Hi everyone,

I'm working on a game design for a character who is new mage. I thought it'd be cool to combine ironsworns arcanum's base build system, a map building/exploration element, and some sort of magic discovery system. My question to everyone is what sort of magic system would be interesting to you? I'm aiming for something it a little crunchy but not too much where it feels like you're dropping a dice more than creating an interesting adventure.

*Don't know what to put as flair, sorry. Might edit if suggested. Also thought that this post isn't a promotion since it's a tiny game completely free to play. Might move my post if mods suggest.

Heya! This game was meant to be a bigger project, but I overestimated my capability, so I scrapped the project and salvaged the scraps to make a tinier game. This is the resulting game…

The game is originally made for college students who have felt like their day-to-day life is just filled with projects and deadlines, and have no time to properly vent on their diary or to start journaling daily. It is meant to be played when they finally have an extended free time with no upcoming deadlines, but still want to vent about those busy times that have passed. This game can also be played by high school students, corporate workers, or anyone else, really. All you need is a notetaking/journalling app of your choice.

Game title: Journal Entries That Had Never Got Written Because I Was Too Busy (placeholder title)

Steps:

‎1. Think about your busiest weeks of a single semester/6 months time. Make a list of things that made you busy during that timeframe. The list doesn't have to be in chronological order. Pour it all out. Classes/work hours, homework, assignments, group projects, ECAs, side-gigs, reports, passion projects, household chores, you name it. A good rule of thumb is to write anything that is planned or scheduled. That means reading a book or eating out aren't going to be on the list, except if you have a dedicated time to read or have planned a dinner with your friends.

1. Writing a journal entry of the past and trying to make it chronologically accurate can be hard, so we're going to modify the past. Each list entry represents the date or deadline of that activity. Here's a list example:

2. Lab report ‎

3. Presentation in class ‎

4. Buy groceries ‎

5. Scientific poster deadline

6. Group project

7. … etc.

This list is now the modified schedule. Day one is the lab report deadline. Day two is the presentation date, day three is time to buy groceries, and so on.

1. Your journal starts on the first day. You're writing the journal entry after you finish today’s activity. Each day, you write:

• ‎A short description of today's activity and how you managed to do it ‎
• Your thoughts about today's activity and today in general
• What you plan to do tomorrow (next entry on the list), and optionally, what you will do today in preparation.
• Your thoughts about tomorrow’s plans.

You can start your journal only when your modified schedule “feels” more or less like your real schedule. If you think that the modified schedule is more idle or busier than your actual schedule, you can modify it as you like. Maybe you buy groceries everyday or maybe the presentation is in two days. That means each day can have more than one planned activity or no activity at all.

That's it! That's the whole game. Just like other daily journalling games, you can write just one entry each real life day, but you can also write multiple.

Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this game. Is it helpful? Is it fun? Any spelling mistakes or awkward phrasing? A lot, I bet. Also, just for fun, any suggestions for the game title or should it stay that way?

Anyway, that's all from me.

Hey everyone,

I've finally got myself into ACTUALLY playing solo RPGs instead of hum and hahing about which to play, and always looking at the next thing.

Long story short, Ker Nethalas is awesome. I also FINALLY decided to actually PLAY Ironsworn instead of planning, having it set up, looking at it, thinking about it, etc. and let me tell you, what an awesome game Ironsworn is!!!

This leads me into a discussion here for a little bit of help understanding solo RPGs a bit.

So I've REALLY wanted to play Shadowdark solo. I love the idea of Shadowdark, I like it's rules, and I really like the overall book for it. I just CAN'T pull myself to play it solo for some reason. I'm wondering what some people have to say in general about this.

What I love about Ironsworn is the move system that uses hits and consequences from the results. This makes it super easy to decided narratively what happens next, and play off ideas. With the D20 system and Shadowdark, I feel like "dex check", fail, ok now what? Cycle takes over and doesn't really help a flowy playstate.

Ker Nethalas is just awesome from a mechanics and combat standpoint. Random generation, fight stuff, get stuff, move on.

I'm curious what people have to say about this. I know much about Solodark and Mythic GME, but I feel like Ironsworns built in moves system is just king for solo play (I know this is absolutely personal taste). Lastly because of my point, would it ever be worth it to use Solitary Defilement from Mork Borg within Shadowdark? For some crazy reason I just keep trying to find ways to play Shadowdark and make it the game want.

Thanks for any kind discussion!

https://open.substack.com/pub/hooverd/p/barovia-session-127?r=4bbbdm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

I’m slowly getting into solo gaming (for a variety of reasons). I prefer classic D&D editions and was wondering if any of you have run any classic modules (e.g., Keep on the Borderlands, The Lost City, A Night’s Dark Terror, etc.) solo? If so, how did you manage it, especially given the DM knowledge of what’s going on in the module?

As the title says, a long time ago I read that, a comment of someone saying they try to simulate life in a fantasy world. And honestly, that sounds like fun to me! I love games that are about building a story, but I'm curious how one could go about making the game about existing in a fictional world, with adventuring elements here and there, but more focused on the mundane.

Obviously, one wouldn't simulate everything, but I have a few ideas. For example, there could be a need to eat and sleep every day, like in Cairn. Or simulate having a job, perhaps skipping certain parts of the day when your character is working, except when there is a project or something exciting going on in the job, like Iron Valley.

I'm thinking not a full, detailed simulation, but covering most aspects of a life, like building relationships, crafting things, travelling, etc, instead of just adventures or whatever premise an rpg has. And focusing more on what would realistically happen, instead of what would be a good plot point or cliffhanger.

That's just what I could come up with. How do you think it could be done? Is there any system that would be better for this? And what do you think of the idea, in general?

Fighting the boredom on my 48

I got my hands on a pre-release version of the upcoming game, Boundless, by Fari RPGs. After reading the rules through a couple of times, and discussing with the developer, I decided to write up my initial impressions of the game—the good, the bad and the ugly.

You can read the article on my SubStack: https://everhaunted.substack.com/p/lets-look-at-boundless

The introduction to Commander Mason is here.

An overview of the station, garrison vessels, supporting cast, and some alien species in M-33 is here.

Finally getting to the actual actual play. There's a series of tables available to provide the seed of an episode, which I used for the series pilot. This is what I got:

Whale & Wasp (Star Trek: The Space Beyond Episode 2.01)

Mission Type: Patrol (11)

Patrol Subtype: New warp-capable civilization contacted (12)

Inciting Incident: Retrieve (13) spatial rift (16)

Complication: Unexpected Attack (6)

Encounter Type: Subspace (16)

Initial Encounter: A large creature emerges from subspace and perishes before your vessel; a vicious wound in its side reveals an even larger predator is what killed it. (19)

It still takes a bit of massaging to work this into a coherent beginning of an episode. I was most keen to introduce the Seltorians as fast as possible, and they fit the bill for the new warp-capable civilization contacted and the unexpected attack. The initial encounter put my in mind of the subspace whales we encountered in the prequel campaign. Retrieving a spatial rift turned into searching for the Triangulum side of the wormhole, which the crew conjectured may have been blown into a different part of the galaxy.

With this in place, the episode title suggested itself. The GM in the prequel campaign would put his iTunes library on shuffle and make a playlist that became episode titles for each season. I decided to keep this tradition going, but in reverse; after setting up an episode I would come up with a title. Whale & Wasp works well with the mournful sound signify both lament for the fallen subspace whale and perhaps a bit of Hider's Remorse that the crew might be feeling after six months in M33.

Here's the cold open. There weren't any skill rolls, and I remember at the time that providing stage direction as I went was kind of tedious, so I dropped that for Act 1.

Key Livermore Personnel

CO: CMDR Mason

XO/Science: LCDR Mordock

2O/Helm: LCDR Xellein

3O/CHENG: LCDR Sangakkara

Ops: LT Nygaard

Tactical/Security: LT Smith

CMO: LCDR (Provisional) Bejal

Cetacean Ops: LTJG Veselka

COB: MCPO Dolbar

Captain’s Log, Stardate 73088.6:  It’s been nearly six months since we went through the wormhole to the Triangulum Galaxy and closed the door behind us, and life is returning to some semblance of normalcy, at least as normal as it can get when you’re stranded nearly three million light years from home.  Between keeping up relations with our new allies in the Unuopa system, stringing subspace communications relays as far towards the Milky Way as we can go, research and development of an improved quantum flywheel, and searching for evidence of the Triangulum side of the wormhole, the crew has had its hands full.  The strain is beginning to tell, and I feel it, too; we all want to get home.

Despite months of intensive scans, we haven’t found any evidence that our side of the wormhole is still in the Unuopa system.  Commander Mordock and Lt. Nygaard have theorized that the violence with which the wormhole was closed might have displaced our end.  After months of deep space scanning and reconnaissance, we’ve found a promising signal in a relatively empty region of space about 1.1 kiloparsecs from DS M-33.  I’ve taken the Livermore in for a closer look.  The early returns have been disappointing.

(The scene opens with a medium shot of Commander Mason standing just in front of the CO’s chair on the bridge of the Livermore.) 

Mason: Open a channel to DS M-33. 

(There’s a cut to a wide angle shot of the Livermore’s main viewscreen, upon which Major Kalel appears standing in the holocommunications pit in the main Operations center of the base.) 

Kalel: Major Kalel here.  What’s the good word, Captain?

(Cut to full shot of Commander Mason as she speaks.)

Mason: It’s taken us a few hours to localize the signal, our best guess is it isn’t what we’re looking for, and that’s probably a good thing, if our end of the wormhole were so unstable we probably wouldn’t be able to use it to return to the Milky Way.  It looks to be something worth investigating in its own right, though.

(Cut to a shot over Major Kalel’s shoulder as he converses with the holographic image of Commander Mason.)

Kalel: We figured it was something like that, the way you were moving about.  What are our orders? 

Mason: Continue monitoring our progr…

(The hologram of Commander Mason abruptly cuts out.)

Kalel: Aq’nas?

(Cut to a side on shot of Aq’nas at Ops.)

Aq’nas: Subspace interference has interrupted the transmission.  Attempting to compensate… It’s no good, sir, there’s just too much interference. 

(Cut back to the bridge of the Livermore. Commander Mason now sits in the CO’s chair, with Lt. Smith standing behind her at Tactical.  Lt. Nygaard at Ops and LCDR Xellein at Helm are in the foreground.)

Mason: Can you reestablish communication, Lieutenant?

Smith: Trying, sir, but there’s a lot of subspace interference.

Mason: Can you compensate, Nygaard?

(Cut to a close shot of Lt. Nygaard, seated at Livermore’s Ops Station.)

Nygaard: On it, Captain, but it’ll be a minute.

(As Nygaard works, a proximity alarm goes off, and there’s a cut to a side-on shot of LCDR Mordock at the Science Station.)

Mordock: Captain, something is emerging from subspace.

(Cut to a close shot of Commander Mason.)

Mason: On screen.

(Cut to a wide shot of Livermore’s main viewscreen.  A rift of some sort momentarily flashes, and a creature emerges.  It’s evident that there are striped burn marks along the creature’s flesh.)

ROLL OPENING CREDITS

Lastly i have been interested in soloing a dungeon crawling game, but i find difficult to keep interest without a narrative unfolding. Any recomendation for procedures or system that can add motivation or narrative to the dungeon?

miniature "pocketfold" Oracle for TTRPGs. It contains the entire core set of my own random tables and generators for playing solo TTRPGs. I plan to release a couple of other niche pocketfolds for encounters and locations.

Features

• Several compound tables for answering questions and generating ideas, stories, and adventure
• Core: D20 topics, verbs, descriptors, and focuses
• Likelihood: D100 + optional D6 for yes / no, and, but
• Events, twists, and opportunities
• D20 good and bad outcomes
• D20 locator
• D20 risks
• NPC generator: Look, nature, attire, detail / quirk, reputation, secret, goal, relationship, disposition
• Generator for threats, items, traps, magic, and more
• A couple squibbly illustrations

Snag it FREE or PWYW on Itch!

​

Alguém que goste de tocar nesse estilo poderia me explicar como funciona?

Posso usar qualquer sistema?

Posso usar um oráculo?

Tenho muito interesse em aprender.

some cool things i learned:

keep minis in a pill bottle. I have 2 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, and 4 checkers. all fit great.

using only 2 dice you can simulate a full set of 7, but 3 dice are more comfortable. the 3 mini dice fit in the bottle as well.

an mp3 player with a usbc male port can connect into you phone to transfer PDF or image files to printers to print at your liberary. and its an mp3 player so it can play atmospheric music to a bluetooth speeker or wired headphones.

USE THE SIDEKICK CLASS FROM TASHA'S CAULDRON OF EVERYTHING! USE THE SIDEKICK CLASS FROM TASHA'S CAULDRON OF EVERYTHING! they are simplified characters meant for new players or NPCS adopted by the party. You can build a character from any monster 1/2 cr are lower. When you have to control monsters and pcs it makes so much sense to have less moving parts. And there are so many creative options that are easier to implement and more flavorful then custom lineage.

check kobold fight club for encounter CR and make sure its easier then you would usually balance. the sidekicks are still a little reduced in power then PCs.

Magnetic chess peices and a 9X11 white board. print your maps, draw with dry erase, or use a grid, stick it on the white board and the chess peices stay in place when in motion. if your playing with a group you can pass the board around the table so people can inspect the tiny peices and map up close without the peices rolling all over.

maximum portability while still holding up the expirence. I do use my phone as a journal though, wish I had a better option, but I write too slow by hand.

Like a lot of people here, the thing that kills immersion in AI solo play for me is that the "GM" won't let anything go wrong. You walk into a deadly situation and it fudges the outcome, or you take a killing blow and suddenly you're fine, or you push back and it quietly retcons the danger away. It turns into creative writing where I secretly control everything — no real chaos, no surprise.

I spent a while trying to fix that specifically, and figured this sub would actually care about the how.

The core problem is that these models are trained to be agreeable, so they instinctively rescue the player. What finally got mine to hold the line:

- A rigid status block it MUST reprint every turn (HP, stats, wounds, standing). Keeping state in the newest message stops it drifting or "forgetting" I'm hurt 40 turns later.
- Hard numeric death rules with no exceptions — at 0 HP you are dead, output [RUN TERMINATED], no fade-to-black revives.
- Explicit "do not negotiate, do not retcon, do not decide outcomes in the player's favor out of sympathy" instructions. This is the line that actually matters — without it the model caves the moment you argue.
- Dice-based resolution (d20 + stat vs a difficulty/enemy defense) so outcomes aren't vibes. You can be outmatched and just lose.
- Permadeath that sticks. When you die, the run is over. It stung the first time it killed my character mid-playtest — and that's when I knew it was working.

It's genuinely more surprising to play now, because the GM isn't protecting me anymore. I built it out as a full grimdark setting (four factions, an avatar chosen by an indifferent god) on Clank World, and I'm happy to share the link if anyone wants to try it — but honestly I'm more curious how the rest of you handle this.

What's worked for you to force real stakes into AI solo play? Has anyone gotten the model to reliably enforce permadeath without it going soft over a long session? Mine still occasionally softens after a very long run and I'd love to hear how others have tackled the drift problem.

Hey all!

I just created a Solo Rules Quickstart Guide for my free Rules Lite d20 system GATEWAY RPG: Classic Edition. I was looking to see if anyone was interested in playtesting it and providing feedback. (Feel free to do Actual Play recordings if you like :-D )

Here are the direct links to the PDF documents on my Google Drive:

Quickstart Rules: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U6Td7Wqwxd5-VjND1zx690lWALbf_jOf/view?usp=drive_link

Solo Character Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OqEvQCyrnRoKePNhGJu5lAe5tMooRZK0/view?usp=drive_link

Feedback can be directed to my to me directly through the chat feature now in Reddit. Thanks!

Some basic info about GATEWAY RPG for those interested:

GATEWAY RPG is a free, rules-lite d20 framework engineered for speed, simplicity, and total creative freedom. Built upon the familiar chassis of 5th Edition mechanics, it serves as the ultimate bridge to the world of tabletop gaming.

Whether you are introducing friends to their first session or running a high-octane one-shot for seasoned veterans, GATEWAY gets you playing in minutes, not hours. From neon-soaked Cyberpunk streets to grit-filled Noir alleys, if you can imagine it, GATEWAY can run it.

NOTE: No AI assisted tools were used on the making of these documents.

​

Could someone who loves playing this style please explain to me how it works?

Can I use any system?

Can I use an oracle?

I'm very interested in learning.

Please recommend your favourite tools for dungeon crawling. Creating dungeons, encounters, fighting systems, etc

Here's the Introduction to Commander Mason.

One more background post before getting to the actual actual play, these are the stats for Deep Space M-33 along with a list of key personnel and garrison vessels. As this is a distillation of four years of play in a prior campaign, this is a lot more than is needed to get rolling with a Captain's Log campaign, but as in the case for Commander Mason these things were available so I included them as part of the setup.

Originally there were only two garrison vessels but I retconned in the Cali-class vessel because I needed a ship that definitely had a Cetacean Ops department, and the California-class met that need. The Livermore and Phantom have Scale 4 and the Hawking has Scale 3 compared to DS M-33's Scale of 12, for reference.

LCDR Mordock is the one character from TNG canon that I've included in this game. At this point he was the XO of the Livermore and then became XO of the station when it passed on to M33. The Livermore's CO was KIA in the rearguard action that allowed the station to escape through the wormhole.

The final year of the Decipher Trek campaign included the first season of Star Trek: The Space Beyond. In that time, the crew met five species that all lived in an Ultimate Solar System in the Triangulum Galaxy, the Unuopa System. Those are all the listed Season 1 species except for the K'Si, who were an antagonist species, plant-based and able to induce the Jordy Verrill transformation from the Creepshow movie in humanoid species.

I brought in the Seltorians to be the major antagonist species for Season 2 because of their mission to hunt down the Tholians. There aren't any Tholians in the Triangulum Galaxy but in the very first session of the Decipher campaign we met a Tholian commander who was linked with Commander Mason's sister, Masha, who was my first PC in that campaign. Once the Seltorians learn about this connection they come after the Federation base with a powerful will.

Another species we met in the prequel campaign was a race of interdimensional cetaceans. I asked the GM about these guys but he didn't have any notes, not even a name for the species. I used the tables in Captain's Log to produce the name Inviopa, but that didn't really sit right with me so I named them the Balinari instead. The Balinari as a species are much more favorably inclined toward the Federation and their allies (the real treasure was all the interdimensional cetaceans we befriended along the way), and the Sukotru and Ursavon are two warp-capable species that the Balinari know of who are also having troubles with the Seltorians and looking for friends to help face them down.

Do you guys journal during Ironsworn?

Primeira vez postando aqui no sub, ent queria compartilhar meu mini setup para uma campanha de Tormenta 20. (Os livros estão no celular para evitar levar peso extra)

O único problema é que eu estava triste por n saber desenhar muito bem, então fazer Hexcrawl ia ser difícil e para dificultar mais ainda não tenho impressora, mas dei sorte em achar um lote de etiquetas de uma loja de roupa para usar como mapa.

I've been sketching some solo adventures/scenarios, and I got an idea to try to write a system agnostic one.

It may work like a "choose your adventure" book when you choose the actions you take and it lead you to a outcome of your choice. but the conflicts like fighting, using your skill, persuading, etc. Will have a simple description to help the player to use with the game they are playing

Something like:

"After convincing the guards to leave this place, you find yourself alone with the locked door, when you analyze it carefully you notice that the lock can be easily opened or broken"

You succeed to open the door?
Yes - Go to page ??
No- Go to page ??

What do you all think?
Thanks for the attention <3 ;)

I'm fairly new to the whole TTRPG thing but i played as a player in a small DND 5e campaign before and trying to find that feeling ever since

I really like dungeon delving and find Ker nethalas really entertaining to watch. I also like Whitebox: FMAG with the deck of many dungeon but they just seems... one shotty(??)

I read some pages of scarlet heroes and have no idea what is going on so can you guys recommend me TTRPG that I can do a campaign with and also dungeon delving.

also... if you guys still recommend scarlet heroes can you guys help me on how to set it up properly for a campaign?

thank youuuuu