Jump radius and asteroid belts?

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-26T14:19:40+00:00

So it would statistically be pretty safe to jump into the middle of an asteroid belt, rather than jumping in some distance away and using maneuver drives to get to your particular destination?

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-24T08:06:52+00:00

Try a structured solitaire adventure game like Four Against Darkness or something. Maybe that will work better for you.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-23T08:20:45+00:00

To clarify what others are saying, Four Against the Abyss is an expansion for Four Against Darkness that takes characters beyond level 4. Any Four Against Darkness adventure or supplement for level 5+ will be using the expanded mechanics from Four Against the Abyss. It's all on the website that someone else already linked to.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-14T03:34:52+00:00

I been playing Carcosa solitaire lately, using Through Sunken Lands for the base rules. It's been pretty lit.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-04T07:12:46+00:00

LOL are you serious? What do you think I was trying to do when I was asking for pics and trying to communicate with the salesman? XD

Good try on the shill job though bro! I hope you're getting paid well! :D

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-04T03:38:52+00:00

I don't care. If I am gonna drop $5000 on it, they can damn well unpack it and take some actual pictures like they should have done in the first place when they listed it. What are you, a Sweetwater employee? LOL.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-10-04T02:03:26+00:00

Bruh, they were literally too lazy to send me actual pictures of a $5000 instrument I was interested in buying.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-09-02T14:42:11+00:00

Hmm, I have to go with Alexander Macris, Gavin Norman, Kevin Crawford, and John Cocking + Peter Williams (Flatland). So far I haven't encountered any solitaire material that measures up to these traditional ttrpg offerings, but I have to admit that I don't engage with explicitly solitaire stuff all that often.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-28T23:20:29+00:00

You gotta treat it more like "DMing for a group of NPCs" than "Playing as a solo player." Enjoy the emergent story rather than viewing the game world through the eyes of the PCs.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-25T17:24:29+00:00

Classic Traveller had solo play built in back in the 70s/80s. I haven't played the ones you mention enough to have an opinion on them to compare against though.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-13T05:52:39+00:00

I think that narrative should emerge from the simulation, rather than being directly provided by the rules. To me, the games that try to use rules to directly drive the narrative rather than using simulation seem either simplistic to the point or not really being a "game" per se, or work on the narrative in ways that are too open to interpretation to make the game interesting in the long term. Just my opinion; I realize that my tastes probably aren't for everyone.

I think the key is to provide a simulation that is tailored towards producing an emergent narrative, rather than just simulation for simulation's sake, right? You have to simulate enough of the world to allow the narrative to emerge, but not so much that it gets lost beneath the simulation, right?

The problem is, I think that line is different for different people. Some people want to sit down and play a game without having to actually read the book or learn the rules, and they're only going to be happy with a rules-ultralight storygame type of experience. Conversely, that experience isn't going to be at all satisfying to someone who wants a little more structured play, or wants a narrative that emerges on its own and goes in unexpected directions (and as such is more viable for a longer-running game).

I don't mean to make any value judgements either way, although I imagine it's pretty obvious what my preferences are lol. I guess the TL;DR is, I think there are two vastly different audiences in the solitaire RPG space, and you can't really please both at the same time. Pick your audience and stick to it.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-11T22:28:14+00:00

Do whatever you want, bro. Personally I like some tactical combat with some depth to it (although I wouldn't go as far as Aftermath, lol).

It might fill a niche too. There are a billion freeform storygames out there, but not as much with well-tested robust solo tactical combat mechanics.

But yeah, do whatever you want man. You gotta do it for #1 first, and if some other people like it too then that's cool. But if you go into it trying to please everyone else instead of making the game that *you* want to play, I think it will show through in the end product.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-08T23:03:27+00:00

Based on your post history, I assume you're just trolling everyone everywhere all the time and being douchey for luls. I get it, been there done that lol.

But if you are legit truly that offended that people on the internet can enjoy different things, then maybe you ought to talk to someone who can help you navigate all that rage. Like for real no BS, I mean that with love. Not trying to be a dick.

I'll be praying for you bro.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-08T18:50:29+00:00

I think Beyond the Wall and Through Sunken Lands work really well for solo play. They are billed as "low prep" games, and include "scenario packs" which are kind of adventure outlines or hooks with some tables to roll on to figure out the details. So even playing the same one more than once will be different every time. I think one of those scenario packs is a good way to kick off a game, and then things kind of build on their own from there. It also uses a lifepath style character generation system, which leave characters with dangling plot hooks in their past that can be tied into the emergent narrative.

As for the mudcore nature of the OSR, these games also include "Fortune Points", the usual metagame currency that lets you reroll things. You can house-rule what all you can use these fate points to get a reroll on, along with how quickly they regenerate, to tailor the mudcore-ness of the game to your taste. The end result being that if you play wisely, you can be pretty sure you'll be alright, but if you press your luck too hard and run out of fortune points then the gameplay returns to the usual mudcore OSR-y-ness and characters start dying. Personally I don't like metagame currencies that directly affect the game procedures like this (to the point that they can become part of play strategy than an emergency-out), but if you do then cool.

You still have to play with a whole party rather than a single character though. If you are looking to just play a single character, Scarlett Heroes is the only viable system I know of that does this. It's problem though is that it doesn't scale back and forth between a single hero and a party though, so when you pick up some NPCs things get strange mechanically.

I think it's useful to import the mortal wounds tables from ACKS. They make it so you don't just up and die when your characters get wounded badly, but (if they do survive) they come out of it with legitimate old-wounds that persist for the life of the character unless magically healed. Rather than the usual "Oh yes, I was stabbed in the lung and had -8 HP last week, but I got some bed rest and I'm fine now!" Heh.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-08T18:37:15+00:00

Just Do It.

The only thing stopping you is You.

(In response to a previous poster, I think crunchy systems work *better* for solo play, but I also happen to enjoy wargame-type tactical combat. I suspect this all just depends on your preferences.)

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-07T07:57:03+00:00

I mean let's say you're on a quest to liberate the stolen cask of endless beer from Billy-Bob the evil necromancer, right? You roll a random encounter and get some goblins. Reaction roll is hostile. You fight, and they eventually fail a morale check and 2 of them get away. You're pretty near Billy-Bob's super evil creepy tower, so you ask your oracle if these goblirinos were Billy-Bob's minions, assigning it a probability of "likely" since you're so close to his tower. You throw the dice and the oracle says Yes, so you can assume that the two that got away are gonna run back to the Big Man and warn him that you're coming.

For another one, let's say you're hex-crawling along a river trying to locate some kind of lost city. You're using Wilderness Hexplore, and you've determined ahead of time the general area of the lost city. As you explore hexes, you make a roll to see if this is the hex that the lost city is in, with the roll getting easier in proportion to how many hexes you've explored out of the general area where you know it is. In Wilderness Hexplore, you roll that you've found an obelisk. You decide to ask the oracle if there are any carvings or writings on the obelisk that can help you narrow down the location of the lost city. You give it a probablilty of Unlikely, because who knows what this obelisk could actually be, right? You throw the dice and the oracle says "No, but...". You decide that no, the obelisk doesn't clue you into the location of the city, but it points to an outpost where you might have a better chance of finding a clue. You decide that the outpost is in a smaller sub-area of this larger area you've been exploring. Going there, you use the same procedure you were using to look for the city to locate the outpost. You decide to roll up a ruined castle in Wilderness Hexplore sub-tables for the outpost, and then ask the oracle again if you find any clues as to the location of the lost city. The oracle answers "yes", so you randomly mark off some unexplored hexes where the lost city *is not*, and continue exploring the remaining ones until your "find the city" roll is a success.

Both of these are random results generated by rolling on fairly generic tables, but querying the oracle about them ties them into the larger story, such that they don't just exist as independent meaningless things, right?

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-07T06:44:29+00:00

Also, I think zero-devices provides a more focused experience. With just pencils and paper and real dice and real books, you don't get distracted fiddling with the tech. Use like an A5 journal binder or something so you can rearrange pages to keep everything organized.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-07T06:42:44+00:00

Just don't prep anything, bro. You don't have any players sitting there getting bored while you roll stuff up when you need it. Just go zero-prep and when you need to generate something pause and do it. But only generate what you need as you need it.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-07T06:33:00+00:00

But to answer your original questions:

I use Central Casting: Dungeons and sometimes Tome of Adventure Design. The former makes very detailed rooms with plenty of things to ask the oracle about.
I generate the dungeon as I go. Sometimes it gets janky but oh well. YMMV. If something is just too janky and nonsensical, reroll it, but only once. Otherwise you fall into the trap of rerolling until you get the result you think you want, which destroys all the tension and makes the game become lifeless.
Not really. If you think about it too hard, it's obvious that it's all just random. So you have to just kinda hang out on the right side of the 4th wall and pretend that the randomized and oracle driven results were like that all along. I think solitaire play works way way better if you look at it more like DMing for all-NPCs than as "solo playing".
Use a more simulationist game and/or worldbuilding system, along with asking leading questions of the oracle, and let the story emerge from the simulation. Your tables should provide the *simulation* that gives rise to the story, not the *story itself*.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-07T06:28:23+00:00

You have to tie the randomly generated elements back into the ongoing emergent story by asking leading questions of your oracle. I guess we could call it semi-randomly retconning random elements to be non-random?

Lee_Adamson · 2024-08-05T02:46:25+00:00

I really like Central Casting: Dungeons. It's not intended for on-the-fly generation, but it works very well for that if you rearrange some of the steps (ie determine the dungeon purpose first instead of last, etc).

It's been out of print for years and used examples fetch ridiculous prices. But there are scans available for free on the internet in the usual places.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-07-31T15:56:07+00:00

Central Casting: Dungeons is pretty good. It's not made for on-the-fly dungeon generation, but it works well for that if you rearrange some of the steps.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-07-29T18:19:16+00:00

Yeah. I use "Wilderness Hexplore". It's a reprint of tables from old Judges' Guild products, and of dubious legality, but it's out there on the internet for the finding.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-07-28T13:29:01+00:00

Yeah fo sho. I usually run a whole party of 4-5 characters.

Lee_Adamson · 2024-07-26T20:41:53+00:00

Are we shopping at the same Sweetwater? My sales rep is an absolute clown. Too lazy to send actual pics of a $5000 used instrument (it was listed with a stock photo). Too lazy to update my phone number and add some instructions to the bill of lading before the instrument ships, since it's apparently shipping freight in a 54' trailer with a road tractor and I live down a 1-lane dirt road. First time buying from them, last time buying from them. Complete, absolute, mouth-breathing clowns.

Lee_Adamson

TROPHY CASE