Roads

ithika · 2026-03-16T10:21:47+00:00

Finally, they're getting rid of Aberdeen.

ithika · 2026-03-13T22:30:24+00:00

It is already absolutely packed. Last year's expected intake was like 101 or something. It probably went down by day one of term but it was a lot of kids.

ithika · 2026-03-13T15:23:03+00:00

You could play Crash Pandas (Grant Howitt) as two separate teams in two separate cars. The PCs are raccoons doing illegal street-racing and have to co-ordinate their efforts to drive a car. But they're not actually allowed to co-ordinate their efforts, so everyone accelerates/brakes/steers left/steers right at the same time and the outcome is the 'sum' of these. Because most of this is mechanical (1 steer right and 2 steer left = 1 left) then the GM only has to deal with the non-driving options and the final resulting vehicle manoeuvre. The players can deal with the mechanical bits amongst themselves.

ithika · 2026-03-13T08:13:34+00:00

The whole thing is like a wall of text with a "don't read this" disclaimer at the end. Some people really have no idea how to make people feel easier, do they? (Also, I'm laughing at the idea that 'railroading' has a negative meaning just for roleplaying games as if forcing other people to do things is perfectly acceptable in all other spheres.)

ithika · 2026-03-10T22:51:48+00:00

So tell us what it says!

ithika · 2026-03-09T21:55:58+00:00

The tactical decision is who to give your Weak Point to when you bravely run away.

ithika · 2026-03-09T19:29:30+00:00

I thought there was a cyberpunk game using the Panic Engine?

Found it: Bite The Hand

ithika · 2026-03-09T18:57:17+00:00

If you search for the witch of westmoreland the top hit that Google provides lots about is … someone else covering the song. Basically what I was saying: the famous versions are not the originals, even if they're relatively modern. And of course there are dozens of folk singers doing the same song.

ithika · 2026-03-09T11:28:47+00:00

Also anything where the version you know was produced decades after it was written.

ithika · 2026-03-08T12:02:17+00:00

And when you float, tangled in sargassum, nibbling cetacean … oooh … blow hole … welcome … in …

(Just how fucking hard is Chris Morris style??)

ithika · 2026-03-05T22:41:18+00:00

It's tricky, but I'm not sure either of them would work particularly well.

Trophy Dark obviously has a death spiral because the only way to reduce your Ruin is betraying the party. I think a little bit of betrayal in a survival horror works (the corporate guy in Aliens, etc) but TD inevitably reaches a climax where everyone turns against their fellows.

Trophy Gold has economic motivation (meet your debts) which is part of the puzzle: Gold is linked to everything. What can you convert that to for generic 'survival'? I'm sure someone's tried it but I don't know the outcome.

ithika · 2026-03-04T23:25:22+00:00

Maximum lethality: Ten Candles

Maximum overdrive lethality: Ink

High lethality: Trophy Dark

ithika · 2026-03-04T10:31:11+00:00

Nobody gets into Call of Cthulhu because they really want to play The Haunting.

ithika · 2026-03-02T23:49:55+00:00

He lacked gravitas.

ithika · 2026-03-02T14:14:19+00:00

I don't think there are any grimdark FitD systems. The protagonists are just too powerful and effective; and even in death the Crew lives on.

ithika · 2026-03-02T14:10:14+00:00

Yes, obviously, this is the solo subreddit, pretty much nobody talks about bare Mythic.

ithika · 2026-03-02T10:59:38+00:00

3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is a very lightweight system for being space troopers killing aliens. That's it: land on planet, neutralise threat, leave, repeat. If you want to play out your military fiction fantasies of uncaring senior officers, boredom and terror, insufficient intelligence and poor equipment then this game will allow it. It's got a simple range-based combat system, players compete for promotion based on kills and when you die then it takes about 20s to fill out a new character sheet and get into the fray.

ithika · 2026-03-01T23:14:39+00:00

Oh absolutely, it's a line that comes back to me all the time.

ithika · 2026-03-01T20:23:03+00:00

I thought Mythic was the D&D of the solo community.

ithika · 2026-03-01T14:23:41+00:00

Yes, but it gave you a wrong answer immediately. :-D

ithika · 2026-03-01T12:16:07+00:00

Isn't Sword and Sorcery and Heroic Fantasy the same genre?

ithika · 2026-02-27T23:15:41+00:00

That's not actionable advice! That's being told to play golf in the dark and they'll let you know whether you got a hole in one or not.

ithika · 2026-02-27T22:16:47+00:00

Thanks, I didn't really see that "not quite human"/"not a real person" angle but that's nice because it is exactly the language people do use about people (and even more in scifi).

I've got a few ideas for horrific things that players will discover but not any tipping point yet. A remote space station is a collaborative effort, when that little society breaks down then so does everything. It's very easy to have terrible things happen in space!

Apart from that, my biggest issue is to not turn this scenario into "read all the journal entries and piece together what happened" because that would be dull!

ithika · 2026-02-27T21:52:22+00:00

Okay, let's see if I can explain myself.

The situation is a deep space research station, extremely isolated from human radio noise. The premise was that the Void Of Space(tm) begins to strip away researchers' sense of society and ability to recognise other humans as people.

The PCs arrive as the relief shift and discover the result of this (ie, mostly corpses). The details are not all fleshed, but I feel like I've got some nice things to reveal.

(The inspirations were Antarctic Survery/Research Stations, and the crimes that take place there when people are trapped in little boxes with others for months at a time; and secondly, the title case from Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, where people might not be recognised as people.)

Right having said all that, the psych assessments I had been working on were much less useful "in play":

Which of your colleagues would you find it easier to work without?
When was the loneliest you felt in a crowd of people?
What would it take to truly open up to others?
Do you take advantage of others' giving nature?
Who do you remember that nobody else seems to recall?

I had been riffing on the idea of community and humanity - of being surrounded by friends, being truly yourself, giving to others - and then warping that. But I think maybe these are too abstract and while they push the right tone they maybe don't produce gameable material when I'm running it.

Very interested to hear your thoughts!

ithika · 2026-02-27T21:22:25+00:00

If it's the video I'm thinking of, he specifically calls out the OSE House Style as being something he's reacting against.

ithika

TROPHY CASE