#Solo TTRPGs

[misslazarus]

TANGLED BLESSINGS GAME JAM

Solo TTRPG posting again for my fellow solo game enjoyers/the solo game curious!

I’ve posted before about Tangled Blessings by @cassimothwin , a project I was so thrilled to back and play (and find in the wild a couple of times 👀). It’s a really engaging solo/duet rpg about being a student at a spooky magical school, and facing off against your rival. Also very cool to know, Tangled Blessings is a hack of the iconic game Anamnesis by @goblinmixtape (a game I mean to post about here one day if I feel I actually have anything interesting to add other than “I love it” lol).

In extremely cool news for amateur/fledgling game writers and those who never find time to participate in NaNoWriMo [meeee], Cassi Mothwin opened up a Tangled Blessings game jam on itch.io !! The game jam is for expansions to /projects inspired by Tangled Blessings. The jam is running until February 29th (leap day swag btw). I think this is such a cool idea to explore a really fun game, and I’m planning on submitting something! If you want to participate and don’t already own it, Cassi has a free preview to get you started!

DISCLAIMER: I am not posting this in any capacity other than as a big fan of Cassi’s work— and to alert my buddies on here who are into this kind of thing and to whom I’ve spoken about Tangled Blessings and solo rpgs in general.

I’ve linked the jam below for the rules and info. I also linked Tangled Blessings and Anamnesis itch.io pages so I hope all the links don’t nerf this post in the tags.

Happy writing y’all!

[charidotella-art]

I've been playing solo ttrpgs for fun for about a year, but I never posted anything about them online before. I finally decided to at least share them somewhere, so I can keep track of my games and maybe sometimes go back and revisit them. I think it could be fun for people to see if they're interested in different solo ttrpgs before getting them, or even find out about new ones to try. Here's my very first post. If it turns out that it's something I keep doing, I'll work o an blog that looks a bit better :)

[goblinmixtape]

10 single-player TTRPGs

To be an Earthling

Live. Love. Die. Remember.

What Should We Have Tomorrow?

Log Lady

Superhuman Industrial & Immaterial Incorporated

Sacred Forge

The Spider and the City

The Sticker Game

Strange Changeling Child

Anamnesis

[companionwolf]

Finally got my hands on one page Mythic; now I have a little travel kit! (: Pondering putting stuff on the back side; not sure what to add there if I do.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

OKAY. I finally managed to carve down an actually simplified version of the offline pocket edition I made for the excellent RPGSolo system. I definitely have more things in mind to expand on as options for players who want them, and this draft is Rough and near entirely unedited because I pounded it out in like half an hour during a migraine, oops, BUT! It should be fully functional as it is currently, and I hope people enjoy it as much as I have been.

(Also, if you like it I encourage you to go give the creator of the original site some support! This wouldn't exist without his work, and there's all kinds of neat extra tools and in-depth explanations to be found there and on the forums. Go check it out!)

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To play, you will need a d100 (percentile dice), a d10, and a Likelihood table. One is provided below, but you may substitute your own percentages if you want to tweak your chances.

• A way to record the events of your game and/or to keep track of bonuses and penalties is recommended, but not required.

RPGSolo runs on the Yes, And/No, But system.

• Yes, and...: Not only is the outcome successful, but it's better than you expected; you are even better off than you would have been from achieving what you meant to do. Situations you are observing turn out to have some extra good news involved, or you gain even more thorough insight than you were looking for at first.

• Yes: You achieve your goal.

• Yes, but...: You achieve your goal, but there's a hitch or it comes at a cost.

• No, but: You fail your goal, but not completely. If you are making an observation, the situation isn't great, but there's a silver lining.

• No: You fail your goal.

• No, and...: Not only is the outcome a failure, but it's even worse than you thought, and/or you're worse off than if you had left it alone.

The Likelihood of a given roll dictates how likely you are to receive one of the above six outcomes. Each Likelihood lists the corresponding results on a scale from 1 to 100.

• No matter the Likelihood you are rolling from, there will always be a chance no matter how small to roll each outcome. Almost Impossible has a tiny chance to roll 'Yes, and...' and Sure Thing has a tiny chance to roll 'No, and...'

Optionally: you may add modifiers to increase or decrease your chances in a given scenario. Your character might be a trained fighter; they might have a sprained ankle; they might have found a flashlight; they may have a bad reputation in town which makes interactions with the townsfolk more hostile.

• Each point on a modifier counts for +1 or -1 Likelihood. A +1 turns a 50/50 into a Somewhat Likely, a -3 turns a Likely into a Somewhat Unlikely, and so on.

• Some modifiers make a bigger difference than others. A friendly demeanor might add a +1 bonus to checks involving interactions with the surly townsfolk, where that sprained ankle might be a -3 penalty to attempts to move quickly.

• Optionally: you may also add modifiers to change the outcome of a roll, not the Likelihood; a 'No, but...' becomes a 'Yes, but...' for example. These have a much stronger influence on your game, and you may want to use them sparingly.

• You may assign modifiers to your player characters--or other characters, or locations, or anything else--ahead of time, or you may add or remove modifiers during play as you feel they are appropriate.

At the beginning of each turn, decide what action you want to take, what observations you want to make, or what happens in the world around you.

Roll 1d10 to determine the difficulty of an action.

• 1: Almost Impossible

• 2: Very Unlikely

• 3: Unlikely

• 4: Somewhat Unlikely

• 5: 50/50

• 6: Somewhat Likely

• 7: Likely

• 8: Very Likely

• 9: Sure Thing

• 10: Reroll with +1 bonus (or just reroll, if you'd rather)

Add any appropriate modifiers to determine the Likelihood of the roll.

If you check the Likelihood of a roll and don't like your chances, you can choose not to pursue it.

• If there are any rolls you might want to come back to and try again later, you may want to make a note of it on the side. You might decide to leave a door with an alarm alone until you can find some tools to disarm it with, for example.

If you decide to proceed, roll 1d100 and consult the appropriate Likelihood table.

Add any appropriate outcome modifiers to determine the result.

Decide how to interpret the result.

• In case of wording you're not sure of ('do the guards notice me?' for example), a lower outcome is generally negative. You may want to write out the translated result next to the 'yes, and/no, but' result, for the sake of clarity.

• If you're rolling to decide between multiple options instead of for negative/positive outcomes, you may use your d10 as a yes/no oracle, or use 'yes, and/no, but' to roll for the degree to which the result falls between the presented options.

• Oracle between 2 options:

• 1-5: No/First option

• 6-10: Yes/Second option

• Oracle between 3 options:

• 1-3: No/First Option

• 4-6: Neither/Both/In-Between/Second option

• 7-9: Yes/Third option

• 10: Reroll, or secret fourth option

If you want to make more than one roll to determine what's going on before you continue the narrative, feel free to make as many in a row as you want before you describe what happens.

Optionally: you can use a Do-Over to redo a roll, or directly choose your outcome, if you really don't want to continue with what you got.

• It's recommended that you limit the number of these you have access to, if you want to keep some challenge in your game (5 Do-Overs per scene, for example), but you don't have to. You can do it as many times as you want; it comes down to what's most fun for you.

Write out what happens as a result of the outcome you rolled, until you reach the next point where you want the dice to show you the way.

Happy roleplaying!

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Likelihood Table

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Almost Impossible/Sure Thing:

-No, and...: 30% (1-30) [...] 1% (1)

-No: 50% (31-80) [...] 3% (2-4)

-No, but...: 11% (81-91) [...] 5% (5-9)

-Yes, but...: 5% (92-96) [...] 11% (11-19)

-Yes: 3% (97-99) [...] 50% (20-69)

-Yes, and: 1% (100) [...] 30% (70-100)

Very Unlikely/Very Likely:

-No, and...: 20% (1-20) [...] 3% (1-3)

-No: 40% (21-60) [...] 5% (4-8)

-No, but...: 20% (61-80) [...] 12% (9-20)

-Yes, but...: 12% (81-92) [...] 20% (21-40)

-Yes: 5% (93-97) [...] 40% (41-80)

-Yes, and...: 3% (98-100) [...] 20% (81-100)

Unlikely/Likely:

-No, and...: 15% (1-10) [...] 5% (1-5)

-No: 30% (11-50) [...] 10% (6-15)

-No, but...: 20% (51-70) [...] 20% (16-35)

-Yes, but...: 20% (71-85 [...] 20% (36-55)

-Yes: 10% (85-95) [...] 30% (56-85)

-Yes, and...: 5% (96-100) [...] 15% (86-100)

Somewhat Unlikely/Somewhat Likely:

-No, and...: 10% (1-10) [...] 10% (1-10)

-No: 30% (11-40) [...] 20% (11-30)

-No, but...: 20% (41-60) [...] 10% (31-40)

-Yes, but...: 10% (61-70) [...] 20% (41-60)

-Yes: 20% (71-90) [...] 30% (61-90)

-Yes, and...: 10% (91-100) [...] 10% (91-100)

50/50:

No, and...: 10% (1-10)

No: 20% (11-30)

No, but...: 20% (31-50)

Yes, but...: 20% (51-70)

Yes: 20% (71-90)

Yes, and...: 10% (91-100)

[bipedalseal]

anyway, i started a substack about solo TTRPGs (because tumblr is really inconvenient for that sort of blogging). 0th issue will be out in a few days. if you like casual chat about solo gaming, stay tuned &c.

[paleode-ology]

lowkey I’m thinking of making a side blog to post about solo RPGs bc I have So Many that I haven’t played and I feel like I would be more motivated if I were actively making reviews and/or posting snippets from games I’ve done

[totcoc0a]

looking for an introduction into solo ttrpgs? check out my review of 'Evergreen Wilds', released by @/disastertourism!

[soloistasivictor]

miru (and its sequels miiru and miiiru) is interesting to me not just as a hybrid of a hexploring game and a gamebook but also as a product of the ai boom/scare this past few years--miru's story starts when your brother is killed by a robot and you set off in this robot-laden solarpunk world to find out why. miru's primary antagonist is the god-ai (whose name i forgot) that took over the world like less than a hundred years ago. miru is also made by hinokodo, who released human made, which is basically a stamp you put on your projects to say that no generative images or languages was used in the production and design of said project.

i would say more but sadly i haven't finished the game!

[dorklordcanada]

Extra Life (Solo) TTRPG Weekend

I had intended to run games during Extra Life’s official Tabletop Weekend a few weeks ago but health issues got in the way. But every weekend can be Tabletop Weekend if you believe. So join me April 26-28 for my Extra Life Solo TTRPG Weekend! I’m playing solo TTRPGs and chatting, most importantly I’m raising funds for Extra Life. Every donation enters you in a draw for signed copies of My…

[theartofmadeline]

lil 16 page zine that i made at the coffee shop this weekend! a sort of pick your path style mini game, because i love wizards + interactive fiction. hope you get out of the wizard dungeon!!

[roguecentaur]

You are something ancient.Something terrifying and unknowable. You are rage itself.

You are Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle.

My newest SoloRPG has dropped today! Play as a vengeful goddess of impossible strength, as she struggles to restrain herself from destroying the world.

Can a god be so mighty and unstoppable that they cannot stop even themselves? Is it possible to overcome instinct? Are we more than our ugliest moments? It seems inevitable that you will only grow colder. Change feels like an impossible task. Maybe it is already too late for you. But you must try, all the same.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Reason why you should play solo games :

You can play without having to find a day when all the group can be here.

[parker-d-bloodrose]

Chapter 2 - Outside Fate

In which Shade fights a bush, and discovers something interesting about her situation as an Engraved. No art this time!

SIGIL (DAY)

Shade awoke the next morning after RESTING and contemplated her next move. She doubted there was anything worth value in Tiresh, so she decided to take the path to the north. It would lead her to the uninviting forest, but she figured that there might be something worthwhile there. As she walked the path, she took note of just how everything seemed somehow different than she remembered when she was a child. Things were darker now, and there was a definite sense of grimness that filled the air. She recalled that as a child, there was a time when the hill she was crossing was covered in a field of beautiful flowers and the trees weren’t such a dark shade of green. It was inviting back then, before the dead began to walk again. The Kingdom wasn’t perfect of course, nowhere is. But now the very boughs that had offered her comfort as she walked into them seemed to warn her away. The trees loomed over her, the canopy blotting out the sun almost entirely as she plunged deeper into the forest. And then, suddenly she arrived in a grove.

The Gnarled Tree (DAY)

The first thing that she noticed was the Gnarled Tree. In the middle of this dark wood rose a strange, twisting ash tree. Its bark was rotting and yet as the rot spread, it also strangely appeared to be renewed. It gave the tree the appearance that it was writhing. The next thing Shade noticed was that there were three more of those men in frayed robes. She didn’t recognize any of them, but they were surrounding a bush in the middle of the grove, muttering observations to themselves about it. Shade couldn’t hear them, and she considered for a moment whether to sneak away or FIGHT them. She realized that she couldn’t do much else unless she FOUGHT them. Her experience with the three men yesterday had proven informative, so she considered her best options first. She didn’t recognize the bush the men were investigating, but she did recognize that they were keeping their distance from it. She wasn’t sure why, but decided that was unimportant. As she was considering her options, one of the men glanced her way and frowned.

“There’s a woman over there.” he said, pointing at Shade.

“Excellent! The Stars delivered her unto us! We’ve been needing a test subject to feed the bush.” the other said.

The three men attempted to advance upon Shade, but Shade was fast on the draw – before they could even react she had let loose a rock from her sling. It found its mark with a sickening crack between the zealot’s eyes, and the man crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The attack must have taken one of the other zealots by surprise, because he stared at his fallen comrade in disbelief. The third however ignored this, and advanced upon Shade. He ran straight for her and drew a thick wooden club, which he slammed into Shade’s shoulder. She let out a hiss of pain and turned her attention to him. Shade didn’t like the way the bush suddenly seemed to writhe itself, as though it were awakening from some sort of slumber and decided to avoid getting close to the bush itself. The second zealot was shaken out of his stupor from a shout by his comrade and he rushed at Shade, drawing his own weapon, a broken short sword. The club wielding Zealot bashed Shade upside the head, momentarily dazing her. She stepped back from the club wielding zealot, clutching her head where he had bashed her. The other zealot took advantage of Shade’s momentary distraction and stabbed her in the left arm. She grit her teeth and shrugged the attack off as best she could and drove her long sword into the club wielding zealot’s gut. The zealot gurgled up blood and Shade kicked his corpse from the end of her sword.

Shade whirled around to the final zealot. He approached her with a leering grin and punched her in the diaphragm, knocking her breath away. As she doubled over in pain, she saw a vine shoot from the bush and hurl something from itself onto the ground next to it. It looked like a caltrop carved from a splintered bone. She decided then and there that she definitely wanted nothing to do with the bush at all. She straightened up and bashed the zealot’s mouth with the pommel of her sword as she stepped away from the man.

He spat a tooth out and snarled. “You’ll pay for that, bitch.”

He rushed her again, driving his blade into Shade’s hip. She grunted in pain and wrenched herself free from his sword. She had to end this quickly, as she wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. She swept the man off his feet and stabbed him through his sternum. He clutched the blade futilely and then fell slack against the ground, dead. She turned her attention to the bush just in time to see it throw another caltrop of bone on the ground. It didn’t seem that it could hurt her as long as she didn’t step on them, so let loose several stones from her sling until the bush stopped moving. She carefully swept the shards of bone to the side and investigated the bush. At the base of the bush she found all manner of bones from squirrels to wolves with roots tangled around them like greedy fingers. A vine was curled around a small rat’s skull, which was obviously beginning to crack when the bush was defeated. Shade figured that the bush must’ve pulled corpses in to fertilize it and then used the bones to create the caltrops for self defense. She decided to SEARCH the area and found within the pile of bones. She also took stock of her surroundings again. Though the gnarled tree was new, she was certain she had been to this glade before. She took a few minutes to SEARCH for a path she knew was here that should lead to the boat house. And she found it – hidden through some overgrown bushes, which she easily hacked away as night fell. She began walking to the boathouse again, determined to return to the island tonight. Along the way, she decided it prudent to drink one of her healing potions, unsure of what she would find on the island tonight.

BOATHOUSE (NIGHT)

The first thing she noticed when she arrived back at the boathouse was that there was a distinct lack of blood or any other sign of her battle with the zealots yesterday. If it weren’t for the lack of blood, she would have thought that the Crimson Duke had claimed their bodies for his army of undead minions. The spectral boatman was waiting for her in their boat again, and she decided to ask them about this.

“Er, hello,” she said to them.

“Good evening, Engraved.” they replied in that crackling, ephemeral whisper of theirs. “I sense that thou wishes to ask a question. Wouldst thou also wish to travel to the island yonder?”

Shade nodded as she got settled into the boat. “Yes, and yes, I do. Yesterday, I fought some men here after we returned. Do… you know what happened to them? I thought maybe their bodies got claimed, but… there isn’t even blood or a new footprint.”

The boatman regarded her for a moment and nodded. “Thine eyes deceive thee not. ‘Tis true that the corpses of thy foes are no longer here. But it is not because a necromancer has claimed their bodies either. Thou art outside the tapestry of Fate now. This is why thou cannot DIE, and why thou can no longer pay me in what I wish. When you meet thine demise, thou shall reawaken at thy sigil, on the same day as when thou DIED. The same happens when thou chooses to REST at thy sigil. The only way to end this is to seize the 7 Runes of Obron, and use the power granted to thee to wrest control of the loom of thy Fate. Some foes, by their own nature are outside of the Weave of Fate and will not return. The one thou calls ‘The Crimson Duke’ is one such example. For him, it is because he is directly tied to your Fate by virtue of being the one who first slew you,” The boatman paddled the boat as they explained this, “Another such is the Lost Knight, though this is because he has cast aside the yoke of his own fate by failing to die when the Ruined King seized the Rune of this realm. And obviously, so too are all the Rune Lords like you. Thou art two sides of the same coin. Ah, it appears that we are here. When thou art ready to return, I will answer more questions. For now, safe hunting, Engraved.”

Shade disembarked and considered this new, troubling piece of information.

RUINOUS CAMP (NIGHT)

Shade wandered through the empty camp, her head dizzy with the knowledge that her foes would be alive the next time she came through that area if she RESTED at her Sigil or DIED. It certainly would affect how she handled some of her resources going forward. She shook her head of those thoughts and turned them toward the present. She knew she wouldn’t find the health potions here to refill her stock, but she vaguely remembered seeing some notes before she headed out the last time she was here. She decided to take the time to SEARCH the area for those notes. After a time she found them and studied them. They were notes about a necromantic ritual that the Crimson Duke was going to attempt on the Ruined King at the very last moment to seize the Rune for himself. The plan obviously backfired, and the Crimson Duke fled after besieging the castle. The majority of the rest of the notes were about searching for a way to separate the Rune from the Rune Lord, and claim it himself.

[companionwolf]

physical copy of lighthouse got here 💙

(there's a mini game on the back of the lighthouse blueprint + it also came with a second mini game on a business card)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

So I've been trying for a long time to figure out a good, simple way to substitute dice for a deck of playing cards. I made this primarily for the sake of accessibility--I am disabled in such a way that I can't use physical cards, and it is much, much harder to find good offline digital card decks than dice rollers--but I'm hoping it will also be useful for people who don't have playing cards on hand or space to use them.

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You will need:

A d10 and d6.

Preferably a way to record which cards you've drawn to which pile.

How to draw a card:

You will be rolling from 1 of 9 tables; the d10 is your table die, and the d6 is your result die. If you roll a 10 on the table die, reroll.

If playing without jokers, reroll on a 5-6 result from Table 9. If playing with jokers, roll normally.

The default order of suits is Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, and Clubs, though you may change this if you want.

The order of numbered cards is Ace to King for each suit, followed by the black joker and red joker.

Roll 1d10 and 1d6.

Table 1:

1: Ace of Spades

2: 2 of Spades

3: 3 of Spades

4: 4 of Spades

5: 5 of Spades

6: 6 of Spades

Table 2:

1: 7 of Spades

2: 8 of Spades

3: 9 of Spades

4: 10 of Spades

5: Jack of Spades

6: Queen of Spades

Table 3:

1: King of Spades

2: Ace of Hearts

3: 2 of Hearts

4: 3 of Hearts

5: 4 of Hearts

6: 5 of Hearts

Table 4:

1: 6 of Hearts

2: 7 of Hearts

3: 8 of Hearts

4: 9 of Hearts

5: 10 of Hearts

6: Jack of Hearts

Table 5:

1: Queen of Hearts

2: King of Hearts

3: Ace of Diamonds

4: 2 of Diamonds

5: 3 of Diamonds

6: 4 of Diamonds

Table 6:

1: 5 of Diamonds

2: 6 of Diamonds

3: 7 of Diamonds

4: 8 of Diamonds

5: 9 of Diamonds

6: 10 of Diamonds

Table 7:

1: Jack of Diamonds

2: Queen of Diamonds

3: King of Diamonds

4: Ace of Clubs

5: 2 of Clubs

6: 3 of Clubs

Table 8:

1: 4 of Clubs

2: 5 of Clubs

3: 6 of Clubs

4: 7 of Clubs

5: 8 of Clubs

6: 9 of Clubs

Table 9:

1: 10 of Clubs

2: Jack of Clubs

3: Queen of Clubs

4: King of Clubs

5: Black Joker

6: Red Joker

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Methods to efficiently keep track of a deck are another story, and will be one of my next projects, but for now have this in case it's helpful to you. Enjoy!