Roll your own

I haven't had time to write up my investigations yet, so here's a general solo playing post.

So one of the boons, and banes, of solo play is being able to do your own thing.

It is almost overwhelmingly a good thing but I often find myself in the opposite camp, and this post is a reminder to myself of the good things over the bad.

Boons

You can play any game/setting you want
If you want to play something obscure that there is no hope of getting any group for, then there's nothing stopping you. So if that's a Police Quest or Hill Street Blues homage to regular police work, or Witch Hunting in a fantasy world of your own devising, then get to it!

You can use any system you want
Similar to the above, if you want to use Advanced Heroquest to run in the Warhammer FRP 1st edition setting then go ahead.

You can get rules wrong and nobody cares
Forget to roll for knocking down an opponent in Pendragon or screw up a damage roll in Mini Six, it doesn't matter.

You can play any character you want
Want to play as a Hylian wanderer in Ryuutama?

At a time to suit you
If you have a demanding job, or worse yet, live in a place other than US, then getting a group together even online can be a difficult process.

There is no-one to embarrass
Your character take a shine to the Princess, want to role-play that romantic relationship that's so important to your character. Well now you can sweet talk to your heart's content, and not to some sweaty GM.

You can cheat and no one cares
Did that shot between the eyes just take out your character permanently? Well, you can re-roll that surely, what's the chance of that happening again?

You can try different things and reset
So that ruleset you cobbled together or wanted to tryout not giving you the results you wanted? You can easily switch it over to something more in line with your vision of your game without someone complaining about it.

Banes

There is so much choice
Choice paralysis is a real thing for the solo gamer. When you can choose anything, you can often end up not choosing anything.

Game acquisition
You can keep getting more and more games just to try out - without finding the acutal time to try them out.

There's no-one to hold you to account
Don't feel like gaming tonight? Well, there's no-one to tell you to be on time, or anyone to upset by skipping the game.