Solo Tunneling...My New Approach...

[Rat Salad]

Okay, this isn't exactly ground-breaking, but I thought I'd throw out the solo playing approach I've been utilizing, as it's been really successful and enjoyable so far. I've been working with a solo-playing set-up for some time now; something I could play on my own, or with my gaming pal I've diced with for a decade now. I did a lot of online research for various approaches, and found some useful stuff on youtube, but none of them really hit me as close to the way I was hoping to do it. My conclusion, finally, was that I needed to put together something that was different than what I was seeing and reading about, but didn't try to re-invent the wheel. The solution, for me, was to use some pieces of what was out there, but arrange them in a way ideal for me. First off, I'm an cranky, weirdo-beardo, old-timer that's reluctant to utilize technology too much..nothing against it, just don't enjoy it a lot...get enough of that at work. I've been playing since about 1983 or so, so I knew I wanted something that didn't rely on computer generated maps, story threads, seeds, die rolling or any other thing...or at least as little as possible. Nothing against those ways of generation, it's just, for me, gaming is more of a physical die rolling experience...and probably charts to some degree, to be honest. I want to make my own maps, by hand...I want to keep notes with a pencil.

To take care of the first part of my "engine" I knew I wanted to round up as many random dungeon determination dice as I could find, and to keep it in the spirit of T&T, I limited my selection (with the exception of one die) to the arena of six-sided dice. I purchased several complete sets of the "Dungeonmorph" dice that are out there, but found they are too large for my liking. They are good dice, and I can see using them at some point, but I don't like the way they roll, they are hard to transport (my setup is in miniature...A5 size notebook, shrunk down "booklet" pdf. rule-set, all of it), and, honestly, the amount of detail on them could be simplified for my liking. I kinda wish they left out some of the elements and just focused on the room/area shape, but that's being picky. They are really cool, and I can see using them in some fashion at some point. I already had several sets of the "Adventure" dice, the "Monster" dice and the "Corridor" dice from the Flying Buffalo days, along with a ton of the skull-faced "Death" dice, and I'm glad I got 'em years ago, because now they are high as H...,and hard to to find (maybe they'll come back once the company transition is complete and things re-open over there). I bundled those together with some rather costly but cool dungeon dice from rpgshop (similar to the 'morph dice, but 16mm and simpler designs). Lastly, I found a "yes"/"no" die on fleabay and some custom random monster dice that a feller offers on etsy (still waiting on those, doggone it..). There's a "+"/"-" Fudge die in the batch. One could amass their own pool of dice based on different criteria. In fact, I'm thinking it'd be cool (and in the spirit of playing the 1st edition rules), to just use plain old D6s and just assign duties to the pips in order to have the same effects. Charts could back up the number assignments for monsters, room shapes, etc. That's the way we've always done it anyhow for regular and solo play before fancy dice were around. Another thing I'm wanting to work on are penning in drawings on blank-faced dice, which I have a lot of. Might do that this summer. So, there's my dice.

The "magic punch" that sent this solo play into overdrive I'll talk about in Part II here in a bit...thought I'd post this and see what it looks like to practice my posting skills, and I didn't want to ramble about the obvious too long...which I've done a lot already.

"Hey, my solo system is all about dice and charts!!"...yea, no kiddin', dumbo...! Ha.

[Rat Salad]

So, for awhile I tried some of the established solo systems out there, but I didn't get too far. "Mythic" made my head hurt and I didn't want another book I had to study. Some of the free methods I found online and downloaded didn't have an "old school" feel, which is important to me, and when I modded them, it just seemed kinda weak.

I cobbled together quite a few random charts that I had created and discovered online and modified for our use. My notebook was getting thick and the system took too long to execute which broke the story line (though we keep our story fairly thin and mainly prefer the crawl itself). I managed to get rid of most of the random charts and things that I had found with one simple set of charts. Coupled with the dice, the "D30 Sandbox Companion" booklet (found physical copy and the pdf. for cheap pay download) has a set of charts that give 10 starting inspirations to build a setting. After I re-typed them to convert to d6 rolling, we were good to test it out. Where it got better (and here is, I believe, the part that made it successful), we rolled a die for each of the categories to create the background of the adventure and the introduction, then we took this list of words and we BOTH (there are two of us playing currently) wrote a free-form paragraph using the information. Then we simply read both of our paragraphs of what we were envisioning and then combined the efforts into one cohesive "foundation for the house". With such a solid background (and we've done this several times now...works great every single time), it was then really easy to construct, with the dice and discussion, what we were facing. I know it doesn't sound like much, but if you've tried playing solo you might have run into what we did, which is a bogging down into too much infinitesimal detail and flipping around thru a ton of notes and paper. This streamlined it, made it solid as a rock, and left just the right amount of room to let the dice start suggesting what is going on without breaking things. If you combine a willingness to make some slight assumptions here and there, roll a lot of "yes/no" when needed and you can nudge the dice and re-roll sometimes, it works almost as well as having a DM at the table. There's a lot of other useful charts in this publication, but so far the first batch that I converted is all I'm using, and we really don't need more, so that keeps the paperwork thin in the notebook and smooth.

Here's an example of some notes from our last rodeo to give you an idea. Here are the categories for each and what was rolled randomly:

1.) Trigger: Teleportation
2.) Major Goal: solve mystery/phenomenon
3.) Obstacle: speak incantation
4.) Location: fortress (decayed)
5.) Location Feature: laboratory
6.) Phenomena: Decay
7.) Villain Goal/Reason: amusement/boredom
8.) Artifact/Relic: stone
9.) Theme: immortality
10.) Key NPC: hermit

.....you have to take some liberties with the rolled results..be willing to throw out what you don't need, and read "into" some of the stated results, but this one was easy. Here was my written paragraph:

"In a decayed castle, inside a lab is a lich. The lich was a former prince who consorted with the legions of Hell and commanded the forces of the undead. Now, he uses a sear stone to stare into and study others in an attempt to enchant the surrounding dukes and barons of the surrounding settlements to draw them to the ruins in order to steal their souls and to amuse himself with their peril, which he sets up in most nefarious ways inside the trapped and decrepit castle. Various magical teleporters exist and may be used if one can solve the riddles, glyphs and wards that are inscribed within.."

....and my gaming buds story:

"While drinking and playing cards the gang are assailed by an annoying and ugly old man who says he will pay them for their souls if we lose in a dice game with him. Being drunk, we play...we lose, and we are instantly teleported to the doors of a dilapidated fortress inscribed with strange writing. In the distance, like the whisper of the wind, we hear, "If you survive you may in fact gain a prize...but if you fail, your souls are mine".

With such similar paragraphs, it was easy to merge the two paragraphs into a solid story. After some discussion we proceeded to select and roll our dice and sent our party of four into the doors of this cursed place. We have already entered and a moldy, and damp rock-faced 20 x 20 ft. room and then into a torchlit hallway with dripping sounds and pools of stagnant black water. We triggered a few traps at doors in another room, and had to make some level 1 luck saves, and then got teleported to a room where we fought a gorilla...which we assumed was the foe, but turned out to only be the pet-food for the real monster which dropped on us from above: A gigantic spider. My rogue figured out a secret entrance that has taken us to a huge 50 x 60 chamber, and that's where we are so far.

The party:
Morgan Ratsniffer: Human Rogue 2 dice + 5 adds, gladius sword and scutum
Gormoug "The Basher": Naked Dwarf Warrior with a war hammer 4 dice + 28 adds (!..yow!)
Skidmark: Dwarven Rogue 4 dice + 14 adds...battle axe
Opposum: Human Warrior 2 dice + 1 add..broadsword

...we'll be picking it up this next week for a few more rooms. We'll see how long it takes before we get diced into oblivion! Aside from the pages that came from the "D30 Sandbox..", the only other paperwork is a form I put together for keeping track of experience points (this thing has been a handy game-changer for moving the game along), and I like to use the chart I made back in high school ("King's List of 100 Random Cutthroats, Scumbags and Thugs For Tunnels & Trolls") for naming my guys, but that's about the size of it. I think we might make a video of play going down at some point just to show the system and how it rolls. I should mention that I'm mapping out on graph paper our map and we're keeping notes in pencil as we move along.

[stefanj]

You should write this up, with more examples and tables and such, for Trollszine.

[Rat Salad]

Really, you think so? Maybe I should try that. It really is working nicely, and I think it's pretty solid in it's simple approach. I might just do that..thanks for the notion. I simplified it as there are many other examples we've played out, so I might be able to color the description of things quite a bit more.

[darrght]

I agree with stefanj @rat Salad , this looks excellent and I'm sure plenty of your fellow trolls here at the 'bridge would love to use such a system when players are limited and no one wants to GM

[zanshin]

Feb 19, 2022 18:36:47 GMT -5 stefanj said:

You should write this up, with more examples and tables and such, for Trollszine.

Thumbs up from me

[Rat Salad]

I think I'll do that guys, thanks. The last 8 years or so has kept me out-of-the-loop gaming wise (just now exploring it again) after my sons autism diagnosis. It's been a full time job for my wife and I and has demanded all of our attention, so excuse the lame question, but how would I go about that? I have pdf.s of some that I've downloaded...maybe the recent issue would talk about submissions, so I'll go look at that. Thanks for the encouragement gang...! I'll see what I can do and see what happens!

[Rat Salad]

...folks at Tavernmaster still? Issue 12 indications...

[ProfGremlin]

Feb 20, 2022 11:56:39 GMT -5 Rat Salad said:

...folks at Tavernmaster still? Issue 12 indications...

I would recommend sending zanshin and/or quoghmyre a private message as they have helmed the last few issues of TrollsZine! To my understanding, Tavenmaster is only offering a storefront for the distribution of TrollsZine! so it comes under their imprint. The 'zine is still a TrollBridge creation and production, created by and for fans of T&T, offered to the community - through Tavernmaster, now - for free.

[Rat Salad]

Thanks ProfGremlin..I'll do that!

[mahrundl]

Popping in late to add my vote for a TrollsZine! write-up.

Your system sounds like it has quite a few similarities with the way I run my games. The party decides where they want to go and what they want to happen though, rather than your random plot rolls, and then they try to do that. 'try' being very much the operative word - I don't go out of my way to stop them, but sometimes the world (in the form of random events) does, and quite frequently they distract themselves from the task at hand...

[Rat Salad]

Yea, if you are running solo, it's been my observations, from experimenting in different approaches, that you want to be very open to two factors: A collective notion by those playing (to discover fresh avenues, new paths and different ways of looking at "it"), and a willingness to make "something" out of whatever comes your way, and that includes rethinking and re-determining if the road is blocked. I developed my wits in this arena when my family situation left me little option for gaming with my normal friends, and a lot of practice has helped as well. Thanks for the vote too...I'm going to write it up and see what Zanshin and Guoghmyre think.

[cupboardgnome]

Do it, do it, DO IT!!

[mahrundl]

RPG parties are, at least in my experience, incarnate examples of the maxim "No plan survives contact with the enemy".

Of course, the flip side of that is that it applies equally to GMs...

[trolletgunnar]

Feb 19, 2022 17:39:56 GMT -5 Rat Salad said:

So, for awhile I tried some of the established solo systems out there, but I didn't get too far. "Mythic" made my head hurt and I didn't want another book I had to study. Some of the free methods I found online and downloaded didn't have an "old school" feel, which is important to me, and when I modded them, it just seemed kinda weak.

I cobbled together quite a few random charts that I had created and discovered online and modified for our use. My notebook was getting thick and the system took too long to execute which broke the story line (though we keep our story fairly thin and mainly prefer the crawl itself). I managed to get rid of most of the random charts and things that I had found with one simple set of charts. Coupled with the dice, the "D30 Sandbox Companion" booklet (found physical copy and the pdf. for cheap pay download) has a set of charts that give 10 starting inspirations to build a setting. After I re-typed them to convert to d6 rolling, we were good to test it out. Where it got better (and here is, I believe, the part that made it successful), we rolled a die for each of the categories to create the background of the adventure and the introduction, then we took this list of words and we BOTH (there are two of us playing currently) wrote a free-form paragraph using the information. Then we simply read both of our paragraphs of what we were envisioning and then combined the efforts into one cohesive "foundation for the house". With such a solid background (and we've done this several times now...works great every single time), it was then really easy to construct, with the dice and discussion, what we were facing. I know it doesn't sound like much, but if you've tried playing solo you might have run into what we did, which is a bogging down into too much infinitesimal detail and flipping around thru a ton of notes and paper. This streamlined it, made it solid as a rock, and left just the right amount of room to let the dice start suggesting what is going on without breaking things. If you combine a willingness to make some slight assumptions here and there, roll a lot of "yes/no" when needed and you can nudge the dice and re-roll sometimes, it works almost as well as having a DM at the table. There's a lot of other useful charts in this publication, but so far the first batch that I converted is all I'm using, and we really don't need more, so that keeps the paperwork thin in the notebook and smooth.

Here's an example of some notes from our last rodeo to give you an idea. Here are the categories for each and what was rolled randomly:

1.) Trigger: Teleportation
2.) Major Goal: solve mystery/phenomenon
3.) Obstacle: speak incantation
4.) Location: fortress (decayed)
5.) Location Feature: laboratory
6.) Phenomena: Decay
7.) Villain Goal/Reason: amusement/boredom
8.) Artifact/Relic: stone
9.) Theme: immortality
10.) Key NPC: hermit

.....you have to take some liberties with the rolled results..be willing to throw out what you don't need, and read "into" some of the stated results, but this one was easy. Here was my written paragraph:

"In a decayed castle, inside a lab is a lich. The lich was a former prince who consorted with the legions of Hell and commanded the forces of the undead. Now, he uses a sear stone to stare into and study others in an attempt to enchant the surrounding dukes and barons of the surrounding settlements to draw them to the ruins in order to steal their souls and to amuse himself with their peril, which he sets up in most nefarious ways inside the trapped and decrepit castle. Various magical teleporters exist and may be used if one can solve the riddles, glyphs and wards that are inscribed within.."

....and my gaming buds story:

"While drinking and playing cards the gang are assailed by an annoying and ugly old man who says he will pay them for their souls if we lose in a dice game with him. Being drunk, we play...we lose, and we are instantly teleported to the doors of a dilapidated fortress inscribed with strange writing. In the distance, like the whisper of the wind, we hear, "If you survive you may in fact gain a prize...but if you fail, your souls are mine".

With such similar paragraphs, it was easy to merge the two paragraphs into a solid story. After some discussion we proceeded to select and roll our dice and sent our party of four into the doors of this cursed place. We have already entered and a moldy, and damp rock-faced 20 x 20 ft. room and then into a torchlit hallway with dripping sounds and pools of stagnant black water. We triggered a few traps at doors in another room, and had to make some level 1 luck saves, and then got teleported to a room where we fought a gorilla...which we assumed was the foe, but turned out to only be the pet-food for the real monster which dropped on us from above: A gigantic spider. My rogue figured out a secret entrance that has taken us to a huge 50 x 60 chamber, and that's where we are so far.

The party:
Morgan Ratsniffer: Human Rogue 2 dice + 5 adds, gladius sword and scutum
Gormoug "The Basher": Naked Dwarf Warrior with a war hammer 4 dice + 28 adds (!..yow!)
Skidmark: Dwarven Rogue 4 dice + 14 adds...battle axe
Opposum: Human Warrior 2 dice + 1 add..broadsword

...we'll be picking it up this next week for a few more rooms. We'll see how long it takes before we get diced into oblivion! Aside from the pages that came from the "D30 Sandbox..", the only other paperwork is a form I put together for keeping track of experience points (this thing has been a handy game-changer for moving the game along), and I like to use the chart I made back in high school ("King's List of 100 Random Cutthroats, Scumbags and Thugs For Tunnels & Trolls") for naming my guys, but that's about the size of it. I think we might make a video of play going down at some point just to show the system and how it rolls. I should mention that I'm mapping out on graph paper our map and we're keeping notes in pencil as we move along.

You are no longer lurking under the bridge – god job Sir!