Would anyone here like to playtest a possibly way too difficult mini 4-page post-apocalyptic Fighting Fantasy style thing I have written? It has a new type of combat system and 3 win conditions, and can be played in about 15-30 mins. You need a 6 sided dice and 10 double sided counters (which can be anything as long as you can differentiate one side from the other).
It is called “Revenge of the Foaming Mutant”.
Gamebook Adventurer ?
Working with the Index Card RPG system for interesting roleplay.
My character Boshgo is pretty much complete, or at least ready for action if not enabled with any backstory or personality.
In ICRPG players begin with 6 points to divide between the six stats (Str, Dex,Con, Wis, Int, and Cha) but also armor, weapon damage, magic damage, basic effort (for non-combat action) and Ultimate Effort which comes into play if you roll a 20.
The map is set at level ten. All monsters, traps, and challenges are set at level ten unless otherwise specified.
Monsters are hit on a ten or better and do 1d6 damage.
Traps can be evaded on a ten or better.
The * on the map are encounters. I made a separate encounter table. Monsters traps artifacts…
I don’t need stats for monsters so i have Sparks like Crawling Floating Slithering…
I haven’t tried.it yet but there’s a lot here.
So I’ve been thinking about a solo Spy thing again. In particular I was thinking of learning the James Bond RPG. It has a lot of old school reaction & encounter tables that I think would be great in Solo. While looking around online I found a series of blog posts where someone did that very thing back in 2010.
The 2nd & 3rd posts in the series in particular I think would be a great illustration for a n00b to Solo RPG’ing of how it’s done. It features Mythic & UNE in action, & does a good job of illustrating of how a few die rolls & interpreting a few results on some random tables turns into a cool story, with a little imagination. I also like how minimal the die rolling is vs the amount of narrative they yield.
Shame the blogger didn’t finish the adventure. Looks like they’d gone dark for a couple years, but just posted again last month, so who knows…?
https://rpgnouns.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/elisha-zheng-double-oh-one/
https://rpgnouns.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/with-royal-sanction-pre-credit-sequence/
https://rpgnouns.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/with-royal-sanction-part-1/
https://rpgnouns.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/with-royal-sanction-part-2/
Just wanted to share my solo method. It’s really simple, but works for me.
1d6 is the oracle
Rory’s storycubes are the engine.
Roll 3 cubes to establish where the first scene takes place. Pick any or all images.
Roll 3 cubes to establish the quest or adventure impetus. Again, pick any or all images.
Play out the scene using a d6 to answer yes or no questions. Usually 50/50 but modified depending on likelihood.
When establishing a new NPC, event or location, roll 3 cubes.
I tend to use a mix of medieval and regular cubes.
Pimp my solo rpg kit: I had my eyes on one of these for a while. And as we time constrained solo players know, a quick set-up is crucial. And I go on a business trip tomorrow, so it was a must buy.
Ironsworn Session 2
Originally shared by Eric Bright
Session 2 posted!
Story Stacks review:
I backed the Kickstarter campaign for this card-based story-telling/role-playing game a while ago and just got around to trying it out last night. TL;DR: Though intended for a GM and a group of players, it works as a solo exercise as a way to play out a quick randomly generated scene.
How to play:
1. Draw two cards, each with a Mission and Setting printed on them. Choose one of the two possible combinations. (I chose Locked in a room with only one door / Experimental research station). From these, come up with a description of the scenario.
2. Draw two character cards and choose one. (I chose Spy, which has a bonus to stealth-related actions)
3. Lay out three plot point cards and one complication above the second plot point facedown. (I drew: Space Mech, Axe-throwing Beaver, and Needs a Key as plot points. The complication gave a bonus to action resolution.)
4. Reveal a plot point, decide what happens, and decide on an action.
5. Use cards from the Chance deck to decide whether the action succeeds or fails (pretty simple, ask if you want details).
6. Move on to the second plot point; also reveal the complication.
7. Resolve the plot point as before, applying complication when relevant.
8. Ditto for plot point #3 (sans complication).
9. The End.
I ran through this before bed as a quick demo, so I just let it play out in my head without trying much to fill in details.
After being discovered infilitrating a high tech facility run by nefarious evil-doers, the Spy escapes through a door along a corridor and finds himself in a giant hangar-like space, in which sits an untended mech surrounded parts and tools. He decides to try to get the mech started and climbs up into the cockpit (action succeeds). Just as he begins to figure out the controls, the sole door flies open and then slams shut behind one of his pursuers, a bio-engineered beaver-man (!?) that begins hurling axe blades at him. The spy awkwardly guides the lumbering mech at his foe and attacks it (action succeeds). Splattering the bucktoothed assailant, the spy then decides that the only way out is the way he came in, hoping the corridor is large enough to allow him to pilot the mech as he fights his way out of the facility. Since the door has locked behind his last foe, he begins to bash it in with the mech’s claws (action succeeds). The door crumples and the mech begins lumbering through it and out into the awaiting corridor…
On the box they say this game lasts an hour. Maybe with a table of gamers and/or a different scenario this could run that long, but based on this one test drive, it seems better suited to generating a three “act” scene, rather than a full adventure. Not counting time reading the short rules, I probably played for 10 minutes tops. I feel like I managed to pull it all together somewhat, but the randomness is pretty high (and it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the beaver doesn’t suddenly turn things toward the absurd). Playing the rules as written modified as a solo game, it was a fun little bit of story-telling and felt like good practice for stitching together random prompts into something (semi-)coherent. The only real catch for solo play is figuring how to handle the complication, which is supposed to be secret until triggered.
Of course the other way to use this is to ditch the character and action resolution system and just use the narrative stuff to frame a scene for use with an existing RPG. That would probably require some broad reinterpretation of the cards to make them genre-appropriate (research facility = wizard’s tower, mech = some weird magical contraption or golem, etc).
At $30 (KS price and current price at the internet retail behemoth), I’m not totally sure it’s worth that, but since I have it, I’ll probably keep messing around with it a bit more. I actually kind of enjoyed it exactly as I played it, as a short creative exercise before bed. I could also see this working well with a group regardless of prior RPG experience. Given its fairly short length, it could be slotted into a game night along with other tabletop games.
Anyone else tried this?
Here’s a continuation of my solo game.
Originally shared by John Feldman
Returning to the Keep, the Company stables the horse and mules. The bandits have taken many of their mounts. They now have three riding horses and four mules. The supply of grain is still intact. In all, they have thirty seven days of grain remaining.…
These cards have everything you could want from any oracle, and so much more. I don’t see any other solo system replacing these any time soon.
Originally shared by Nathan V
My Gamemaster’s Apprentice cards arrived!
Now, so long as I’m at least familiar with the system, I can run any game with zero prep!
Solo play report posted to the Ironsworn community and my first try at sharing across communities thanks to Todd Zircher’s kind instructions. Thanks, Todd, for the help!
Originally shared by Eric Bright
Just posted Episode 1, Session 1 of Ironsworn solo play with my shepherd turned hero. Check it out!
Lone Wolf Roleplaying 