Everything is Playing

The Geek Gamers book Solo Game Master's Guide is one of the best solo play books ever written. They understand the number one enemy of solo play is "not caring" and "losing interest." The book solves those issues nicely and gets you excited to play by redefining solo play as...

Everything is playing!

Generating characters, reading the books, and even thinking about stories you might tell  - are playing too!  Moving the books around on a shelf so you can get to them easier and cleaning your game table? Playing! One of the enormous problems in solo play is the "not playing" and "feeling bad about it" cycle, which is sort of like the "stopped working out" and "feeling bad about not working out, so you don't work out" cycle.

The book breaks the negative feedback cycle.

If all I have time for today is messing around with my character designer, guess what? You found time to play today; feel happy! Is this character better than the last? Can you tell more stories with them? I was doing that last night and laughed at the concept of the character I made, which is why I love GURPS, and it is leading me down a new path of discovery and imagination. I am on the chase, and I have energy and momentum. This feels so good!

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

By setting that "what is playing?" bar very low, every little thing you do progresses to eventually actually, for real, playing the game! The method creates one of those gears in a clock that can tick forward a short distance but can not go back. Ten or twenty clicks and you have a revolution. You have movement. You create preservation of momentum.

You are not going back to a place farther away from your dream.

This is not only great advice on how to run solo play, but it is also great advice for life.

Don't try to have something all at once - if you want something. You will only get frustrated and fail. Instead, establish a system where "everything moves you towards the goal" and be like that gear in the clock. Move forward a tiny tick and never fall back. Even if your day was trash and you can't do one more thing, do something tiny and almost trivial to keep moving forward.

I do this with my gaming shelves. I do this bonsai tree activity where I clean and create the most attractive gaming setups for my shelves. The books I do not use get put in my sealed plastic storage boxes. The games I want to play get displayed in beautiful layouts like you would see in a store or on a streaming show devoted to the game. Is that "playing?" Well, yes.

Move a book to a game table where you will read it, then drop yourself on your bed and fall asleep. You are keeping the habit going, one of the most critical patterns of behavior to fall into if you want something. The following day, when you see the book, what could happen? If it was on the shelf, you might have done something else that day because you forgot. By moving that book, you may have set up a butterfly effect of discovering a "timeline" you may have never explored nor would have ever ventured onto because that book was still on that shelf.

Even the most minor and nothing things can later on lead you to wonderous discoveries and possibilities. You need to help yourself by being that "critical character" to your plot that leaves something out or keeps a pattern of incremental success going.

So keep making campaign notes, creating characters, thinking about stories, and building your worlds. Keep reading the books! Keep creating character sheets and playing with the software. Keep reorganizing and cleaning your shelves. Set up a map and pawns. Keep imagining. Keep dreaming of your game.

You will get there.

Just take a series of small steps and keep moving forward toward your goal.