>"Even then it might begin to get a little bit samey, so suggest your friends could design your scenario and stick it in an envelope."
>"play by post without any feedback"

>filled a micro niche between choose your own adventure books and role playing games in the pre-computer era, for like several years (83-85), and then disappeared from the world.

These were literally computer game replacements, when computers were inaccessible/weak. Today such niche simply doesn't exist. The people who want "their own adventure without socializing" go for computer games with proper AI and actual, complex, non-rudimentary world generation only a computer can "roll", and the people who want actual roleplaying (social activity) do actual role playing by gathering together.

Your situation with your social incompatibility with humanity and the desire to get away from the computer is unique to you. Maybe there are another 2 or 3 freaks like you, but that's it.

Only useful in case nuclear electromagnetic pulses destroy all electronics and nuclear bombs destroy all the semiconductor infrastructure. But in such scenario you won't be in need of entertainment while living in a comfortable apartment/house -- the life itself will be too "entertaining" to bear.

Why are you so upset?

>People play pen and paper game to have an excuse to turn off phone.

If what you say was true there would be plenty of solo roleplaying games. But they died off as a commercial product in the 80ies. People play pen and paper games not as an excuse to turn of device, but to prevent devices from disrupting one-on-one and one-to-many interaction. If some hologram tech is invented, that would allow people to look at each other and not at the screens while playing, even the literal pen and paper might go the way of the dodo.

Pen and paper also describes the type of rules of the game -- something that can be understood and verified by the players without the need for computer, and that's not going away, since it's profoundly uncomfortable to rely on "ruleset" oracle.

>Or because it challenges their own brain, instead of AI.

Whatever you describe as your solo play doesn't provide any actual additional brain challenge vs the same game against AI executed on a computer, that controls monsters and generates the world for you. What you describe as the challenge is mechanic/arithmetical chores.

>there is a reason they are called pen-n-paper,
and not pen, paper and a bunch of real life NPCs.

And what that reason might be? Pray tell!

Maybe because it's the obvious omission of the default assumption -- that games are primarily for playing among several people.

Also because it's the sociable people who define the vocabulary, not the aggressive loners? You can write a rage post about that, how it's the fucking normies who control the vocab, there should be a loner vocab, with blackjack and all the needed stuff.

>With computers game designers, programmers and CPU play the game for you.
>But if you're okay with dialogue tree NPC or some ChatGPT running it...

What are you even strawmanning here?

...

I googled around, turns out you are not alone in this solo roleplay weirdness. Well, I never said it's completely illegitimate. There are people who need it apparently, but I don't see the enjoyment at all in generating a dungeon manually, doing rolls on the go for stuff that should be fogged, and playing against dum-dum monsters that don't have coordination. I would program or play a computer game instead, and people like me are in total majority on this issue.

I blame the rise of sperging autistic transgenders (of which there are many) coming out of the closet and embracing their inner "self" in the last decade and half for the increased demand for this, lol. But seriously -- this is a worrying dynamic.

>statistical modelling

calling it "statistical modelling" is really a misnomer. One can call solo roleplayers "data scientists" with about the same success.

it's as close to statistics as using a calculator for grocery list is to numerical analysis.

Also, Gygax was a businessman, and choose your own adventure was an existing niche at the time (that was killed by computers). Trying to establish a foothold in that niche was natural. Turned out it wasn't viable.