Wilderlands Sologame Preamble: How I Play Solo

I thought I'd do a little series walking through a solo game as I play it, both as a game log but also as something of a how-to tutorial for successful solo play, since I see a lot of people who have interest in it but can't quite figure it out. It's just one style of solo play, probably a tad idiosyncratic style, but it works for me and hopefully someone out there will benefit. 

The campaign is going to be set in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, since I've never actually done a real strong hexcrawl solo and I am feeling the urge to run something really ancient and raw from the dawn of the hobby. I also haven't properly run it before, and one of the reasons I play solo is to test games so that when I inflict them on players I know better what I am doing. I am starting with the DCC module Sailors on the Starless Sea to kill two birds with one stone- I'm interested in the large catalogue of DCC modules but have never run any of them, and am especially interested in how funnels play. 

I am using OSE as the actual system as it is my comfort zone and has a solid Foundry module for automation, which helps when running things solo. 

Solo Game Style

I run my games very similar to how I run real games, which means

• Multiple Party Members
• Hireling focused play
• Module focused adventures, particularly dungeon crawls but also hexcrawls. 

This is not the only way to  play solo games. Some people play with one abnormally strong PC, using rules from Scarlet Heroes or similar. Some run highly randomized solo games relying hard on oracles to generate situations (instead of using prewritten modules to play through). Neither of these are wrong, and both can be very fun. I run my games with a party experience to playtest and familiarize myself with stuff I want to run, as this is my goal it is best to hew close to default party play. 

 I believe that the best way to be better at running games is with practice. The best way to be better at playing games is practice. The amount of time you can play real games with real people is limited by the dread specter of scheduling, solo gaming allows you to squeeze extra practice in- both as a GM and as a player, as you are kind of playing on both sides at once. 

 Sometimes I feel bad about playing solo games instead of trying to fill my schedule with real games with real people, but regular tabletop games have to be scheduled, and it is unwise to fill up your schedule too tight. Solo games can be played whenever, and can be easily shifted around. The end result is that solo games tend to be competing with, say, video games or watching movies, instead of competing with scheduled gaming.  

Player Color Coding 

A trick I use to organize my characters is to associate characters with fictional "players". These players don't really exist, but are an organizational scheme. I do not give them names, instead I group them by color, with some associated tendencies that turn into character motivations, like so-

 

Red- Characters tend to be direct, likes playing Fighters and similar. Likes combat. 

Blue- Characters tend to be team focused and lean towards lawful and/or good.  Plays anything but prefers clerics. 

Green- Characters can be anything as long as they're special, particularly fond of elves but also any shiny unique classes in play.

Orange- The Chaotic Player, leans towards schemes and sometimes wicked behavior. Enjoys playing Magic Users and Thieves but can make a mess out of any class. 

Purple- Is just here to play the damn game, they've got no particular tendencies besides an interest in tabletop gaming and a love of gold. Will play anything and everything, the average player to support the other's schemes. 

 

Other color combinations may work, these are ones that have withstood the test of time for me.   It's just a little prompt to help resolve character creation (which statblocks go with which classes) and give characters some starting motivation, as well as to track which characters are replaced by who as characters die... and they will...

 

Rules to Live By- How to Resolve What The Players Know

The number 1 tension in playing through a module solo style is that you need to read the room key to play the room, and this will naturally give away most surprises, if only for a moment before they hit the player characters. This can't be fixed, but I have developed some standard rules and assumptions to resolve What The Players Do even when I have read the room key. 

 

• The Players are Experienced, about as experienced as I am, at least. Assuming some basic competency is essential in OSR games as otherwise it will turn into a bloodbath. Pathfinder can get away with players walking into every trap, OSR games cannot. Players are assumed to be cautious and poke things before committing. Players are assumed to have brought rope, iron spikes, etc- not an excess of such things, but enough to function. 
• There are Standard Procedures, ideally written down. Use a 10 foot pole to check for pit traps in hallways, check the door with your thief before opening it, assume all treasure chests are trapped, check ceilings at regular intervals, etc.  If your standard procedure would find a trap or avoid a trick, you avoid it! 
• Go with the Gut Reaction- all that said, when reading a room key if your heart leaps when you see the hoard of treasure and your immediate instinct is to start shoveling it into a bag, that's what happens, even if as you continue reading and it turns out those coins are a swarm of poisonous bugs imitating gold coins. This is the #1 rule. If your first reaction on seeing a lever is to pull the lever, that's what happens, unless there's something really fucking obvious, like a dead corpse in front of it (Assume Competence).  This gets easier the more you play and the more you GM, solo or otherwise, as you become more in tune with your habits. 
• Assume the "players" are asking questions, and as a GM you should be doing your best to give your players information. This ties back to assume competency, on both ends to the Player/GM table. A healthy back and forth is vital to running a regular game of D&D. This doesn't mean the "players" get all the information about a room, you probably know what type of questions you're likely to ask (Go with the gut reaction, when in doubt), but it's good practice to err on the side of assuming players have enough information to make decisions. 
• Compile a list of Solved Problems. This is very similar to standard procedures, and can probably be the same list, but the emphasis is a little different. I check under every bed I see, so secret stuff hidden underneath a bed is a Solved Problem, therefore my players will automatically find it. I tap every treasure chest looking for secret compartments, most desks, most coffins. Secret Compartments are a Solved Problem, so I assume the party find them unless there's a further complication. Secret doors that break symmetry on the map, I assume the party is mapping properly (Assume Competence) and so if there's one door breaking the symmetry of the room they'll probably find those. A side effect of compiling such a list is that you get to wow everyone at your incredible player skill when you apply such techniques to real games. 
• Look for Interesting Play- Just like running a game with a group, when you're stuck err towards the decisions that make life more interesting for the hypothetical players. If there's ambiguity in the module, err on what makes for interesting and difficult decisions. Eventually you'll get to the point where you are no longer dealing with questions of "what the players know" and "what would they do", and instead, as a player, are trying to figure out the solution to open ended problems, and resolving the consequences naturally, as you go. This is the ideal Solo Play experience.

You can see how these kind of build on each other to create a bit of a consistent procedure for resolving situations in solo play. What would an experienced player do? What would I do? What is my immediate reaction upon getting information? What do I just automatically solve?

I can see an objection to assuming basic competency being that players can and will make stupid mistakes. I've done it, you've done it, it will happen time and time again. Aren't I giving the party a little bit much credit? That may be true, but another thing the "players" don't have is four or more brains working on a situation, nor do they have the eureka moment when a player performs the exact perfect action for a situation by sheer coincidence. So the fictional party playing through a solo game can have a bit of grace, and it can be assumed they are good enough at the game to not fuck up the basics. 

 

Inventory Management, or lack thereof

It pains me, but one thing I do not really do is hardcore adventurer's supply tracking. It's not particularly interesting. Nor do I use slot based encumbrance- for a single person managing 10+ character's inventories, it's simply not practical. So B/X's basic encumbrance is perfect. All I need to know is if someone is wearing armor and what kind, and if they are carrying treasure. 

 

I do track treasure in great detail- who is carrying what and how. That stuff is FUN. How is the party going to get the cool shit out of the dungeon? That's what I'm interested in. This is one of the great joys of solo play, actually- with one person tracking loot you can do advanced things like hiding loot in secret locations in the dungeon without worrying loot will get lost in the cracks.

 

I also keep track of magic items, who gets what. That makes sense, that's essential to the strength of individual characters. A virtual character sheet where you can move items around by point and clicking helps here.  

 

As far as adventurer gear goes, the party is assumed to have a couple of people with ropes, at least 100ft, maybe more if there's more than 10 characters present. The party has a set of iron spikes. Almost everyone has torches, someone has a lantern- I do like to actually track oil since that can be used as a weapon. Someone is carrying a crowbar, because why not. I generally cannot give a fuck about rations- maybe that will change with this game, since it's a hexcrawl, hopefully.  

 

You'll have to find your own comfort zones as far as what to track and what to abstract goes. Just, make life easier on yourself and don't use slot based encumbrance. Please.

 

The Adventurers Assemble...

On a island in the Islands of the Dawn, tucked in an obscure corner of the Wilderlands, the town of Bondport, ruled by Larga the Wise, a Lawful Good Fighter, has been attacked by monsters, with villagers abducted in the night. So a small group of 14 would be heroes set out to the nearby ruins to try and save their fellows, and stop the evil that has been attacking them...

 

A nice little island, a bit unconventional- I just didn't feel like starting near the City State of the Invincible Overlord.  I'm going to play a sailing game. But for now, there's plenty of interest on this island for low level characters, and the Starless Sea awaits...

Hireling Complications

 In OSE, which is the system I return to again and again, the hireling process is pretty solid, but there is one bit I hate. When rolling to confirm whether a character can hire a recruit or not, there is a mostly useful table, if it wasn't for one glaring problem:

 

 Do you see the problem? 6-8 would be pretty significant even if there wasn't a dice curve, but with the curve it's dramatically more likely that when hiring a hireling you will be tossing dice over and over, for no reason- except maybe to increase the drama. That works once, I think, but quickly becomes farce. 

 This table is modified by charisma, so that helps things, but unless you have a huge charisma modifier there's still a large likelihood of that pointless reroll.

Rather than redo the table, or change my procedures, I had a brief moment of epiphany and realized I could pull on some of that Powered by the Apocalypse energy, bring in those Success At A Cost ideas. So I replaced "Roll Again" with "Complication". Hirelings will join you, but there's a twist, something the players need to take into account, that will hopefully give the hireling some flavor right from the start.

 This has been playtested a couple of times and it was a huge success. Now, instead of pointless rerolling, the most common result gives hirelings flavor and identity, and is a lot of fun to riff on as a gm. I'm not sure it's as well appreciated by my players, but it does mean that unless a negative charisma is in play, success is very likely. So it's not an entirely bad deal for them either. 

 The following list is optional, if a complication presents itself through context go for it. This also does not mean that a hireling hired with a 9+ has to be simple- they can still have faction ties, history with other NPCs, goals, etc. It just means they're not making it the players problem (yet).  

 LIST OF HIRELING COMPLICATIONS (1d10) 

 1. Indecisive- The Hireling isn't sure. Come back tomorrow, and I'll think about it. Treat "Complication" as "Roll Again" and every time you get the result add another day to their hemming and hawing. This is the worst, but eating up some in game time waiting for a hireling to make up their mind isn't the end of the world, comparatively.

 2. Disloyal- They'll join you, but you're not clicking for some reason. The hireling has -1 loyalty compared to what they should.  This is probably something that can be fixed, with time and effort, but for the time being they're more likely to leave after an expedition. 

 3. Expensive- The hireling won't join unless you sweeten the deal. Increase their rate of pay, give them a nice shiny gift, or maybe just build a sweet high class stronghold- the hireling values the fine things in life and will join purely off of that.  On the plus side, this means they're highly receptive to bribery should they ever fail a loyalty check.

4.  Quest- The hireling has something they need to do, or want done. They need to find x item, go to y location, meet with z person. They don't need to do it now, but waiting too long to help them with their quest will reduce loyalty after a couple expeditions. Needless to say, these sort of quests shouldn't be a complete tangent, they should still be in the game's area of interest, but should be just a tad inconvenient- otherwise the hireling would just do it themselves!

5. Faction Ties- The hireling is up front about it- they've got divided loyalties. This may mean they intend to report everything that happens to their faction, or they just will likely defer to members of the faction they meet in the adventure. This isn't necessarily malicious, but it can definitely be a dealbreaker, especially to groups that prize secrecy.  

6. Two in One Deal- The hireling has a friend (or perhaps they just want to keep an eye on someone that owes them money), and won't adventure unless you take another hireling along. On the plus side, you needn't roll to recruit the second hireling, they join automatically- on the other hand it's now double jeopardy with regard to loyalty rolls- if one leaves,  the other follows.

7. Dangerous Enemies- The hireling has pissed someone off- someone important in town, a rival adventuring party, or even a dungeon faction. They're a liability when dealing with that faction, -1 to reaction rolls while they're present at the very least.Or maybe they pissed off the mob and you get to look forward to assassins? I'm sure it'll be fine. 

8. Local- The hireling isn't just passing through, they've got some strong connections to the place they were hired. On the plus side, this means they definitely know people. But it also means they won't be interested in traveling the world, only adventuring in the local area. For many campaigns this isn't even an issue, but there's always that moment when the sphere of play widens... Also means there will be loyalty checks for things like "going deep into the underdark" or "traveling to another plane", if there weren't already. 

9. Cowardly- Or one might say, "actually values their life". They will not be the one to step into a room to test for traps first, they would rather not be in the front line unless the front line is 3 people at least, and if a session goes poorly they're going to be itching for the loyalty checks. Don't be too negative towards them, this probably means they have a strong reason to live.  

10. Ill Intent- Like Quest, but bad. Your hireling is very clearly plotting a murder, a heist, pissing off a dungeon faction, or something of that nature that will cause a lot of trouble. It might be a lot of fun, though. This is the hireling that ropes the party into doing something really stupid. More so than any other, this hireling needs to be watched.