Solo (Zoser)

The Solo system for Cepheus Engine has always been strange to work with, and it differs from the more popular Mythic Solo tools in a few significant ways. For one, in Solo, you make a plan, determine the difficulty and danger level, tally up the modifier to the roll, and then roll the dice.

Success means the plan worked, and you are done.

Failure means the plan failed, and now you must adjust.

Consequences are rolled for either result. If the plan succeeds, this has a positive modifier and can include results where characters get killed, with a greater chance of this on a dangerous plan that fails.

Then, you write a story answering the question, "What happened?"

It is a strange system because I don't see the need for skill checks. You just determine if you have the skill, which is a positive modifier. It is like I don't need characters at all, just plans. Skills play into positive modifiers, and characters play into plans, but I don't see too much of a need for characters.

The system is innovative in that I haven't seen too many "plan-based" solo play systems.

Myself? The future is not predetermined. If a plan signals a failure, and something terrible happens, I will start the end of the mission in media res and have characters fight to avoid that fate or make it worse. Most "easy-peasy" plans, yes, just say what happened, but there are times when I want to know what went down, have a chance for characters to play a few turns of combat, and try to salvage a bad situation for the better.

Something worse could happen. A result where nobody gets killed could be that half the party gets wiped out. That is the price for trying to change history. Could they change history, turning a failed plan into a success? It may be possible with a few critical success rolls, but that adverse fate will haunt them later.

Is the failure or success still predetermined?

Yes. A failed plan is still a failed plan.

How it fails will be how you play it out. The same goes for success. You may get to the end and wonder how you could fail, but you still do. You could lose it all, yet that roll for success means you still won. It may fail or succeed in a way you did not expect.

The consequences can change more drastically. You tried to change fate. Or maybe you did.

I like to use my starship combat systems, run interpersonal combats, and do my Car Wars battles. I don't want an abstract system taking it all away, only for the boring parts. So "be kind, rewind" is still how I use the system to lay out what happened. I go back and fill in the middle. But that is when I start playing if I so choose. If I don't like the result, I can change things. Maybe.

But I always leave the door open to return to the critical moment, set up the scene, and begin a short play session to figure out what happened. This has full combat, skill rolls, exploration, and all the other parts I love using. A character may be able to talk themselves out of trouble. They may have failed the mission, but what damage did they inflict?

It is a different take on solo gaming, but I like deciding when it is "play time" versus "plan time" and letting the dice fall where they may.

Solo Motivation

Or, more specifically, a lack of motivation.

I have tried playing solo RPGs, but it is challenging to get them to work. The more charts a game has, the worse it gets for me. This doesn't bode well for many chart-heavy games, like Shadowdark or DCC, and in some games, I freeze up and quit playing because of chart paralysis.

It blows up whenever I go high concept with a pre-built group of 'fun' characters. Four characters are my party limit; everyone at spot five and up gets ignored.

I do better with single-character games. Survival. A focused experience on one person and their challenges. Games that are balanced for parties are tricky since they force me to play more characters or solo-friendly classes (cleric, paladin, etc.). I can feel the missing character classes in some games in my experience. No rogue in the party? Who is opening the door, then? I guess we are hosed when it comes to any situation needing stealth. No cleric? Who is going to heal us?

Add to that most modules are written for 4-6 characters. Designers will think nothing of tossing 8 orcs in a room; the CR is good; we are done here. In addition to being a dull encounter for a solo player who is a meat grinder - especially for classes without that sleep spell this encounter is supposed to mitigate. A lot of D&D's design is predicated on the spells the game gives you, and designers of the old tournament modules would give pre-gen characters resources and one spell that should be used in one room for maximum effectiveness. It was the same with a flask of oil, a rope, and iron spikes - all of it had a use somewhere to 'solve' a room like a puzzle.

For solo play, I am looking at an encounter of 12 giant rats and asking myself, how many should there be for a solo character? The answer is always one to three, and with oracle dice determining if some hang back or watch, to avoid a video game-like "rubbing the character out" like this were a game of Gauntlet.

I still love GURPS, especially Dungeon Fantasy. I had both on a storage shelf and recently pulled DF out and put it on one of my play shelves. I like the character designs, the detailed equipment for dropping backpacks of heavy gear on the ground, and the tactical combat. I love the point-buy characters with dozens of skills and traits. I love building custom advantages and disadvantages.

What trade-offs do you make? What limitations do you pick? How do you set up your gear? How do you fight? Do you fight? Are you more of a task or social character, or a mix? How are your survival skills? Does it make sense to have them? How much money do you have in types of coins? Where do you keep it? Do you have a set of nice clothes for social encounters? Where are you staying tonight? Can you cover the cost of a more comfortable place?

Every character is like a mini-game design.

The freedom is unparalleled.

Point-buy games are more compelling for me to play solo since I can build characters who do a little bit of everything. I can work on the skills I need. If my cleric in a GURPS game needs archery, I have something to spend character points on. If they need stealth, that skill is right there for my next skill purchase. Do they need survival skills? Buy them. Don't go looking for a ranger. The concept of certain classes being good at some things to the exclusion of others - sucks.

So you are telling me a nature domain cleric has no survival skills and will get lost and die in the woods? Are you telling me a follower of a thief god has no thieving skills? That a barbarian can't have magic shout powers or blood magic? I should multiclass if I want that. Why? Because your game is broken fundamentally and can't express certain character concepts?

And then the answer is that a new book is coming out for you to buy for those options.

If you want those skills in a party, you must create another character to have them. It is more paperwork for my solo game and another character to keep track of. I would rather have one ultra-detailed character than twelve simple ones.

Give me a world and system like Skyrim, where one character can be a master of many things. I can play Dungeon Fantasy with one character easily. They will be skilled in many areas of my choosing, and if they know a little magic, all the better - if I want it, I don't have to invest there and be very good in a few areas.

Is it 5E? Can I run a party of characters? Can I run a dozen? Do I have all these monster and treasure tables? Do I have hundreds of adventures at my fingertips? Are combats fast? Are the rules intuitive?

No, to all of the above.

However, GURPS isn't a game; it is a toolkit. The rules are designed in a way where you choose which sections to ignore. When you use a real-world toolbox to fix something in your house, like tightening a screw, do you need to use every tool in the box? No. I can run the hyper-realistic GURPS combat like D&D, roll to hit, and apply damage. Most advanced rules are there if you want them, but it's okay if you ignore them.

Most 5E groups have no idea how to play a game like that. But this is old-school and mirrors how we used to play AD&D back in the day. Rules were simply a collection of things we used to run a game - and these rules could come from multiple sources - the game itself, articles in Dragon magazine, house rules, supplemental games like Arms Law, and even other games like Aftermath. Most of the time, a group's rules were the group's game collection and hand-written notes.

People today "think" B/X was followed precisely by the book and need a reference guide to ensure they are "playing it right," but they are so lost. I am like the ancient Egyptian coming to the future telling you that you are reading all those hieroglyphics wrong, and you have no idea.

These days, most OSR games sell you the fallacy that buying the book will give you an authentic experience. That is so far from the truth it hurts.

I need to put a sister game in here, Savage Worlds since this is also a point-buy game. Anything I say about GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy character builds applies to Savage Worlds. This is also far easier than GURPS but more conceptual and abstract.

Most B/X damage dice and hit point ranges are acceptable for GURPS, and the combat skill can be 10+HD, modified up or down by a little to account for danger. AC can be figured out relatively using GURPS armors.

Grab the free Basic Fantasy PDF; you will have a ton of monsters and treasures to use directly with Dungeon Fantasy. Convert them to your heart's content, and don't worry about using a character sheet designer to get these designs to the point. It does not matter.

An orc from Basic Fantasy?

• HP = 10  (10 x HD)
• Attack Skill, Parry = 13 (10 + HD, I added 2 for a somewhat skilled fighter)
• Dodge = 8 (estimated)
• Damage = 1d6+1 (by weapon, use the GURPS charts; I added one for strength)
• DR = 2 (heavy leather)

An ogre?

• HP = 40  (10 x HD)
• Attack Skill, Parry = 16 (10 + HD, I added 2)
• Dodge = 6 (estimated)
• Damage = 2d6 (I used B/X damage, this is powerful)
• DR = 3 (one better than the orc)

My hits numbers are a rough calculation and possibly more suited for parties. Many "designed" monsters typically never have more than 20-30 hits, so 40 seems like an outlier. Then again, 40 hits will not be enough once modern firearms appear.

But why GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy?

For solo play, I lose interest if I play a too simple game. Take a dirt-simple game; you pick a class. Anything your class can do, you succeed on a 1-4 on a d6. Anything you can't? You have a 1 in 6 chance. For a character to survive a hit, it is 1-4 on a d6. For a monster, hit and survive is a 1-2 on a d6. My game is a variation of B/X d6 skills but applied to everything.

It needs a lot of tweaking and improvement and at least 300 pages of random tables to fill out the game. I also need to pay a lot of YouTubers to promote this as the next big thing. Ah, the grift is high in the hobby currently. But it is sorting out since we are in the "creators fighting with each other" phase, which means the grift is declining.

I am not playing more than 5 minutes, and certainly never playing that for an entire campaign. No matter how good the game gets, it has no depth and can't keep my interest.

In Dungeon Fantasy, I could run a maximum of three characters. One is ideal. Two is okay, but I need to start juggling a lot of variables. Three would be my absolute limit. But the one character, the hero, Buck Rogers, Conan, Flash Gordon - this is a story of a hero.

And the single hero who can do it all is the ideal. In party-based play, you need role protection to pull in multiple players. In solo play, I am better off with a point-based system that lets me improve in areas the campaign challenges me with. If my game turns out to be 90% social, I can focus on improvement there. In D&D, if that is the case and I am a fighter, I am out of luck, so campaign over or roll up a social tag along NPC to use as a roleplay puppet.

Most NPCs? GURPS Ultra-Lite. Even PC allies. Use this for enemies, spiders, rats, orcs, and goblins - all can be GURPS UL characters and mesh perfectly with the complete rules. NPCs and opponents do not need to be anything more than this.

If you know how to cut and fold paper, your GURPS NPCs can be zero work, and you will have a lot more fun playing the game. You can hack in advantages and disadvantages with a pick cost or extra pick.

I am a lot more motivated to play with heroic, single-player games that do not use character classes and role protection. Open advancement also appeals to me greatly since my character is a product of the campaign - and they do not drive it.

If I pick a fighter class in D&D, and my game turns out to be exploration or social-based - the game breaks. In DF or GURPS, I buy skills and abilities in those areas, and my character improves organically. And I am not 'forced' to 'create fights' in a campaign just because 'I have a fighter, and they should fight something.'

Part of the problem I had staying motivated was feeling forced into a role with no path forward if the campaign changed or a particular skill became essential to continue. A game's direction can change with one dice roll in solo play.

Flex Tale Solo Adventuring Toolkit

Today, we look at the phone-book-sized solo play system!

Someone who buys this could be instantly put off by solo play of any sort. This book is bigger than most of the games it supports in page count (613 pages). Compared to Mythic and other solo-play systems, this is not rules-light.

But it is.

The book is divided into sections that each cover a topic, and most of the pages are filled with charts for each option. The random-dungeon generation section is only 43 pages long, and it covers five different game systems, giving you CRs, damages, and DCs for:

• Pathfinder 1e
• 5E
• Pathfinder 2E
• OSR Games
• Dungeon Crawl Classics

Using this for games like Castles & Crusades, GURPS, Mutant Crawl Classics, or your favorite would be simple. Just understand the difference between a hard, moderate, and easy check in your game, and you can easily translate the tables. This isn't limited to any genre, so you could create anything from sci-fi, and modern, to fantasy adventures with the system.

This is easily the most complete and comprehensive random dungeon system out there and can create an amazing variety of rooms, traps, encounters, and treasures. The rooms are more generic, so it is up to you to make one a 20x20 and another a 40x40 with a corner removed, so there is room for a little artistic freedom. The system is concerned with the master grid and what is in each 'cell' instead of trying to draw a pretty map. That is your job.

If you ignore the rest of the book, this solid random dungeon creation system can provide hours of fun. This is honestly how I approach this book, and at this point, this is all I am using it for. There are plenty of other chapters here, including:

• Quick Start (with the random dungeon generator)
• How to Solo Play
• Play Techniques and Variants
• PC Roles
• Solo Quests
• Balance and Rules Adjustments
• Rewards and Penalties
• Generators and Tools
• Encounter Tables
• ...Appendixes

The Solo Quests chapter is enormous, with over 150 pages of quest templates and charts for creating the 'flowchart style' adventures common to other games. A great system is hidden here for 'generic and specific clues' that can be used as counters to fill quest objectives. If you need 3 clues to find where the bandits ran off to with the princess, there are systems to generate and place those clues in the environments you explore - and even on the enemies you defeat. Some clues you can collect, and you won't know what quest they are for, and they have a chance to become relevant later when you pick up a new quest. It is really a smart and innovative syste.

This is the sort of book where you aren't supposed to use it all, but it has it all in case you need it.

I am taking this one part at a time, starting with the most valuable pieces and ignoring the rest until I read and discover them. The quick start rules are excellent and are probably where 90% of the book's buyers should start - and leave the rest of the book for later. My reviews will probably come in as I discover new parts of this book, but that is okay since I doubt anyone would (or should) use every table on every page of this book.

Supporting so many games is a plus, and it doesn't use much space to get the job done. You won't find conversions between systems here, but guidelines to get you started. The hardest part about using this book is creating a way to deal with how much you have at your fingertips.

This is recommended if you lean more towards 'random generation' and less 'off the cuff' style of solo play.

Everything is Playing

The Geek Gamers book Solo Game Master's Guide is one of the best solo play books ever written. They understand the number one enemy of solo play is "not caring" and "losing interest." The book solves those issues nicely and gets you excited to play by redefining solo play as...

Everything is playing!

Generating characters, reading the books, and even thinking about stories you might tell  - are playing too!  Moving the books around on a shelf so you can get to them easier and cleaning your game table? Playing! One of the enormous problems in solo play is the "not playing" and "feeling bad about it" cycle, which is sort of like the "stopped working out" and "feeling bad about not working out, so you don't work out" cycle.

The book breaks the negative feedback cycle.

If all I have time for today is messing around with my character designer, guess what? You found time to play today; feel happy! Is this character better than the last? Can you tell more stories with them? I was doing that last night and laughed at the concept of the character I made, which is why I love GURPS, and it is leading me down a new path of discovery and imagination. I am on the chase, and I have energy and momentum. This feels so good!

By setting that "what is playing?" bar very low, every little thing you do progresses to eventually actually, for real, playing the game! The method creates one of those gears in a clock that can tick forward a short distance but can not go back. Ten or twenty clicks and you have a revolution. You have movement. You create preservation of momentum.

You are not going back to a place farther away from your dream.

This is not only great advice on how to run solo play, but it is also great advice for life.

Don't try to have something all at once - if you want something. You will only get frustrated and fail. Instead, establish a system where "everything moves you towards the goal" and be like that gear in the clock. Move forward a tiny tick and never fall back. Even if your day was trash and you can't do one more thing, do something tiny and almost trivial to keep moving forward.

I do this with my gaming shelves. I do this bonsai tree activity where I clean and create the most attractive gaming setups for my shelves. The books I do not use get put in my sealed plastic storage boxes. The games I want to play get displayed in beautiful layouts like you would see in a store or on a streaming show devoted to the game. Is that "playing?" Well, yes.

Move a book to a game table where you will read it, then drop yourself on your bed and fall asleep. You are keeping the habit going, one of the most critical patterns of behavior to fall into if you want something. The following day, when you see the book, what could happen? If it was on the shelf, you might have done something else that day because you forgot. By moving that book, you may have set up a butterfly effect of discovering a "timeline" you may have never explored nor would have ever ventured onto because that book was still on that shelf.

Even the most minor and nothing things can later on lead you to wonderous discoveries and possibilities. You need to help yourself by being that "critical character" to your plot that leaves something out or keeps a pattern of incremental success going.

So keep making campaign notes, creating characters, thinking about stories, and building your worlds. Keep reading the books! Keep creating character sheets and playing with the software. Keep reorganizing and cleaning your shelves. Set up a map and pawns. Keep imagining. Keep dreaming of your game.

You will get there.

Just take a series of small steps and keep moving forward toward your goal.

Solo Game Master's Guide (Modiphius)

Do you know the difference between a book written by someone reciting things off a checklist versus someone who has actually done something and mastered the field?

This book is the latter.

This is partially a solo play system and more a theory book about how you solo play, what you should not get hung up on, and how you can get better at the art of solo RPG play. These skills easily transfer over to being a referee; being able to improvise, come up with stories, and exercise your imagination are critical parts of becoming a great game master.

This is an excellent book; I had some of the bad solo play habits warned about in this book. Endlessly rolling dice. Frustrating myself with tables that did not tell me anything. Feeling the story should go one way, but the system never allowed it to. The overuse of story assistants, or picking card after card and expecting everything to work. The burnout. Stalled stories.

I put unreasonable expectations on a solo system and did not trust the storyteller inside myself.

There is a lot on telling stories, arcs, and how to keep momentum. There is a bit of excellent advice on skipping character creation as your "first step," - and I have had so many solo games end at character creation I would have to agree.

A character is not a story.

A character is not a game.

A character does not guarantee momentum.

There is also a concept of every oracle roll being a danger to your story. I find it fascinating to realize what you are doing to your game with an oracle roll and save them for the most critical questions. Your game will get better the fewer oracle rolls you use.

If you ever find yourself rolling an oracle too much - STOP. Figure out a way to move forward without a roll. What you are doing is destructive behavior to your story and game. No amount of rolling will give you an answer, and it is better to come up with the most exciting way forward by yourself instead of overreliance on the oracle.

Sometimes, no matter how much you roll, you will never get an answer.

So just make yourself happy, sad, or whatever. Go with a feeling and move on.

There is also a lot of inspiration on "interpretive sources" where the oracle you use does not give you a hard "yes-no" answer. Still, you grab a few random things, flip through a book and find items of inspiration, or use a table of descriptive words and imagine "what happens next" from these "imagine what they mean" sources.

I am lost in this book, and it is making me rethink solo play.

Highest recommendation for solo players.

Mail Room: Solo Game Master's Guide (Modiphius)

Modiphius put out a Solo Game Master's Guide with the Geek Gamers Youtube channel, and this looks like an interesting system-neutral book on how to make solo gaming work. The production values, art, and advice in this book look top-notch, so I want to give this a read and cover it soon.

Solo Play: Journaling

At the 5:50 mark of the above video, Magehammer shares how he solo plays, and he uses a journal to record his sessions, just like an example of play. I found this really inspiring and looking closely at his notes, he does it something like this:

CK: You approach the door at the end of the hall and hear grunting noises beyond.

Balder: I ready my ax!

Ragnar: I listen at the door. (Rolls a 16+3 = 19)

The CK in the above example is the castle keeper, or the DM or referee. And he will write out the entire session in the "example of play" format, not explaining everything like a tutorial but making all the dice rolls, making decisions for characters, and playing the referee. Now, he doesn't use an oracle to solo play; he makes it all up himself based on what would make a good story, but you could also use this system with an oracle.

What I love about this system is it combined writing, journaling, and roleplay. Your decisions are set in stone. You are writing a story you can come back to later. And the game lives in this self-contained journal, and that acts as your "save game" for the adventure and the campaign. The downside is you are writing by hand; though I know typing is way faster, there are times when computers allow you to change too much, distract you from playing by offering too many other fun things to do, and do not force you to make a commitment to writing in a real, physical book.

Also, I found these very nice journals on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Lined-Hardcover-Notebook-Expandable/dp/B07L4JCG7T

They have a back pocket, perfect for holding 4x6 character cards. They also have a built-in elastic to hold the book closed, so they are a fun way to record an adventure and keep all the game materials organized. Granted, if I am playing with 4x6 character cards I will want a game that is simple and does not require pages of printouts per character, such as:

• B/X
• Savage Worlds
• Savage Pathfinder
• Castles & Crusades
• Amazing Adventures
• Star Frontiers
• B/X Gangbusters
• Gangbusters (original)
• Frontier Space
• Bare Bones Fantasy
• Covert Ops
• Cepheus Engine
• Sword of Cepheus
• ...and many others

I find myself gravitating towards the simple games as they just provide me with the same amount of enjoyment for a lot less effort and recordkeeping. I also used MS Word and made myself these awesome character card templates (for C&C), and since my printer can print on 4x6 blank index cards, I can print out dozens of character cards easily and fill them in by hand.

So all my characters can live in the journal they are adventuring in. I can start a different type of game in a new journal, like sci-fi, and have those characters live there, tucked into the back of the book.

Journaling also solves the problem of "where did we leave off?" Just bookmark your last location and read the last few entries. One of my problems with solo play is losing interest in a game and having it taper off. Not having the history you can read through drains your game of energy and impetus. Writing the history builds history and records of your game, and the more you have, the greater the reason you have to continue.

And really, there is no "right way" to do this. You can just shorthand everything when you feel like it, write long sections of dialog if that thrills you, speed things up, slow them down, handle the combat out of the book and just come back with the result, summarize things, write out every line of dialog, fast forward time, only handle the critical dice rolls, or however you want to play that makes the most sense to you and is the most comfortable.

I would recommend against games that take hours to resolve combat, lots of back and forth with no hitting, or piles of hit points where you are just journaling how four people reduce 300hp to zero - especially with repeated use of the same power turn after turn (looking at you D&D 4E).

Green flame blade!
Green flame blade!
Green flame blade!
Green flame blade!
...

Savage Worlds is one I want to try, since the game is fast-paced and cinematic, and non-wildcard characters only have one hit before they are taken out of the fight. I need to create a card template for this game and print that out.

So thanks to Magehammer for sharing this, and I hope this more organized and journaling focused style of play works for me.

Pathfinder 2 Solo Play

This is a game I really want to love, but I struggle with it. It feels like there is way too much to remember, way too many modifiers to track, way too many tags to keep track of and apply (at times in chains), and my brain says, "This is how you program a video game, please give me that."

And I do not struggle with Pathfinder 1e, GURPS, or even games like Champions or Aftermath. I like deep, complicated games where a lot needs to happen in my head at once. Many of those games are straightforward, where you are worrying about straight damage, and tags and additional effects are relatively rare. When you get higher level in Pathfinder 1e, you get into those other addon effects, but the lower level game feels very much like B/X and is computationally simple.

I do not want to remember and apply that many effects and tags for a party of four that I am running solo. I can't do it. I will miss half, spend 50% of the time flipping through a book, and never feel I am playing it well enough for all those rules to matter. It feels like buying a software package so complicated you never spend the time learning to use it because your mind just can't.

The character builds in Pathfinder 2 are these giant choice trees, and I just want a simple point-buy design system. Yes, the choices are simplified as you level. You are making a few choices, but I have a specific character in mind, and I find myself predesigning something to make sure I get what I want at a higher level. I am finding myself limited by these "scripted" class leveling systems even in Starfinder, where I want my space mechanic to change focus for a little while, and I feel he really can't because he will miss out on a few powers later on, or the character bloat would increase substantially if I am multiclassing.

I get in a system like Savage Worlds, GURPS, Champions, or other games that give you points to buy the character ability you want when you level, and I feel right at home. I want to increase my combat or piloting skills for a while; go ahead.

I still have the feeling this game is better with others. When you have 4 people around the table, each heavily invested in their class and knows their powers and abilities, I bet things run like a well-oiled machine. When the group learns the game together, and the referee can focus on managing the chaos and story instead of running characters, I bet things run great. The party synergies and action economy make this game awesome. The class choices as you level keep characters balanced without too much referee review. It all works great, and it feels designed for groups.

Some games work better than multiplayer games, which is where I feel Pathfinder 2 lands.

This is way too much for solo play and feels like standing in an empty World of Warcraft server. Sure, you can play a class and get some progression, and maybe you can get a few quest lines done, but ultimately you will never enjoy everything the game has to offer alone.

I am keeping my library and subscriptions up, I still believe in the game and company. It is just a hard choice unless I put some serious time into learning and working through all the concepts, which I don't have right now. I am probably moving to a simpler game for my Pathfinder experience.

Pathfinder 2e Solo

I can run four characters solo with Pathfinder 1e. I tried running six, but I started to feel that stress on the brain, and I found two of the characters began to get ignored every turn as I focused on the front four. Even with five, one inevitably did not have much to do, and it was often because of not having enough front-line space in tight dungeon corridors.

Thematically and story-wise, four always felt better and what the game was designed for.

I would rather play with fewer characters and scale encounters down than create a lot of work for myself and have to scale encounters up. For a solo game? Get the flavor of the encounter and story, and keep your life simple. Many adventures are designed for four characters, so I do not have a problem managing this, and it works well.

Pathfinder 2e Solo?

I struggled with Pathfinder 2, I will admit it. The action economy and the tight game tuning mean you need to pay attention and make good choices every turn. That action economy will likely be different for different classes and builds. Since you have three actions per character, a party of four means up to twelve decisions for your four solo characters every turn.

Yes, in a Pathfinder 1e game, you have your three actions, but the types of each one are strictly defined:

In a normal round, you can perform a standard action and a move action, or you can perform a full-round action. You can also perform one swift action and one or more free actions. You can always take a move action in place of a standard action.

So most of the time in Pathfinder 1e, one attack per turn and one (optional) move are safe to assume. If you are on the front lines, ignore the movement. For many characters, a turn means just one attack and moving on to the next character; for four to six decisions a turn, if a few characters in the back ranks shift or take swift actions.

With Pathfinder 2e, I see many people stress taking those actions, and being smart about them means the difference between success and failure. So you need to make all twelve per turn for a party of four, and you need to make sure you are using them wisely. Yes, some actions take multiple actions, but I would rather have time to consider options than tick through a dozen per party turn.

That feels like a lot for me, especially since I started to zone out with a party of six Pathfinder 1e characters and begin to ignore two of them. I have this feeling most turns two characters will likely be playing sub-optimally.

Solo Play as the Duo

I am likely playing Pathfinder 2e as a duo. I have no problem cutting an encounter in half in terms of numbers or solo monster hit points and focusing on a dynamic duo that learns to work together. That feels good to me, and it cuts down on the overload I feel with Pathfinder 2 solo games. This caps my actions at six per turn, making this task manageable and matching the per-turn average I was handling with Pathfinder 1e games.

This is like your typical "buddy cop" movie, like having a cranky dwarf and arrogant elf learn to get along and work with each other. This also avoids one falling unconscious and the adventure coming to an immediate end, as one could help the other.

At most, I would have three work together, but I would keep my party size to two since there will be times the duo gets an NPC for a while to assist in the fight. If you put your max at three, that NPC raises it to four, and you are back to a heavy action load to manage each turn.

Also, I may adjust the bonuses given by actions that provide party modifiers. There is a vast difference between giving four party members a +1 to a turn's actions versus just two. If I play duos, I am possibly increasing those bonuses to +2 with parties of one or two and +1 for three or more - and calling this the Buddy Rule. We ran into this problem with D&D 4E as well, and this is something I wish I would have done back then for small party sizes.

Plus, with a duo, with every action you take, you are asking this one question, "Do I help myself, or do I help my partner?" Forcing yourself to ask this question helps enforce the "team play" focus of many actions, and you would not get these options if you were playing with one character alone. Since teamwork is highlighted in the game, if you play a single character, many choices you can make with the action economy (and many powers) will be pointless since there is no one else to assist.

Also, in that two-person theme, the entire buddy-cop "helping each other" story of the game advances every time you make choices that force them to work together and realize they are better with each other than they are alone.

Pathfinder 1e: Discovery and Solo Play

One of the things I absolutely love about using Hero Lab with Pathfinder 1e is all the options I have at my fingertips. I will be creating a character and notice a possible new synergy between powers, feats, and skills and say, "This character would make a good horse trainer." And boom, all of a sudden I have an interesting NPC with full stats and powers, and I can build them into a unique role for my world.

I don't get that in B/X, and this is also something I saw in Ninjas & Superspies. When I get a meaty and substantial character design system, I can make it sing. I end up loving the characters I build. It makes me want to play the game on an entirely different level. I love the simplicity and freedom of B/X systems, but when I find myself solo playing, I want a single character with extreme depth and rules support.

To me, my level 1 cleric in Pathfinder 1e is ten times more fascinating to play solo than a level 1 cleric in a B/X system. The challenges she faces are better covered by skills and powers, and she can build as she levels in order to better face them. In B/X I get a few hit points and a few more spells, some gold, maybe a better attack bonus. I feel B/X is a better system for group play, simple and accessible by all, fast and it frees players up to roleplay and be creative without rules shackles.

Complexity? Yes, Pathfinder 1e has an extreme depth of combat rules. But there are times I can handwave and simplify if none of it matters, and throttle down to a B/X style system. I am solo playing, the rules matter when I choose them to. But I have the option to scale up in complexity if I want crunch, with B/X I do not.

For solo play, I crave depth. I love character building. The more options the better. I want to get in there and fiddle. I want advantages, disadvantages, feats, and choices to make as I level. The amount of gold I get is not my entire character power, my choices matter - given the challenges I choose or don't choose to face.

Oddly enough, I find myself experimenting with GURPS again for the same reasons.

Game Shopping: Mythic Game Master Emulator

This play aide was suggested by one of the solo play videos for Forbidden Lands, which you can find here, and it is also a good walkthrough of the game and solo play technique:

It is an interesting product that works with any RPG, and is meant to guide a questions-and-answer style of play that "answers" questions about "what happens next?" Is the princess is this castle? Well, it is the end of level 1-1 so...probably not, but we can check and see. The core of this system relies on creating a question, assigning a probability, adjusting the chance for a "chaos factor" and rolling to see if this is true or not.

For that alone it is a cool product, but there are layered systems for scenes, random events, interruptions and all sorts other story structure generation. Scenes that you setup can be interrupted or altered, changing the expectations of what you had in mind. After a scene ends, you do a little bookkeeping and alter the current chaos factor, the list of characters, and also the story threads that are running (or may have ended).

There is also a framework for a scene and how you resolve one, with sheets to keep track of what is going on, who is involved, and how the story threads come out.

It is an interesting book (and you can get a hardcopy on Drivethru), and I will try to use this along with Forbidden Land's system to see how it goes. It is not a huge book, which I am glad since this sort of thing should be kept simple, and it has a 2-sided page of charts in the back of the book to help you out.

More soon on this when my books arrive and I start diving in to check things out - but it looks cool and a fun addition to solo play.

Mail Room: Solo (Cepheus Engine)

Solo RPG Campaigns for the Cepheus Engine is an interesting solo play product designed for the Cepheus Engine or any Traveller-like RPG, but one could really use it for most any RPG given a little tweaking. This is what I love about OGL gaming, you get so many cool and different ideas and new concepts out here your mind is blown once you do a little digging.

This is also why nostalgia is an inherently regressive force, if all we do is put older games on pedestals and worship them like idols, we become afraid to change them, improve them, and try new things. Endless reprints of older games where they are judged to be "how faithful they are" to older editions does not create an incentive to streamline, improve, or try new things.

M2E Traveller and D&D 5 ultimately are nostalgia plays, but they strike a good balance between keeping things how they were, and improving things that obviously needed to be improved. Basic Fantasy is also another game that says "we are keeping the OSR feeling" but simplifies a lot of the concepts to more modern concepts, and that works very well.

To me, Cepheus Engine and Labyrinth Lord are a lot alike, they work towards compatibility and creating an OGL base from which new things can be created. And thus, Solo RPG Campaigns for the Cepheus Engine has been created to fill a niche, how does one person play these inherently social games?

Solo: Solo Play?

Solo creates a lightweight structure around the host game's rules, and presents a method of advancing story-lines for a group of characters. Once person plays as a group of characters, a complete party, so this puts an emphasis on having a rules system where characters are simple and ultimately disposable. I would not play this in a game system took 4 hours to generate each party member, so having lightweight characters is a huge plus. I could play this with a retro-clone such as Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, or even Mutant Future if I wish.

Group Conflicts

Think of the group dynamic here as "characters in the cast of a movie" such as Alien, The Thing, a war movie, or any other film where the action focuses around a group of characters working together to solve various problems and work towards a goal. Inter-group conflicts based on personalities and relationships in a huge thing here, and Solo provides a system for creating and managing these conflicts, and handling them during play.

This is an interesting choice, since it tells the solo player "you are not fully in control of the party" and generates those interpersonal conflicts for the team during play. So instead of 4-6 players creating the inter-party dramatic moments, the system does that and the player needs to imagine, resolve, and deal with the consequences.

Plans and Outcomes

The driving dynamic behind Solo is the concept of plans and outcomes. You don't turn-by-turn play here, you play a meta-game where you present the group with a situation, rescue the princess from the tower surrounded by orcs, and you make a plan to resolve that situation based on your party, how you approach the situation, and if your plan is risky or not. Based on the plan you assign a difficulty and resolve the plan with a success roll and a later consequences roll (modified by various factors).

If your plan works, the princess is rescued. There may be consequences afterwards, such as losing a party member or equipment, injury, or other good and bad outcomes. That is rolled for afterwards on a second table.

After that, the player comes up with two options for the next course of action, and picks one. That becomes the next plan and the process is repeated. All this is written down so it creates a journal of play as you go, and this helps cement your plans, options, and outcomes into something that is enjoyable to read over later.

Do the Rules Still Matter?

An obvious question is if you are going to ignore turn-by-turn play, do the rules even matter? Well, not exactly. The characters you create will have skills and abilities that are important for how you make plans. The rules system you are using and the internal logic still matter. If I was playing a D&D type game where clerics and turn and dispel undead, that fact (and having a character able to do this) is an important thing to know if a situation ever comes up where I need to create a plan to deal with undead. If i have a character with a mind-reading power, that can be used in my plans. If I have a pilot or mechanic, that is also something I need to know.

In the turning-dead example, this system also assumes you have a basic familiarity with how the game works and what that internal logic is. It helps having played the system and knowing some of these things when situations are created, plans are made, and the resolution decided upon. If in Traveller, missiles in ship-to-ship combat worked a certain way versus energy weapons, knowing that, how they are defended against, and how basic ship combat works will give you more information on creating, resolving, and running plans with the Solo system.

That said, while I own and know a lot of complicated RPGs, I would prefer to play this with simpler ones since the systems and rules I need to understand and keep in my head are much easier to manage. if I can master a game mentally, the plans and consequences and factors that affect success are much easier to know and give me a richer experience since I know how everything works together.

Where is the Roleplaying?

That is a good question. The system has a concept of 'fortune in the middle' that is interesting. In traditional games, they do a 'fortune at the end' sort of roleplaying outcome system, you sneak down a hall, roll stealth, do the guards spot you? You go from area to area and situation to situation at a very low level. Fortune at the end means you roleplay moment to moment depending on the outcomes of individual tests, and the sum total of those tests and the situation determines how the situation comes out - at the end.

In Solo, they turn this on its head and abstract the scene - you don't need to map out a secret base and play through turn-by-turn, you plan, resolve, and the outcomes and random charts tells you the outcome - you then fill in what happened during the mission with our imagination and make it fit the outcome. Fortune in the middle means, the end result is determined based on a pass/fail roll modified by several factors and your party's capabilities (and how the plan suits them), and you roleplay what happens in the middle of the action - you make up what happened inside that secret base based on the eventual outcome rolled.

You need to turn on the ship's reactor, but evil bug aliens infest that deck of your ship. You make a plan, bust in with a force of marines in the front door and attract attention, while two technicians sneak in the back of the deck through the air shafts. Risky plan, but it has a good element of deception and distraction. The potential for accidental death and destruction is high. 

You succeed, but the consequences say you lose a random member of the plan. Maybe one of the technicians is ambushed by a stray bug in the airshaft in a heroic last stand to distract the bugs and let the other technician complete the repair. You make up the middle and "roleplay" what happened inside the event.

And two options present themselves after, either clear out the bugs, or proceed towards the falling space station in the gas giant's gravity for a rescue...

As you may see from the example, the characters in Solo should be disposable, like the members of a horror or action movie cast, since they are ultimately resources used to tell a story. Depending on the risks taken, you could and possibly will lose characters during a game.

Can I Sill...Play?

This is an interesting question. Can you still...play? I mean, break down and play out a combat, make individual skill rolls, and use the rules as they were intended to be used? For me, I would say yes. If you really want to have a starship battle "on the board" and you want to play that out, I say go for it and used the results of that action to cover the pass/fail and potentially the consequences phases of the Solo system.

If there are no meaningful consequences, like your ship escapes unscathed, I may still say "roll for them anyways" to figure out if something unexpected happens. If your ship takes a ton of damage - that is the consequence - but you may still roll if a good consequence is called for as well. I would replace a negative consequence with the heavy damage though, as you don't want to double-up on a bad situation already with a second ruling just because the dice say so.

Looking Forward to This

This was a product that captured my imagination, given my current player-less situation and me being a lifelong fan of roleplaying games. This also prompted me to invest in the Cepheus Engine games, including the modern rules supplement, and got me interested in the system.

I am hoping Solo helps me fill the void here, if just a little, and it gives me some moments of fun as I work through my loss and rebuilding the love I have for our games.