Designing a Solo System
and the next Kickstarter campaign
I took a little break from the business updates to post my solo play report, but I’ve still been working away at a few different projects these past weeks. In this issue of Ink & Dice, I’ll talk about the designs behind my recent release, Captain & Crew (I love ampersands clearly), and progress on my other projects.
Inside
Foul
Captain & Crew
Designing a Solo System
May Production Update
Foul
On May 14, I’ll be launching my next Kickstarter campaign, this time for my MÖRK BORG funnel module, Foul. Inspired by classic funnel modules like Sailors on the Starless Sea, players begin with 3-4 characters each (4 if there are fewer than 4 players, 3 if there are 4 or more players). This mob of characters, residents of the neighborhood of Antare on the outskirts of Grift, descend into the sewers to stop the Lord Beneath that has been terrorizing their neighborhood. The story is meant as an adventure used to start a campaign or as a module for convention play.
Foul includes:
20-room, 2-section dungeon
new rules for creating “Level 0” characters for MÖRK BORG
a new condition, Fouled, with associated boons and curses for the players
a menagerie of factions and monsters for the players to meet
The zine will be a little different from books I’ve printed in the past. I’m going to have the interior pages digitally printed, as I have done before, but the cover is going to be risograph printed (black ink on green paper). The cover will be removable, and the player-facing maps will be printed on the inside so that they can be passed around at the table. I’m very excited to try out this printing process!
The Kickstarter campaign will fund the printing of the zine, especially the cover printing, which requires larger volumes than I usually print when I am producing something directly. If this all sounds interesting, give the Kickstarter page a follow, and check out the rest of the details when the campaign goes live next week:
Captain & Crew
My most recent release, Captain & Crew, is a set of solo procedures, rules, and generators to facilitate solo play of the TTRPG Pirate Borg. Everything you need to take to the high seas in a one-player game of the popular Borg hack.
The ruleset was written for the ongoing Cabin Fever game jam over on Itch.io. There are a few other entries already, and it sounds like there are plenty more coming, so if you need other content for your Pirate Borg game, be sure to check it out.
Designing a Solo System
Putting together Captain & Crew gave me plenty of time to read up on other TTRPG supplements designed to turn traditional, multi-player, GM-led games into solo games. Fortunately, a couple other designers had recently published posts on this very topic:
Alfred Valley with How I Write Solo Rules (Part 1 and Part 2)
Peter Eijk with Analyzing Solo Procedures (Part 1 and Part 2)
I also opened up a few well known supplements:
Lonesome Drifter (designed for another BORG game: Frontier Scum)
Solitary Defilement (the original MÖRK BORG solo rules)
Thousand Empty Light (which I’ve talked about here before)
Between the three supplements and the blog posts, I settled on a few necessary components for Captain & Crew.
A gameplay loop.
A system for resolving actions.
A system to answer questions, both concrete and abstract.
A way to spark an adventure.
1. The Gameplay Loop
While many veterans of solo TTRPGs will not need this, I felt like it was important to include so that anyone, regardless of experience level, could pick up this supplement and play a game of Pirate Borg. I boiled down the central actions of playing a TTRPG as well as I could.
The OAR system describes gameplay in almost every TTRPG, where the GM performs the Observe step, the players perform the Act step, and then, usually through a combination of the GM’s descriptions and the player’s rolling of dice, the Resolve step is performed.
When playing solo, the player must perform all of the steps, often with the assistance of the oracle (see point 3 below). The fact that the acronym has a nautical ring to it as well didn’t hurt either.
2. Resolving Actions
One component that I consider necessary in any TTRPG is a system for resolving actions. Whether it be jumping a chasm or lying to a king, a TTRPG needs to provide a way to decide if a risky action is successful, usually through rolling dice.
Pirate Borg already has a system for this, rolling a d20 + relevant attribute to meet or beat an assigned Difficulty Rating. There is a guide to setting the DR for an action in the rulebook, so that was covered. For the dice rolling, I used the system of strong and weak hits described in Lonesome Drifter, which was adapted from Ironsworn. This gives an opportunity for twists (Complications and Consequences) to arise, making your story more interesting.
One area that I decided to address more specifically was combat. When I am playing a solo TTRPG, I am usually less interested in the details of combat and more interested in the outcomes. To build this in to Captain & Crew, I added a formula to reduce most combats down to a single DR:
DR = 8 + (enemy HP) – (PC’s weapon’s maximum damage)
There are additional modifiers for a few other circumstances, but the general gist is that once you have a DR for a battle, you can roll your two checks to use your weapon and get a Strong Hit, Weak Hit, or Fail result…each of these then translates to the outcome of the battle.
3. Oracles
A solo TTRPG needs a system to answer questions, both concrete and abstract. In Captain & Crew this system is the Pirate’s Code oracle. It includes a simple yes/no table (with the usual ‘and…’ and ‘but…’ modifiers) for concrete questions and a larger spark table for abstract questions. This is very similar to what is found in Lonesome Drifter, with the sparks adapted to the theme (Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!).
4. Hoist the Colors
The last thing that a solo ruleset needs is an adventure. Now, this is not 100% REQUIRED, as you could use the above pieces to play through any adventure or module that you like. But I wanted this supplement to feel complete, and that meant adding adventure sparks.
For this, I used something that I have not done before: dice drop tables. Toss a set of gaming dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20) onto the 8x8 hex-grid map, and you’re off on an adventure. The d4 is your ship. The d6 is a ship adrift, moving randomly each day. The d8, d10, and d12 are islands of increasing size. And the d20 is where you get your mission. For an extra twist, add another d4 to get a ship that will pursue you throughout the adventure. The results of each of these dice when they are rolled onto the map gives you the details of what you will find at that location.
And there you have it! Grab Pirate Borg and Captain & Crew, and you’re off on a piratey adventure on the high seas of the Dark Caribbean.
May Production Update
As the Kickstarter for Foul approaches, I’ve updated the production schedule:
Godspark is DONE. Captain & Crew is DONE. Foul is about to kick off. Brine, a new module for The Lost Bay, is ready for illustration. Secret Project #1 is moving along as well.
Thank you
I’m still working on my WyrmHack play-through, and I’ve got a mind to put together a few more video how-tos for my games. Lots of things happening here, so stay tuned. Thanks for reading!
—MAH
The risograph cover/map idea sounds SO cool. I can’t wait to see what that looks like!