Armchair Dragoons Forums
Other Gaming => RPGs & Adventure Gaming => Topic started by: bob48 on October 07, 2019, 05:11:10 PM
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Anyone (Brant, Bison?) familiar with this system? I'm looking for a D&D type system that supports solo play if possible.
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I am a little bit. I have solo played with GRUPS. Of course, I think I can play just about any boardgame/RPG solo. :D
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Thanks, Mike. Yeah, solo is the way most of us are forced to play most of the time.
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I will also recommend Geek Gamers on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLnDxuZE6qWwWxZCN9y8JQA/videos). An excellent source for tips on playing RPGs solo. :bigthumb:
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I'll check that out :bigthumb:
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I would almost recommend the UK Steve Jackson's fighting fantasy series ahead of GURPS.
I get that they just look like "choose your own adventure" books, but they are actually a pretty decent read and an enjoyable experience
GURPS is *very* crunchy and number-heavy. The Hero system is a little lighter, but not too much. Have you looked into RPG-inspired boardgames like the Pathfinder Adventure Game or the D&D boardgames,?
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Well I guess it depends on what you are looking to do. Personally, I’m not sure I could do an RPG solo. Which probably isn’t true since I do test adventures but mostly just the combat encounters.
There are a number of free or low cost RPGs systems in many genres. I’ll advocate again that Basic Fantasy is a great fantasy system. It’s free and has tons of community made content. Adventures, new races, classes, spells,
etc.... basicfantasy.org Give it a try. The worst case scenario is you don’t like it and are out exactly zero quid.
I’m not a fan of GURPS. It’s a spreadsheet game. I never enjoyed the character creation system. But maybe you enjoy that sort of thing I don't know.
If you want a generic system, I would consider the Cypher system from Monte Cooke games. I really, really like Numenera. But any his new games are compatible Cypher, Numenera or the Strange.
So I guess it comes back to what are you looking to do?
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Eh, you can keep GURPS from becoming a spreadsheet game. I do agree that character creation is a bit wonky. I haven't played it but Basic Fantasy does look good.
There's also the new Wendy's RPG that is also free. :P
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Thanks for the input, guys. To be honest, I'm not totally sure where I want to go with this.
In years gone by, I've played the 'old style' paper-and-pencil' D&D and a couple of board games, such as Hero Quest and Sorcerers Cave and thereafter, lost touch with the genre other than PC games, such as Skyrim.
To some extent, I'm motivated by seeing new stuff that i see folks talking about here, many of which either way too expensive for me, or maybe not available yet locally.
I've been pretty captivated by games such as Gloomhaven, and more especially, Middara, which looks very intriguing.
Anyway, I know some of you are well versed on these types of games, so I thought I'd ask the question.
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One thing you could look into Bob is Fantasy Grounds. There is a really active online rpg community there. Many GMs own a copy of the game that lets anyone with the client including the demo play online. You may find a group that has a regular scheduled game or does one shot games at a time that works for you.
There are also a number of games like this https://www.wargamevault.com/product/280863/Five-Leagues-from-the-Borderlands-2E?src=hottest_filtered&filters=0_0_40013_0
At wargamevault. Solo games generally low cost and require some bits and bob to stand in for miniatures if you don’t have any. Fantasy story based miniatures games. Or you maybe able to find a good deal on some used 4e D&D books and do something similar.
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Thank you, Bison; that gives me something to explore.
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There's a system called Tunnels and Trolls that has tons of solo modules to it. I had bought it when it was on sale over at Drive Thru RPG, super cheap and about 30 or so PDFs to it. Might be on the look out for that.
I've not tried it yet (big surprise, I know), but the system I've heard is decent and from what I have managed to read, very interesting.
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There's a system called Tunnels and Trolls
That's like saying "there's a sport called hockey" :hehe:
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Well, it might be totally familiar to most of you, but I never played it. When I was first exposed to RPGs, DnD was the king, and anything else was just poseur stuff (of course I know better now, but I still never got around to playing it). Part of the problem is not having a gaming group into that sort of thing, or a gaming group period. :(
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Oh, yes, paper and pencil D&D was the big thing for me too. Mind you, computers weren't around in those days - and before you ask, no - we didn't use parchment and quill pens.....
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Oh, I'd forgotten about Four Against Darkness (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/197097/four-against-darkness), Bob. Totally solo RPG-type of play. You need graph paper, dice, and a pencil, just like in the good ol' days.
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Not heard of that one before.
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Also take a look at d100 Dungeon (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/237031/d100-dungeon). Best part about it is that it is free (in the Files section).
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Thanks, Mike, I'll take a look.
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Until GURPS, and MSH in the early 80s, the RPG world was dominated by 4 games: D&D, Runequest, Traveler, and T&T.
Champions tried to make some inroads, as did V&V, but superheroes never fully caught on until TSR released the MSH game.
Top Secret sold a bunch, but good luck finding anyone who actually played it.
It was the same "big 4" until early 83, and the suddenly you had a huge explosion in options over the next 3-5 years or so, with GURPS, Star Frontiers, T2K, the first mass-retail editions of Chaosium's Cthulhu and Elric games, the FGU a-game-for-every-possible-oeuvre, SPI's attempts at Universe / DragonQuest, Indiana Jones, Gangbusters, Recon, Mechwarrior, the goofy one-book games from Tri-Tac, Rolemaster (which everyone seemed to own and no one played), Harn (which no one seemed to own but everyone claimed to have read), and the UK SJ's Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
But at the outset, T&T was one of the very first "it's like D&D, but here's how it's different...." kinds of games, and Ken St Andre was always big on solo support as he realized that not everyone wanted to fly their geek flags too high if they wanted to survive high school.
T&T got (unfairly, IMHO) kicked to the curb as the D&D 2e explosion took off in the early 90s, as there wasn't a great "game world" built around it, and there wasn't really enough differentiation between it and BECMI D&D as a rules set. It was fun, but fell behind other more sophisticated "product lines" at a time when the RPG world was rapidly becoming more consumerized and moved out of the fan-driven first 10-15 years of the hobby.
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Ha, you mention several I flirted with/played a bit of back in the day, but never kept up with.
I had Top Secret and loved it. Played it a few times. I think I might still have the box set somewhere, though don't hold me to that.
Indiana Jones I saw a few times in the game shop but never bought it. Regretted it immensely, but I ended up acquiring the PDFs to it, which I have somewhere on my desktop computer...where they'll gather e-dust I'm sure.
Recon. Whoa. A few of my ROTC friends in high school LOVED that game but it didn't appeal to me. My friends and I did, however, play quite a bit of Twilight: 2000.
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We played the crap out of Top Secret, Role Master, and Space Master.