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I decided to try my hand at solo roleplaying after watching most of the Solo RPG playlist of Geek Gamers: Solo RPG Playlist.
First, I developed a rubric for each day of travel, etc. I am using the AD&D DMG [Affiliate Link], Kelri’s Encounters, Scarlet Heroes [Affiliate Link], & various ideas from different bloggers.
I rolled 4d6 drop lowest, in order and rolled well enough to have an illusionist, Morpheus Phantasos. (I re-used that name from an illusionist character I created in another group a few years ago.)
Morpheus hired a light horse soldier to travel to the dungeon, 5 hexes away.
I did not define the size of the hexes other than it takes 2 days on foot or 1 day mounted to cross.
There were no encounters, but found bad water – the hireling is fine, but my PC got sick. Finally we got to the town near the dungeon, but there was no room in the inn the first night, & second night we slept in the common room. Morpheus needed a few days to recover from drinking bad water.
Morpheus hired 3 more hirelings. They tried to turn on us, but failed save vs. hypnotism.
I suggested that they forget about robbing us since they’ll get more gold in the dungeon. They all failed their saved.
There was a mishap, broken equipment, the saddle strap was cut, but they forgot about it.
We finally found the dungeon and I rolled up the entrance using the DMG. It took 3 days to find it.
We went down the steps, found 7 orcs, they were unsure what to do, Morpheus speaks Orc, and as an illusionist used Hypnotism to convince 6 of them to work together to get loot worthy of the Orc Lord – who didn’t live in this dungeon. The one against it I convinced the others he was plotting something and they took care of him. Thankfully, nothing came to investigate the noise.
We went into another room and fought skeletons. We took them out but they dropped two of the orcs.
That fight attracted 2 zombies who we finally dropped, but they took out several more of the orcs and 2 of the 3 hirelings I picked up in town.
We found loot in urns in the room the orcs were in, loot in chests the skeletons were in, and a chest with coins and an Alchemy Jug in a secret compartment. We heard fighting – another party of adventurers was fighting something. Since we lost so many we left.
The horse soldier hireling was still there, unmolested at the entrance to the dungeon. We loaded up the loot and had a fight with the orcs and managed to win.
We overnighted without incident and made it back to town. I tallied the XP and levelled up so now Morpheus Phantasos is a 2nd level illusionist.
I thought about solo roleplay back in the day with the DMG, but didn’t have a solo engine to facilitate play. I didn’t get very far.
However, after spending some time watching a few YT videos and pulling together my resources and settling on mechanics, I can see the appeal.
It gives me lots of ideas for making adventures or new tables to use during adventures.
I need to come up with a better flowchart AI to run monsters & NPCs if there’s a fight.
I’d like it to be more than reaction & morale checks.
I’ve got a couple tables from blogs for monster activity & I watched Runehammers “Monster Mind” video from 2017 again.
I want something more general that can be applied. I can make my own, but would like a peak at something others have done.
I want a general framework for a monster AI and not something that has to be hand-crafted to each monster. I am making notes, but making a brief system that doesn’t require lot’s of oracle if/then checks is the challenge.
I’ll share my framework once I clean it up and have another adventure. I put together a rough draft of a new PDF of my experience with Solo RPG play and shared it on my Patreon. It needs a LOT of cleanup before I share it with the world. I’ve been working on a page of resources.
If you know of a blog that is focused on Solo RPGs or regularly posts about solo RPGS, let me know. I’d also like to know about websites focused on solo RPGs and any sites that have a section for solo RPGs.
I’m also curious to hear about other’s experiences with Solo RPGs. What solo engine/GM emulator did you use? What RPG rule set did you use? Was it a positive, negative, or mixed experience?