Morten Pedersen, designer behind the solo modes for games such as Scythe and Viticulture, discusses how to scale a game down to one player and create a great solo experience.
Morten has his own design company that focuses on creating single player systems for games and has even won awards for it. For more, check out Morten’s blog here.
13 comments on “Creating a Great Solo Variant with Morten Pedersen”
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Fantastic episode! Solo play has been super interesting to me as I have less time to meet with a regular group. I thought it was great when Morten was talking about the necessity of keeping costs down for his variants.
Any chance you could do a two-player episode? Or I would also be interested in an episode with a designer or publisher for games that utilize Apps.
I’m happy to hear that you like it, Wyatt, thanks 🙂
Like you, I have trouble finding the time for frequent multiplayer gaming. Ironically, I’ve had even less time to play games with my friends after I started working in the board game business.
My newer problem has been purchasing giant solo games like Gloomhaven, 7th Continent, and City of Kings that are/will be hard to get to as well due to time (like you mentioned with COIN)!
Yeah, this is also the reason, why I still haven’t tried Mage Knight, Magic Realm, and Last Frontier: The Vesuvius Incidence.
I would love to play them, but the barrier of entry is simply to high for me currently.
Thanks! Yeah, I think there’s a lot of people right there with you who are playing a lot of solo games because it’s so much easier to get to the table.
I did a two-player episode back in December with Rahdo. http://www.boardgamedesignlab.com/how-to-create-the-perfect-2-player-experience/
But I’m looking to do another episode on the topic and talk to a designer who’s created some 2 player games.
An episode about games with apps is also in the works.
Thanks for listening!
Listening to the episode with Rahdo now, thanks for the recommendation and glad to hear about the app design episode.
Thanks Gabe!
Hi Gabe
Thank you very much for having me on the show. It was very interesting to talk to you and as I’ve mentioned to you I’ve listened to all your episodes over the past two weeks. They’re really helpful to me and your podcast is the first one I’ve ever subscribed to.
As an aside, the first time I tried to post a comment, I was told that it was blocked, because I was suspected of being a bot, which I found pretty funny given the topic, we we’re talking about 🙂
Cheers
– Morten
Again, thanks for coming on the show, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the other episodes!
I’m not sure why the site blocked you at first. Probably has something to do with all the shady people in Denmark…
That might be it 🙂
Agreed about the quality of the podcast. It would be interesting to see behind the scenes on an episode or on the site how you produce episode for the show, get the guests etc
Not much magic to it right now. It’s a lot of email, Skype, and Audacity. But hopefully one day soon, there will be a little more to it. I’ve got a long list of ideas.
Gabe,
Absolutely fantastic interview! Among the folks in the game design and development space for whom I really appreciate their work, Morten is easily in my Top 5! The podcast had great information and I really enjoyed his candid answers. It is really is much, much more about passion instead of profit and as I’m in the throes of devising soloable scenarios for our latest Kickstarter, Tradewars (and my 2nd published game), Morten’s comment about finding the balance between “simplicity” and “simulation” resonated deeply with me.
Cheers,
Joe
Thank you for your kind words, Joe, and for your contributions to our community.