One minute you’re playing Mork Borg, the next Cloud Empress, why do you jump around so much?
#tldr
“Don’t you ever finish what you started?”
I tend to switch between different games like a hyperactive squirrel on a caffeine binge. My brain is a cloud of curiosity, constantly shifting focus from one thing to the next, only to circle back and complete the loop.Like many modern humanoids, I'm a dopamine-chasing, doom-scrolling, overbooked, overworked professional. I'm a drone, a father, a husband, a handyman, landscaper, gamer, reader, writer-ish—you get the point! We're all spread thin, trying to juggle life's responsibilities. Finding time to play solo games is tough, and gathering friends for a game night feels like summoning a dragon.Yet, I have an unrelenting obsession with TTRPGs and imaginary worlds. My internal dialogue during a typical workday often goes something like this: "I wish I could actually visit both Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith’s Hyperborea. If I were an adventurer there, I'd sneak past rock-throwing troglodytes, delve into ancient caves, and lay waste to ghastly horrors until I reached a buried Elder God. Maybe I'd find a ghoulish priest to charm and convince to train me in their eldritch ways. If I could learn to communicate with an Elder God, perhaps I could understand its cosmic wisdom without going insane!" And then, I snap back to reality, realizing my boss is talking to me. I probably look like a stellar employee, diligently taking notes, when in reality, I'm rolling on my dice app against an unspoken difficulty check on my phone.
It's apparent that I love this tabletop hobby and the beloved genres we all hold dear. It's always on my mind. That said, there is just so much content to explore. We're lucky to have the most creative and prolific content creators ever, right here in our tabletop RPG scene. My reading pile and backlog grow exponentially each day. There's not enough time in the world to play all the games in my backlog. For that reason, I'm constantly trying new games, new systems, tweaking my solo methods, experimenting with new tools, learning new mechanics, and synthesizing it all into my own Frankenstein-style homebrew.
I tend to jump around. One day, I might post about playing a solo hexcrawling Dolmenwood using OSE, Black Hack, Mythic GME, and the Dolmenwood core rules. The next day, I'm playing a space trucker in the Alien universe using Cephus Engine, Hostile, and One Page Solo Rules. Later that day, I post the characters I made to explore the Nausicaa-inspired setting of Cloud Empress. Some games are just one-shots, some turn into epic campaigns, some fizzle out, and some I pause to check out something different until I'm inspired to jump back in. Often during that break, I find information and tools to make it more fun than before. All of this may sound chaotic, but it's genuinely very fun. As time goes on, I've become a skilled solo player/GM (you often have to play both roles). Prep is play, imagining is play, designing mechanics and rules, creating tables and generators, curating and cultivating a game wiki or website, drawing NPCs and monsters, chatting in a forum, dreaming about the setting while you sleep! All forms of play.To wrap up this rant, I'll just say: while I may seem to jump around from system to system, setting to setting, and character to character. After all is said and done, it’s not just about finishing the plot, defeating the villain, and wrapping everything up with a tidy little short bow. At the end of the day, I'm just playing one huge, ongoing solo game encompassing everything I do! In all the years I’ve played RPGs, I’ve never been so immersed in the hobby or had more fun since i started soloing.