Alegis Downport

For my first review of 2025, I’m going to take a look at the latest edition of Zozer Games’s ‘Solo’ by Paul Elliott, for Mongoose Traveller. Paul very kindly forwarded me a copy to review and now I’m on holiday having sorted out some real life stuff (though things are still ongoing), it feels good to have the opportunity to write again. This review is an update to my original post back in 2017 where I reviewed the Cepheus Engine version, so there will be some re-use of text where the two books are the same or similar.

One of the ‘problems’ of the RPG gaming hobby is sometimes you simply don’t have any players to game with. This is especially true of old school gamers like me where real life, work, family make significant demands on our time and it can be difficult to set up a gaming session. For those in-between times where other players aren’t available, there is the solo gaming option. Different systems have provided solutions to this approach, Tunnels and Trolls is probably the most famous for its series of solo dungeons in the fantasy genre.

If your preference is to use the latest Mongoose Traveller RPG system, what are your options? There are some Traveller Solo adventures for Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition, but I can’t comment on these as I’ve never seen the book contents. However, if you want to try your hand at running your own solo games, Zozer Games Solo aims to provide a solution.

The book is split into five major sections;

How to Solo

Characters

Resolution

Building Plot

Write it Down

Campaigns (1-6)

Starships

Examples of Play

Random Tables

Blank Forms

The book is available from Drivethru RPG for $11.99, though at the time of writing it is available for a discounted price of $8.39. DTRPG provide the PDF version, whereas you can buy either a softback (approx $20.70 USD) or hardback (approx $31.78) copy of the book from lulu.com. This edition of Solo contains 178 pages. If you purchase a printed copy from Lulu and you send your receipt to Paul Elliott he will send you a free copy of the PDF which I think is a great offer.

How to Solo (Pages 8 to 13)

First of all Solo looks into the problems around solo gaming. In my experience, these can be summarised into four problems;

1. Trying to cover every single potential situation that could occur.
2. Trying to ‘randomise’ situations.
3. Attempting to make the situation ‘flow’ in a story-telling manner, so that it simply doesn’t feel like a series of dice rolls.
4. Not falling into the temptation of dismissing an unfavourable dice roll result and rolling again until you get the result you want, simply because its easier to deal with, or advantageous.

Solo addresses this by getting you to ‘take a step back’ and not necessarily worrying about having to try and cover every single potential solution, or to try and roll for it. Instead, it wants you to think about the storytelling side of the situation and the flow of the adventure. This takes some preparation and a bit of getting used to, but the ultimate aim is to try and create more memorable adventures; its more satisfying to recall that you managed to fool the broker into accepting those dodgy credits and escape the cantina rather than thinking ‘My Bribery-1 skill helped me get an 8 and then roll a 10 to escape the cantina’.

The Building Plot section covers this through the following headings; Random Encounters, Storylines, Character Creations and Spotlights. The latter heading describes where a couple of your group’s characters may not be getting any ‘screen time’ say, during a routine job. By randomly rolling a couple of words, it can reveal what they are thinking or may be intending and hence inspire ideas for the storyline.

Characters (Pages 14 to 19)

One of the most enjoyable aspects of gaming is to create characters and their background. Because Traveller / 2D6 SFRPG adventures tend to be more ‘group’ orientated (ie. you need many characters) Solo suggests that you roll up a number of characters with which to play. As there are a number of things that can happen especially if you are commanding a starship for example, you stand more chance of advancing through a situation if you have many characters ‘at your disposal’. However, rather than simply rolling up a series of character stats, Solo encourages you to think of the relationships between your group and introduce how they react to each other.

Paul has redeveloped the character generation section by combining a number of elements from the previous edition of the book and expanded it. It encompasses any relevant system-specific changes where Solo recommends it, to help you play the game in ‘solo mode’ such as removing the Connections Rule or skills such as ‘Homeworld Skills’ have been changed to reflect the Mongoose Traveller chargen process.

This is followed by looking at a description of Characteristics, Skills, Mustering Out and a Life Events table. This D66 table helps to build on the Mishap or Event table and describes some sort of unresolved aspect of the characters background. There is an odd typo in the PDF copy I reviewed, where the last three Life Events seem to be missing (64 to 66) compared to the Cepheus Engine edition; however I’m sure this will be corrected in a future update. *Update 31st July 2025 – this has not been corrected and an ipdated version is now available to download**

Resolution (Pages 20 to 29)

Page 20 starts with methods how to resolve random events and encounters. ‘Interpreting Success and Failure’ provides a table to help you decide on how much of a success or failure your roll results in. For example +6 or higher is an amazing success and could transform the whole plot. But a -6 effect is quite bad and there is some sort of additional disadvantage.

It can be tempting to resolve complicated tasks involving multiple characters going through each action in turn. ‘Scene Resolution’ takes a different approach asking you to think of what the group’s plan is and what they are trying to aim for? Think about how dangerous it is; is it a reasonably safe situation, or one where there is a distinct likelihood of injury or death? This is broken down with a couple of tables helping you to ‘Resolve a Scene’ and the ‘Consequences’. Alternatively you can take the ‘Yes / No’ approach (yes / no / and / but) or you can ‘Ask the D6’ where a die roll against the Person / Situation table can provide a catch-all if you’re not sure how to resolve a scene. Still stuck? Why not ‘Just Decide’? Don’t forget, the game is meant to be a narrative rather than a record of dice rolls. Rounding off the section pages 28 and 29 contain a couple of D66 Inspiration Tables with a series of useful headings. Its a neat system; you have to be honest with yourself and to a certain degree be disciplined in keeping to the roll result. However, because Solo encourages you to ‘storyline’ your adventure, this gives you the scope to elaborate and expand on the situation, which leads into developing the adventure further.

Building Plot (Pages 30 to 42)

Storylines are the heart of any adventure, but you need some tools with which to set up the initial details. It can be very difficult to think of everything from scratch, without some sort inspiration or structure and frankly off-putting. Solo gives you advice how to best create a storyline, without getting too hung up on the details.

The section titled ‘Random Encounters’ encourages you to use the tables in the Traveller rulebook, but with a more thoughtful approach. The author suggests not using the encounter simply as an event to get through, but as an idea or plot generator. What effect does the encounter have on the game? Try to link the encounter to into the game in some way rather than something that simply needs to be bypassed.

The next section looks at Non-Player Characters and the relationships and interactions they can have, within the game. There is a really nice table in D66 format which lists some of the potential relationships that the party have had with each other, here are some examples:- ‘Bickers’, ‘Competitive Rival’, ‘Knows a Dark Secret’ and ‘Divorced Over Differences’. This all helps to build backgrounds for the party (and makes for some interesting ongoing situations onboard a starship!) Solo has some tools (such as the ‘Reaction Table’) with which to make best use of these relationships and other tools to add contacts, enemies and other NPCs.

Not every encounter needs to link to some sort of action; leaving an event ‘hanging’ can help to lead to unresolved situations that can set up a story later or in another game.

Write it Down (Pages 43 to 45)

Writing it all down is a very effective technique which you are encouraged to do, there is nothing worse than trying to remember everything you’ve done / want to do and end up forgetting it. Using a diary is actively encouraged in Solo; keeping a written record is a much better way than trying to keep it all in your head. There a few suggested headings to help keep a record, such as ‘Allies and Enemies’ or ‘Storylines’.

Campaigns (Pages 46 to 126)

The original Cepheus Engine version of Solo contained four types of campaign, which were ‘Travellers’, ‘Star Traders’, ‘Naval Officers’ and the most extensive, ‘Survey Scouts’. These have been carried over to the current edition, with the addition of two more; Salvagers and Mercenaries.

The first campaign (‘Travellers’ – 4 pages in length) is broken down into a useful checklist followed by a series of events tables (Starting Situations, Missions and Speculation without a Starship) with examples such as situations to immediately throw the players into, onboard passenger ship events, ship malfunctions and world encounters. These will help to give your party a leg up in starting an adventure.

The next campaign format some people may recognise; the ‘Star Traders’ (7 pages long) section is based on an older Zozer Games title of the same name, which was published for the Mongoose Traveller first edition rules. I picked up the original Star Traders book some time ago so I was able to compare like for like. From what I can make out, this has been updated for the Mongoose Traveller rules set, reformatted and text updated to fit in with the rest of the Solo book. You start with the checklist with some tables to work through, which is structured to help make the aspect of trading a straightforward process. The Star Traders book was the inspiration for Solo as many of the techniques and solutions presented in the new book were incorporated from the original.

The third section ‘Survey Scouts’ (19 pages long) is the most comprehensive because it is potentially the most wide-ranging in scope. The section starts with giving you a structure with which to select your crew and a ship. The next few steps describe how to conduct a survey of a system. You then move onto how to actually survey a system and how star systems are constructed, namely the different types of planets and how they are made up. There is quite a bit of information presented here with plenty of inspirational tables, so you could spend quite a bit of time building a system ready to explore. Next you have ‘Landing and Exploration’, where you are guided on how to get to the planet and some of the survey problems that you could encounter. You could use this section with the original Classic Traveller introductory adventure ‘The Imperial Fringe’ that was included with the Deluxe Traveller boxed set, to help provide a bit more structure in surveying the Spinward Marches subsector.

The fourth section ‘Naval Officers’ (12 pages) describes the Interstellar Navy and Star Patrol. This could be a very useful section for developing traits whilst creating characters and adding colour to events. It follows the same structure with a checklist for how a Naval patrol would operate and some of the types of encounter you could come across. In addition, you’re provided with the types of crew that make up a Naval patrol and who to focus on ie. keep it simple and to your key characters, everyone else are played as NPCs. The character generation process is tweaked slightly to help you generate a character that fits the job required and not to wory about the full chargen process. The ‘Resolving Problems’ section helps you to work through some of the rolls made on the above tables and give you some pointers how to make use of them from the perspective of a Naval Officer.

The fifth campaign type ‘Salvagers’ (14 pages) is new addition to this edition of Solo and looks at those crew who want to try and get a big payout by recovering derelict spacecraft or rescue stranded low berth passengers. Or, you could be a prospector looking for valuable minerals in an asteroid belt. You’re given some pointers how to setup your crew (use the Scavenger Assignment from the Drifter career in the Traveller rulebook) and some suggestions for what type of ship would be suitable for this jack-of-all-trades role. How to conduct salvage and asteroid prospecting is covered in a couple of pages each, followed by a system to generate randomised interiors on spacecraft or space stations. This is a particularly useful system so that you don’t get bogged down by trying to find suitable deck plans to fit the situation. You could however, utilise the Starship Geomorphs book to help you make a space station or facility more ‘substantial’, especially if it turns out you may re-use the location in the future.

The final campaign setting is ‘Mercenaries’ which involves the player creating and running a small independent military force. The checklist provides for either one-off missions or the more involved battlezone mission. Mercenary units managed by the player are best kept to a maximum of 3-4 ‘core’ characters and have a second NPC team who are managed with a single dice roll for task resolution. This cuts down on the amount of operational management and paperwork you will have to do. You’re also made to think about the equipment your Mercenary unit will have to carry. This is no place for Snub Pistols and SMG’s, you’ll need some sort of rifle such as an Advanced Combat Rifle or Gauss Rifle.

You’ve given plenty of scope and inspiration for the types of mission you’ll end up with, but with some complications (you weren’t expecting things to go smoothly, were you?) An additional page describes a simplified way to resolve a firefight, hence its useful to have that second NPC team for a bit of cannon fodder…!

Starships (Pages 127 to 136)

Rather than using the normal starship combat rules, the author has presented a Fast-Play Space Combat procedure to help speed such encounters along. This is followed by six sample spacecraft stat summaries ranging from Scouts, Traders and Escorts. Three of these have associated Ship Books by Moon Toad Publishing, whereas the three that don’t have deck plans (which are based on the one common platform, the Zori) have a set provided on pages 135-136.

Examples of Play (Pages 137 to 150)

The original Cepheus Engine version of Solo included a large number of examples which were embedded into each section of the book. In this version, these have been moved to a separate part from page 137 onwards. To demonstrate what Paul is trying to put over, he’s provided lots of examples of how these processes work. This isn’t just a short paragraph or two, he takes each section and adds to it so as you work through the book, the whole process is demonstrated in great detail. The first example looks at the Scouts with a survey of a star system by four characters. The narrative demonstrates how the steps presented earlier in the book can be applied to make an adventure with a description and not just a record of dice rolls. The second example covers the Star Traders campaign and the third looks at the Mercenaries campaign.

Random Tables (Pages 151 to 168)

This section presents the Solo player with a huge resource with which to draw upon with a wide selection of tables to help you build your storyline. These range from for example NPC Reactions, World Encounters, Location Encounters, Ship Types and Reactions, Non-Passenger Ship Events, Ship Malfunctions, Patrons and their Missions.

Quick Reference Sheets (Pages 169 to 177)

The final part of the book includes some Quick Reference Sheets in landscape format for printing with key checklists, tables and record sheets.

Conclusion

Going back to my original set of problems when playing a solo game, do I think that the Solo book addresses these effectively? It’s a most definite ‘yes’. No book can even think it can cover every potential situation or variation by having large numbers of tables and charts; in doing so I think such a book would be so unwieldy and daunting to use that it would never be taken off the shelf. Solo addresses this by getting the player to think and use their imagination – it takes a bit of getting used to because there is an amount of preparation to do, but its certainly worth it. The book also offers enough structure and supporting tables to be a very useful reference tool not just for solo play, but also for group play with a referee. At the same time though it does present lots of tables later in the book, it doesn’t fall down the trap of trying to be too comprehensive which is what it is trying to avoid. I found the writing style engaging and well edited, any book that provides lots of examples is a plus for me as this always reduces the amount of time getting used to a new set of rules and reduces ambiguity in its interpretation. You get various examples ranging from multi-page narratives to short paragraphs, all of which are useful. Compared to the original Cepheus Engine edition, the book has lots of excellent monochrome and colour illustrations, the latter by the ubiquitous Ian Stead.

Overall, I feel Solo is an essential product not just for Mongoose Traveller but considering the new layout and additional content, with some minor adaptations you could easily use it for Cepheus Engine. This isn’t just for solo play as I believe there are many tips, tricks, guidance and tables which will prove very useful for solo players and referees alike. Therefore, I consider Solo as a highly recommended purchase! Finally, I would like to thank Paul Elliott for very kindly sending me a copy of the latest version of Solo to review.

I would also like to mention that there is also a version of Solo for the TAS Classic Traveller in LBB (Little Black Book) format which I’ll be reviewing in another blog post.