How I Solo Game
How I Solo Game
I’m just going to gush about a couple of gaming products here. I’ve posted about them before, but I’ll go into a little more detail.
Scarlet Heroes
This is the best OSR ruleset. Period. The end. I love all Kevin Crawford’s stuff, but Scarlet Heroes is special. Nominally for a single player and a DM or solo play, I’d use it for a gaming group by just changing the damage system back to the classic system. It normally uses a unique system to make it possible for a single character to play through a D&D adventure solo.
The rules for skills (traits) and saving throws are more “modern” than most OSR rules, having more in common with 13th Age’s Backgrounds than old school proficiencies or thieves skill systems.
The rules really shine in the section for solo play. You could use these to spontaneously make an adventure on the fly for a group as well. Mostly I use these to supplement the second product(s) I’m going to gush about.
Mad Monks of Kwantoom & Ruins of the Undercity
Kabuki Kaiser has taken the random dungeon generator from the 1e DMG and turned it into a solo campaign machine. Ruins is a pretty typical pseudo-european dungeoncrawl, and Mad Monks is a crazy wuxia world. These both assume the player has created an entire party of OSR/AD&D/LL characters to march through. That’s too much work for me, so I decided I’d try them with Scarlet Heroes instead. Turns out that’s like mixing two delicious things that also taste good together (that aren’t peanut butter and chocolate, because I don’t like peanut butter cups).
Kabuki covers almost all your adventuring bases. The dungeon, obviously, but also events between delves. Things might happen in the city while you’re shopping for supplies or fencing your loot. Merchants might not have the items you want right now and you’ll need to come back later. This is pretty simple in Ruins and delightfully complicated in Mad Monks. In the city of Kwantoom there are many districts with different specialties and you need to roll to see if you can even find the shop you’re looking for. Every district has its own events possible. These events can lead your character down paths to fame and power, or ruin. There’s a section of choose-your-own-adventure-like secrets to uncover when certain events in the dungeon or city are rolled.
Putting it all together
Scarlet Heroes uses regular old-school stats blocks, so no conversion is needed. I can go back and forth with no issues. If I need a bit more detail for what I encounter, I can embellish from the solo-play oracles in Scarlet Heroes.
I created a Google Community, just for myself, and made categories for each solo game. This makes it easy to sort. When my character goes into the city or on an expedition, I start a new post and label it accordingly, as you see below. I decided to write this because I was so pleased that this took less than five minutes to play out. This goes fast.
All this stuff is on Drivethrurpg.com.
You just sold a copy of Ruins! :-)
ReplyDeleteAfter the Bomb was mostly just Scarlet Heroes with random encounters from the actual book.
ReplyDeleteThe new PDF versions of Kabuki Kaiser's solo play things are so good you all! I play from my iPad with a dice app and good reader open. SO GOOD.
ReplyDeleteAlso, solo play peeps please check out my buddy Noah Stevens and his DCC solo game, as it is in a similar groovy vein at an unbeatable price point:
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/138653/HHSOLO-1--The-Hounds-of-Halthrag-Keep
Joe England I haven't tried it with a group, but I'd probably skip the Fray die, and give fighters a free attack if they drop an enemy and call it good.
ReplyDeleteI have Noah's book too, but to my shame I haven't played it yet. Good way to dive into DCC.
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention I just keep my characters in Google docs and have them open on another tab.
ReplyDeleteI don’t like peanut butter cups
ReplyDeleteuncircled!
but seriously, while i don't do solo play i am very interested in sandbox play styles and quasi-random generation of… well anything that could come up in a game, really. so thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and recommendations.
Casey G. just became a lot more awesome in my book.
ReplyDeleteThat, Casey G., that is an awesome read. It's not the first time people tell me that Scarlet Heroes and my stuff mix well together. You know what? I'll give it a try myself for the next one.
ReplyDeleteI'm too lazy to keep track of an entire party.
ReplyDeleteWell you don't necessary have to but I agree, it's best suited for a party than for a single character.
ReplyDeleteHave both of them, fantastic products!
ReplyDelete