Leon Barillaro and Scott Bullock are a creative duo behind a solo journaling game on Crowdfundr.
Leon is a game designer who readers might recognise from MCDM, Ghostfire Gaming and EN Publishing titles.
There are plans for O Captain, such as an SRD, in which you are a ship captain with only the stars to guide you.
Leon has an interesting, and I think you’ll find a compelling argument for solo games. Kindly, they’ve agreed to write a post for Geek Native.
Solo, Together: The Case for Collaborative Journaling Games
“Fourteen: The curse becomes impossible to ignore; it permeates your entire life. How does this curse manifest, and how does it affect you moving forward?”
“Well… the curse is that our captain is basic, right? So I bet the mist that follows his ship contains the stench of being basic. Everyone who sees the ship just instinctively knows this guy is boring.”
“Oh! Oh! Can I offer a build?”
“What do you got?”
“What if wherever he goes, you can always hear the faint sounds of Yacht Rock emanating from the ship? It’s inescapable. Unending.”
“That’s perfect!”
—
This was a conversation I had while demoing O Captain, my new game, at Big Bad Con at the end of October. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the collaborative creative process. But O Captain isn’t a collaborative game by design; it’s a solo journaling game.
It might seem daunting at first to try to facilitate solo play with multiple players, because a solo game is something that can just be so personal. But solo games are all about storytelling, and storytelling is my favorite group activity.
When Scott Bullock, the game’s co-writer, and I would playtest, we always played together. I find it’s so much more fun to come up with ideas when you have someone to play off of. Sometimes when I play a solo game, it feels like a writing assignment or creative exercise. In other words, work. But having someone else to talk through it with suddenly makes it more game-like. Collaboration is an important component of play!
Take Turns
If there’s a main gameplay loop, like rolling a dice and answering a prompt, you can count one iteration of that loop as a “turn.” For example, if we’re playing The Wretched, a horror game where you are the sole survivor of a spaceship wreck being hunted by an entity, one “turn” would be a pull of a brick, a draw of a card, and the subsequent answering of a prompt. When answering the prompt, everyone gets a chance to build on it or offer ideas, but the final decision rests with the person whose turn it is.
There are lots of worldbuilding games that have guidance for adjudicating the decision-making, and they’re usually my go-to for how to turn a Solo game into a Together game. One good example is The Ground Itself, which has a turn structure similar to the one mentioned above.
Listen & Build
Offering up your creative ideas to a group can be tough, especially if the game is open-ended.
We can make this process easier for each other when we listen and offer builds on everyone’s ideas or compromise on our own.
Maybe the group doesn’t like my suggestion of a shark popping out of the waves to bite a hole in the hull of our ship. But if someone wants to offer a different suggestion, it’ll feel really good if they say, “What if instead of a shark, it’s a kraken that punches a hole in the ship!” My idea of the damaged ship and its consequences are still part of the action, but now it’s more in line with what everyone wants.
Another tactic that helps here is the callback. Maybe our group doesn’t want to deal with sharks right now, but later on when there’s blood in the water, someone might say, “Leon, this sounds like a great place to introduce that shark you were talking about.” Nothing feels better than when your friends find a way to fit your ideas into the story you’re building together.
Playing Round Robin
Some games lend themselves really well to players taking turns writing entries in the journal, or setting their playthroughs after each other. In The Machine, players take turns writing in a journal and then passing it along. You could take a similar approach with any solo game that wants you to keep a log. Even if your character’s journey comes to an end, maybe they left business unfinished. Passing your log or journal to another player helps create a sense of excitement and discovery. Imagine someone else poring over your character’s log, discovering their hopes and accomplishments, their trials and failures, and then taking up the mantle themself.
Some of these tactics are just things that work best for any kind of collaborative game. At the end of the day, it’s all just play and storytelling. Make something beautiful with your friends, or by yourself. Share it with the world or keep it for yourselves, an esoteric reinforcement of the connection you share. Go forth and tell your stories!
Leon Barillaro is a writer and game designer living in Los Angeles, CA. You can find more of their work on their website or on twitter, @barilleon.
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