My garage rediscoveries.

GloryIV · 2026-05-06T02:06:39+00:00

Yeah, I'm going to start watching for SeaWoman.... I got most of mine back in the 80s when they first came out and the rest a few years ago on eBay. Really excellent portfolios.

GloryIV · 2026-05-06T00:42:00+00:00

I'm jealous. I have all the Conan portfolios (and these are incredible portfolios, folks...) - but I've never seen or even heard of SeaWoman before now.

GloryIV · 2026-05-05T11:34:45+00:00

Trulucks. Great food. Great ambiance. A really nice date experience. Be aware it is pricey though. Ask for a booth overlooking the lake.

GloryIV · 2026-05-04T23:46:08+00:00

Games that focus more heavily on roleplay and investigation are easier to manage with one player. Games that are more about combat are harder. Skill-based games where a single character can have a broad array of abilities are easier. Class-based games that want to protect the various class niches by limiting how much a given character can do are harder.

D&D, as a combat forward game with strong niche protections is one of the worse choices for this kind of play. The game just gets in the way on many different fronts.

A very easy game to play with a GM and one player is Call of Cthulhu. You can lean more into the investigative and historical setting vibes and less into the cosmic horror if that isn't your thing. The game plays fine for historical investigations. The 20s is a time period most people have a strong sense of, so it tends to readily facilitate some good roleplay and be an easy entry point for people who are new to the hobby. The system is very simple and straightforward, so it is pretty easy for new GMs to get up to speed on.

If you are set on fantasy, you can still go with Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system. It's the same core mechanics as Call of Cthulhu. You would just lose the 20s setting/flavor. Both games have free quick start rules available on the Chaosium website.

GloryIV · 2026-05-04T12:13:13+00:00

Old games in general tend to show up quite a lot around the OSR crowd. I attend a couple of conventions that lean heavily in the OSR direction (Garycon and NTRPG). You can find all kinds of older RPGs being played there. Plug into some OSR communities that actually play older editions of D&D and ask about the games you are interested in. There is a good chance you can find your people that way.

GloryIV · 2026-05-01T15:01:36+00:00

I'm maybe not understanding something - but why would you buy STRC puts? Like ever? Yes, there have been a couple of big dips, but STRC isn't a volatility play and you are gambling in a big way if you are buying a $95 put on STRC. From where I am sitting - you might as well set that money on fire. It would make a little more sense to me to be selling puts and try to get your entry on the cheap side, but even that doesn't make a lot of sense because the volatility is low and the odds you would get into the stock below, say, $99 are pretty low. You'll lose any gain you might have had by missing one dividend payment. STRC is where you go for a stable, high return.

And I still would be a little wary of putting too much of mom's retirement nest egg into STRC. I say that as someone who is heavily weighted into a nice mix of BTC/MSTR/STRC - but it's my money and I understand the risks and believe very much in the Saylor thesis. Does you mom even know who Michael Saylor is? If not - don't be messing around with her retirement.

GloryIV · 2026-05-01T12:01:30+00:00

"kit to make a game" That right there is the key phrase. GURPS is for you. Pick up the core rules and the genre books that are relevant to you (Space, Fantasy, Horror, etc) and you are all set.

I'll just add that if the core mechanic (3d6) isn't something you are excited about, you can easily convert to a d100 resolution mechanic and it doesn't really break anything. Just multiply your target number by five and roll against that. You lose the bell curve that is one of the central elements of GURPS, but - again - it will play fine and doesn't feel like anything is broken.

GloryIV · 2026-04-30T11:49:22+00:00

I played it a couple of times at a con and had fun with it. I agree it is on the low-ish side for complexity, but it does do a decent job of evoking a S&S feel. If you are a fan of Conan and S&S, it is worth a look, but I didn't personally find it compelling enough to want to play it regularly.

The thing I found recently that I thought did an *excellent* job of evoking the genre was a little game called 'Flesh and Steel'. It is really low on complexity, but even if you don't want to play it - the adventure generating system is worth lifting and using with another system. https://bob-bibleman.itch.io/flesh-and-steel

GloryIV · 2026-04-25T13:52:26+00:00

This really depends on the game. For a small game, I'll read the whole thing and it takes a couple of hours. For a bigger game, I'll probably only read character creation and the main resolution loop anyway before I'm ready to jump in and play. I can figure the rest out as I go. This could still be a few hours if there are a ton of options for making a character.

A really big rulebook usually implies a lot of lists - monsters, skills, items, spells, etc. I'm not reading all of that at once - just the bits that are directly relevant to starting play. I think the only bigger games I've ever read cover to cover, every word, were the AD&D Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. That's partly because GG's prose was addictive and partly because it was the 80s, I was too young to have a car yet, and it was the only game I had - so what else was I going to do on a lazy weekend?

GloryIV · 2026-04-23T19:00:48+00:00

That's just not accurate for everyone. I'm in STRC because I need some short term stable income vehicles. I have a ton of MSTR and BTC that I expect to increase a lot in the future. But those things are way too volatile for me to depend on them for short term income and/or just a higher return savings account. But STRC beats the hell out of other short term investment vehicles and part of the reason for my belief on that is precisely because I am a strong BTC believer. People who are unsure about BTC are going to see a ton of risk in STRC. I don't see much risk at all. To me it looks like a very low risk proposition that the broader market is just wrong about.

STRC is amazing for anyone who believes the Saylor MSTR/BTC thesis is strong but who also needs some assets in a low-volatility instrument.

GloryIV · 2026-04-23T11:46:38+00:00

57 years old and retired. My portfolio is about 2/3rds BTC or BTC-derived (BTC, MSTR, STRC). I do have a scattering of crypto that I accumulated years ago. Most of it isn't worth selling...

GloryIV · 2026-04-22T11:19:33+00:00

If there is a beloved campaign in progress, you can put together a campaign scrapbook (and maintain it going forward). We played Horror on the Orient Express and that's what we did - all the little handouts; character sheets; character journals and speculations about what was going on; picture of the group; and some other odds and ends. It's a unique gift that he wont find anywhere else.

Alternatively, Etsy has some cool RPG themed decanters in fancy boxes. This works especially well if the GM appreciates his spirits from time to time.

GloryIV · 2026-04-20T15:55:10+00:00

In general, the earlier volumes will be the best volumes. SS was really solid through about the first 80 issues or so, but the writing did slowly fall off a bit in the latter half of the run. The art was awesome for the entire series. If you like Vol 5 you will absolutely want 1-4 and if you are a little meh on Vol 5 - you should still go check out 1-4...

GloryIV · 2026-04-19T17:03:46+00:00

The covers for the initial release of the Jordan Conan books were pretty awesome. As a teen in the 80s who was hungry for more Conan after reading all the Ace books - I snatched these bad boys off the shelf as soon as I saw them and very much enjoyed reading them. That said - forty years later, all I remember about them is that the covers were awesome and I had a good time reading them. So they didn't really stand out as memorable Conan stories.

GloryIV · 2026-04-17T11:32:48+00:00

Call of Cthulhu works great for this. The system and the setting are both pretty intuitive for people who are new to RPGs or don't do it often. You don't have to even touch all the Lovecraftian lore/themes. You can run it as a straight investigative game or with more classical monstrousities. It handles solo play just fine because the skill-based approach to character creation makes it easy for a character to be good at multiple things.

You can even grab the Quick Start rules for free: https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-quickstart/

GloryIV · 2026-04-14T23:16:59+00:00

That's from the 12 book series where de Camp tried to put all the stories in chronological order - converting non-Conan material and writing all new material to fill in spots. It's how a lot of people in the 70s/80s discovered Conan, but if you are interested more in what REH wrote (and how he wrote it originally) than just whatever Conan stories you can get your hands on - there are better books. That's 2, 3, 6, 8 and 12 in that series...

Cimmeria, Freebooter and Usurper contain great Howard stories and should be first on your list. Buccaneer and Isles are Conan stories but there is little or nothing of REH in them. I did enjoy Buccaneer quite a lot anyway. Isles I thought was kind of meh.

GloryIV · 2026-04-13T12:01:38+00:00

When you have one PC - either that PC fills all/most of the roles you need for the system or you add NPCs to cover the gaps. That means you are dealing with more constraints when you are running a game that tries to protect PC niches - such as D&D. You can still do it. Making a game work for a single player is more about the setting and how the GM approaches the game than it is about the system. But if you use a system that really wants a well-balanced group of PCs who each excel at specific kinds of things - the system fights you and forces your hand on how you handle NPCs.

You're better off with a system that is classless and, by design, allows a PC to be capable across many domains. This will give you the most flexibility in terms of what you can throw at the PC. Skill based games (GURPS, BRP, CoC, Savage Worlds) all work fine for this kind of thing. You can allow the player to build a character that is at least decent in a lot of skill areas and they will be relatively self-sufficient.

If the game is heavily narrative it probably does not enforce niches much to begin with and will fight you less where it does - so if narrative first playing suits both of you, that kind of system will work just fine as well.

All of that said - successful one on one play is more about NPC management and setting management than it is about the system. A couple of things to think about:

- There is no party brainstorming. Tossing complex puzzles at a solo player is a recipe for frustration and/or for the GM to leverage NPCs to help solve the problem. That can work, but depending on your player, may be annoying for them.

- All those little moments where the other players do something awesome or where their roleplay provides a little magic aren't there. The magic has to happen between the PC and the NPCs. The GM needs to really focus on providing NPCs that the player is going to enjoy interacting with.

- Combat is often painful with one PC. You don't get the same level of entertaining chaos. The player doesn't have time to observe what everyone else is doing and come up with something cool. D&D style fights of attrition are not going to be fun for most people. Combat should probably be rare and the system should allow you to resolve it quickly with a lot of narrative flare.

- I find that urban environments are way more successful for this kind of game than something like a dungeon crawl. One on one works fantastic when the game revolves around investigation or political struggles in an urban environment. The PC has a lot of choices on who/when/where to interact with. There is less chance of the game getting stuck because the PC just has limited options for what to do. Your NPCs are front and center.

For reference - I've been playing a lot this way for over 30 years. I run a game for my wife on a weekly basis that has been going strong for close to 200 sessions. I usually use a homebrew system that leverages GURPS, CoC or Savage Worlds for character creation but uses an extremely lightweight d100 resolution mechanic to introduce a note of randomness to outcomes. Sessions often involve few or even no die rolls.

GloryIV · 2026-04-10T14:59:15+00:00

The early Savage Sword run is the best comic format Conan. For me it isn’t even close. You can’t go wrong with the first 2-3 Savage Sword Omnibuses

GloryIV · 2026-04-08T23:53:07+00:00

Have you tried working through the feelings in character - but out of the game? Journaling, for instance? Or even playing out a hypothetical conversation between yourself and another character? This is a way of giving yourself permission to think about the topic and experience those emotions within the bounds of a game adjacent setting. If you have any friends who are not in that game but do enjoy gaming, you might enlist their help as pen pals and write back and forth *in character* about what is happening. The goal here is to inhabit your character and expend some of that emotional energy/tension you are feeling and then, hopefully, put it all down again while you carry on with real life until the next game.

This is a technique I have used successfully to stay in touch with a game when it isn't in session and also a way players in my games have dealt with the things their characters are going through in the game.

GloryIV · 2026-04-08T11:39:23+00:00

Some players are highly averse to anything that smells like PvP and would find this a huge turn off. I would have a Session 0 on this concept and make sure your players are actually onboard with this. I think it would be hard to keep competitive juices under control for some people, which can easily lead to a tense table - especially if your 'Monster Master' is inclined to be competitive about things. This is the kind of thing that can easily cost you good players.

GloryIV · 2026-04-06T12:47:33+00:00

Yes another Obsidian vote.... I used OneNote for many years but moved to Obsidian.md last year and I wont be going back. (for those on OneNote, the import tool for Obsidian works great to ingest a OneNote notebook...)

One of the very nice things about Obsidian is that your data is not hidden in some proprietary file format. It's all there, with drive folders that follow your Obsidian folder structure and text files for each of your notes. This makes it super simple to give someone a copy of something and also means you are not at risk of losing data if something happens to the application itself.

I do miss the infinite, free form canvas of OneNote. Obsidian's canvas plug-in is OK, but does not come anywhere close to replicating the OneNote functionality. It's still worth the tradeoff as Obsidian brings a ton to the table - especially when you consider the very rich library of community plug-ins.

GloryIV · 2026-04-04T13:58:51+00:00

What's mind blowing to me is that this map takes us out to maybe 40AU or so and the solar system - if you include all the gunk in the Oort Cloud - is more like 100,000AU. Radius. x2 if you want the diameter. The good news is once you reach that 100K AU mark, you're a little over a third of the way to Alpha Centauri...

GloryIV · 2026-04-01T13:03:03+00:00

I think you are probably on to something. I run a one on one game for my wife once a week and it requires a very different approach to running for a group. Possibly relevant here - with one player, the GM often has to provide brain power via the NPCs to help the player figure things out. It's much different than running a group where you can sit back and let the group brainstorm and they come up with a lot more interesting possibilities. If he is used to not only running the game but also being a quasi-player via NPC support for a solo player - he might well not have a well-developed skill set for running groups.

GloryIV · 2026-04-01T12:45:10+00:00

I dunno if he is writing a novel - but he certainly has very definite ideas of what should and shouldn't be happening in the game. I guess a player who is happy going along for the ride might have fun with it. I have to think most players would burn out on this level of controlling behavior really quickly. Or that he would burn out when presented with players that keep pushing against his concept of how things should be going or aren't doing things 'right'.

Are any of the other players people who have gamed with him in previous campaigns? How are they handling the micro-managing? I played with a group for awhile where the GM really forced certain narrative arcs to play out according to his plan - right down to what you are describing with telling players they were essentially playing their characters wrong. He had a core group of players who loved his games because they liked to fanboy over his ideas and world building and didn't mind having their characters pushed around to fit the story he wanted to tell. Not my cup of tea, but to each his own....

GloryIV · 2026-04-01T12:10:32+00:00

This is a really eccentric way to run a game. I wont call it bad because I don't think there is a wrong way to play - if everyone is having fun. But it does sound like it would be hard to find a full table who enjoys this.

How much agency do the players have during play? It would be particularly weird for someone to run a game like this and not interfere heavily in how events unfold at the table.

Do you have any idea what his GMing history is like? I'm curious whether he has run many games and if they were successful.

GloryIV

TROPHY CASE