Hope is Not a Plan: A Depressing Solo Journaling RPG
Enter the professional world of project management in a realistic solo roleplaying experience with Hope is Not a Plan.
Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly excited to dive into Hope is Not a Plan. My real work involves multiple levels of project management, along with everything that entails! My husband picked this up for me in the hopes that it might be an interesting way to write away the stresses or otherwise explore this topic in a creative way. Only one way to find out!
Game Overview
Game Name: Hope is Not a Plan
Publication Year: 2020
Designer: Steve Wright
Artist: Unsplash
Publisher: Deus Ex Minima
Solo Mode: Designed for Solo (Included in the Base Game)
With a deck of cards and optional tumbling tower, this is a journey of writing about everything that goes on with managing a project. Everything goes wrong, and the challenge to stay on-schedule is one that never quite lines up with the best laid plans! Yet one must ever persevere…
Vague Beginnings
I figured I would try to approach this in a more fantastical or imaginary way to distance myself from the real world.
The trouble was that the setup process was extremely open-ended, and I still felt like I had to stick with a modern, fairly realistic sort of setting for it to work.
There weren’t a lot of options provided in the book itself, so I resorted to using randomizers and my imagination.
My company was Wonderprises, which was a wonderful name! The project was centered around managing investments for space travelers who stayed alive in stasis.
Storyteller Cards
The book is entirely devoid of illustrations, so I had to fill in a lot of ideas myself. I’ve been searching for a way to use my Storyteller Cards, and they were perfect here!
This is a standard deck of playing cards with illustrations on every card. I may not love the art style, yet the cards are great for showing a person, location, item, and action.
So much personality! These helped bring my journey to life a little bit more, as the card prompts were very basic.
I’ll also say to look closely at these cards. If you know what I usually hide, you should be pleasantly surprised…
Too Much Realism
In a nutshell, I didn’t particularly care for these prompts. I didn’t see any reason to add details to what I would classify as fairly depressing, realistic situations.
Are they realistic? Definitely! I believe the author based at least 30 of 52 prompts on actual experiences.
There is a warning at the start about this being quite realistic, yet I was hoping to find something to inject a little humor into the world of project management.
I also didn’t see why I would want to play again with how specific and unhappy practically every event was.
An Awful Feeling
Not surprisingly, things went poorly and I lost the game by being fired. This is technically a spoiler, but it’s so unfortunate that I think it’s important to mention.
The ending states that the entire experience came from an unreliable narrator, and you were set up to lose from the start. Joke’s on you: You thought you could do it.
It then explains how to play again with an easier start to simulate learning from failure… But why? Why do this?
These cards explain my reactions perfectly. I felt misled and tricked into a trap, which did not improve the theme.
Exploring the Reasons for Solo Journaling
What went wrong here? Many things, although I’ll admit I probably wasn’t the right person to try this one out. That ending felt pretty rough, though… It was like I was punished for trying to play a game. Note, too, that success is very much tied to the order of the cards, so it wasn’t like I learned how to play better for another attempt. Just deflating.
Yet it got me thinking about the solo journaling genre. There are often fantastical elements tied to it, where only portions are steeped in reality. That’s where a lot of these shine for me: I don’t have any direct experiences to the entire setting or theme. Some situations might dredge up stress or bad memories, but those are very rare and often known.
In this case, the entire experience is realistic. I still believe that might work as a way to relieve stress for some, yet I am not in that group. My professional experiences have been built to leave behind as much of the negative work situations as possible. I love what I do in real life and work with awesome people who help me avoid the situations depicted here!
Going back to memories of working with dysfunctional teams was not helpful for me. I’m extremely lucky to be doing what I’m doing, and feel thankful without needing to be reminded of what this game calls professional horror.
Simple Journal Entries
One of my bigger challenges lately has been writing shorter entries when roleplaying, and I’m doing well!
In this case, however, I mostly copied over the details and found very few ways to embellish my status reports. It was very realistic, but not in a way that helped me in any way.
Perhaps living out project management debacles is a good way to deal with everyday stresses. If that works for you, awesome! This is probably an excellent, realistic choice.
For me, this was an exercise in creating stress. It felt like someone was laughing at me for even attempting to play.
Continue the Conversation
Have you played Hope is Not a Plan? Are there any other solo RPGs you’ve tried out, only to discover they were not quite what you expected? I probably wasn’t going to be in the target audience to begin with, so take my assessment with several grains of salt. At least I got to use a different deck of cards, and know to steer clear of similar RPG experiences!
Ugh. Why? Why would they do that to the player. I used to run a wind farm, and I think it’s really was just a resource management game at is core, but inflicting that experience on someone else? Shudder.
Thank you for the review. I’ve been digging into solo games lately. This one will not make the list.
It felt more like it was a helpful exercise for the author to write about these issues. Maybe it works for some to relieve stress, but it sounds like you’re in the same boat as me with this doing just the opposite!
Good luck as you dig into some more solo games! I’ll be covering some more solo RPGs, too, many of which offer great experiences!