Since someone was asking about Basic-style OSR solo gaming, I figured I'd share a bit about my BFRPG solo game.
I'm using this game as a way to playtest my own megadungeon. This way, when (and if) I can run it for my group, I'll have a better idea of what to expect, and what to work on. For my GM Emulator, I'm using a small sample from the Gamemaster's Apprentice deck. I absolutely love these cards, and intend on buying multiple decks.
It's worth mentioning that, at this point, the dungeon doesn't have much story. Especially, as I quickly learned, the goblin woods outside. This has turned into a hack and slash. That's okay, I can work on that.
Leaving town, Ceele, a human fighter, encountered goblins in the woods, a day's travel out. She managed to escape, having killed all three, but just barely clinging on to her last hit point. On one goblin, Ceele found a correspondence with a villager, regarding a prophecy. Ceele returned to town, patching up her wounds. I decided this was a good point to tweak how I'm playing the game solo.
It's worth mentioning that this is really my first experience actually playing an OSR game, so I'm still getting the hang of the system. All of the encounters I've had so far, I've always been so caught up in managing both the goblins and the characters, that I forget to use the morale rules. All the goblins have thus had a morale of 12, which isn't good for the goblins, adventurers, or even the story, really.
So, with that, Ceele befriended a halfling cleric, who had a friend that was kidnapped by the goblins. They went out, this time together, and fared... well, a bit better. This time, it was the healer who almost died! Ceele bravely stepped in to save the halfling, and again, they returned to town. This trip's bounty was a scroll of Speak to Animals, which the Cleric found.
And that's where the story last left off. The experience gain is slow and tedious for my taste, but that's part of OSR. It will take a lot of goblins to reach second level. I did get Black Streams: Solo Heroes, which gives damage rules for small parties. I gave that a test encounter, and it went well, although I didn't record it as part of the story. With these rules, and hopefully with remembering to use morale, these two might be able to survive even more action!
Very cool. I was thinking of starting a solo campaign for BFRPG as well.
ReplyDeleteC.M. Pendleton Haha! It was your post that inspired me to share this.
ReplyDeleteLike I said over on that post, the system certainly works solo. There are a few gotchas in terms of power level, but there are ways to handle that.
Nathan V I ordered mythic gm emulator, but I also have universal adventure cards for encounters, dungeons, and wilderness. Plus, I made my own set of cards for more nuanced storylines.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping it goes well. I'll let you know.
I will definitely look into black streams.
So, the key to actually playing old school is that xp comes from treasure, and fights with monsters are best avoided unless absolutely necessary. That's why you're finding advancement slow; you're not really intended to have to survive 20+ hard fights to level up. You should probably up the treasure and/or come up with a way to work out if there's a decent shot at treasure and run away/avoid encounters that don't look like they'll pay off, or just reduce the xp needed. It wasn't until later editions where they made combat a lot less lethal that they started to design around x combats to level up.
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm not running the usual treasure-hunting adventures in an OSR game, I either multiply the combat XP by some amount, or give some sort of quest-based award. I've also been trying scene-based XP based on chaos levels in Mythic. So there are options.
ReplyDeleteGerard Nerval how do you like Mythic?
ReplyDeleteC.M. Pendleton, I swear by it. I like the open-ended scene structure, the alterations & interrupts, and the random Events.
ReplyDeleteI did end up writing house rules for it (link below), though. The Fate Chart slowed me down -- there was no way I could memorise it, so I always had to look things up -- and I grew dissatisfied with the chances of Yes results increasing with chaos, so I worked up something simpler and more to my taste.
I'd tried one or two other GM emulators, but I always went back to Mythic, even before I decided to house rule it.
dropbox.com - MCSV_final2.pdf
Gerard Nerval that's great to hear. I ordered a print copy. It's hard to find groups when your time is structured around family and work. I'm hoping mythic gm let's me have some RPG fun when I get time.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this write-up.
ReplyDeleteOSR is pretty brutal. Another thing would be to give XP for exploration or for resolving the encounter. Fighting is the obvious way to resolve an encounter, but maybe avoiding it (maybe partial XP) or negotiating out of it would be other ways.