Introduction
Happy new year! I wanted to post a really quick update to say I hope you all have a great year of solo and/or group roleplaying ahead of you. My life changed completely on 13 October last year when my daughter was born. My whole world has changed and my life has gone completely crazy in mostly good and some very minor bad ways.
I don't have anywhere near as much free time as I used to which makes joining any kind of RPG group campaign seem impossible now, especially as I can get called away to do baby stuff without notice. Luckily though solo games can be left on the table for hours without keeping anyone else waiting.
Over Christmas I did manage to play a two hour game of Four Against Darkness with my brother and his girlfriend, both avid roleplayers. We played until we killed our first boss, an orc brute who fell to my cleric's two exploding sixes. It was fun, and my brother came up with interesting ideas during the game. For example when we failed to open a puzzle box and got zapped with lightning he asked if we could take it with us and try again later, so I thought why not, it doesn't say it's bolted to its pedestal. Although it's quite a basic game and more like Heroquest than an actual RPG it's still great fun with a couple of other players.
Towards the end of last year I spent all my free time playing Cepheus Deluxe, my Bounty Hunter campaign. This has been incredibly fun and I'm enjoying the really simple Cepheus/Traveller rules where you can do anything you can imagine using the same 2D6 resolution mechanic. I've got big plans for former space marine Arman Doyle which should take the campaign in a more traditional Traveller direction soon.
I'm also going to try using more of the Mythic GM Emulator 2nd Edition rules too. There are lots of details I haven't tried yet, like "threads" which work similarly to Ironsworn's progress tracks, and random events that you roll for when you roll a double on a question to the fate chart.
I'll continue making images for the campaign too, using both Adobe Firefly and doing it myself. I'm thinking of even doing some very basic animations I can embed as GIFs on the blog to show things like ship combat, which could be fun (In my day job I'm a freelance motion graphic designer).
The homebrew Scarlet Heroes/Basic Fantasy RPG mashup campaign may look dead but I promise it's not. I'd still be playing it right now alongside Cepheus Deluxe if my baby daughter wasn't so bloody cute. It's up to thirty-two sessions now and the heroes are still only just in the process of discovering who the bad guys of the story are.
It's a very slow burning story because I'm intending to play solo in the world of Eilobar from now until the day I die.
Finally, my project where I play through episodes of Star Trek: Voyager using the Alpha Quadrant RPG is also definitely not dead, it just takes quite a while to make each one because I watch the episode first, then play the game with the episode open on Netflix for reference. I'm not doing all the episodes - because imagine playing through the pilot where half the senior officers get killed off, only to have all the cast members of the show die instead through bad dice rolls - so I tend to watch the show when I get the chance and wait til I find an episode with a mix of diplomacy, an away mission on an alien planet, some punch ups, phaser fights and ship combat. Imagine trying to play through Year of Hell with all the changes to the timeline, whole civilisations being erased from history etc. That would be a crazy one.
Future Games
I've got a folder on my hard drive with eighty-two RPGs in it. A large number of them were free, some were bought in bundles for various good causes, and the rest were bought very cheaply. Here are some details of games I want to play this year.
This was my Christmas present from my wife. Designed by Blackoath Entertainment, makers of Disciples of Bone and Shadow, another solo RPG, it's a sci-fi game about exploring the planets, ships and space stations of a long dead alien civilisation. I started reading the gorgeous physical rulebook over the holiday and made a character, but I've yet to actually get started with it. I want to play a short session or two by myself and then do an actual play blog post once I've got the hang of the rules. Because blimey there are a lot of rules to it. Half a year ago my long-suffering wife bought me this for my birthday after I showed her its nice graphic design on a visit to Forbidden Planet, one of the handful of shops in London that sell anything RPG-related. I wasn't expecting her to get it for me but it was a nice surprise. I just need to find time to play it now.
I played one session of this back in May in which I designed an arena tournament in the world of Dark Sun (I bought the Dark Sun PDFs on Drivethru RPG). I've got the printed rulebook and it's massive. I've flicked through it a few times but it hasn't really pulled me in yet. I'd like to continue the tournament I started because the crunchy combat was a lot of fun. I'm not sure when that will be though.
I've been slowly buying all the HOSTILE RPG books over the last year one by one. It's a really detailed retro sci-fi RPG based on Cepheus Engine, inspired by the retro futures of 70s and 80s sci-fi films like Alien, and sci-fi horror/thrillers like Event Horizon, 2001 and The Thing. As with Across a Thousand Dead Worlds I've started making a crew and I'm going to play a short session or two by myself to learn the ropes, then do a campaign on here. This one has the potential for some nice multimedia stuff like I mentioned I want to do for The Bounty Hunter.
If you want to see a couple of good solo campaigns played in HOSTILE I recommend this YouTube playlist by A.R. Kavli: Hostile RPG Solo Play I'm ashamed to say I bought the digital version of Starforged at the start of last year and all I've managed to do is complete the "truths" section of the campaign prep (where you decide on several key aspects of how the world works). I think it's because I discovered Cepheus Deluxe soon after, and I enjoy the crunchiness of it that Starforged doesn't have.
I played Ironsworn for hours before starting this blog and it was great, but I find you have to be in the right mood for that style of game as it needs a lot more creative input from the player. I'm definitely going to play it... I just don't know when.
How can you not have tried Mork Borg yet, you ask? I don't know, I don't have a good enough reason really. As it's such a well designed product I don't want to buy the PDF, I want the hard copy but it's proved quite difficult to find. I also can't justify buying more and more physical RPG rulebooks that cost more than PDFs and take up the limited space in our house.
I have however got the free bare bones edition along with Solitary Defilement, the solo supplement, so I'll get round to it this year for sure.
One Shot Fantasy Dungeon Crawls
Something I enjoy a lot is playing one shot adventures using a game or system that I don't normally use. Like using an online dungeon generator to make an OSR style dungeon and sending a party of Old School Essentials characters into it, or the Wallet Dungeons tool I tried out last August using Scarlet Heroes. Expect to see more of this in 2024. This might be the way I try out Mork Borg actually. Mystery Dungeon Crawler Review
Finally, just before Christmas I was contacted by a company who wanted to send me their new game so I could try it out and review it on the blog. My first thought was "Are you sure? Barely anyone reads these mad ramblings!" but then I replied all professional like a real blogger, so they sent me the game. It's a lovely thing, and I've still got a bit of time to play it and write my review to coincide with the launch of the game later this year.
So that's it! I'll be back very soon with the next session of The Bounty Hunter. Until then, enjoy all your gaming, solo or otherwise.
Tom
Lone Horizons
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