The Culture: Dunder Moose Talks Solo Gaming In Ongoing Campaigns With John N McGowan

"Solo Gaming in Service to a Living Campaign? What? I thought Solo Gaming was what WARgamers do! We play RPGs! We have no problem attracting players! Well hold up there, Hotchkiss! THE author of The Living Campaign comes back on This Is Dunder Moose to share how he has been using the one to enhance the other. Is he full of crap? Are YOU? Am I? I'm probably not...Watch to find out!!!

There is one big reason for why an ongoing campaign should include Solo Gaming: it allows the Referee to play the game.

Every so often play results in the spontaneous creation of mans of note who are not aligned with the players' mans. These mans, until they can be handed off to a player, need to be accounted for in what they do.

Solo Play is one way to handle that matter. It keeps a Referee's familiarity with the player-facing side of the game fresh, allows him to record what happened (receipts, thus accountability), and track things as if he were playing his own man.

As with using the Appendices, Solo Play allows for unexpected developments that introduce novel situations into the ongoing action that would not have happened otherwise. You're handling that NPC party that the tables spat out at you, and one of them gets eaten by a grue; mark that down, and have that be discoverable thereafter. Or they get overwhelmed by Wights, or they find the ruby before the players' mans do so now there's a question of how that's handled when they meet up again, and so on.

You can just say what happens. They are Referee-controlled mans. But it's far more fun to use what is there to play the game. That turns what would be ordinary prep chores into a game session to itself.

But if you need a justification for Solo Play in a campaign, Jon Mollison has your answers: to pick up a man who otherwise is riding the pine and giving him a chance to do things, in a manner that is accountable (due to the generation of receipts and subsequent publication). (Entire playlist below)

Yes, this can be abused--Farm Dweebing gold and XP can be done--yet that is abuse; it is not intended use. Intended use is to cover corner cases in campaign play, to master the rules, and to make contributions to the campaign in a manner other than at the table or in Braunstein sessions- which is why you need a High Trust environment to make this a viable practice, such as in a Clubhouse environment. This is not for the Soup Aisle.