D&D: Five Bits Of ‘Lonely Fun’ For PCs You Might Be Sleeping On
Want to spend more time with your special little guy that you made for D&D? Lonely fun might be your friend.
Lonely fun might have kind of a sad-sounding name, but it’s actually a big part of any RPG. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s the kind of fun you get from, say, reading the book and creating the perfect character. Or thinking about the kind of world you’ll make for your friends to play in.
It’s basically the time outside of the game that you spend having fun thinking about it. And, weirdly enough, it can deepen your enjoyment of a campaign, because it helps keep it fresh in the mind. Last week, we talked about a DM’s lonely fun, but there’s plenty to be had by players, too.
Coming Up With A Cool In-World Goal
One of my favorite things to do is to think about what kinds of things my character wants to do. Not just like “get a magic sword” – though that’s good too – but I like to come up with something really specific. And sometimes, petty. Like “get the wealthiest outfit I can, so that I can walk into the shop of that merchant who was rude to me and really show him.”
I think the more personal, the better. And things you can sort of drive yourself to do, like join the mages guild, or find the perfect gift for an old friend. Basically, if it were the main plot of a Frieren episode, it’s probably a great start.
Thinking About Character Arcs
Not far off from daydreaming about what your amazingly cool OC will do, is daydreaming about how they might change. Aka thinking about all the ways your character might become a hero, or learn a little something about courage, or find their lost family member. Or whatever. You think about your own personal story arc.
And you might be thinking, but isn’t that a collaborative thing you discover in play? Well yeah, but you come to the table with ideas and then see what happens once dice start rolling and other people get involved. The key is don’t get too attached to your daydream, but use it as fuel for your roleplay.
Planning Your Build
On the other side of it is figuring out what mechanical stuff you’ll take. This is probably one of the more common bits of lonely fun – but it bears mentioning, if you’ve never thought about how you’d optimize and/or min/max your character, it can be a lot of fun. Think about all the features you might snag. All the items you could use to really make your character absolutely disgusting in a fight.
Come Up With Combos
Closely related to figuring out your character build is looking for fun combos. Even if you aren’t a big optimizer, it can be a lot of fun to look at the stuff on your character sheet and figure out all the ways it might fit together. This is something as simple as figuring out that softening someone up with a cantrip that penalizes a save before you cast a big spell bomb that incapacitates them. But maybe you’ve got crazier capabilities. I don’t know; but looking at your sheet and thinking about it? Great lonely fun.
Do Your Own Worldbuilding
Finally there’s your own little bit of worldbuilding. Now, every table is different. But even in the most basic of backstories, you do some of your own worldbuilding. Even if you don’t name the town your character grew up in, you certainly get to think about what it was like. And who your character’s parents were and stuff like that.
You can kind of keep going from there, having a bunch of ideas about how your character fits into the world, and the people who orbit around them.
What are your favorite pieces of lonely fun as a player?
