Welcome to another Solitaire Storytelling! Until now, Seamus has been the one leading the way on solo games coverage here, finding a lot of interesting gems among all of the recent releases. Now, though, I’m throwing my hat in the ring and seeing what solo gaming has to offer. My first game is not only a solo game, it supports between one and five players. It also comes from one of the best known names in the narrative and storytelling game world, Bully Pulpit Games. In addition to a few straight-up RPGs like Night Witches and publishing other designers’ games, like Star Crossed, Bully Pulpit Games and its lead designer Jason Morningstar are likely best known for Fiasco, a comic game of Coen Brothers-style antics and table improv. The game I played this week takes a card-based format like that of the newest Fiasco edition and uses it for a very different purpose; instead of comedy we’re leaning into horror.

Desperation is a game with two scenarios about people pushed to the brink. Dead House is about a small town in Kansas about to be hit by a massive snowstorm while The Isabel is about a fishing vessel out in the Gulf of Alaska, shipping out on what will be its last voyage. For my solitaire experience, I chose to play The Isabel; my New England upbringing has given me a predisposition to nautical tales (or maybe being caught in a snowstorm hit too close to home). Sitting at home, I cleared off my coffee table, put on some creepy atmospheric music to set the mood, and set up the card deck as instructed in the game’s booklet. After being introduced to the ship and its passengers, each card brought me through a terrible storm, rickety boats at sea, and finally a handful of survivors washed up on a remote island. When all was said and done there had been drownings, murders, and a suicide. Three survivors were rescued; two of the grizzled crew members and the late captain’s daughter, who must now live with the fact that she stole food from the others in order to survive.

Desperation tells two grim tales, and the cards are numbered to help identify potentially upsetting topics, listed in the booklet so you can remove them if needed. It’s not exactly possible to sanitize this experience, though; each phase has roughly a dozen cards and, as per the booklet, if you cut any one phase down to less than eight because of content warnings, this probably isn’t the game for you.

The Isabel is played in three phases which equate to being on the boat in a storm, being cast off into dories (fishing launches serving as lifeboats), and finally washed up ashore. Play goes around to each player in order as they pick up a card and follow its instructions. This starts simple, with the first task being to place the areas of the ship and the second to introduce the cast of characters, reading the descriptions of the ship and of people aloud as the card is placed on the play surface as instructed. After that, though, play begins. Whenever a player draws a card from one of the three phases (i.e. after the ship and character cards are placed), they first read the card to themself and then decide which of the characters the card’s text is being spoken by. They then read the card out loud as that character, and have an opportunity to ‘speak their truth’, adding more flourish and detail or even pulling another character in for a scene with the help of another player. As you get further into the game, though, especially into the second and third acts, ‘speak your truth’ is often joined with a second part of the prompt where a character is consigned to ‘the Deep’. In this case, the character who is speaking the text on the card either dies, kills someone, fails to save a life, or some other macabre happening. Of course, this means that the player who pulled the card now not only has to choose who says it, but who is dying after that round. The game continues either until you draw the ‘salvation’ card which is inserted randomly into the second half of the third act, or when everyone is dead.

Desperation is a much more constrained play experience than its predecessor Fiasco. As the events are defined and you’re going to play with about 80-90% of the cards in your deck, there’s not a huge range of different storylines to investigate. This is one reason why the Desperation set includes two different scenarios in it. The other side to this, though, is that the game invites you to interpret the characters differently and add your own flavor to them, and this flavor will drive a different set of outcomes every time. For me, though, I played the game solo; while I still found it a really interesting experience and narrative, I know that playing it again solo probably isn’t going to do much more for me. In my playthrough of The Isabel, there were three survivors who got rescued, a lot of tragic deaths, and a few dark secrets, at least one of which wasn’t taken to the grave. I imagine if I played again there would be different survivors, or maybe the luck of the cards would consign everyone to death. Even so, I don’t think things would feel that different, especially compared to if I played again with three or four friends. There, with a group of people who all share the storytelling, there’s going to be more different voices and also more opportunity to play around, to go through the game more slowly and build up to the conclusion with some additional flair and flavor.

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I enjoyed my playthrough of The Isabel. By playing through alone, though, it was made pretty clear that though the game can be played solo it isn’t designed as a solo RPG. Now that I’ve cracked the protective plastic on my deck, though, I’m going to want to play it again. Desperation is not a complicated game, but that means you can get right into a bit of roleplay and some weighty decisions both without much rules teaching and, in fact, without much RPG experience. Just like Fiasco, all you need is a little understanding of improv and a group of friends you’re comfortable with to get a much deeper experience of a story than you could from a book or movie. Desperation is a bit more constrained than games like Fiasco; if you played, say, Camp Death two or three times you’d probably get very different stories, while The Isabel will always be about a shipwreck off of Alaska.

While I enjoyed my first Solitaire Storytelling experience, picking a game that would have worked better with friends is perhaps not an ideal way to start. Even so, I’m at an impasse. Should I investigate another group RPG that happens to have solo rules, or should I jump into one of the strictly solo games on my shelf? While I’m mulling this over, you should go check out Desperation. Bully Pulpit is putting cards down for tragedy just as well as they have for comedy, and anyone with a taste for dark tales will enjoy this. Even better, you can play it alone or with friends.

Desperation is available from Bully Pulpit Games, and as a print-and-play on DriveThruRPG.

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