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Greetings Designers,

With the Quarantine and COVID-19 not looking like it is going away for some time, it seems natural to turn our attention to solo-wargaming. In recent memory, there have been a few Solo-wargaming options available:

- Rangers of ShadowDeep
- Some Frostgrave
- Horizon Wars: Zero Dark
- 4 Against the....
- Spellslingers and Sellswords
- Chain Reaction
- The Men Who Would be Kings: Fighting Mr. Babbage

I am sure there are more options out there, but these are ones I recall off the top of my head.

What mechanics changes are required to make a good solo-game vs. a more typical "2+ player" game? What are some mechanics that define the genre of Solo-wargame?

Interestingly on topic to a thing I just started working on...

I think one of the most important things for a solo game is to maintain some sense of tension and unknown. When you're playing against someone, you have the challenge of not really knowing what actions they're going to take. Sure, you can guess a few best courses, and maybe have an idea of what their goals are, but you don't know exactly how they're going to go after achieving them.

In single-player game, you often are "omniscient," in that you know far more about the opposition than you would if playing another human. I feel that in order to keep it "interesting" and still have the opportunity for interesting choices (which, after all, is a core concept of any game), there needs to be some form of rules for controlling what the enemy does.

How detailed that can be seems to vary a lot in solo games I've tried. Some have a simple flow chart, which works ok but can be predictable. Others have some element of random actions, either by tables or cards (Kingdom Death uses a specific card deck for each adversary, for example).

I think that there's a lot of overlap in solo and co-op games, too. In co-op, players aren't competing against each other, they're competing against the game itself. One advantage co-op has there is that it's easier to get multiple ideas on how to do that in comparison to solo, but most co-op games could easily still be played solo with a single player controlling all of the player elements instead of one each, for example. I think that brings up another point, though, in that for solo play, the details of whatever the player agents are can't be too complicated or detailed, since a single person has to keep track of all of them.

Definitely interested to hear other folks' thoughts, too...

The crucial component of a good solo game is a functional artificial intelligence system: one which presents a challenge that is realistic.

There are two main approaches: tabular and card based.

The tabular approach means consulting a table and cross referencing that against the state of play to determine the actions of the enemy. The card based approach is just flying a card and doing what it says.

Zero Dark has a card-based approach. Admittedly, there's a table. But the table just tells you how to interpret the result on the card and, once you're used to it, you will be able to just read the card result.

 precinctomega wrote:
The crucial component of a good solo game is a functional artificial intelligence system: one which presents a challenge that is realistic.

There are two main approaches: tabular and card based.

The tabular approach means consulting a table and cross referencing that against the state of play to determine the actions of the enemy. The card based approach is just flying a card and doing what it says.

Zero Dark has a card-based approach. Admittedly, there's a table. But the table just tells you how to interpret the result on the card and, once you're used to it, you will be able to just read the card result.

I think that this is the key to it - you need and AI which is unpredictable enough to pose a challenge but predictable enough to seem realistic.

If the units all charge the nearest enemy, then they are easily led and exploited, so it takes away from the challenge of the game.

I think the two key components you need are "Surprise" and "Player Choice". Those are the two elements.

Interestingly enough, in most 2-player games we are OK with omniscient, bird's Eye view of the battlefield as the "surprise" is generated by the other player. However, omniscient, bird's eye view of the Battlefield is not acceptable in a solo wargame because their is no one else to generate that level of surprise.

To me "Surprise" requires two things. Uncertainty of enemy location and uncertainty of enemy actions. It is a nice bonus if you can also add some uncertainty to the terrain as well. If the game can create both of those criteria around location and action, it creates surprise and therefore creates an opportunity for Player Choice.

If the game does not generate a decent amount of Player Choice, than it is a less than successful solo wargaming experience. It could have been played out by a simple computer program.

So what do we think works best for creating the AI? Tables, cards, or tables and multiple decks of cards?

I've not played any 1-player solo board games (I have 1, fallout, but I've never played it solo). I'd be interested in getting a couple more, as long as they can also be played with 2 players.

 some bloke wrote:
So what do we think works best for creating the AI? Tables, cards, or tables and multiple decks of cards?

I've not played any 1-player solo board games (I have 1, fallout, but I've never played it solo). I'd be interested in getting a couple more, as long as they can also be played with 2 players.

I think when it boils down to it, both tables and cards are just different methods of random number generation. Both have advantages and disadvantages, though.

For tables, it means you have to reference them pretty frequently, and the more complex you make the AI the bigger the table is going to be, thus the harder to memorize it. You can get pretty detailed, though, and even have different tables for different types of AI within the same game (something I'm currently playing with in my development...), but then that adds the problem of lots of tables.

For cards, it means you can have a method of culling out actions, if you don't reshuffle after every draw. This might make sense for some types of AI, but may be weird for others (what do you mean it doesn't attack because all the attack cards have been drawn?). Advantage is that cards provide an immediate spot for reference, and may not need much looking up rules outside the card. Disadvantage is that either you still wind up having to have a table to refer to if you're using standard playing cards, or you need to custom print cards which is more expensive. This gets even worse if you go with multiple decks, but again, multiple decks let you do different types of AI, which is good.

 some bloke wrote:
So what do we think works best for creating the AI? Tables, cards, or tables and multiple decks of cards?

I've not played any 1-player solo board games (I have 1, fallout, but I've never played it solo). I'd be interested in getting a couple more, as long as they can also be played with 2 players.

Thanks to everyone's help here I put down some thoughts here about this very question.....

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/

I basically see four choices:

1. Script or Action Flow
2. Cards
3. Escalating Danger
4. Dice charts

Of course, you can also mix and match them together as well.

I got some more thoughts about solo-wargaming up on my blog. This time, they are focused on deploying the enemy to keep things surprising and entertaining.



https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/05/wargame-design-solo-gaming-deployment.html



I wonder if you think that enemy deployment is an improtant part of keeping the surprise in the game or not?

I think enemy deployment is important, but I also think it needs to "make sense" for any given scenario.

For example, tromping off into some wilderness, probably a lot more random deployment of hostiles, with maybe a few "hotspots". Assaulting a prison to free an important ally, probably a bit of known spots for guard posts, then some semi-randomness inside (maybe a few patrolling guards, but also would have some "normal" stations).

Sellswords and Spellslingers did a pretty interesting method of having an event card cause an "Ambush," and (as I recall, been a while since I've read the rules) would spawn an enemy at the closest bit of terrain that would make sense for them to have been hidden in.

So, yeah, I think enemy deployment is somewhat important to the surprise in the game, but it isn't the cure-all. Even if deployment is totally random, if the behaviors of the enemy aren't that great, then it's still pretty easy to reduce reasonable choices down to a very small set, making the game not as interesting. In the thing I'm working on now, I'm trying to have a mix of randomness in locations of hostiles, some possibility of "wandering monsters," and trying to make the AI "sensible, but not totally predictable." Yeah, not an easy task.

Nope not easy at all.

My previous post talked a bit about different ways to make AIs, so this was a follow-on. I think if yo combine the two you can get a pretty decent solo-game experience.

Perhaps another interesting key to a solo-wargame experience is providing the player with a scenario to complete other than kill them all. What do you think?

I think scenarios that are more than just "kill everything" are really vital to solo gaming. Murderhobo scenarios might be fun once in a while (and are good ways to test out various combat mechanisms and so on), but they get old pretty quick and essentially boil down to Yahtzee.

Coming up with good scenarios is a whole 'nother ball of worms.

And yeah, right now I'm leaning towards some small-ish tables with a bit of randomness in them for the AI, and categorizing different tables by general "behavior" of the monster thing. Easy was "mindless hunger" types (zombies). Much harder is something that actually has a brain and possibly a purpose in the scenario.

I added some more thoughts on Scenarios for solo-wargaming on my blog....

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/06/wargame-design-solo-wargaming-scenarios.html

With all these articles on solo-wargming you would think I was working on something in this space. Surprise! I am not.