With the new Dungeons and Dragons movie out, plus the hassle of the OGL and One D&D (Or 6e or 5.5e or whatever they’re calling it), the tabletop RPG has been in the public eye a lot as of late. Many people had considered jumping ship and moving to other TTRPGs, most popularly Pathfinder, before seemingly falling back into place with the OGL revisions and the movie release.
Now all that could potentially shake their devotion now is the fact that One D&D is replacing 5e. Still, with most already possessing the material and homebrew safe from tampering, it seems highly unlikely most will venture beyond the mainstream safe zone. It’s a shame because, for those willing, they’ll find there are many more TTRPGS other than D&D, some just as old and still going strong, and not just Pathfinder.
While the initial scare of the OGL worried me a bit, I never truly felt heartbroken about Dungeons and Dragons. I owned some material and had played for a few years, but without my groups, the game never stuck with me beyond that point. I realised I both loved the game, while also not caring for it at all. It’s a disorienting feeling, and these past few months I’ve taken the time to organise my thoughts.
First: What do I like about D&D? Well, it’s the players themselves, the dungeon master, aka my friends. Being able to meet up and hang out for a day playing a game and fighting monsters before going out to dinner is among a few of my favourite memories over the past year. And from my first group, those afternoons of D&D, even when it was stagnant and slow, were always the highlight of my day and gave me a friend or two that I kept into adulthood. My passion for the game grew exponentially with my friends and social events, but once those factors disappeared, any interest went with them.
So what? What kept me from the plentiful resources online surrounding solo play with D&D? Why couldn’t I use the Mythic Emulator or a bunch of random tables? Because I didn’t want to. Because I realised: I don’t like fantasy as a genre. Medieval? I can deal with. Dark fantasy? An acquired taste, but D&D is often set in a sort of traditional fantasy, and even with species such as Drow or expansions specifically to make it more dark and grim, I simply cannot find it in me to care. But when I have piles of die and a need to fill an empty slot on a Friday afternoon because my group cancelled again… I needed something to do.
It was an impulse purchase, I wanted a gift for myself for Halloween last year and we ended up in a small gaming shop. On the shelves was a book: Call of Cthulu 7th Edition, plus the Keeper Decks, there was no Keeper’s Guide but I bought the pair anyway, I had been playing a lot of Mythos video games lately and I was interested in a D&D concept but with Cthulhu, even if it was nothing more than light reading.
And it was a few months later when the problem developed. I wanted the Ripples of Carcosa Campaign, but for it, I needed 3 other books, and while I could just have it as reading material, I thought… why not? So I bought it, along with the Keeper’s Guide and the last few copies of Cthulhu Invictus and Call of Cthulhu: The Dark Ages that I could find. Then I bought a rare copy of Cthulhu By Gaslight, then I bought a book of Hastur-related stories, and then I found another Hastur campaign and bought that too.
I invested an unhealthy amount of money in a game I don’t even play, nor did I feel comfortable asking my friends to play a whole new system I hadn’t even learned yet. While the reading excuse played off for a while, the pile was growing and the shame was sinking in, so when I was recommended a video on solo playing for D&D by Ginny Di, I was immediately hooked on the concept. A few videos into alternative methods later and I’ve been running short random one-shots for myself for the past few months.
My spending hasn’t ceased, I’ve bought S. Peterson’s Field Guide in hopes of saving for the Malleus Monstoreums for my Halloween gift this year, and The Almanac of the Mad and the Macabre: A Comprehensive Resource Book for Lovecraftian and Horror TTRPGs, a collection of random tables for generative content I’ve been waiting on for a month or so now. There’s even a Solo Investigator’s Handbook by the man who wrote the D&D solo books Ginny Di used in her video that I’d like, but I’m happy with my hand-made solo campaign, and I feel Call of Cthulhu is my TTRPG system.
Even without the social aspect for the meantime, the system keeps me engaged, the stories are fun, and I’ve even worked on a Keeper-centric system with emulated “players” so I can enjoy a pre-published campaign on my own. I’m already making my way through CofC’s infamous “The Haunting” and well… my “players” are keeping me on my toes, that’s for sure.
Dungeons and Dragons, I hope, are beginning to lose their iron grip on the TTRPG market, people have begun exploring alternatives, both Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Cairn (which is free), Dungeon Crawler Classics and more. Since 2020, solo TTRPG play has also become more popular. I encourage others who don’t feel too strongly about Dungeons and Dragons to not homebrew themselves out of the core game too much.
Instead, I ask you give a chance to explore, try whole new systems, and even give solo-play a shot if you’re worried about convincing friends to play the system with you, and if you fear you won’t be interested without your friends, then rest assured the system probably wasn’t meant for you in the first place. Please, at least, avoid my mistake and spend your money a bit more wisely.
I’ll potentially describe my solo player-focused and keeper-focused playstyles for Call of Cthulhu in future blog posts. Mine are fairly budget versions anyway so they’re open to complete beginners or amateurs who just want to start. You don’t even need the Mythic Emulator (because I did not know what it was when I started). But that’s all for another day.
Keep learning and keep sharing stories.
-Reyes Raine
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