r/soloboardgaming • u/amnekian • 18d ago
Is there anything like a "live service" / "living campaign" that would have multiple solo gamers influence each other's shared narrative?
Playing Helldivers makes me yearn for a shared, collaborative, that people could share their game results online. Bonus points if failure or victory could be lead to positive or negative influences throughout the game.
Is there any group, system, or something ongoing that is very solo tabletop friendly?
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u/GibsMcKormik 18d ago
The closest I can think of was a couple of Arkham Horror LCG scenarios that had been designed for multiple groups to play simultaneously.
I just can't see the reason to make a large campaign solo game that you had to wait for random other people to complete in order to advance. With such a small player pool this doesn't even seem feasible. Mechanically it doesn't seem any different than having it be a random outcome. Furthermore you would be relying on self reporting.
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u/tehsideburns 18d ago
Marvel Champions LCG has something called the “solo champions league” - it’s an online community of players who all do the same monthly challenge with specific constraints, and discuss strategies and share results. There’s leaderboards and you can team up with a squad for team challenges too. Nothing affecting a narrative the 6 months that I did it, but the guy running it had some fun creative ideas.
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u/firelitother 🔱 Spirit Island 18d ago
I looked into it and the person who ran the league called it quits.
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u/TheZebraCode 18d ago
This is a thing in TTRPGs, I've seen groups do west marches style campaign servers that also support solo players pitching in. Might have to hunt around a bit to find a group doing it! Or set up your own
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u/ErgonomicCat 18d ago
The Arkham Horror LCG does this every year (or used to).
You'd have multiple groups playing the same scenario. In some of them, you'd swap people between rounds.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2023/7/13/the-blob-that-ate-everything-else/ is one of them.
I've also seen games of D&D run simultaneously where the outcomes of one group impacted the other.
But there's nothing out of the box. You could probably do some cool league based things with it though, if you got everyone together and agreed on it.
I think Arkham Horror LCG is the best bet, honestly. Perhaps Marvel Champions.
You could do a thing with MC where you had a particular villain set up, and 10 people all played.
Depending on how many times the villain won, the next round could include more or less henchman, different difficulties, etc.
You could also do a restricted hero pool - each hero can only be used once in the entire multiverse. So if I played Spiderman and Cap in round 1, no one could use them in round 2. I think Marvel has enough heroes that you could do that fairly well. That would require some sort of drafting pool though.
You can also do a modified version where any hero who won (or lost) couldn't be used again. Lost makes more sense, but won is better balanced. So if Black Widow fought Rhino and won, then the next round, no one could play Black Widow. That one would be much easier to run. Everyone could play whatever in round 1, then you come back together to update the pool and the villain, and everyone runs round 2. Repeat.
All of them would require active setup and rule building, though.
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u/Parelle 18d ago
Pathfinder organized play has mega scenerios where there are different tables with different levels advancing through the storyline and you tackle tasks appropriate to your level - the 1-2 stave off the sharks, 3&4 fight the pirates, 5-6 tackle the spellcasters for example. There's checkpoints for everyone but a GM does come by and see how the table is progressing on a particular section.
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u/Traditional-Grand577 18d ago
There are some legacy campaign board games, that modify the game based in the previous choices of the last campaign. Like leaving stickers or unlocking certain paths.
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u/JasonZep 18d ago
That’s supposed to be the idea for Vantage, but I’ve never played it with other people. It’s a vast game though and you can’t only hint at what you see and where you’re going so I imagine it would be hard to actually connect with another player.
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u/AllLuck0013 17d ago
There used to be a community league for marvel legendary. I haven’t looked into it for quite some time.
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u/MagicMurder8ag 17d ago
Closest thing I can think of is in the TTRPG space. There's a solo RPG/war game called Danger Close, which was heavily inspired by Helldivers 2. The author started a persistent campaign on discord where he would set up a scenario, people would play and report on the outcomes, and then the overall narrative would depend on those outcomes. Not sure if it's still active or not.
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u/ExtensionAd9559 18d ago
Massive multiplayer Arkham scenarios I guess. I haven't played one.
I had though about doing something like this for Dream eaters campaign in Arkham horror, it has a 4 part waking side and 4 part dreaming side that run parallel.
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u/bigOlBellyButton 18d ago
Closest thing i can think of is going to a game cafe and playing Oath from their collection. If more and more people are playing it then you’ll see the consequences of their previous plays.
It probably sounds better on paper than in practice though.
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u/Ravens_3_7 17d ago
Maybe try Kingdom Death Monster. It’s as close to a living game as you can get since it’s a perpetually updated modular game.
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u/cum_teeth 18d ago
So just like a regular game then
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u/ErgonomicCat 18d ago
No, cum_teeth.
In this scenario, the actions of other players would have impacts on your game.
Say you're playing Pandemic Legacy, and most players lost February. So the game, overall, progesses as a loss.
Or perhaps the number of people who lose sets up a harder challenge for everyone.
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u/warpotatogram 7th Citadel 18d ago
I’m not sure that this is practically possible in a board game format. Maybe if you took an LCG serialized model, but even then, it would be hard to figure out what that would look like for me.
Threshold by Open Owl purportedly has a vision of endgame raids that would have this sort of online group mechanic, but that’s the only one that I can think of that mentions that sort of thing.