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Angrymog posted:I actually find myself really giving the rules a workout in solo games, whereas I'm more likely to just make something up in a live game in order to keep things flowing. It's the pushback from other people that keeps you honest. When you're alone, if you're not getting pushback from the rules you imposed on yourself, what's left?
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Jun 22, 2021 00:54
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Yeah, when you play solo it feels like if you're not following the rules, are you actually playing a game or just daydreaming with extra steps?
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Jun 22, 2021 02:20
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"Daydreaming with extra steps" seems like as good a metaphor as any for a solo RPG: what are traditional tabletop RPGs but playing "let's pretend we're wizards and warriors" with your friends, except with extra steps? Been playing a lot of the "randomly generated dungeon" meta-game in the back of the AD&D 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide lately. I guess it was originally intended to generate dungeons for a DM to run their players through, but it works suitably well as a solo dungeon, which I experimented at times when I couldn't find a gaming group; roll up a group of characters, send them wandering in the underdark. The tables include rolls for generating dungeon passages and rooms, monster encounters, traps, and random wandering monsters to provide a modicum of challenge, and a lot of practice at running D&D combat rounds. It's definitely a very old-school, mechanistic sort of game, not really opportunity for character development or negotiation, more along the lines of "enter room, fight monster, get treasure, move on to next room." But considering that I started playing D&D in 1978, it does remind me a bit of gaming in elementary school, and back then a lot of D&D was mechanistic hack & slash. In a way, it's like playing the old Rogue ASCII PC game (or other "roguelike" games), but without a computer, a so-called "procedural death labyrinth." While the adventure and encounters are random, I try to coax a theme out of the random die rolls. On one recent crawl, the upper level level seemed to have a lot of goblins and hobgoblins, and an unusual number of round rooms with pools in the center. Random dice rolls included multiple encounters with shriekers, one of which was followed by a random encounter with a group of goblins--the shriekers were used by the goblins as an alarm system, which alerted a nearby patrol. A lower level included an ambush by wererats where one wererat ran away due to being Commanded to flee. In the very next encounter, around the corner from the initial wererat attack, the characters discovered a large chamber with (by luck of the dice) two more wererats, one of which had close to maximum hit points, so I assumed that was the fleeing rat, who had run back to their lair to get Papa Rat and get revenge on us! The wererats also summoned a pack of rats against the party, which made for a more balanced battle. It was a tough fight and we lost a mage to one of the wererats, then subsequent encounters included two more attacks by giant rats--one of which happened after a trap was triggered blocking the party's escape from the giant rat chamber. After prevailing over the rats and reopening the trap door, we encounter another chamber--also filled with rats! Presumably, according to the dice, the semi-intelligent giant rats were in turn seeking revenge against us for killing all the wererats. I'll see what else awaits my party of adventurers in lower levels of the catacombs next time. It's an entertaining diversion on occasional weekends, and the characters are sort of evolving into a group, but I'm wondering how long the replay value will last. I recently ordered a copy of the "Solo" game for Cepheus Engine http://www.paulelliottbooks.com/solo.html, so I can try that system to run solo Traveller, the other game I played a lot of in the 1980s. I'm kind of curious to see how well it adapts to the Traveller "patron encounter" and "Amber Zone" adventure format (briefly described encounter or mission, many of which include a die roll to resolve how the actual situation differs from how the patron describes the job) that seems potentially translatable to solo play, which I'll try out using the "adventure journal" style. While it's not too hard to find friends to play AD&D (even 1e), finding willing & able Traveller players has always been difficult so I figure a solo adventure might be worthwhile.
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Jun 22, 2021 08:24
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I'm super new to solo RPGs, but I've released my first solo game and my first journaling game: Serious Reading is a comedy journaling RPG that lets you generate excerpts from fictitious opinion columns that reveal more about how bizarre and out-of-touch your columnist character is than the article's topic. Just like real life! You'll take on the role of a grossly overpaid opinion columnist who probably should have quit years ago, as most of them should have if we could only be so lucky, and use two tables of prompts to write headlines for fictional opinion pieces, ostensibly about very serious topics, and excerpts from those articles that reveal nothing about their supposed topic but everything about the bizarre, broken life of your columnist character.
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Jul 10, 2021 21:00
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Giving this a bit of a bump with something I've been thinking about lately. Anyone got any random tables they particularily like for doing solo stuff? It can be from any source, not just things intended for solo play. Aside from all the good stuff in Ironsworn/Starforged themselves, there is a fan supplement called Ironsmith that has a lot of expanded oracles. For non Ironsworn/Starforged, there is a cool thing for cyberpunk genre called Augmented Reality.
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Aug 15, 2021 05:47
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Been playing some solo Wanderhome and it's very nice. It's bringing up memories of time spent with my nan and camping trips, and it's nice to weave all that together.
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Aug 15, 2021 08:03
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Did anyone get a copy of the Thousand Year Old Vampire secret companion book? And then did anyone that got their copy figure out what it is?
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Aug 15, 2021 14:27
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EnjoiThePureTrip posted:Did anyone get a copy of the Thousand Year Old Vampire secret companion book? And then did anyone that got their copy figure out what it is? There was some discussion in the industry thread. It's like this on the inside.
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Aug 15, 2021 14:49
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Do the words appear if you put the book in moonlight?
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Aug 15, 2021 14:54
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Yeah, I got my copy and was, and am, just confused? Guess I got taught a valuable lesson about not pre-ordering things that the creator is keeping a secret. 
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Aug 15, 2021 15:25
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SkyeAuroline posted:There was some discussion in the industry thread. It's like this on the inside. Is that a ...joke? A book of redacted text? Or are you supposed to fill in yourself?
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Aug 15, 2021 15:47
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Comstar posted:Is that a ...joke? A book of redacted text? Or are you supposed to fill in yourself? It's nominally an art piece intended to represent how the protagonist vampires find no meaning in "familiar" words and pictures, or along those lines. YMMV on whether it actually works as an art piece. I'm not in the camp of "gently caress this guy for doing this, never buying again" but I am a little wary. It was, at least, described up-front as being a thing people shouldn't buy.
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Aug 15, 2021 17:43
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Is that the official explanation or just conjecture at this point? I bought it and I'm rather annoyed at it, not for the art piece gimmick, but for the sheer laziness of it. A lot more effort could have been made to get the point across rather than a simple ctrl A redact job. As such it's mildly amusing for 5 seconds and then never to be bothered with again.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:07
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iceyman posted:Is that the official explanation or just conjecture at this point? source for following redditor who asked Tim posted:Hey, /u/beyond_my_ken. I was kind of pissed, too, when I got my copy, so I reached out to Tim and basically just asked him to explain the joke, or the point of the art, or whatever it was that I clearly didn't understand. (I also asked if he'd prefer I keep his response private, but he didn't say to do that, so I'm gonna talk about what he said.) Maybe you'll find some solace in a paraphrase of what he said to me in reply.
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Aug 15, 2021 18:14
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I've been playing Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell and it's really lovely. A journalling game where you are a village witch, curing people of ailments both minor and major. You have to seek out reagents that match the tags on their ailment, and have tiny adventures in different locations. I'm saving up for a beehive because people will pay more for potions that taste nice. Gotta get that honey money. Journal page here. My writing is awful but to be fair it's only for me to read.  Galaga Galaxian posted:Giving this a bit of a bump with something I've been thinking about lately. Anyone got any random tables they particularily like for doing solo stuff? It can be from any source, not just things intended for solo play. I really like 'Table Fables' by Madeline Hale. I felt silly paying for a book of the kind of random charts you get for free all over the internet but it's really quality stuff. I'll get her other books I think.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:00
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It's like, how much more blank could it be? And the answer is none. None more blank.
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Aug 16, 2021 13:33
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Imagined posted:It's like, how much more blank could it be? And the answer is none. None more blank. It could be blanker, though - without the redaction effect it could be used as a journal as companion to the game. It's exactly not blank enough it can't be used for anything.
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Aug 16, 2021 14:13
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That was a reference to a scene in Spinal Tap where the band receives the first pressings of their new album and discover that instead of artwork it's been made entirely blank (and black). Some of the band then start trying to invent post hoc artistic interpretations for why this development is actually a good and cool thing. Whatever the optimistic version of "sour grapes" might be. Maybe "Well I wanted the grapes to be sour anyway."
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Aug 16, 2021 14:56
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The point of nailing a banana to a wall in an art museum is to get people to treat it like art and analyze it as such, not because you're smarter than hundreds of years of art criticism (although you might be), not because it's funny to make the most expensive banana to ever exist using only a nail and the right social connections (it is but that's irrelevant), but because one really interesting thing you can do with art is give people a chance to knowingly work backward from a false premise and find interesting conclusions, sometimes genuinely meaningful ones. This is why that one review of Piss Christ focuses on the otherworldly beauty of evanescent bubbles in golden light without acknowledging the fact that it's piss and Christ is suspended in piss and you're looking at the artist's piss in a bottle that he carries around and will probably sell to you. This is why the "Pierre Menard" story matters. This is why all my posts loving suck
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Aug 17, 2021 02:19
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HopperUK posted:I've been playing Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell and it's really lovely. A journalling game where you are a village witch, curing people of ailments both minor and major. You have to seek out reagents that match the tags on their ailment, and have tiny adventures in different locations. I'm saving up for a beehive because people will pay more for potions that taste nice. Gotta get that honey money. I am really liking Apothecaria too.  I also dipped my toes into her dungeon map-making game Delve and utterly devastated my dwarven hold within ten turns.
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Aug 18, 2021 21:43
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wizzardstaff posted:I am really liking Apothecaria too. Yeah, my Delve dungeon did not go so hot. I'm gonna take a good run at Umbra I think, and sort of fudge the book-keeping cuz I don't want to do combat in that game, I just wanna draw map. What familiar did you get? I got a rat with an independent streak and I think when the summer comes I'm going to have him come home with a wife and six baby rats.
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Aug 18, 2021 23:57
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HopperUK posted:Yeah, my Delve dungeon did not go so hot. I'm gonna take a good run at Umbra I think, and sort of fudge the book-keeping cuz I don't want to do combat in that game, I just wanna draw map. I actually haven't given myself one yet, I'm still only a few weeks into spring and I want to ease into the setting. Kind of just waiting for inspiration to strike. In my "trial run" experimentation that I didn't commit to canon, my first patient was a baby gryphon who wrecked up my cottage while I was away gathering ingredients. I thought maybe I'd develop that into a recurring character I could eventually befriend into a familiar. I bought the Delve PDF originally when I was just checking out the author's works, then sprung for the full deluxe option of all her games in print for the kickstarter. But that shipping has been delayed because I bundled it with the zoology sourcebook from her partner, so now I'm sitting on my thumbs waiting to try out Umbra and Rise. e: whoops, just looked at backerkit and it turns out I got all three as a digital download! Guess it's time to check those out. wizzardstaff fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Aug 19, 2021 |
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Aug 19, 2021 00:04
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Giving this a bit of a bump with something I've been thinking about lately. Anyone got any random tables they particularily like for doing solo stuff? It can be from any source, not just things intended for solo play. I really like https://donjon.bin.sh/ - it's got a good suite of randomized tools for a couple of different genres (including weird/Lovecraftian, which is rare) and some good ones for some specific games like AD&D, Traveller, etc.
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Aug 19, 2021 18:45
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I always felt hesitant to try something like this. It seemed vaguely embarrassing to play a game solo, when I thought it should be a social experience. I have buddies who I play pen n paper games with, but getting a game going and keeping it going is a challenge. There have been a number of times where someone talked about running a game, and I spent a few days reading up on materials. Then the game never happened. I've had situations where I spent a bunch of time designing a campaign, but we barely had a chance to play it. drat, that's hard to deal with. Turns out I own Ironsworn, and I'm gonna try it. I love CYOA books, and I play tons of single player games on the computer. My favorite part of playing tabletop RPGS is just going through the books, trying to understand stuff, and thinking about what I want to do with it. Just gotta say, this is amazing: HopperUK posted:I've been playing Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell and it's really lovely. A journalling game where you are a village witch, curing people of ailments both minor and major. You have to seek out reagents that match the tags on their ailment, and have tiny adventures in different locations. I'm saving up for a beehive because people will pay more for potions that taste nice. Gotta get that honey money. I love the idea of creating something in the process of playing. I have all kinds of physical art materials, and I barely use them. This might be a good opportunity to do something with it.
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Aug 20, 2021 14:54
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If you're getting into solo games and you like creating artefacts of play, Wreck This Deck might be up your street.
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Aug 20, 2021 17:28
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potatocubed posted:If you're getting into solo games and you like creating artefacts of play, Wreck This Deck might be up your street. Oh that looks cool, thanks for pointing this one out. I've actually been tinkering with creating a solo zine RPG type thing of my own partially around the idea of altering a normal deck of cards, but with very different theme and I presume gameplay to this, so this is really one to check out for me.
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Aug 20, 2021 18:20
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I've been playing a lot of ALONe lately. It's a solo game that is currently in beta by the guy who made the Game Master's Apprentice cards that uses the cards as the engine. He claims to be getting close to being ready to Kickstart it, and I'm super excited for that. If you're unfamiliar with the Game Master's Apprentice, they're cards that contain a few dozen pieces of information that can be used to improvise a scene when running a traditional RPG, or to spur creativity in other contexts. I love them. The basic mechanic in ALONe involves asking questions with narrative stakes, determining likelihood (i.e. Good odds, Even odds, or Bad odds) and drawing a card to check the odds results for a yes or no answer. Answers can be "qualified", i.e. "Yes, and..." or "No, but..." Characters have Descriptors (similar to Aspects in Fate) that help determine the odds mechanically and can also influence narrative circumstances. Random events will be triggered by comparing the DiffGen number (a 1-10 bell curve) against the current "tension" in a scene. Random events are created by combining a Verb, a Noun, and possibly an Adjective by drawing cards. For example, a few moments of play may involve your character trying to outrun some cops through a crowded mall. You might decide to drop down from the second story to the first to try to get a lead, and ask the question "Am I able to swing over the safety railing and drop down to the bottom level without hurting myself?" There are a variety of ways to choose the odds, but let's say they're even. You draw, and get "Yes, but..." You can interpret that as "Yes, but I'll have to ditch most of the stuff I stole." Or maybe draw a card to see what the "but" is and you notice the water symbol. "Yes, but I drop into a fountain and am now dripping wet, which will make me easier to follow." The cards offer lots of inspiration for interpreting the results of a given draw. Later, you might be at home trying to lie to your parents about where you've been and why you're all wet. "I pitch them a story about having stayed late at school studying, and how when I was walking across the quad to head home the sprinklers came on. Do they buy it?" Bad odds, it comes up "No, and..." Looking at the card, the DiffGen result is lower than the "tension" in the scene, which triggers a random event. You draw "LOCATE" and "ICON". The news program in the background starts in on a story about a teen that outran police after stealing from the mall vape shop, and puts up security camera footage that is obviously you. To resolve the "and..." there's a knock at the door, and you see a police car parked in your driveway. It's really fun. There are also super useful charts that let you draw cards to generate backstory and narrative background stuff that is quite productive and interesting (I've made some really compelling characters using the randomized method that are quite different from the sort of stuff I would come up with on my own). I have one game set in a sandalpunk setting of my own devising that I'm pretty invested in, and I've also been doing quick sessions to fill out background activity in a DnD game I'm running (i.e. what is this NPC up to while the players are in the dungeon?). It also totally works as a multiplayer GM-less game as long as everybody is on board with the type of game it is. I've been wanting to share it with this thread for a while. The GMA cards are on steep discount right now ($6.99 for a printed deck instead of $19.99) due to COVID-19, and the .pdf of ALONe is a pay-what-you-want beta with a recommended $4.99 price. It's absolutely worth checking out.
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Aug 20, 2021 19:45
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Solo rpgs are seriously the best form of entertainment I've discovered in a while. So many hours of fun with so many of them being so low cost. It's wild, I'm so happy to have discovered them.
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Aug 20, 2021 20:27
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Kenning posted:I've been playing a lot of ALONe lately. It's a solo game that is currently in beta by the guy who made the Game Master's Apprentice cards that uses the cards as the engine. He claims to be getting close to being ready to Kickstart it, and I'm super excited for that. If you're unfamiliar with the Game Master's Apprentice, they're cards that contain a few dozen pieces of information that can be used to improvise a scene when running a traditional RPG, or to spur creativity in other contexts. I love them. That sounds very cool. If you remember, please link the Kickstarter here whenever it starts; I'll probably wait until then to see if there is a bundle price on all the various decks (I see that there are some genre specific ones aside from the base deck) and the game.
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Aug 20, 2021 23:03
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potatocubed posted:If you're getting into solo games and you like creating artefacts of play, Wreck This Deck might be up your street. Oh, that's cool! A part of me wants to make something akin to the grail diary in Indiana Jones. Different types of media all jammed in a journal. Cards would definitely fit the bill. I've been looking for cheap medieval-looking artbooks online. I'd probably want to get a few, and use them for various games. Even our D&D campaigns. In unrelated news, I found some kickass grail diary replicas on etsy in the $200-$300 range.
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Aug 21, 2021 00:04
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StarkRavingMad posted:That sounds very cool. If you remember, please link the Kickstarter here whenever it starts; I'll probably wait until then to see if there is a bundle price on all the various decks (I see that there are some genre specific ones aside from the base deck) and the game. I'll do so! And yeah, the genre decks are cool. I have all of them except horror, since I'm not really a horror guy, but I've considered picking that one up just to complete the set.
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Aug 21, 2021 01:59
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Uganda Loves Me posted:
I'm glad you liked the look of it! I had a faux leather journal notebook thing and decided to go to town. I heartily recommend setting yourself up with a nice book and a nice pen and making an indulgent little time of it.
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Aug 21, 2021 04:00
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HopperUK posted:I'm glad you liked the look of it! I had a faux leather journal notebook thing and decided to go to town. I heartily recommend setting yourself up with a nice book and a nice pen and making an indulgent little time of it. Urgh, I wish I could write prettily as opposed to the weird scrawl I have, because this sounds lovely!
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Aug 21, 2021 09:02
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For Apothecaria, how much of the magic is lost if I journal into a laptop? I can't handwrite for that long.
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Aug 21, 2021 09:06
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lol my writing isn't great, as you can see, but it's not like I'm writing it for anyone else  I think a laptop would be fun too! Just pretend you're a more high tech witch and write it like a series of livejournal posts.
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Aug 21, 2021 12:38
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potatocubed posted:If you're getting into solo games and you like creating artefacts of play, Wreck This Deck might be up your street. Thanks for this tipoff, I just picked this up. Excited to ruin this deck of cards.
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Aug 21, 2021 14:46
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Ragnar34 posted:For Apothecaria, how much of the magic is lost if I journal into a laptop? I can't handwrite for that long. Plenty of people seem to like it. On the discord channel for the game (linked from the itch.io page) there are folks sharing links to their witch blogs. Also a lot more pretty paper journal pics.
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Aug 21, 2021 16:12
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Oh, man. I've been thinking about getting into calligraphy. I have a couple boxes of crafting supplies that I bought last Christmas. I made cards and ornaments for everyone. I have decent penmanship if I take my time, thanks to filling notebooks in lab classes. Not only did I have to write everything down, it had to be readable by other people! Looks like I already have a bunch of colorful fine-tipped markers. I'm looking at fountain pens. I like to write and journal, and this might be more incentive to do so. It won't be digital, though. EDIT: VVVVVV Thanks for the advice! I did a whole lot of reading about fountain pens today. I ordered a Pilot Metropolitan off Amazon. It came with 12 ink cartridges. Seemed like decent quality for the price. I wanted something that seems more like a classic style than something modern. I also bought a neat-looking bound journal for gaming, and a couple spiral-bound notebooks for journaling and general note-taking. It's all fountain pen-friendly paper. I learned a lot from the JetPens website. It's a retailer trying to sell you stuff, but the info seemed to check out when I checked other sources. I couldn't find any threads on calligraphy materials or techniques. Seems like it might be an interesting topic. I saw a big thread in creative convention about sending each other greeting cards. A stationary/calligraphy/cardmaking thread might be neat. Uganda Loves Me fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Aug 21, 2021 |
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Aug 21, 2021 17:02
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Uganda Loves Me posted:Oh, man. I've been thinking about getting into calligraphy. I have a couple boxes of crafting supplies that I bought last Christmas. I made cards and ornaments for everyone. I have decent penmanship if I take my time, thanks to filling notebooks in lab classes. Not only did I have to write everything down, it had to be readable by other people! A set of pilot parallels is pretty cheap. I recommend using a syringe + cartridge for refills rather than getting basically any converter, the seal will be better and the flow better.
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Aug 21, 2021 17:24
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Also there’s a fountain pen thread over in PYF (I’d link but I’m phone-posting) if you want even more advice and pens and inks to drool over.
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Aug 22, 2021 15:19
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