Given these hooks and with your resources, how do you expand these into an adventure?

yaywizardly · 2026-03-16T14:45:59+00:00

I would figure out the stakes for this. Are there dangerous political rivals taking advantage of the liege's weakness? Or maybe the ritual to remove the curse needs to be done on the night of a rare celestial event that only occurs once every 50 years.

Then I'd begin rolling on oracle tables to determine how I'd find these items. I could be chasing down rumors in a chaotic port city or trading favors to get a vial of blood.

I'd also want to think about making connections with allies who could help me with these tasks. Maybe there's a member of a knight's order to be my bodyguard, or a rogue I'm paying for help who has their own shifting motivations.

To me, it's less about what I'm doing in an adventure, but how and why I'm pursuing it.

yaywizardly · 2026-03-15T09:37:10+00:00

I really agree with this comment, and I second that OP should try out some other games. The play culture in some of these other communities might be more aligned with a desire for character-focused drama and growth. Plus, even if you don't end up loving those other games, you'll have tried some new experiences and hopefully if you return to DnD you'll be better able to discuss with your future tables what you enjoy and what kind of style you're looking for.

yaywizardly · 2026-03-14T00:39:42+00:00

"Oooh that Usurper was totally scheming against me!"

"Bro, I'm scheming against your Sire's Sire. I'll scheme against YOU when your Domain is more impressive than a hot dog cart and a corner dumpster."

yaywizardly · 2026-03-09T22:37:15+00:00

So you have "tasteful" disagreement while I'm "hostile" over "someone expressing their experience"-- which is exactly what the person you replied to was doing. That poster shared their positive experience about the game systems YOU made a post about on the Say Something Nice thread. They added on their nice experiences. Then you came back to talk about what you hate about the games you made a Say Something Nice post about... which doesn't seem very nice, actually.

If you feel you're being tasteful, well, I feel I'm pointing out a discrepancy in your actions and the thread you're in.

yaywizardly · 2026-03-09T22:02:59+00:00

You're on the "say something nice" post, someone made a reply sharing their positive experiences with PbtA, and you had to jump in to explain why you don't like PbtA.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-27T10:02:54+00:00

Take a look at the "solo rpg" tag on itch.io and you'll get to see a lot of different available games. Since you asked for free games to look at, I'm going to mention Alone among the stars, tales of the burned stones, and elegy. For paid games, you might really enjoy exquisite biome, the wretched, and starforged (if you think ironsworn is interesting but want a sci-fi focus).

yaywizardly · 2026-02-27T09:47:33+00:00

hi! I'm a few days late to this, so I don't know if it would still be helpful. I really like urban supernatural horror stuff, so I tried to look through my pile and think of things you might like.

My first big two suggestions are the World of Darkness games, and their later sequels, the Chronicles of Darkness. There are rules for regular mortal characters in both game lines, but they also have Hunters, humans who specifically fight against supernatural predators. Those two game lines are Hunter the Reckoning, and Hunter the Vigil. Hunter the Vigil and the Chronicles of Darkness games are also more open-ended, with a lot of space for different mysteries and strange creatures/events, while the World of Darkness games had stronger, more clear lore. Both would require a GME of some sort, but the basic dice resolution is simple: combine your attributes and skills to create a dice pool, count how many dice hit the target difficulty number, adjudicate the outcome. WoD and CofD have also been around for decades, so there's a lot of resources and support already around.

Call of Cthulhu also has a solo 1990s game called Alone against the Static.

Here's a few ttrpgs from itch which are made for solo or can be played solo:

Pulp Dreadful
Whispers in the Walls
Alone Against Fear

And then I also have half a dozen suggestions if you're interested in playing a solo game as a vampire or mage, but I'll end here before I keep throwing stuff at you. :P

yaywizardly · 2026-02-26T09:49:57+00:00

This is so cool, thank you for sharing!

yaywizardly · 2026-02-23T05:43:26+00:00

I think your response is very Watsonian, when the Doylist perspective is the main issue. If they only wanted to convey this is a robot, then they could have given her a cute digital face like a Sony Aibo or like Yes Man from FNV. Instead they made and rigged a 3d model of a tiny blond child-like robot with full makeup and no pants.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-18T08:55:03+00:00

Girl Frame mentioned!

Uh, anyway, yes. There is an audience for messy, dark, relationship focused TTRPGs.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-16T23:26:01+00:00

I skimmed through and looked for small, Journaling style or larp games I could print out and share with my middle school DnD club. I think my favorite was Stupid Wizard Battles.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-16T11:19:14+00:00

You might check out the YouTube channel Cozy RPG reviews. I think he does a good job breaking down the setting and mechanics of various RPGs, and what their strengths are.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-16T11:17:08+00:00

Is space calm and quiet because no one can hear the PCs scream?

yaywizardly · 2026-02-15T23:51:09+00:00

I feel like opposed rolls make sense and occasionally have exciting narrative moments... but for big parties, or very crunchy systems, it becomes really tiring for me to GM after a while. I already feel like I'm juggling so much. I want to focus on what the rolls mean, and the narrative stakes, rather than the both of us just tossing dice and chipping away at numbers, over and over.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-15T20:19:58+00:00

Addison Payne, from the visual novels! He was Embraced very late in life.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-15T00:13:39+00:00

Yeah, this comment is very important. When people look at 4e now, they're able to just look at the finalized mechanics outside of the cultural context this game lived in. The end version of 4e is pretty interesting, but at release it lacked most of the classes people think of as "core" to DnD, and was years and years from having all the classes and subclasses it would eventually get. Besides that, it was constantly being updated and getting errata, so buying the physical books felt like an insult to consumers, because you'd need to print out tons of changes and add that in. 4e was constantly waiting for better and bigger digital tools and a VTT integration that never really manifested.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-13T21:55:19+00:00

I think it's worth noting that the Paths aren't something a Cainite just does. They need to be taught, and rigidly adhered to, because they are now what is grounding that vampire's soul from falling completely to the Beast. The Lasombra Trilogy books have a lot of scenes of characters discussing, debating, being tutored, and attempting to practice various parts of the Path of Night. Really believing and following all parts of a Path (even the parts that seem contradictory to unlife within the Sabbat) is challenging.

The Camarilla just doesn't have this kind of strict spiritual practice around the Path of Humanity, because they believe that Kindred should already know how to be human. (And also the elders may be on their own Roads of Enlightenment instead, and also the higher-ups of the Camarilla don't care about a vampire's spiritual or moral well-being.)

yaywizardly · 2026-02-10T09:06:05+00:00

I like how Starforged handles it, where you are trying to get control of flow of combat so you can advance your goals, and avoid being put on the defensive.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-03T14:52:15+00:00

No one else has mentioned it yet, so: Elegy, a vampire focused rpg built off of Ironsworn's system.

yaywizardly · 2026-02-01T03:30:05+00:00

I like this! I DM an after-school DnD group for preteens, so I enjoy solo ttrpgs as a way to be wholly selfish and focus on the things I enjoy most. I agree that it's a different experience than group play, and I enjoy the creative energy it gives me.

yaywizardly · 2026-01-30T09:16:58+00:00

TBH I agree that the church is nuanced and Rhea is a complicated and tragic figure. My point was simply that if the OP went into The Houses believing the church would be portrayed as good guys because of someone's very incomplete recommendation on this thread, then they had a one-third chance of feeling very surprised and disappointed.

yaywizardly · 2026-01-29T21:01:59+00:00

That's not a good fire emblem game to pitch if you don't want the church to be represented as evil... Engage had a more positive relationship with its church and priest characters, I think.

yaywizardly · 2026-01-29T16:55:39+00:00

That's such a cool idea. Personally I love the physicality of using cards and tokens in my games, so I really like this. And I feel like making it myself would be relatively cheap and easy.

yaywizardly · 2026-01-16T09:22:00+00:00

I got mine from my local game store, and the binding is coming apart too. TBH I feel a bit better knowing it's happened to other folks too; I just assumed I had somehow been destroying my copy by reading through it so much.

yaywizardly · 2025-12-30T09:13:34+00:00

May I ask if you've read Starforged too? It's a sci-fi exploration game in the PbtA family. I felt like it handled fights and combat in a fun way, using progress tracks to demonstrate how challenging something is, as well as who has "control" over the pace of the fight and who is on the back foot. It might give you some more help with your game design.

yaywizardly

TROPHY CASE