House Rules, Tools & Resources for Solo Play

[TyCaine]

Greetings!

With the pandemic raging, in some states more than others, face to face gaming has become problematic, if not outright difficult (and potentially foolhardy), and gaming over Roll20, VTT, Zoom or a host of other tools is great (and I'm making great use of it with my current group) but occasionally something more measured and sedate is desired.

Having read some of the notes in a few blogs out there for solo play, I was wondering if anyone had any house rules, tools or resources they could share or recommend for someone looking to supplement online gaming, with a little solitary T2K fun?

http://twilight2000solo.blogspot.com for one lists the Mythic Game Master Emulator as a useful tool, along with some of the tables and charts in Solo Rules for Cepheus Engine by Zozer Games.

Anyone have anything else they can add to the pile? Or perhaps their own homebrewed set of notes and/or rules?

Just need something to feed the urge a little more, you know?

And since I didn't mention it, I'm a diehard v2.2 fan (with my own bits and pieces added on top, based upon a modified timeline that drops the start of the game at the 1st of the year, 2019) in case that matters.

Thanks in advance!

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I'd suggest Tegyrius' encounter generator. I can't find the link back to his post just at the moment but it's here somewhere

[Raellus]

Teg's Random Encounter Generator:

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=6196

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[Tegyrius]

Thanks for the plug. I'm trying to consolidate all of my fan work in one place, so the link in my sig file is current.

The "strict compliance" version of the encounter generator is stable and should be bug-free. I do not plan additional updates to it at this time.

The "expanded" version is under frequent revision as new dumb ideas pop into my head. It has considerably more variety and detail than the first version, but it also may yield results that don't make a damn bit of sense, so consider it worth exactly what you paid for it. It also should be bug-free but I'm hand-coding every bit of it, so don't be surprised if it occasionally pukes.

ETA: For other people's resources, I recommend Jed McClure's sandbox hexmaps, which I am using for a couple of different purposes right now. Jed was briefly sighted on this forum as Jedo, but his last activity was 2018. There's also some good material at The Ranting Savant's site.

ETA2: I had sort of ignored the concept of solo play as "why don't I just write fiction" until stumbling upon the Ironsworn RPG and its use in the second season of Me, Myself, and Die. While Ironsworn is about as far from T2k as you can get in terms of design ethos, both the game and the series may be worth checking out for solo play style inspiration.

ETA3: Looks like The Ranting Savant also has an account here as, unsurprisingly, therantingsavant.

- C.

[TyCaine]

Well I have to say I've already noted the encounter generator, nice piece of work there. And I'm looking forward to see the evolution of the 'expanded' version.

I have also seen the settlement generator, as well as the additional careers information you've done... Nicely done!

I found and raided Jed's hexmaps too, not to mention the Ranting Savant's posts of which I wish there were more....

Hmmmm, so what else is out there that we've missed?

As for the 'why don't I write fiction' question, I had very much the same revelation as you in that regard, having seen others do solo and do it well, it just struck me as something I wanted, maybe needed, to try, which then raised the questions of whether others were doing such things and what they used to make their own solo games work...

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Also, if you don't mind spending a few dollars, DriveThruRPG has a range of random generator pages for such things as "contents of modern storage containers", "things to find in the wasteland", "items found in NPC pockets" and so on.
This is a good start page to browse: -
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...c-Corpse-Vol-1