In an effort to refocus my brain and generally accomplish…anything, I’ve been sniffing around solo tabletop RPGs over the last few years.  Having mixed success (with failure being heavy in the mix) with playing games with a group of folks, I figured solo RPGs could also just be a good outlet for some creativity, as well as a place to test some ideas.  So, I’m often at least somewhat on the lookout for games that seem like they might tickle certain fancies.  While out checking local shops on Free Comic Book Day recently, I came across Alone on a Journey, a short anthology of solo games by Takuma Okada.

There are three games, a section on modifying the rules, and then what I’ll generously call some tools for play.  While the book is 30 pages, there’s really only about 16 pages of gamable material.  The first game is Alone Among the Stars, and was the one that sold me on picking the book up.   It captures the gentle, wondrous vibes of the No Man’s Sky video game.  The second is Alone in the Ancient City.  With the title, I imagined it would be about wandering through abandoned ruins or something.  However, it’s about a thriving, active city that happens to be old.  More Cairo or Rome than Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat.  The final game is Alone Among the Shifting Trees.  This last one is about finding artifacts abandoned in an unfamiliar part of the wilderness.  

The system for each game is essentially the same, with some slight variations.  You flip over playing cards and roll a six sided die.  The combined results give you a prompt, and you then explore that prompt as you see fit.  

There’s a fair amount of combinations, but I imagine it wouldn’t take too many playthroughs for things to take on a samey feel.  There is a website you’re directed to that apparently has a lot of hacks for the idea.  I wonder if perhaps there are alternate prompt lists.  I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’m also reviewing the book as is, not further resources. 

The final chapter gives some advice on using the core mechanics and gameplay loop to create your own Alone game.  Certainly there’s a lot of potential.  One of the biggest limiting factors is the specific list of thirteen prompts for each game.  New lists of prompts could open the door for very new stories. 

While the game makes no mention of this, I could also see mixing in elements of some other games.  For example, I might make a character from a game like Mothership or something; some space explorer with quirks, interests, and maybe even goals.  The viewpoint of that character would shift how the prompts can be interpreted.  Not to mention, the addition of specific character goals would have an effect.  With the help of some random charts, it might be possible to add specific details or just generally break out of any ruts you might find yourself in.  

I’ve played around a bit with each of the three games, and I like the idea.  I could see myself sitting down for an afternoon and creating some fun little stories, or brainstorming for an upcoming session or campaign.  But there really isn’t a lot here.  Nowhere is that more obvious than when you compare the amount of game material to the page-count.  Most of the back half of the book is taken up with lined paper.  A few are a very loose worksheet for making your own Alone hack.  The rest is simply journaling paper.  I know there are certain page counts needed to print, but almost half the book is made of filler pages, which makes its price tag tough to swallow.  It’s $10 for the PDF and I think I paid $15 for the physical book.  It would have been nice to have either another variant or two of the Alone game, or maybe an extra set of prompts for each game that is here.  The blank pages bug me. Still, overall I like this and I’m looking forward to playing it some more. 

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