
The utilitarian pleasures of playing board games by yourself - exanimo_sai
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/utilitarian-pleasures-playing-board-games-by-yourself
======
qaid
As an only child, I used to spend my summers playing board games by myself. It
started with monopoly (which my babysitter introduced me to) and carried over
to chess and beyond.

For many of the games, I ended up assigning one player to be “me” and
different personalities to “the other players,” who each had different styles.
I also tried my best to stop “myself” from cheating by forgetting what cards
“everyone else” had. After all, games are not fun when someone is cheating.

Thankfully, my days of playing board games by myself is long over. However, I
still have a tendency to take a long time to calculate my next move since I’m
always trying to factor in what everyone else is doing.

~~~
galfarragem
I'm also an only child and I'm thankful that I was raised in an area with
plenty of kids. I never missed having real siblings. (Future) Parents of this
world remember this when choosing a place to live, specially nowadays that
only childs are becoming the norm.

~~~
spugody
Aside from being in that area, did you wish you had a sibling growing up?
Selfishly my partner and I want to stick with a single child but for his sake
we are thinking of having another.

~~~
galfarragem
I never wished I had real siblings, I had 2 "brothers" and an older "sister"
living next doors while a kid. Despite my personal anecdata, I would prefer to
have more than one child. Being a single child has more negatives than
positives. Parents always expect/demand more and can't avoid to treat them as
scarce.

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navbaker
I can't recommend Fantasy Flight Games' co-op card offerings enough. They
allow 1-4 people to play against an encounter deck that acts as the opposition
and generates the story of the quest/encounter.

-Lord of the Rings: They have the rights to the books, not the movies, which allows for a ton of creative writing and characters. Definitely the heaviest and most complex of the three, but allows for the most granularity in deck building. Has an enormous card pool.

-Arkham Horror: VERY story driven, cosmic horror theme that draws heavily from Lovecraft writing, but isn't afraid to blaze its own path. Feels very much like an RPG.

-Marvel Champions: Lighter weight than the other two, but an absolute blast to play. Very pick up and play with minimal story, feels like an action brawler. The newest of the three. Deck building is much less of a chore than with the others. You pick a super hero, they come with fifteen hero-specific cards, then pick an aspect (think color from Magic) and fill out the deck with only cards from that aspect.

~~~
lukifer
It isn't one-player exactly, but it's easy to jump into from home during
quarantine, so quick plug: FFG's tragically deceased LCG Android:Netrunner
lives on digitally at [http://jinteki.net](http://jinteki.net), and the
community is very welcoming to new players. (It's also open-source and quite
elegantly engineered using Clojure/ClojureScript.)

~~~
navbaker
There is a solo variant for both the runner and corp that you can find on
BoardGameGeek. I believe the runner side is called Running Solo, can’t
remember what the corp side is called. I printed it out ages ago and never
tried it, you’ve inspired me to give it a go today!

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9214
Design of 1-player and 0-player games is a topic that really interests me, but
finding any coherent resources on it is a non-trivial task.

Aside from card solitaire reviews, Hesse's "glass-bead games" (aka Hipbone
games [1]) and various articles on Game of Life, only [2] with [3] seems close
enough to what I have in mind (+ variations on Jung's active imagination with
tarot, surrealist games), mainly using board games as a tool for thought and
modeling beyond the purview of classical game theory.

I would appreciate pointers in that direction.

As a bonus, if you are interested in abstract board games and eurogames, GIPF
project [4] is worth checking out.

[1]: [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38371/hipbone-
games](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38371/hipbone-games)

[2]:
[https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691025667/la...](https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691025667/laws-
of-the-game)

[3]:
[https://senseis.xmp.net/?TheProtractedGame](https://senseis.xmp.net/?TheProtractedGame)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIPF_project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIPF_project)

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altacc
As well as solo play, I've also started playing more digital versions of board
games where an AI opponent is available. Whist not at all social it is a good
way to quickly work on your strategy for when you do find a mutually
convenient time to play online with friends. Plus most of them work on a
decently powered laptop and don't need powerful graphics cards that a lot of
other games do.

~~~
pixxel
If you don't mind me asking, where do you play these digital board games?

~~~
JackMorgan
Not OP but likely the various paid and free DLC for Tabletop Simulator might
have such features. Keep in mind as someone who enjoys boardgames TS can be a
surprisingly steep learning curve.

~~~
oarsinsync
> Plus most of them work on a decently powered laptop and don't need powerful
> graphics cards that a lot of other games do.

Tabletop Simulator absolutely kills my 15" 2015 MBP (integrated graphics
only). The interface is laggy, and the fans are running at max after about 10
mins of gameplay.

Not that it doesn't work when there's no dedicated digital alternative that it
exists, but its generally my absolute last choice.

~~~
altacc
Have you tried Tabletopia? Lacks the AI, so it's for playing against real
opponents, but runs in the browser. It's still laggy at times though, it's not
quite scaled to cope with the increased numbers staying home.

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k__
Half-OT: Anyone knows good contemporary board/card games for two players?

I like deduction games like "Mastermind".

~~~
redshirtrob
"Ticket To Ride" is a nice, casual play as a two person game. "Twilight
Struggle" is fun but much more intense.

"Small World" is a super fun, ultra confrontational game in two player mode.

~~~
caf
The hidden objectives in Ticket To Ride might suit that OP's request for a
deductive element as well.

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drewcoo
Works for typical puzzle/optimization Euros, but not for the games my gaming
groups have enjoyed most. Anything involving politics, diplomacy, intrigue,
back stabbing and the like just don't work solo. Nor do RPGs except for grindy
munchkin-fests like CRPGs. IMHO, that human interaction is the reason to play
games with other people.

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remmargorp64
Whenever I got bored enough to actually do something like this, I just read a
book.

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Animats
Somebody is _really_ bored.

Still, this is a great era for not being bored. There's far more content
coming out every day than anyone can consume. That was not the case two
decades ago.

~~~
altacc
For many people simply consuming media for long periods of time is boring and
unmotivating. Playing a strategy boardgame is much more interesting and
involved.

~~~
Cthulhu_
IDK, there are some really good and compelling single player video games out
there nowadays. I'm trying to play half a dozen at the same time lately <_<.

~~~
cableshaft
While I agree there's a lot of compelling single player games out there (my
PS4 backlog is over 20 games at this point, still slowly working through FF7
Remake), they tend not to really scratch the same itch.

A lot of those games are often very story or action driven, and aren't really
about successfully navigating a system of interlocking mechanisms like a lot
of board games are. There are exceptions out there (XCOM: Enemy Unknown comes
to mind, although that was designed by Ananda Gupta, the same guy who designed
one of the best thematic strategy board game ever - Twilight Struggle - and he
prototyped XCOM as a board game first), but not many.

Logistics video games also seem to work well, like Factorio or any of the
Zachtronics games, about making the most efficient system you can to
accomplish a goal.

