone is as excited as I am to just destroy a book sometimes. But if you did want to write in the book, then you're very literally like editing the story that I've written. And you're now my editor and you're being like, actually, this is how this goes. This is what happens next.
And I really like that kind of feeling of collaborative creation. So I love when people like send me pictures of like, I've written into the book and I've drawn into the book and here's how all the art and the words look differently now. And it's just like, so exciting. Cause I'm like, yeah, now that's a whole new story that you made and I made and we did it together.
Sam: Yeah, I gotta do a whole episode on that feeling of transgression that comes from that. I wanna have on Lady Tabletop to talk about Wreck This Deck.
Seb Pines: Oh, nice.
Sam: I, like, even in A Collection of Improving Exercises, also by Tim Hutchings it's this game that, it's, the primary mode by which you are engaging with this solo game is through drawing. It's... go look up this game. But there's like a, Paragraph in it early on where he is like in character as the author of this book Telling you that it's okay to write in the book and it is on the one hand like funny and an interesting illustration of this guy's tone of voice and opinion and on the other hand, it's clearly Tim just begging you, the player, to fuck up this beautiful book that he's made.
Like, he just, he loves that, he wants you to do that, that feeling of like, is this allowed? Like that, you know, gimme, gimme, gimme! Like, there's some, I have a hard, I have a really hard time destroying books, But I I also, think that, like you, there is a certain kind of person who really finds that act thrilling, and I, I've been trying to embrace it a little bit more in my playing of solo games.
Seb Pines: Yeah. Solo games have this great quality that, not related to prompts, but, you can come out with something, you'll come out with like a physical thing afterwards, and that's a thing It's a term that you've maybe heard some people say is like an artifact of play. That's a thing that like I'm a freak for I like to design things so you come away with a changed book or you've made your own specific kind of journal or you've created something afterwards.
And that, that's such an exciting thing to me, that like, solo games can offer you is like, oh, I have this tangible thing, I've got this story written in this book.
And I especially love when games ask you to like, really lean in, to being all in it's bullshit. I love when games are like, here is the format that we like to structure things of like, how you could do reports, or how you can write journal entries, or how to draw, or how to do these things.
Cause, solo games are cool, and I think a lot of them want to ease up on people being like, it can be a lot of writing. You can just do bullet points if you want, but like, there are plenty of people that are like, I want to type up the report at the end of this. Like, I want to have that formatted agency report at the end of this, and then I can print it off, and that's the real thing.
And like, I think solo games have this ability to make us create something for the world that they exist in. And I want to see more solo games do that because I love the idea that you could just crowdsource this extra stuff. Like if there was like a solo SCP game and everyone just wrote up their own report, then you could just crowdsource a whole new wiki. And that's so cool, like the idea of that is so amazing that they help you create in this very structured creative manner to like create some art like how they like to create art It's a funny like I'm teaching how to draw but I'm teaching how to draw in a weird specific way. You're gonna draw a crab in this box. And then after this you're gonna draw a lot more crabs
Sam: Yeah. Which is also how you learn how to draw a crab, is by like, drawing it like, 12 times. Or like, 112 times.
I do think, like, as much as I completely agree with you, that like, artifacts of play are cool as hell, and like, I want games that ask me to do a specific thing, not just sort of say like, eh, write a novel if you want, or do some bullet points. I also feel like one of the things that makes it hard for me to sit down and play a solo game, is the need to do that extra work. Like, the thing I want out of solo games is more games that are designed specifically to make sure I know I'm only gonna be playing for 20 minutes ahead of time.
That like, I can like, believe them that like, I'm not gonna lose myself in this for the next three hours. Because as much as the experience of losing myself for three hours is really fun, I don't have that kind of time all the time, you know. And like, I want to play these games, but I also, I want to be able to play the full experience and don't feel like I was quote unquote, missing out or something,
And like, all this is like, bullshit and , I should talk to my therapist about it, you know, like, it should be totally fine for me to just like, sit down and speedrun Thousand Year Old Vampire. Like, the game text encourages you to do so, just like, don't worry about it, just play it in your head, but I think that something like Void, where you're not writing anything down. Just speak into a fake microphone and like, move on with your life , and then you have a playlist at the end, like, that's so much easier for me to sit down and play than to have to think like, I gotta pick up a pencil? Like, that's hard. I'm lazy.
So, I don't know. I don't know. maybe I should do the work on myself to ignore those voices. But also, I think designers at large should design for the real instincts that a lot of people have.
Seb Pines: Oh, no, I totally get that, yeah, I mean, I am a big fan of very small games that you can kind of just play in your imagination for 15 minutes. I have a series of small zine games that are, they're in their own little notebook zines, and the whole idea is like, one of them is just like, you can write a ghost story, and it literally just asks you ten questions, and then you're done. You just go find a weird looking house, and then you decide, that weird looking house is haunted now, and then you answer ten questions, and it's haunted now.
And it's just like, succinct things, like, how do we create the 20 minutes of scrolling on Twitter, but it's a solo game?
Sam: I remember several years ago now, encountering a list of micro games someone had made for fleshing out your Blades in the Dark campaign. It was like, between sessions, you can only play this game at a laundromat. Think about this part of the fictional city that y'all are in while you're at the laundromat.
And, you know, like 30 of those or something. And I love that. I think that the connecting that kind of solo experience to between session play of group games is also something really cool and potentially underexplored.
I have a game I'm working on where you're like doing found family and space stuff and if between sessions you want to go off and just like do a cool flashback about why your character is sad all the time if you want to like go off and like think about what your character does alone on the spaceship when everyone else has gone to sleep i'm putting together some specific little microgames for living in that world a little bit longer on your own time, on your own terms, and then being able to come back.
It almost like, cause I think it also works well as like, prep as a player for the game. That I think like, it's really valuable as a player in a traditional GMed game to come into a session with a little bit of an agenda. Like, just knowing what your character wants, knowing some ways you might, like, fuck up other people's lives, you know, like, to introduce a little bit of, friction and story to things, and ha combining that kind of player prep with, isn't it fun to just, like, live in this world by yourself for a little bit? I would love to see more games do that, too.
Seb Pines: Yeah. I wonder if a fun way to lean is the more literal journaling game kind of vibe where it's like, here's a game that you can do for like 20 minutes a day.
Sam: Yeah. No, but like,
Seb Pines: No! I wouldn't!
Sam: yeah, like,
yeah,
yeah. But like, you
Seb Pines: I'm bad at that.
Sam: If you ask me to do two prompts a week, yeah, I think I actually am really interested in that experience. Cuz I, the pressure to never miss a day, like, oh no. But if you give me some flexibility, like, my Tuesdays are pretty good, but my Wednesdays are very busy, you know?
Like, Wednesdays I don't need more shit on my plate, but like, yeah, it's often the case that it's like 11 o'clock and my partner has gone to bed, and I want to do 10 minutes of checking in with myself. And designing a game for that moment in time would you. Like, often, but not always, at a particular time of day, that, I would really love that.
Seb Pines: Yeah. I mean, this is not games that were, like, on our original list, but feels connected to this is there's been a few games that are individually and collaboratively by Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor that are, like, newsletter games
Sam: interesting.
Seb Pines: so you get a prompt a day. Or a prompt every so many few days, and I really like that format. I, I don't always love newsletter format, just because sometimes I don't enjoy getting emails. But I do love that kind of like, metered, you can't even see the rest of the game until you, it shows up for you. I think that's a very exciting design space.
Sam: Dracula daily? A solo game? Or, or what was
Seb Pines: Uh, yeah.
Sam: Like, uh, we, we, I don't really want to get too far into this because taxonomies are boring and a lie, but did have on our notes here like, are books solo games? Is a novel? A long prompt? What do we think about I Eat Mantras for Breakfast, which is a weird lyric game that is sort of a stream of consciousness ramble. Are these solo experiences?
But, you know, you just very quickly get into, like, art is art, it's all weird, that shit rocks, like, I, like, it, it is fun to think about is, like, interrogating your own emotional reaction to a piece of art as a game. but it doesn't matter whether that's true or not, I, well, who cares.
Seb Pines: I'm definitely of the category that I think lyric games kind of can exist as a very strange solo game because just the way that you read it and you interact with the text, and the thoughts that you have, That's the interaction. That's what they want. That's, the play space is in your head, and it's happening as you're reading it, as you're thinking of it.
I Eat Mantras for Breakfast, my favorite, which I will say is a prompt in the whole thing, is define lol bitch when? I, every time I read that, I have a different answer for myself, and I love that for me.
Sam: Yeah,
Seb Pines: Cause that's like a great thing that lyric games do, and sometimes a lot of these more introspective games do, is anytime you come back to them, any amount of time passing, you're gonna have a different interaction with them, you're gonna have a different answer to all the questions, and that's a kind of fun play of legacy play, at least in your head.
It's like, each time you read it, you're reading it a little bit differently, and you're forming different thoughts, and you're having different feelings, and, I definitely Think Lyric games are solo games. You could maybe argue a book is A very long prompt, if it asks you questions.
Sam: Uh, yeah. But like, why would you, I don't know.
Seb Pines: I have this collection of solo games mostly solo games, that are printed on bookmarks to be played with books. And so, the whole idea is like, a few of them are destroying books with like blackout poetry or making them maps, cause I'm a terrible person, I love ruining books used to work at a library, never would've guessed that, love ruining books, also love them and, but then also they have these option of like, edit the book, do people say and do things that you don't like?
Well, actually, they're not doing that now. And I just like this idea of like, you can have these fun moments of imaginative play whenever, wherever, with whatever you're doing.
Because I'm a kind of person that sometimes when I read a book, I might like pause and just kind of go off into my own imagination space of being like, would that actually happen? What would I do in that situation? And then I kind of just create fun little scenarios for myself in the head. So I just like, here's a game that kind of just slots you into it.
One of the games is just you're in the book but you don't say or do anything, and everyone is terrified of you. Because you're in the book, in every scene, you're always there, and everyone can see you. And then keep reading, knowing that everyone is scared of you, and you're always there. Just put that in the little part of your mind.
Sam: Uh,
You're
Seb Pines: there you're freaking everyone out, and see how this changes the tone of the book.
Sam: yeah, yeah, they're just, art is cool, fucking love art, it's really wild what cool people like you are able to do with it. This has been wonderful though. Is there anything else, like final words you want to say about solo games or prompt writing in general?
Seb Pines: I think everyone should give a crack at solo games. Just do it. I think you'll probably learn something very interesting about your even own design desires by doing one. So I think everyone should make them more because they're wonderful to design, they're wonderful to play.
Sam: I agree. Seb Pines, thanks for being here.
Seb Pines: Thank you for having me.
Sam: ugh. Thanks again to Seb for being here. I loved this one. There's so much in here.
If you want more from me on solo games and The Ink That Bleeds, you can find a blog post I wrote about all that on the Dice Exploder blog at diceexploder. com.
You can find Seb on socials at Small Ghost. Their game Dwelling is available through Good Luck Press. As always, you can find me on socials at s Dun Wald or on the Dice Exploder discord. The Game Jam accompanying this season of the show is wrapping up soon. Get your games in.
Our logo was designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray, and our ad music is Lilypads by my boy, Travis Tesmer.
And thanks to you for listening. I'll see you next time.