Happy First Birthday, The Doug Alone

 

Happy birthday, Doug Alone, you are now one year old [officially]. 

A bit over a year ago (maybe 1 year + 1 week) I had come up with the idea to play a solo campaign that could be entirely played on my oldish smart phone. I didn't need a lot of apps, per se. A PDF viewer to view a Tricube Tales micro-setting (I chose Guardians of the Shadow Frontier) and the Tricube Solo PDF. A dice app. Then Google Keep to track the short scenes. 

Here is what the original playthroughs looked like:

As you can see, I misunderstood how scenes worked with Tricube Solo and thought you had to draw an Ace/Joker to move on to the next. It made a fairly action oriented episode played out over a few set-pieces. 

After playing out a "session" over a few short bursts, I would recap it to this blog. It was nice and relaxing. For the blog version, I would type as many or more words than my initial notes. Sometimes I would add in dialogue and side scenes. A simple piece of stock art (pulled from Pixabay) would be used. At the time, it was never meant to illustrate the scene but instead to simply act as kind of a symbolic mood piece.

A little over a week later, on June 30, I posted the third session of my Bleak + Peal campaign. Initially, it was pretty much exactly like The Bloody Hands. I would play it out with external tools and then post a summary after the fact.

The next day after that (July 1), I posted the first piece of advice: about treating death in solo play as more of a narrative opportunity rather than a reduction of narrative options. Then, that same week (July 4), I posted the initial draft my "extended Tricube framework" which wasn't just for solo play but actually for co-op play. Over time I have changed a good deal of concepts for it and probably, soon, should write out the changes. 

Finally, in that same week (or so) I posted the recap that was meant to bring my main solo play campaign, an Advanced Fighting Fantasy campaign about Barston Bakersfield and a city called Humb, to the blog. As of eleven months later, that plan has never worked out. Soon, maybe. 

So, see you next year, right?  

July 2024, the first true month of the blog, had 31 posts. An average of one-per-day. Which is crazy talk.

Arguably, the most important change in the early days of the blog was the Gareth Hendrix and the Bunker Bigfoot campaign. It was the first "actual play" campaign where I used the blog itself as a play journal. It used the footnotes concept I had introduced for part 5 of the The Bloody Hands campaign to display mechanical aspects of the play "in line" (but without the mark-up meaning readers had to scroll down to see them). It used a short-story format to represent a higher depth of solo play for myself (where characters had actual dialogue and scenes had setting details). It brought the Alabama Weird to the blog.  It basically took the blog from an idea dump and recap collection to a central tool in my solo play journey. It also introduced using stock art - including photos I had taken myself of a real world equivalent of the setting - to actually illustrate scenes rather than just hint towards them thematically.

By the end of the month, The Bleak + The Pearl had transitioned to an "actual play" campaign and more art was being used. Then the first draft of Eustace + Hitomi was created as a spiritual successor (though set nearly 30 years earlier) to Gareth Hendrix. The use of multiple campaigns in multiple settings meant I was increasing AI art to try and fill in the void. A decision that I ended up retconning and regretting but posts from that time still have pieces here or there. 

Prior to the more advanced formatting tricks to bring up posts, I was using custom "section breaks" for each campaign. Small PNGs to split up sections to help reduce eye strain. Which ended up being a bit of a problem when I would swap up colors on the blog. 

After the next month, I started introducing gamemaster/prep phases where I would set up elements and figure out scenes. I started adding in intermission elements for campaigns that needed check ins and extended musings. And then, on August 25, I introduced the term "Fourth Wall Break" to describe more meta-posts. I had already had a "check-in" but the FWBs were conceived as a way to talk about the personal elements around the blog but also some thoughts about the blog and solo-play that did not fit a particular post. This one is technically a Fourth Wall Break but also is not. 

So it goes...

By October 2024, I was playing around with what would become the standard Doug Alone format with different sections have different distinct colors and formatting. Around the middle of November 2024, I had started using even more complex formatting and hyperlink elements to make mechanical notes pop-up on hover. 

I kept struggling with the [likely wrong for me, personally] belief that what I really needed was to return to fast-play recap-style posting. Every time I tried, I ended up frustrated. Also, copy-and-pasting my actual play notes into the blog's HTML (possibly) led to the blog being flagged as some sort of scam site. 

In December 2024, I put the blog on a hiatus to go and work out some formatting (meaning that some posts linked above probably look different than they initially did, which means some of my above links are likely wrong on timing). The GLOW 1996: Agent Johnny Blue represented the first full version of the standard formatting (which changes, but sticks to the overall elements).

January 2024, I went through and did something completely different. I rewrote essentially every Eustace + Hitomi post up to that point. Sometimes, a little, sometimes a lot. Fixing some heavy glitches and concepts. I also decided to focus on one primary solo play campaign at a time [generally a shorter arc/chapter of a campaign]. 

Anyhow, one year and 154 published posts later, I'm still here. Still playing solo games. Badly. But enjoying myself, mostly. 

What surprises me the most going back and looking at all these posts is just how much recrimination and self-doubt shines through. Like, really, honestly: who cares? This is a fun experiment that allows me to play games and do some creative writing. Why have I so consistently worried about it? 

I have no idea.

What have I learned over this year? Absolutely nothing. Anything I type here I will end up going back on and forgetting within a week [month at most]. 

What am I looking forward to the most in the second year? Based on this historical look back, probably starting 2-3 "recap only" campaigns and then complaining about it. Making a big deal about adding a couple of formatting elements. And still not bringing back my OG boy, Barston Bakersfield.

Poor guy.

Thanks for reading, Space Pilgrims. I love you all.