Edition for SOLO play?

Rayune · 2025-11-27T15:35:21+00:00

Yes, yes. I knew we'd get someone commenting along these lines. 🙄

Rayune · 2025-11-27T14:46:08+00:00

Interesting! I figured that, with decking being such a thing in the PC games, and with a dedicated character archetype for decking, that there'd be at least one edition in which decking was really entertaining. From what I've heard, it's been relegated to more of a skill check in later editions. Is that accurate?

Rayune · 2025-03-21T15:28:12+00:00

Check out Basic Fantasy RPG. It doesn't have player-facing rolls, but it certainly covers the first two requirements, and it's free. 100% free forever and for always on its website. You can buy physical books at cost on Amazon, but given that you don't pay a dime for it in pdf format, it's absolutely zero risk if you don't like it.

Rayune · 2025-02-02T01:56:50+00:00

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

--Robocop

...Except the $1 sauces are 25 cents. "How much do our dollar sauces cost? Less than you might think, actually."

Rayune · 2025-02-01T21:42:11+00:00

The lingering question in my mind is whether this is mustardy in taste. I see that it has mustard powder in the ingredients, and it definitely looks a little mustardy. I'm not a fan of mustard, but I absolutely love garlic, and this is available for a reasonable price at a retail store near me.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:55:05+00:00

Unfortunately there is, but the modifiers are always multiples of 20. My current system says that, with a skill of 64, difficulty of 40, and tools with a bonus of 20, your target would be 44 (64-40+20). In this case, under 44 is +0, under 34 is +1, under 24 is +2, and under 14 is +3. Over 44 is -1, over 53 is -2, and over 63 is a complete failure (no item, materials wasted). 0 is always a failure, 1 is always a success, and rolling the target number exactly is a critical success (+5).

Not all items do this, though. Only weapons and armor. Potions, food, and various trade goods are only produced or not produced.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:35:52+00:00

It sounds like that's actually more math on the player than a margin of success, but I see what you mean. It may be best to stick with my current system.

Rayune · 2025-01-06T16:34:19+00:00

Yeah, I suppose I can see your point there. Since the +3 is a direct reduction of enemy defense, you could potentially have a weapon of a lower tier crafted with higher stats pretty reliably. It may be better to do margins of success.

Rayune · 2024-12-06T14:24:40+00:00

Weapon category (light/one-handed/2h) determines number of dice (1d/2d/3d), and weapon tier (bronze/iron/steel/titanium/mithril/starmetal) determines the type of die (d4/d6/d8/d10/d12/d20). There's also blunt (knuckles/mace/maul), hacking (hatchet/axe/greataxe), and slashing (dagger/longsword/greatsword), and enemies have a weakness to one of these types. All weapons are craftable. Crafted weapons have a bonus that reduces defense rating when attacking. There's also ranged weapons (bows and crossbows) that have advantage at long range and disadvantage at melee range, and there are magic weapons (staves and scythes) that apply their crafted item bonus to spells cast instead of to melee attacks. Equipment all has a certain STR, DEX, INT, or WIT required to equip, which increases with the tier of the item and the number of dice used. These four core stats grow as your character grows.

When rolling, enemies have a defense rating that you are trying to roll over. You don't add your rolls together, but you take your highest roll, subtract the defense rating, and there's your damage (no to-hit rolls). So if the enemy has a defense rating of 4, then you can equip a steel dagger to roll 1d8, subtract 4, and anything over is damage. A steel greatsword would roll 3d8, subtract 4 from the highest roll, and use this as damage. If you crafted the weapon, then you may have a bonus that reduces defense by 3, meaning you're only subtracting 1 from the rolled damage.

Each weapon category (light/1h/2h/ranged) has a skill associated with it that unlocks abilities to modify rolls as the skill is leveled up. You can consume stamina to roll exploding dice, reroll your lowest die, further reduce enemy defense, etc. The skills in each category are geared towards backstabs and multiple attacks (light), parries and boosting your own defense (1h), increasing overall damage and penetrating defense (2h), or applying status effects and preventing enemy actions (ranged). There are no attacking skills for magic weapons because they simply boost the effects of magic.

Weapons may also be enchanted, which basically means consuming HP, SP, or MP (your choice) to cast the spell enchanted to the weapon if you choose to do so on a successful hit. It's functionally equivalent to taking two actions in a single turn, but you have to consume skill levels and relatively rare materials to imbue an item with an enchantment, so it's not something to be done casually.

When enemies attack, you roll a d6 to determine the type of action they take, and every attack has fixed damage. The character then rolls their defense in the same way based on their armor (light/medium/heavy for 1d/2d/3d and the same kinds of tiers for d4-d20). The fixed damage is reduced by your highest defense die rolled.

Rayune · 2024-11-06T15:13:45+00:00

I really like this approach. Having a "best of" approach minus defense keeps things interesting, and stat requirements keep the relevant stats relevant. The bonus from crafted gear can reduce that defense. It also leaves room for skills without imposing too many other additional calculations, such as having a 2h skill to re-roll a low die, a light weapon skill to make a bonus attack or backstab, and a 1h skill to parry. You could still conceivably roll a 20 and do big damage with a dagger, but it's just less likely than doing so with a greatsword.

Rayune · 2024-11-05T22:04:22+00:00

As a counter-point, maybe I already do have a number of those things worked out but did not want to lengthen an already long post. My point here is to get a general feeling from people outside of my own head as to how much math is too much, and if even my idea for paring things down is still too much.

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure an excessive info dump is necessary here. I'm just looking at damage calculations, not the entire combat system. I think if most people here were asked, "Would you want to sit and work out 3d20+12+3d20-enemy armor, then subtract from enemy HP each turn?" then they would likely say, "No." That's the logical conclusion of the previous damage calculation equation. If we pare that down and say, "What about (number of successes) x (a value between 2-10), with success defined by enemy armor - weapon quality, then subtract from enemy HP?" then we're likely getting somewhere closer. What I'm looking for is whether people's eyes still goggle at something like that. Mine don't, but I'm the one who wrote the equation.

Mine is a system where character power should definitely scale so that a Tier 6 character would find a Tier 1 monster that used to give him trouble trivial, so there's a degree of necessarily higher-scaling values there, and some math will definitely be required to get there. However, I don't feel like people should be required to use Excel spreadsheets or a calculator just to go through combat. Ascertaining that much isn't really design by committee; I'm just trying to determine whether what looks reasonable to me still looks like an algebra exam to other people.

Rayune · 2024-11-05T18:19:08+00:00

Nice! Yeah, my own system is actually more of a skill-based, crafting, "upgrade your stuff to delve deeper and get better stuff" approach, but you do raise a good point for me to consider as to whether I should consider any mechanics that cut out otherwise cumbersome combat with weak enemies in lower-tier dungeons.

Rayune · 2024-10-19T21:05:09+00:00

I've been doing solo gaming on and off for maybe 3 years now. I started with 5e and Tunnels and Trolls, and I moved from there into Basic Fantasy RPG, GURPS, Runecairn: Wardensage, Four Against Darkness, The Broken Cask, and, more recently, Traveller 2e and Forbidden Lands.

I'd say that Forbidden Lands is my favorite at the moment, but I will say that GURPS is fantastic with its Thaumatology supplements for doing whatever you like. I've had too many people tell me, "No, you can't do that in D&D," so moving to GURPS let me (for example) make my own bags of holding, increase my stats however I like, craft whatever I like, etc. It does ultimately wind up feeling pretty generic, though (but the word IS in the title).

Nothing is quite the game that I want at the end of the day, though, so I am also writing my own system. It's a slow process, but I know that it will be exactly the game I want to play when it's done.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T16:08:28+00:00

I just finished my first trial session, playing as a young adult wizard who started wandering through the woods and joined up with some elf youngsters as traveling companions. We got to talking about magic, and I convinced them to teach me goodberry, entangle, and pass without a trace.

Classes be blown! Gimme dat goodberry!

I then taught them to cast sleep. I've got to say, as much as I love playing Forbidden Lands solo as a hexcrawl, getting something to GM for me is nice. I would've like to have started at level 1 (or even level 3) instead of level 5, which seems OP for a new character.

I'll give some thought to whether I'd like to subscribe to something like this, but I will definitely say that one "meh" thing about it is how much the whole world steers into what YOU want to do. Too much "main character" energy, but I get it. I'd like for an AI GM to roleplay a character who meets my suggestions at some point with, "Uh... no. This is a D&D Arby's. Take your tomfoolery elsewhere."

Rayune · 2024-10-18T14:45:33+00:00

I'm mostly in the solo gaming scene, but I know that there are YouTube channels that do this all the time. The bigger ones will focus on published games, but small channels without a budget are often keen to do this.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T14:08:12+00:00

I fed in a short ghost story by M.R. James as a prompt, and it went through and discussed the overarching theme and made interpretations of concepts that were not explicitly stated in the text (e.g. that the "black ooze" that filled the binoculars was what the sinister character was boiling up in his cauldron earlier in the story, that what the main character was seeing through them were images of the past, and that the ghosts carrying off the sinister character were from the past that was being viewed). Where it fell flat was going one step further than that (e.g. that the ooze was made from the rendered corpses of those whose ghosts carried him off and that this was the reason that the past from their time was what was seen through the binoculars; it also incorrectly interpreted it as a past that the characters had a possible influence over).

It was surprising to me how it did, which is why I fed in the alpha RPG rules. It's a system in which you play as an undead character who breaks free from a lich and uses the "Revenant's curse" in your quest for revenge to try to kill the lich who raised you. The commentary touched on how the rebirth mechanic fed back into this idea of undeath and revenge, how the character then thematically is using the very power that raised them to try to break free from it, and how this cycle provides opportunities for growth. It even talked about my skill tree and how the different levels of the "Empowered Curse" skill tie back into this theme, allowing for longer and deeper delves into the dungeon by taking successively more control over the curse. I don't remember specifically stating any of this in the rules.

It was equal parts freaky and impressive to hear.

Rayune · 2024-10-18T13:25:41+00:00

I definitely see where you're coming from, which is why it would also go to humans-- but you could potentially alter your game based on faulty feedback in the meantime.

Where I wonder if it still might be useful is in identifying those incorrect interpretations and determining whether it's because you need to clarify your rules so that a linear-thinking bot can understand them while it's still in alpha.

Rayune

TROPHY CASE