A solo procedure for playing VyrmHack
and Godspark is DONE! (mostly)
I’ve been hammering away at Godspark fulfillment these past couple of weeks, and we are almost finished! Despite that work, I managed to read VyrmHack by Feral Indie Studio, and oh boy does it spark some lovely ideas. Read on to see the solo procedure that I have put together to guide my play with this system.
Inside
The Lost Bay RPG on Kickstarter
VyrmHack
Godspark fulfillment update
April production update
The Lost Bay RPG on Kickstarter
The Lost Bay is live on Kickstarter. It funded in its first few hours, and it has been piling up stretch goals.
I have a particular interest in this game, as I have been writing modules for this system for the last few months. One of them (Diesel Service) even made it into the Community Edition tier of the Kickstarter rewards!
It’s been a blast working on these modern horror RPG modules, and I’ve got more on the way. The game includes robust solo procedures to support solo play, and there are multiple solo-first modules out there already (including Corpse Snatchers XMAS in the Community Edition and my pamphlet module Moe’s House of Meat)
Vyrmhack
One of the zines that I picked up at GameFaceCon was VyrmHack. With the work of wrapping up the Godspark campaign, I have not had the time to play any solo games, but I did take a few minutes to read through this zine. I hope to run a solo campaign in this system soon, and I’ll report back with how it goes!
From the Itch.io description of the game:
Vyrmhack is a small-scale wargame with role-playing elements. Players take on the role of a single or band of characters who explore, fight, and survive in a dark fantastical land. It is meant to be compatible with most old-school game modules and wargame-style senarios.
I love everything about this game, especially how it is billed as a tabletop wargame that happens to also be an RPG. You play this game when you want to fight monsters. The ruleset fits in a 20-page zine, and an entire page is dedicated to weapon modifiers and critical abilities, with roll tables to randomly generate new weapons. It also includes roll tables to randomly generate new monsters as well, which lays the groundwork for playing solo where you don’t need to specify what kind of monster you’ll run into next.
As far as solo play goes, there is no explicit procedure included with the base zine. However, when you add in the Scenarios and the Monster Intelligence flowsheet from the SRD (available on the itch page), you have all of the pieces you need to create a series of encounters between your character or war-band and increasingly difficult enemies. Add in your dark fantasy oracle of choice, and you have the makings of a nice solo campaign of journeying through this dying world and killing vyrmin in service to a wretched lord.
Here is my game plan for creating a solo campaign. I will be using the SRD, as it includes some additional tables that the base zine does not. I will also be using some of the oracle tables from Solitary Defilement, though I have half a mind to write some bespoke tables to better fit the vibes of VyrmHack.
The goal for the campaign: kill a Lord. Initially, I thought that I would play a campaign in which I served a Lord, but after seeing the Marked For Death scenario in the SRD, I knew that was my endgame.
Roll 1d6 on Settings table (page 39): Elder Ruins.
Story Structure: I created a list using the first seven Scenarios (p35-36 of the SRD) from the SRD, with 7+ being Marked for Death. As I explore the Elder Ruins, if I roll for a Scenario (on a different list of possible complications as I move through the ruins), I then roll 1d6 and add the number of Scenarios I have completed already to pick which Scenario I play. This is sort of a depth crawl, where I have to play at least one Scenario before I can find the Lord in Marked for Death (as I cannot roll a 7 to start), and the more Scenarios I play, the more likely I am to roll a total of 7 or more.
I will use the monster generation tables on page 26 and the Monster Intelligence procedure on page 29 to guide combat and keep the Scenarios fresh even if I roll the same one twice.
I’ll be back with play reports soon.
Godspark Fulfillment Update
We are at 95% fulfillment on the Godspark campaign rewards! I dropped off 240 packages at the post office yesterday. If you are expecting physical rewards from the campaign, check BackerKit for the tracking number for your package. If you don’t see a tracking number, make sure that you have completed your survey and that your shipping was charged successfully. There are still a few people with those steps incomplete.
April Production Update
With Godspark coming to a close, I’ve been looking at my upcoming production plans. Here’s my updated schedule:
Foul will be my next crowdfunding campaign, and I hope to have the Kickstarter landing page up by the end of the month. I’ve started to put together some of the framework for Brine, my next module for The Lost Bay, which will probably release directly to Itch.io.
Thank you!
I hope to have some more playable content for you all in upcoming editions of the newsletter, and stay tuned for my experience playing VyrmHack. Thanks for reading!
—MAH