SoloRPG posts
Posts: 164
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Micro GM-Emulator
Heya, my wonderful patrons,I trust the weekend treated you well as the holiday draws to a close (at least in this neck of the woods). During the past week, I focused a bit on playtesting new additions to my swingy (I like swingy) d6 micro-GM emulator system, a staple in my own Solo/GMless pick-up games and the pamphlet adventures I've crafted previously.I realized that I've been relying heavily on impromptu notes and hastily scribbled tables, often jotted down in pencil and way too easy to lose. This is especially true for managing my c...
Alea Station Redux
Hello there, my amazing patrons!Hope you had an amazing gaming-filled week with lots of opportunities for solo or GM-less gaming. I have been enjoying getting back into White Star, one of my fav rulesets for pulpy sci-fi-themed solo gaming.I thought it would be fun to share some of the random tables I am currently using. Alea Station Redux is the result: a room description generator using a familiar falling-forward method that generates increasingly dangerous/interesting unique room descriptions set in an abandoned space station originally crea...
Mythic Starters VII - Tales from the Gnarly Stump
Hello, my lovely patrons!With all the bad weather we are having in the Netherlands at the moment, I am very much enjoying starting up some mini-campaigns. One of which is a GM-less Underdark game I’m running with my son, and the other one is some experiments with starter seeds for Mythic in the style of my previous entries in the series.Mythic Starters VII - Tales from the Gnarly Stump is the result I thought would be fun to share with you all. It sets up an interesting background location that ties events together, and provides plenty of fun...
Watchtower on the Frozen Frontier
Hello, my lovely patrons,Hope you are all doing splendidly, and that you have a chance to fill your summer break with some fun gaming. While prepping for a solo game last week, I had no clear idea of a setting to play in. For me, figuring out what makes a campaign setting tick is a fun part of solo gaming, because I have the time to explore the stuff that I find fun.I decided to go for a fun new approach and combine three pretty random things as inspiration to create a concise system of mini-random tables to get things moving and on my table as...
Patron Poll
Calling all patrons!I would love to have your help in shaping my content in the right direction by learning more about your personal preferences. This will help me to better tailor the experience to your own solo gaming table and setup. So, please let your voice be heard as I value your input in doing what I love :)Happy gaming,John
Call of the Crystal
Hello, my incredible patrons, and thank you all for your kind words of encouragement and reassurance during my long absence. After what feels like a long and arduous journey back to a semblance of normalcy in my life, it is good (and a relief) to feel my creative juices returning again.I now find myself with both time and opportunity to return to one of my favorite activities: creating resources for the solo roleplaying community!This past week, I have been playtesting "Call of the Crystal," an OSR mini-adventure about a strange crystal...
Billing cycle paused this month
Heya everyone,You might have noticed that I have not been as active (as I would have liked) this past month with uploads. Unfortunately, this is because I am dealing with a personal issue that is causing me heaps of stress.I decided it would be fairer to pause my billing cycle for a bit this month. This will give me some breathing room to catch up and hopefully have stuff sorted out.I do want to thank all who asked me how I was doing in PMs and anyone that expressed their concern for my wellbeing, that was hugely appreciated :)That said, I plan...
OSR Retroclone Monstrous Action Cards II
Heya, everyone,Hope you all enjoyed the first part of the OSR Retroclone Monstrous Action cards! So far, these cards have been a great way for me to supplement and spice up my retro-clone solo battles with a fun mix of tactics and wacky on the fly GM rulings.Took me a while to playtest the second part, but finally got a chance to add animated statues, giant toads, gnolls, kobolds, walking fungi, and wraiths to the mix.It is adding up to a nice OSR bestiary so far! Let me know if you want to see a particular favorite monster added.All the best,J...
OSR Retroclone Monstrous Action Cards
Heya everyone,I often use little cards with random tables on them in solo play, as you might have already guessed from the Deck of Point Crawl locations and other card collections!Having played through a lot of OSR Retroclone adventures with my son during the holiday break, I made a small system of monster cards to spice things up for us during combat, or when we just needed an answer to ‘what happens next’ in battle.Instead of flowcharting realistic actions, which I find a bit boring, these cards lean more into the aspect of OSR Retroclone...
As the Crow Flies
Heya, everyone!I hope you all enjoyed exploring Dark Edwardian Garden Crawl and had a chance to consort with some very lovely Faeries.For this week, I had some fun creating a new pamphlet adventure featuring, spoilers, I guess, maybe, a doppelganger plot based around the Copper Crows, a thieves guild I like to use a character background for my city adventures, and its leader, Mother Dearest.In As the Crow Flies, you try to get to the bottom of what exactly is going on in the manor of the captain of the city guard and try to rescue the recently ...
Dark Edwardian Garden Crawl
Heya everyone,Hope the start of the holiday is treating you right, with lots of rest and relaxation, and hopefully, some nice opportunities for some solo roleplaying.I had great fun preparing a little longer resource for you than usual. Since creating Orchid of the Ages as part of Mythic Starters II, I have used its featured walled faerie garden setting as a favorite haunt in several of my solo games (mostly using CoC by Gaslight or Changeling the Dreaming).Surprising myself during play, and not knowing what exactly lies at the end of a meander...
God's End - Planar Punk
Heya, everyone!I received some requests lately to expand a little on Planar Punk, which is a 24xx game jam entry I made a while ago. Planar Punk was basically a little love letter to Planescape, combining it with a bit of a punk vibe.I think all the 24XX micro-systems are great to use in solo play, because they match great with any 'What happens next' style oracle results!God's End is a one-page location for Planar Punk describing a fortress-city on a lava island in hell that is controlled by the Pantheon Breakers cabal. Aided by th...
Rise of the Wyrm-Eternal
Heya, everyone,Hope you are all doing well and had some fun using a deck of cards to draw up some interesting wizardly journal entries using Tower, Toil, and Trouble!I don’t know about you all, but I am soooo much looking forward to the holiday period :) I plan on doing some hardcore solo roleplaying, maybe starting a new campaign, and doing some catching up for my Patreon.For this upload, I was experimenting with an approach to dungeon room description generation that hooks into the micro GM emulator that I really like to use for pamphlet ad...
Tower, Toil and Trouble
Heya everyone,First of all, apologies for the late upload! Life got a little in the way of things and decided to throw some nasty curve balls in my direction. Definitely looking forward to the start of my vacation period in a few weeks!I participated in a solo journalling game jam recently and thought it would be fun to share the result: Tower, Toil and Trouble is a solo journalling game about wizardly chores and preventing the dangerous results of your magical research and experiments to destroy your peculiar tower.As some of you know, I alway...
Grimsbury Secrets - Oracle Adventure Kit
Heya, everyone,Hope everyone is doing well, and that you don’t mind I took a little extra time working on this upload, expanding it to about 14 pages, including the one-page GM emulator I mostly use these days (I kindalike swingy tables in solo play!).Grimsbury Secrets is an experiment using the same kind of possibility space I used previously in Crowloft Manor, but without hooking it into a specific emulator (used Fichtean Micro for that one). I do like the goal vs obstacle approach though.In this oracle adventure kit, you are trying to save...
Foreshadowing Schemes & Intrigue
Heya, everyone,Hope you are all doing well!The freeform aspect of solo roleplaying has always fascinated me for its ability to create an interesting story out of thin air with a few die rolls. I think there is something profoundly exciting to trying to answer that 'What Happens Next' question.However, that also makes solo roleplaying often focus on the immediate, reacting to what is right in front of us. So, I thought I'd have fun this week experimenting with a little system to handle foreshadowing and share the first result with yo...
Chance Meetings v2
Heya, everyone,Hope you are all doing well and that you enjoyed your own adventures Underneath the Barking Tree!I had fun experimenting with a few solo games (mostly using World of Dungeons and Heartseeker) and the Chance Meetings situational random encounter tables. Mainly exploring the tension between general and specific in the situation vs. circumstance outcomes when interpreting these into results.In the process, I edited some things, and also added a few more pages and tables to Chance Meetings based on my own games, which you can also fi...
Underneath the Barking Tree
Heya, everyone,Hope you all had fun battling degenerate giants and frosty wyrms in the now complete Frostmist Mountains Feud!Recently, I have been running a kind of Ravenloft-lite in a few GM-less games tying in from my previous solo pamphlet adventure Coincackler Well.I thought it would be a nice idea to convert the finale of these Ravenloft-lite games into a new pamphlet for you all, especially since some of you messaged me if I was planning a new one in the series!Underneath the Barking Tree features a growing fiendish presence in the nearby...
The Frostmist Mountains Feud - Complete
Heya, everyone,Hope you all had fun last week using Chance Meetings in some of your own games!This week, I returned to my Frostmist Mountains Feud mini-campaign which surprisingly concluded in an epic but icy battle with the betrothed of the frost giant leader, the Stormwitch Drekimodir.This mini-campaign three-parter was inspired by a lot of Mythic GME rolls, and is a good example of what I like to do when starting up a solo/GMless game: just pick an interesting premise, a constrained area/region, and literally roll with it (in this case I use...
Chance Meetings
Heya, everyone!Hope you all enjoyed using the first two parts of Frostmist Mountain Feud in your own solo games.My playtest for the third part of that series was interrupted by a very fun GMless pickup game I ran at the university I am teaching at.I thought it would be fun to bundle some of the situational random encounter tables I used during that game for you. Who knows, it might even be nice to expand this booklet with more of these types of random encounter entries. Let me know!The basic premise is simple enough, you just roll however many ...
The Frostmist Mountains Feud - Part 2
Heya, everyone,Hope you all enjoyed the first part of Frostmist Mountains Feud! I really like adding simple flowcharting systems like this to the (original) Location Crafter made by Tana Pigeon.It makes it way easier for me to see the outline of an adventure location starting to appear or to determine how it is all connected somehow.This second part (of three) adds the poor stunted frost giant mammoth herdsmen of the Isejotnar Homesteads, providing some background and context to interpret results, a randomizing location table, and an example fl...
The Frostmist Mountains Feud - Part 1
Heya everyone,Hope you all enjoyed crawling around the Spidercrawl Frontier adventure hex last week!For this week, I thought I'd have some fun with one of my absolute favorites for solo play: the (original) Location Crafter by the always awesome Tana Pigeon.I love how this system lets you combine relatively simple elements into new exciting sandbox elements for you to interpret creatively, and I think it really thrives when you first establish some fun context.The Frostmist Mountains Feud is a fun experiment in doing exactly that! It descri...
The Spidercrawl Frontier - Adventure Hex
Heya, everyone,Hope you all had fun exploring Elderwick Manor and confronting the Lord and Lady of the manor!This week I had some requests to revisit the old adventure hex system I used quite a while ago (in Valley of the Conquered King, for example) These are basically interesting keyed locations on a hex crawl map, using three sentences mostly, and tied together through an adventure matrix to generate fun adventure outlines. It was originally inspired by the old Dragonlance campaign setting box.I also had some interesting questions and reques...
Elderwick Manor
Heya, everyone,Unfortunately, It's been quite a difficult few weeks for me, with most of my family testing positive for Covid. This left me with a ton of day job work to coordinate next to taking care of everyone!I'll do my best to make it up to you all during the holiday break, in which I plan to do some heavy solo gaming and write-ups.I did have some fun with a few hexflowers I made to generate a sprawling manor dungeon system in which my characters had to investigate why gruesome undead children and mechanical puppet horrors were roa...
Arsewurm's Great Goblin Banquet
Heya, everyone,Hope you all enjoyed using some of the new Point Crawl Location cards!Last week, I enjoyed playing through a small side-adventure that actually occurred between locations while using the deck, and I decided to write it up as an oracle icon adventure in the vein of Waker in the Reef and Hillcrest Village.Arsewurm's Great Goblin Banquet features a shrewd goblin leading his poor fellow starving goblins on a mission to take over the Salty Goblin roadside inn and party on like there is no tomorrow! At least, probably not for the h...
Point Crawl Locations - Part 1-4
Heya, everyone,Hope you all enjoyed rolling up some interesting characters for your solo games using Creating Conflicted Characters! I might use it for a small actual play soon to show some character interaction examples. Let me know if you would like that!For this upload, I have added an extra print sheet of cards to my deck of Point Crawl Locations for a total of 60 cards. However, I really want to add more cards and also make a tighter selection in replacing/adding some of the existing point crawl cards. So, if you have any fun location sugg...
Creating Conflicted Characters
Heya, everyone, and welcome to new patrons!I was prepping to run another solo tavern crawl (like dungeon room crawling but going from tavern to tavern in a single explosive night of urban side-questing) and I thought it might be fun to tidy up and share the NPC generator 'add-on' I often use to spice up NPCs my characters might encounter during their escapades.Creating Conflicted Characters lets you quickly establish internal/external conflicts for any characters to allow for making choices, taking risks, and driving them forward based ...
Power Tunes of the Apocalypse
Heya everyone, and happy new year!Hope you all had fun giving Points on a Planar Compass a whirl in your games.This week, I was inspired by some of the earlier micro-setting I created (The Dread Realms and Mount Totemic) and wanted to try out a similar format in pamphlet form but make it more generative by using some d30 tables, and certainly include some wackiness in there as well.Power Tunes of the Apocalypse - features what happens after a strange audio signal of unknown origins causes the apocalypse to happen by inciting murderous rage and ...
Points on a Planar Compass
Heya, everyone,Hope you are all enjoying your holiday break and are able to find time to enjoy some solo/GMless gaming! I decided to dive into the Planes of the Multiverse for this resource and create two (semi-connected) adventures using the solo keywords system that I like to use when playing published modules.Points on a Planar Compass includes: The Mirror Crack’d featuring philosophical thugs trying to hold a violent rally and disturb the peace and contemplation within a blind Medusa’s crystalline saloon. The Actioners Union features a ...
Kingdom Timelines
Heya, everyone!Hope you are doing well with the Christmas break approaching and lots of countries going into lockdown.A few weeks ago, Yukiko asked me if I had any ideas for a kingdom management mechanic. This actually got me thinking about one of the things I enjoy so much when reading through campaign setting books: timelines/history of kingdoms.I just love going through the history of a fictional place and reading about what events took place to shape that particular fantasy nation. The 3rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting had lots ...
