New Solo Sandbox Game: Shawn Ester

I didn’t have any solo games going, and I wanted one. That way, I’d have something to play when I got bored. The goal was to get something started—no need to be fancy about it.

To that end, I decided to use Old-School Essentials and rolled up a level 1 human fighter named Shawn Ester. I’m using Mythic Game Master Emulator to help run the game, and I rolled up a small hex map with a starting village using Sandbox Generator.

The first scene took place in that village—Marsen Chapel—with the head of the merchant caravan Shawn had been working for explaining that the road ahead was safe and he wouldn’t be needed. As the merchant gave Shawn the 10 gp he was owed, Shawn asked if he knew anything about the village. The merchant told him that the Bleeding Club Tavern was a good place and often had a room. He also mentioned that the folks from the Gypsy Wagon, who often came through town, were good people and trustworthy.

Shawn made his way to the Bleeding Club Tavern. When he asked for a room, he was told they’d just lent out the last guest bed, but that there was an employee bunk available—if he was willing to work for it. Shawn accepted without a second thought. Agar sent him back to the kitchens with Mary, the head cook. She had a way with words—and that way was foul. She couldn’t get a sentence out without at least one swear in it. But Shawn worked the night and was shown his bunk—which turned out to be an unused pantry. The shelves were deep and tall enough to serve as a bed, and they were certainly better than any other bunk he was likely to find that night.

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This game is also being posted on RPG Pub.

Portable Solo Roleplaying

I recently read an article in Mythic Magazine #50 called Mythic On The Move. In this article Tana Pigeon talks about ways to play solo RPGs when traveling. I found this concept really exciting.

It wasn’t exciting because I travel a lot—I don’t—but because it offered a way to game in situations where you are just waiting. In the dentist or doctor’s office are good examples. Instead of scrolling on my phone I could pull out a little notebook and play a scene or two of an RPG. That just sounds really fun.

While I’m pretty certain that I would use Mythic Game Master Emulator to play the role of the GM, I’m not as certain what I would use for the game system itself. So far there are two possibilities that I’m considering: Whitehack and WaRP System.

Whitehack

Whitehack is a system that feels like a reduction of first edition DnD down to it’s most essential components. The mechanics have all been boiled down to ability checks. This gives the system a d20 roll under core mechanic.

Characters are defined by a class (of which there are six in the book), a handful of attributes, and a set of groups the character belongs to. This would make a character pretty easy to contain on a page or two of a pocket notebook.

The downside to this system is that the class system feels a bit restrictive. It is trying had to be a very generic system. But, it doesn’t take much work to think up a character concept that doesn’t quite fit.

WaRP System

That’s where the WaRP System comes in. It is the open core to the second edition of Over the Edge. This system allows for the creation of almost any character.

A character is primarily described though their traits. These traits are written by the player during character creation and they are assigned a value. This means that virtually any character can be created as long as the concept fits into the game being played. It’s possible to be a dungeon diving adventurer, a pulp detective, a cyberpunk hacker, or even a demigod.

The only issue with the system is that it’s a dice pool system. This just means that rolling will have to happen on a phone instead of with a spinner or something else. But there is the Mythic GME app that can help with that.

More Systems

If I had to pick a system to use right now, it would probably be the WaRP System. But there are some more systems I want to look at. The most promising of which is probably Index Card RPG.

Portable Paper Dice

I’ve been playing around with options for portable dice. At some point, I thought that I could just print out a bunch of rolls and use that. The thought after that I could do print it as an 8-page mini-zine. So, I wrote some code to do that. But I also realized that there’s a lot of people that would have a hard time running that code and would just like the numbers. So I also made a sample PDF with 100 pages of numbers. If you want a video on how to fold these things, this one is decent.

To generate a number from it, you turn the page and look for the first number that isn’t crossed out. That’s your number. Cross it out and repeat as needed.

I’m not going to say that these things are as fair as dice. But, if you expect to find yourself in a situation where dice won’t work well—a car or a plane, for example—then this is better than nothing.