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Sold! A deal at twice the price. Thanks for the share!!

Thank you for a great review. I would be happy to have the book just for the fun illustrations.

One of the better OSR's IMO. For the money it can't be beat. Thanks for the share!!

Great video. It's cool to see how other solo players keep track of things. One suggestion I have is to add 2-3 pages at the front or back for an index. It does mean you have to number the pages (or get a journal that comes numbered), but it can really help if you use custom tables or have reoccurring NPC statblocks.

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you talking about a "Simple is Best" philosophy to solo gaming.

Thank you for a for a great and easy to digest video. Thank you for the reference to the old "Spiderman and His Amazing Friends" cartoon. Great childhood memory.

Thank you for a nice simple explanation. Also, thank you for keeping the materials simple and common.

Hi! A fellow solo player here! Your set up is pretty much like mine except I like to use pdf when I can. I can print if needed or just use my iPad when it's more convenient. I also downloaded oracle apps on my phone. I have the Mythic GM Emulator 2nd Edition app and One Page Solo Engine app. Yes I can make my own yes/no oracle and write my own table but I'm not interested in doing that. I usually use leather vessel foldable on all 4 corners as my dice tray, but dice tower is really interesting. And notebook! For me it's a must to have a notebook in any kind of TTRPG. You can keep track of whatever happened on the session easier with notebook. It's a mandatory tool. Practice note taking! I also use laminated block sheet and erasable boardmarker for quick map making if I'm home. Great set up and tips!

Nice video, subscribed 👍. I also like to use different journals for different games and use bullet points, short sentences. I underline names and locations and mark important passages or important interactions with an X on the side of the paragraph, so that it is easier to find them later. I think finding the right way to journal that works for you is the hardest part when getting into solo rpg gaming. If I am not playing on camera, where the camera is the recording medium and gives the session a "permanancy", I can't imagine myself playing without journaling. The aspect of fixing a scene in the journal for me is the part of describing what you do in group play. It keeps me mentally focused in the game and keeps my thoughts from wandering off, almost like a spell focus. I tried showing this process to newcomers in a tutorial video I made on my channel.

I have soloing Hero Quest. Takes a couple minutes to set up. Fast combat and the Treasure card system is chaotic enough to make things interesting.

I like the idea of the side scene titles and the Names. For me it needs to have drawings xD

I enjoyed your video on solo RPG. I believe I got some good thing to use. Thanks

I have been trying to relearn cursive after decades of typing everything. I keep having to look up letters but it's going good and I am actually thinking about starting a new game this weekend. thank you for the video and sharing your note books.

Great video :)

Thanks for opening a new world for me. What a great way to brush up on rules or get familiar with a new rule system.

So impressed by how much you have been able to play and write. How long have you been solo journaling, what's your frequency and how long do you sit down and play each time?

This was the best solo actual play that I have seen by far. Thank you. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (KJV)

This was interesting, thanks.

Great video John with some good ideas!

Cool stuffs sir

I am a horrible note taker, I sometimes wonder how I ever made it through college. What works for me is using word documents, excel or one note. Most my character sheets are excel workbooks with all the stats and bios and notes I would need about the character on the page. For my current Basic Fantasy game I have been using one note for an outline of major events. I have one tab for planning, as I really like to come up with a basic goal, or story for my games, and then fill in those plans as I play and the dice fall in ways to change my plans. Then the other tab is general game notes of what actually happened each session or quest line. I don't keep track of of battles or small events unless something profound happened, but I try to keep a few notes that I can read through a recap the story so far. I would like to make a journal as they are a lot more portable, and require less work than building worksheets and needing a computer to open up everything I need up to start playing the game. But I do quite like being able to adjust, add, and change things by inserting them in the best, more readable space, and not just sticking it on at the end of the last journal entry. Maybe as I tweak and refine things I'll find a good journaling style that works. Also thanks again for recommending Basic Fantasy a few weeks back I am enjoying it along with a lot of the tips you have mentioned here to really start having success with the solo play. One thing that really bogged me down, other than too heavy and complex rules, was most Solo players love randomizing, and rolling on tables. Watching you, you seem to more like writing your game, instead of always being surprised. In my past attempts to solo I'd go to an oracle, then not like what it gave me and get discouraged, now I only use an oracle as a last resort when I am stuck. I also like more theater of the mind, which you tend to favor as well, and a simpler system really helps with that, along with using your side initiative style as well.

Great advice!

I have a deck of playing cards, a sample pack of meeples (mine had 21 different colored ones), two dice set of poly + 5d6 (makes six d6 dice) + 1d10. The extra d6 allow me to play most d6 dice games. One dice set is full size and one is mini - the mini I use for counting lives and such. I have also made two character cards for a duo - one with preset of abilities and one empty. I laminated them and thus have one for quick grab game and one if I play some specific game - write and whipe, works great. I also have 4 zines: 2 of small card and dice based game (6 in total), 3rd with half a map for duo to explore, half a random dungeon, 4th zine is random tables with various info using dice and cards. It all fits in an old small box the size of a small pencil case. I glued some felt to the bottom and that's my board for dice. I haven't thought about using different d20s for different characters. I think I have an extra set of dice, they would fit in there perfectly. This set up has allowed me to travel and play most games I have encountered + the home brewed game works great for my idea of explorers.

I have been watching your stuff a lot today, what I am am thinking, so far, is trying to learn that Basic Fantasy RPG system you mentioned I should try in a comment. Which should be relatively easy as it seems a lot like 5e, which I know the best, but even more like 2nd ed, which I know a little less, but like more. But the the Basic Fantasy RPG is simplified, which I need for solo. But I was thinking this and Sky tree look really good, do you think they would both work well solo? I really think this one offers a lot to expand out from after I finish, and it offers a good scify setting but using more D&D rules. I also noticed you have a lot of books on Drivethrurpg, beyond the 3 you mention most of your channel, do you think any others would work better solo, easier to pick up with a slightly new RPG system, or optimized for a lower level? I tend to like to learn on low level character then I level as I learn, and am ready for new abilities and such. This seems to be optimized for lvl 3 and Sky Tree lvl 7, so I'd probably want to start at those levels at least until I know for sure what I am doing. :)

This was great to see how you play through some encounters and things. It takes a lot of tedium out of it using group initiative and such a bare bones system. I may be odd here, but I'd love to see someone record a full adventure with little editing nor cutting corners just to get a better feel for what I should be striving for in my game. But the few videos of your's I watched so far, have been helping me get ideas going on how to have success and not get bogged down as in my previous attempts at solo.

I have tried to play solo a few times, I have had some success with solo adventure books, though they do tend to confine me more than I would like, but once I start trying to create my own game it only lasts a session maybe 2. I get bogged down juggling everything, keeping track of combat, trying to roll for interesting encounters, then not liking what I rolled, then it becomes a chore and the fun is just not allowed to develop. I did try to run a published adventure last time to see if that would help. It called for a party of 4-6 so I tried handing 4, I think if I can scale it down and run 2 characters it might be better. One thing that makes it even more of a struggle is I know mostly D&D and rather enjoy magic users, which adds more elements of spell books and spell slots, and memorizing spells, I wonder if I could make it more low magic, or find an easy to learn system with less complexity. I'll also check out more of your videos and see if they help add new ideas on systems or streamlining. :)

A Lego dice tower would be cool. 😂

Good points. What advice would you have for somebody who wants to GM a small group AND be one of the player characters?

Sounds interesting, John!

Nice look!

You coined this term! You get all the credit!

Looking forward to giving this a try!

Thanks for the post gotta love Super Hero RPGs 😊😊

"Someone has to be Robin." Well, maybe. I always allowed players to have disparate groups of heroes come together to allow them to play the licensed heroes they liked. I would just set a power level (street level, heroes who can survive unprotected in space etc.). I really enjoyed this video, lots of good advice and great delivery. Subscribed! <Kraka-BOOM> ⚡️

I prefer to run solo games. To me it is similar to reading a novel. Reading a book is, the story plus your imagination. Solo gaming is similar. It is a basic rule set, dice and your imagination. No one else. You are absolutely correct when you say you have to simplify rules. I take the rules that are used for group play, throw have of them out and homebrew the rest. It's the only way to run solo games. Even my main character PCs are not as fleshed out as you would in a group setting. It would be too much to keep track of.

I've honestly been struggling with TTRPGs lately. I started with such a love for them, and now I feel like I can't even properly run one. I also struggle finding good players. So I figured I'd give it a go at solo TTRPGs. I've been playing Ironsworn Starforged and I'm greatly enjoying it. I do think I'll try something like mythic GM emulator with a more traditional system though and see how that works for me. Great video, even if you said I shouldn't have pizzas every day 😅

Solo games help fill in those times when your between groups or your group meets once a month or less.

I have played many systems solo over the decades, this led me to create my would-be game, Interstellar Frontiers, which is based on solo play from the ground up. The hardest part with solo play in my opinion, is being engaged; to have the NPCs act 'independently' from what 'we' might want them to do. To achieve this I created a pile of charts to help with this. Try creating a chart using a d100. Assign variables like, "Advance, retreat, evade, hesitate, flee, etc." and using this to determine how an NPC will react in combat. We can create another chart for negotiations, intimidations, and searches. These charts allows us to assign both some chaos factor and some NPC independence. So, in combat, for example: I can roll to determine the foe, be it a single person, beast, or squad-sized unit, their attitude coming into the event; assign modifiers based up on the situation/circumstances (Is the OpFor (opposing force) supported; vested in the event; hired/mercenary, and so on).

I like playing OSE advanced. I have played some pre-made adventures and also some completely random table based games. Now i own a copy of The Halls of Arden Vul, a 1100 pages Multidungeon adventure and i want to start a new solo campaign based on OSE advanced and with making use of Mythic 2e as an oracle, the book of random tables and On Downtime and Demesnes for in between dungeon fun. I think i will use 4 characters but i am wondering if i should keep a log for all characters seperate or one log for the who group, since it is such a large campaign, even if broken down in smaller parts.

The problem is, this product was really designed to be for "Players of Star Trek Adventures who want to play the game on their own", but they failed to mention that as a requirement for picking this up. It is more of a "toolkit" to do solo play, and a "tweaking" of the normal rules of Star Trek Adventures. They mention within this book that you can play using more of the Star Trek Adventures rules if you want more crunchy mechanics. That way you can get all the special racial adjustments and extra things that make it feel more Star Trek. Their neglecting to inform people of the requirements to understand this book is going to lead a lot of people to dislike this product. Is it a great product? No, it is laid out very poorly. Does it have a robust solitaire game system? No, it offers a way to do what I call a "roll and write" roleplaying game. Roll the dice and do a lot of writing. I pick and choose aspects from Star Trek Adventures to use when I am playing Captain's Log, and I have written 40+ pages of Captain's Logs using this book. It helps fire the imagination, and gives a Star Trek Adventures feel without bogging down in mechanics. It streamlined the mechanics out of necessity to reduce the need for automating the GM. I had such an entertaining adventure the first time I played this that, when I told my buddy about it (who also loves Star Trek and had played Star Trek Adventures with me before) and he was so interested he wanted to play and purchased the book. We are currently doing a cooperative Captain's Log game, which the book "opened the door" to the concept, but failed to provide any insight in how to do it. So we are working our way through an episode cooperatively. In fact, we are meeting tonight to continue our game! It is certainly not for everyone, and not even for experienced roleplayers, but if you know and have played/ran Star Trek Adventures, and you always wanted to play more but couldn't, this product could be for you IF you don't mind playing a "roll and write" style game, as their is a LOT of writing in this game. But it is great at giving you ideas to run with.

How do you deal with npcs and asking for information?

Exactly! Right after a lot of mind work trying to simplify my solo setup and finally making progress by copying my favourite oracle tables at the beginning of my notebook, I find this video and your take on "character sheets". Amazing my friend. That "I can carry everything with me" take is exactly my style of play. Reducing the material resources to the minimum and letting the mind and imagination do the magic. Let me ask you: How exactly do you manage to make your gaming more straightforward systemwise? What kind of combat or resolution mechanics do you mostly use?

Great video, John -- luckily I've been able to use all my TTRPG time with you and the rest of the gang 😁

Off topic but…watch Babylon 5. Seasons 2-4 are some of the best sci-fi TV ever.

Great suggestions! Thanks, John!

I have never played solo. Well, with dice and pens. My brain is constantly in process of making up stores and playing through them in my head.

If you think about it Disney+ runs up against these issues too. They could have wrote a good story & never mentioned Jedi or lightsabres or the force & had that story happen on a world that one day is dominated by the Empire which destroys their culture & history.

Thanks, John!

Cool vid bud