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CK07 posted:I am overwhelmed and confused by the amount of Micro RPG items on DTRPG - any chance you might drop a link to the basic play necessities and/or some of your favorite adventures thus far? Yes! My apologies for not thinking of doing this initially. So, most of the larger books come with at least the basic rules, so I'd recommend getting one that's more themed to the setting that interests you. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/348646/The-Bone-Lord-Complete-Chronicles-BUNDLE This is the bundle of adventures that I started with to learn the system initially. It's a bit bare-bones to some of the other zine-format books (as compared to the chapbook-format ones), but it served as a good starter to both the rules and the sort of flow of the game. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358271/Micro-SciFi-RPG-Basic-Rules This was one of the first core books that I got. This one had refinements to the rules I thought worked really well and the bestiary had a lot more interest available in terms of mechanical variety. I'd say overall the chapbook-format books have the least amount of this kind of stuff, so having options available from a book like this really helps. This is probably the single best book I'd recommend overall https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/385615/Neon-Road-AN-80s-STYLE-SOLO-GAME This is a core book with the setting being a sort of Fallout/Mad Max/Cyberpunk mix future. It's unique mechanic is keeping track of Radiation, which also substitutes in for the dangers of getting too cybered up. It feels a bit broken up though as I found both https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/393406/Cars-of-the-Neon-City-Neon-Road-23 necessary for the vehicle rules and https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/396418/Neon-Augments-1 for the Cybernetic rules. They're like a buck each and the main book is too so it wasn't a huge issue other than having to juggle multiple pdfs. If you're the type to print things out and keep them in a binder or whatever it's not really going to be an issue. These are all more core books: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/313842/Hammer--Cross-Deluxe-Core-Rulebook Hammer + Cross has a sort of Gothic Horror theme where you're hunting Vampires, who get special rules and you have a unique stat called Faith. The back half of this book is set up to be more of a directed, constructed adventure than the other core books which feel more random. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/394457/Warrior-Queens-A-SOLO-SWORD--SORCERY-RPG 70s Sword and Sorcery/Planets theme. Bloodrage is the unique stat/mechanic which you can draw on for power or use to make potions. The cool bit in this book is the social stratification where you can move up the ranks to control regions. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/320711/Death-in-Dino-Valley-Deluxe-Core-Rulebook This is a very pulpy Lost World sort of aesthetic and a lot of the art had that sort of bad Poser quality to it which I didn't particularly like. But mechanics wise this book has both a crafting system and dinosaurs to fight and tame and ride.
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Oct 31, 2022 20:00
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Potsticker posted:Yes! These look very cool (and are quite affordable). Thanks for the posts about them!
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Oct 31, 2022 20:09
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Ooh the Micro Scifi one is on sale. That might be a buy from me!
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Oct 31, 2022 20:23
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Really not sure what's up with Deadbelt - I can see it on the company's page, and I got my PDF rewards from the kickstarter. https://acoupleofdrakes.itch.io/
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Oct 31, 2022 20:36
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A guy on Twitter did a thing called Solovember last year, where he played a whole bunch of solo games in November, and he's doing it again this year and is inviting other people to join in. Thought folk in this thread might find it interesting.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:00
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potatocubed posted:A guy on Twitter did a thing called Solovember last year, where he played a whole bunch of solo games in November, and he's doing it again this year and is inviting other people to join in. Thought folk in this thread might find it interesting. Absolutely! I also just bought a ton of micro rpg books thanks to this thread. Only flipped through a few of ‘em so far but stoked to get started
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Nov 1, 2022 23:33
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Got in my hard copy of Lineage: Epoch Edition, a game where you randomly generate a royal family tree and write a little about each monarch. There's a Mork Borg version called 'Lord' with the umlaut that's also really good fun. Just enough prompting to get me going, not so much that I get annoyed. The book itself is pretty nice. Kind of fragile; the covers are more like magazine covers than a paperback book. The printing is nice quality and the book came with a postcard of its cover, and a card tucked in that adds some magical events to the game if you want a bit of that. I'm glad I bought it but I don't think I'd have paid that much for it in a store if I'd seen it. I just wish the cover was sturdier. Still - costs being what they are for everyone, a solid buy and I'm glad to have it on the shelf.
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Nov 1, 2022 23:45
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potatocubed posted:A guy on Twitter did a thing called Solovember last year, where he played a whole bunch of solo games in November, and he's doing it again this year and is inviting other people to join in. Thought folk in this thread might find it interesting. Very neat!
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Nov 2, 2022 01:28
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There's gonna be another itch.io charity bundle. This one for trans rights in Florida. I found out about it by clicking a link on the Solovember twitter thread, so like most of these things I suspect there will be a decent number of solo rpgs in there. https://itch.io/jam/ttrpgs-for-trans-rights-in-florida
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Nov 2, 2022 08:35
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Skwirl posted:There's gonna be another itch.io charity bundle. This one for trans rights in Florida. I found out about it by clicking a link on the Solovember twitter thread, so like most of these things I suspect there will be a decent number of solo rpgs in there. Oh thank you for letting me know about this early so I can submit my book  I love these itch.io fund raisers!
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Nov 2, 2022 09:12
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One thing I've run into with the Micro RPG set now that I've been trying out some of the random generation rules is that, at least in Neon Road, the tables loving suck! 2d6 to pick a random item from a table of melee and ranged weapons listed straight down is-- really bad. The rarest things are going to be weak melee weapons and strong ranged weapons while most common will be strong melee and weak ranged weapons. The same is true of the table for armor & clothing and the consumable table is even worse! Rolling multiple dice does not give a flat distribution! Luckily, this is easily fixed by organizing my own tables, which making changes like that is something I find I do quite common with many solo trpgs. Heck, for Space Aces I hated the core system but loved the tables and systems so I just replaced the core rolling mechanic with something I liked better. Solo gaming for me often involves DIY solutions. I also found that in Neon Road, compared to the Sci Fi book, the prices for standard equipment is way out of your price range as a starting character. You get 1d6 more spending power as a new character, but instead of the beginner items costing 1, 2, 3 or 4, the starting equipment in Neon Road costs 10, 12, 15, 17? I feel like I missed something because this math absolutely does not work out. And with the fact that you've got a flat distribution chance of rolling easy vs hard enemies or fighting a few versus fighting many (both a single d6 roll) -- It makes it hard to start out without maybe a shady loan from a megacorp. (My in-game justification for a bit better gear after the first foray into dangerous territory. Hopefully I can pay it back before goons start knocking on the door looking to give me the Tanya Harding Special) As for the map making and exploring, I like the system quite a bit. It reminds me of Pocket Dungeon without trying to cram in a semblance of a tactical positioning into the combat. The tables for moving from location to location feel like they need a bit of massaging, but even played straight out I was getting results that worked well with the story that was unfolding. I'm not sure if the location tables are meant to have a flat distribution like the items tables definitely are, but over the session the results I got seemed fine and I didn't overly get the impression what the intention was one way or the other. Since Neon Road specifically didn't include rules for boss encounters like the other books (the Neon Road Adventure, NeonAdventures #1, does include a boss and rules for encountering them in it) and I definitely wanted to include a big bad scavenger leader who had taken control of a building nearby with satellite tower where the cables for connecting to the Cybernet linked up to my character's new survival bunker home base in the bombed out ruins of the outskirts of a Megacity-- (I kind of dig the mishmash of Shadowrun/Cyberpunk with Fallout/Mad Max the game has going on) I included using those rules. The whole system reminds me a bit of how we used to play GURPS where it was just like-- collecting various books and mashing them together to get the right feel for the game we wanted to play.
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Nov 2, 2022 09:14
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Played my first Solovember game last night with an old favourite: Thousand Year Old Vampire. It didn't quite gel like my first playthrough, but Eloise (later Lorelei) was an interesting character to inhabit for an evening. An artistically-inclined peasant from the south of what-would-become-France, she was turned by an older vampire trying to get back at her fiance for reasons that never surfaced. She killed her mother and sister -- the latter who she raised as a vampire -- then spent a hundred years as a living weapon after being mind-controlled by a different older vampire, which pretty much permanently hosed her up by making 'kill it' her default solution to any and all problems. Multiple times she was discovered by a mortal who chose to try and help her, and she ended up reflexively killing them when they made some tiny mistake. Just as she was starting to rediscover her old, artistic self, her sister (who had never gotten over being turned back in c. 1000 AD) sealed her in an iron box and sank her into the sea. Game over.
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Nov 2, 2022 11:45
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I'm probably going to splurge on a hard copy of TYOV at some point. It's just so good.
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Nov 2, 2022 12:14
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That's a fantastic story. I should really try Thousand Year Vampire at some point. Every description of play I've heard sounds very fun.
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Nov 2, 2022 12:34
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Skwirl posted:There's gonna be another itch.io charity bundle. This one for trans rights in Florida. I found out about it by clicking a link on the Solovember twitter thread, so like most of these things I suspect there will be a decent number of solo rpgs in there. I’m adding my Dungeon Masters Deck to this, which I’ll say is a fantastic tool for solo RPGs so please support this fund. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollthedicegames/the-dungeon-master-deck
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Nov 2, 2022 13:32
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potatocubed posted:Played my first Solovember game last night with an old favourite: Thousand Year Old Vampire. This sounds great! I should really get back to my current TYOV playthrough at some point. Got 10 prompts in, stopped for IRL stuff, and just never revisited it. Thanks, brain.
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Nov 2, 2022 17:06
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I've started a playthrough of Conduit, a game about receiving cryptic messages from some kind of entity. It's played over 28 (or 29, I forget) entries and it has some fun prompts! You get to make little collages here and there, or look in books for words and write on them, and the like. It has a decent bit of randomisation so you could play it more than once if you wanted and get quite a different result. Recommended! I kickstarted it, not sure where it's available but the KS page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1202282794/the-conduit-a-solo-journaling-rpg-zine
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Nov 3, 2022 13:44
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For Solovember I played Story of a Story, a game about being a story which changes with retelling over time. (purchase link) I rate it 'ennnnnnnh'. I don't really regret playing it, but I wouldn't play it again. It did make me think about what, exactly, I want from a solo RPG, though, which was a thought worth having. Ultimately I want a journalling game with prompts, where the prompts introduce constraints that I wouldn't otherwise think to impose on myself, but where they're also open enough that I can write the outcome without needing to squeeze it into a pre-set shape. SoaS has prompts, and it has enough of a premise that I could actually start -- which puts it squarely above the halfway mark on the list of solo RPGs I've looked at, make no mistake -- but the prompts just didn't engage me.
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Nov 3, 2022 14:46
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potatocubed posted:For Solovember I played Story of a Story, a game about being a story which changes with retelling over time. (purchase link) That’s excellent insight and something that I hadn’t been able to put into words before. I am similar in that I don’t like super open ended prompts like “a person walks up to you. Who are they? What do they want?” It’s like well, give me a little bit more - it would be nice to have at least a hook to trigger the imagination. Give me an interesting tidbit, or a way to think about it. The oracle charts in the Ironsworn book system is good. Thee are a lot of open ended questions, but you can just do a couple rolls and get something interesting out of it. If the prompt were “A [adjective] person [verbs] up to you,” that’s a much better prompt. I think too many games, especially those that derive from other games tend to be too open.
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Nov 3, 2022 20:40
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I feel like the oracles in Ironsworn and Starforged are the real selling point of those games. The mechanics are fine and good, but the concepts that the oracles can throw at you are gold.
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Nov 4, 2022 10:15
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Oh, hey, I had no idea there was a threat about this. Neat! I made a two-page solo RPG once, years ago, and I've always wanted to go back to the idea, expand it a bit further, refine it some more. It's fine for what it is, but I never felt like it was 'complete'', so much as just 'playable', and it was only the restriction of "1 page of rules and 1 page of tables" that kept me from expanding on it any more. Elegance in rules and mechanics is really something I admire in games, though, and it seems like there's nowhere it's more important than solo RPGs, both because there's no one else to share the load/correct mistakes, and because you otherwise risk reaching the complexity critical mass of "why am I not just playing a computer game". Does this bear out with other people's experiences? Semi-related question, is anyone making anything like the old Lone Wolf or Fighting Fantasy game books any more? I don't just mean new entries, I mean new IPs, and original/indie/heartbreaker takes on the genre of "CYOA book with dice rolling."
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Nov 4, 2022 11:14
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Have you tried the Fabled Lands gamebook series? That's my personal go-to suggestion for people looking for good/interesting CYOA w/ Dice Rolling books.
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Nov 4, 2022 11:17
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Potsticker posted:Have you tried the Fabled Lands gamebook series? That's my personal go-to suggestion for people looking for good/interesting CYOA w/ Dice Rolling books.
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Nov 4, 2022 11:21
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girl dick energy posted:I haven't! Tell me about it? Fair! So, Fabled Lands is a book series where each area of the world it takes place in is represented by a different book. And you can travel between books. It's the open world RPG of gamebooks, basically. You can buy a boat and ship goods to make money, hopefully avoiding terrors at sea, or watch a city slowly go to war with itself and decide which side in the conflict you're going to support, you can uncover the plot of an evil cult. There's a ton to do and each book/region has it's own flavor. The books do also sort of represent a progression. if you start with books other than the first one you start at a higher level and so on, and while the later regions do contain harder content, it never really felt to me like I was forced to stick around each area while I was in it's "level." You get clues and items and so on in one book that will apply to others. It's a fantastic experience and I highly recommend it as an example of how the gamebook genre could've progressed even further if it hadn't been pretty much supplanted by Adventure Games and VNs and so on. girl dick energy posted:Elegance in rules and mechanics is really something I admire in games, though, and it seems like there's nowhere it's more important than solo RPGs, both because there's no one else to share the load/correct mistakes, and because you otherwise risk reaching the complexity critical mass of "why am I not just playing a computer game". Does this bear out with other people's experiences? Elegance in design is a big thing that draws me to some TRPG games. Solo or not. There's definitely more load on you yourself playing a solo game to be able to understand it without help, but I feel like there's still a bit of a community aspect to solo games where you share stories of games you had fun with. Whether it was in the stories you craft or just the systems themselves. I think the big draw for me over a computer experience is that there can be a big physical craft aspect to it, and that if there's something I don't particularly like or there's some element I feel I'd like better-- it's way easier to change than in a computer game! Whether it's rewriting bad systems or tables or just refluffing things to get the setting or experience I'm looking for.
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Nov 4, 2022 11:31
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girl dick energy posted:
https://www.spidermindgames.com/collections/legendary-kingdoms http://www.destiny-quest.com/ https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/legacyofdragonholt/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/itbboardgames/alba-an-open-world-adventure-book https://martinbarnabusnoutch.com/ http://aaronemmel.com/ml/wp/?page_id=9 https://www.acegamebooks.com/about-ace-gamebooks https://fabledlands.blogspot.com/p/vulcanverse-solo-roleplaying-gamebooks.html
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Nov 4, 2022 11:44
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Dragonholt was pretty interesting, but I never ended up finishing it and a large part of it was getting frustrated with some of the ways the adventures were structured wrt how they referenced the players skills. Unfortunately it's been long enough that I can't recall the specific details, but what I do remember was that choices felt very arbitrary how/when your skills would get referenced and whether using them was a positive or would bite you in the butt and how poorly that was signposted. For the type of game it was, I sort of felt like if you get the option to take a choice based on your choices in character creation-- it should never punish you if it's not clear you're making a dumb choice. I recall I had other issues, but that was the one that I remember tasting particularly bad. Under normal circumstances I would've powered through, but I was playing with a friend and at the time our schedules started to de-sync and we never got back to it.
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Nov 4, 2022 11:54
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I've just started playing Spires End: Hildegard It's an adventure gamebook in card form with an interesting dice mechanic, and a fishing mini game. Had one death so far - pecked to death by crows 
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Nov 4, 2022 12:21
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Sounds like a murder.
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Nov 4, 2022 12:23
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Potsticker posted:Fair! So, Fabled Lands is a book series where each area of the world it takes place in is represented by a different book. And you can travel between books. It's the open world RPG of gamebooks, basically. You can buy a boat and ship goods to make money, hopefully avoiding terrors at sea, or watch a city slowly go to war with itself and decide which side in the conflict you're going to support, you can uncover the plot of an evil cult. There's a ton to do and each book/region has it's own flavor. The books do also sort of represent a progression. if you start with books other than the first one you start at a higher level and so on, and while the later regions do contain harder content, it never really felt to me like I was forced to stick around each area while I was in it's "level." You get clues and items and so on in one book that will apply to others. It's a fantastic experience and I highly recommend it as an example of how the gamebook genre could've progressed even further if it hadn't been pretty much supplanted by Adventure Games and VNs and so on. The FL books also use code words and tick boxes so the books "remember" things that your character did. Like, if you successfully infiltrate the lair of the sea dragon in book 1, the book will tell you to put a tick in the box above that section, after which you keep reading and collect some nice treasures. If you go back to the lair later, that section will say "if you've already ticked the box, go to section xxx immediately." At section xxx the dragon comes back early because it's paranoid because you robbed it earlier and chases you off before you get much of anything good. In book 3 you can get the code word Calcium which means your lungs have a much better tolerance for high altitudes with reduced oxygen. That comes into play a couple times in book 3 and in book 4 when you're climbing some really tall mountains. The book will say something "take 2-12 Stamina damage unless you have the code word Calcium." Back in the 90s Morris and Thompson wanted to do something like Elder Scrolls online or World of Warcraft but the computer tech wasn't there yet. So they did it in print with the Fabled Lands books.
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Nov 4, 2022 14:12
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Angrymog posted:I've just started playing Spires End: Hildegard I'm really enjoying it so far. I finished chapter 2 last night. I'm hoping some stuff the game has set up starts paying off soonish, I have a real cavalcade of stuff in my inventory.
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Nov 4, 2022 14:13
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Hello thread, does anyone know of any resources for playing Blades in the Dark as a solo game?
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Nov 4, 2022 16:03
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Flakey posted:Hello thread, does anyone know of any resources for playing Blades in the Dark as a solo game? I know this exists, but I haven't tried it personally: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/282013/Alone-in-the-Dark-Solo-Rules-for-Blades-in-the-Dark
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Nov 4, 2022 16:26
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“The content consists of 4 pages of actual instructions on how to generate and use a 3d6 roll for finding icons as a story prompt. The remainder is cover, legal, and 9 pages of icons” Great recommendation as always
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Nov 4, 2022 16:29
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Its good enough for Geek Gamer! A lot of content can be crammed into a small space, which I think is important for fast solo play https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB_Nyl0bloc
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Nov 4, 2022 16:32
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Rutibex posted:Its good enough for Geek Gamer! A lot of content can be crammed into a small space, which I think is important for fast solo play Since you can’t be bothered to read or watch the crap you share, she’s using general oracles and the only actual mechanic provided by that “system” is just the Mythic GM system of D6 with scaling outcomes of yes/and/no/but. To offer actual help, that’s all you really need for solo Blades, since so much of it is mechanically codified already. When you have a GM decision you can’t decide on, roll a D6 and the answers are: 6 Yes, and 5 Yes 4 Yes, but 3 No, but 2 No 1 No, and For Blades specifically, you can +/-1 relative to Position. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Bottom Liner fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 4, 2022 16:37
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Bottom Liner posted:“The content consists of 4 pages of actual instructions on how to generate and use a 3d6 roll for finding icons as a story prompt. The remainder is cover, legal, and 9 pages of icons” It's by Parts Per Million who cranks these out at a rapid pace for different systems. Yeah, they're a little... slim.
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Nov 4, 2022 16:37
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Everyone posted:The FL books also use code words and tick boxes so the books "remember" things that your character did. Like, if you successfully infiltrate the lair of the sea dragon in book 1, the book will tell you to put a tick in the box above that section, after which you keep reading and collect some nice treasures. If you go back to the lair later, that section will say "if you've already ticked the box, go to section xxx immediately." At section xxx the dragon comes back early because it's paranoid because you robbed it earlier and chases you off before you get much of anything good. In book 3 you can get the code word Calcium which means your lungs have a much better tolerance for high altitudes with reduced oxygen. That comes into play a couple times in book 3 and in book 4 when you're climbing some really tall mountains. The book will say something "take 2-12 Stamina damage unless you have the code word Calcium." I wonder what their notes must have looked like when writing these because it's just a fabulous glut of interwoven content.  Bottom Liner posted:Since you can’t be bothered to read or watch the crap you share, she’s using general oracles and the only actual mechanic provided by that “system” is just the Mythic GM system of D6 with scaling outcomes of yes/and/no/but. Blades has a very fail forward sort of gameplay that I'm not sure a standard oracle would work. I guess for the No parts is when you'd come up with consequences that you would then roll to avoid and take stress-- but to me that seems like you're inventing fiction (the consequences) that don't end up being used (since you take stress to resist them) and it seems like, at least to me, that that sounds like a waste of imaginative brain juice? idk, I've never had much success with oracle-based systems and tend to not use them even in games where they are provided, like Ironsworn/Starforged. I think that's why I've fallen a bit out of love with Geek Gamers content outside of discovery for things I may not have heard of yet. A lot of her videos seemed to start to blur together from similarity.
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Nov 4, 2022 21:21
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I think that comes down to how you approach and what you want out of solo systems/games you’re conveying to solo. I find the most success with applying simple narrative oracles to mechanics than vice-versa.
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Nov 4, 2022 22:02
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Potsticker posted:Yes! Hey thanks for posting this, I've been looking for a solo ttrpg with a more directed campaign and the Bone Lord stuff in your first link looks like exactly what I wanted. I played through the first adventure and had a good time with it.
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Nov 4, 2022 23:41
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Thanks for y'all's input on solo Blades. 
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Nov 4, 2022 23:44
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