Game Review: Entity

Author: Peter Scholtz
Publisher: Candlenaut
System: Ironsworn-based d10 System
Marketplace: DriveThruRPG 

Entity caught my attention when it appeared in my recommendations on DTRPG. I looked at it, and wrote it down as a possibility for a future review. Then it started to haunt me: I heard it mentioned again and again in discussions with solo gamers, on TTRPG podcasts I follow, and even unexpectedly in ChatGPT windows. The other night, I was surfing DTRPG and found it front and centre on my recommendations once again and on sale, and decided to heed the gods.

I'm glad I gave it a try! My playtest was a little slow to start, but once I got into the rhythm of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey across the bizarre, desolate and dangerous world of the game. It played fast, put interesting challenges in front of me, and things often came together with compelling serendipity. 

In Entity,  you play an IAP, an android built for deep space exploration by NASA in the late 21st century,  and that has served human expansion for 10,000 years. After a Rogue primordial black hole destroyed the Solar System,  IAP crews became the scouts who serve the dispossessed remnant of humanity by seeking out new places to settle and resources to help them survive. The campaign begins when a  mysterious alien pyramid capable of bending gravity destroys your vessel, and brings your escape pod down on an alien world full of strange vistas, unexpected perils, and ancient ruins.

You conduct missions to gather resources and perform research that will allow you to construct a colony that might make the world survivable for you and potentially safe for human habitation.  As you progress in building your colony, you also begin to discover secrets about the purpose of the alien ruins, the pyramid, and the planet itself.

Entity is built entirely as a solo game, and intended to run through 10 procedurally generated missions of varying complexity. Individual IAPs can be destroyed, but the campaign can continue with the same facilities and discoveries carried over between PCs.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt. 3)

 There wasn't time to guess at how stupid the move was; there was just time to move. Lise disengaged her boots and hammered on the controls in her hand, twisting and turning the cargo pod, building up as much momentum as the tons of medicine could manage with nothing but cheap gas jets, as she rode it out between the closing shutters, sighing with relief when the edge of the pallet caused a mighty squawk as the safety system froze the shutters.

She rode the pallet of medicine out into open space, her heart was pounding; oxygen consumption rate alarms blaring over her helmet comm.  She twisted the pallet and let it drift slowly towards the hull of the station parallel to the plating. Keying the pallet to follow her, she began the task of trudging across the hull between her rings of detection. Everything in her screamed to hurry, but in space, as they used to say in the 'Corps, rushing will get you killed.

 "Holden, are you reading?"

"I'm here."

"I just barely got out of the OT. The Bandits were early. I've got the payload. Monitor comms for me, would you?"

"You're cute when you talk like a soldier."

"Scan now; flirt later." 

"Yes Ma'am!"

Lise smiled in spite of herself. She'd needed that. There was nothing to do now but keep walking her strange, drunken route along the Space Station's hull.

"...Okay, there's nothing about the uh... OT.. in the Station Sec' channels, but we did just get an unauthorized work pod launch, and somebody's running interference to keep it from getting intercepted."

"Shit. I want you to start venting the Arrow's cargo bay now, and start warming up the M-Drive. Keep on sensors. Low energy sweeps. Let me know when the pod is coming."

Holden paused she could hear him interacting with her bridge computer.

"Look, Lise, scanners I can do, but I'm not a pilot."

"Take your time, even double-timing it I'm probably 17 minutes out. Remind me to invest in a thruster pack when I get paid."

Breathe easy. Breathe slow. You're in more danger from tearing your suit than anything else. Lise focused on taking slow steps and steering the pallet. She carefully registered a flight plan for the 'Arrow as soon as she was on board. But some part of her wanted to claw out of her skin.

Pain lanced through her ribs, as she took a particularly narrow turn and for a moment she was on one knee crying and cursing softly. 

"What's wrong?!"

 "Another Spasm", Lise said as she knelt on the plating for a moment. Tears floated free, starting to form a shell of liquid on the inside of the helmet. "I just need to breathe and keep my head in the game. I'll be there in 7."

"Is there a reason why you are still wobbling around the ship like a drunken Bwap on Holiday? They already know you're out there."

"The Bandits know I'm out here, but they are avoiding official channels. If I don't trigger any alarms it stays that way. They have no legal right to stop my departure or search the ship."

Come on!

She forced herself back to her feet and started making longer, faster strides. There was no time for pain.

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.2)

This is part 2 of a fictionalized version of my solo game of Mongoose Traveller (2022), which I wanted to share with you all.  

Solo Gaming Fiction: Bad Medicine (pt.1)

One of the things I make a point of doing any time I am reviewing a TTRPG is to play a couple of sessions of it in solo mode so that I can get a feel for how it plays at the table. If I am going to share a game with you, I want to make sure I am doing my best to have good information. It is not enough to describe the mechanics of a game; I want to have a sense of game play.

This unfortunately slows down my reviewing process - a lot.  Recently, one of my kids has developed some pretty extreme issues related to the way his autism expresses itself. I have had to drop everything - including work - to take care of the little guy. Finding the time to sit down and take a trip into a dungeon or into outer space has been hard as of late. And when I do, it has been more for the joy of playing than for the purposes of the blog.

 But I wanted to relate a cool story from a recent solo game. I decided to sit down and play a round of the 2022 Mongoose edition of Traveller so I could have a better basis of comparison to Cepheus Deluxe and Stars Without Number, which I want to finally review properly in the near future.

This is the first adventure of my home Traveller campaign; and I will present it in four parts to make it more digestible than last year's Death in Space story. 

The Journal of Agatha Fizzyflask -- My Cozy Campaign Experiment (pt.1)

Stardew Valley is © Concerned Ape Games

My wife has been playing Stardew Valley a lot this summer; a game where you play a young person who has just inherited a farm in a fantastical world that sits at something like 1980s technology. It's what the video game industry, and more recently the TTRPG industry refer to as a "Cozy Game." Meaning it is focused on a small area, the stakes for success are failure are small: you might save a community, but the world is in no danger, and the relationships you build with the characters in the community is very much the focus.

Cozy games are not my cup of tea at all, but the game has sort of cast a spell over the rest of my family. My boys are excited to hear what has gone on in the farm and see the strange new fantasy farm animals and the useful item that my wife's avatar brings up from the dungeon. 

Well, if you want to run a good scenario the key is to figure out what your audience likes, and I got the feeling that something like Stardew Valley might make an appealing draw for a few weeks as we ease back into the school year.

So I sat down and asked myself "How can I make this interesting for me, so that I can get myself into the game enough to make it interesting to them?" 

 As I sat and pondered, my mind drifted to a concept that I have been spending a lot of time considering lately: the idea of prep as play.

Help Me Buck the AI Monkey

 

When I created Swords Against Madness, I wasn't expecting a big hit. I figured that my own LSD-soaked imitation on Tale of the Manticore with immortal space barbarians and killer robots might garner an audience of 20... including my friends and family.

I sure as hell didn't expect it to have over 500 regular listeners and thousands of downloads. I am astounded, amazed, blessed, and humbled by the response  to my show.

Now I want to make it into an eve higher-quality, weirder, wilder, trippier project than before.And the first step to that is to ditch one of its weakest points: the AI-generated music.

The Solo Roleplayer's Network

 I wanted to draw you attention to another project I have been involved in!

A while back I started talking about my great enjoyment of solo rpg podcasts, such as Tale of the Manticore, Legend of the Bones, and Stories from the First Watch.

Then I started my own: Swords Against Madness.

Since then I have joined a community of creators of these amazing solo-game inspired pods (as well as comics) and really found my tribe. 

Recently, with PJ Sack of A Wasteland Story as the idea man, and Jon from Tale of the Manticore as the voice of wisdom, and me as the tech monkey, over a dozen solo roleplaying podcasters set up a The Solo Roleplayers Network with a website where you can check out a wide variety of podcasts inspired by solo TTRPGs.

 There are so many amazing games being shared here (and I listen to all of them!)

• My own Swords Against Madness: psychedelic sword & planet played with Swords & Wizardry.

• Tale of the Manticore: a rich novel-like dark fantasy played with B/X D&D; TotM is the template on which most of the other podcasts are built for good reason.

• Legend of the Bones: a well-told dak fantasy heavily influenced by medieval Norse, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon history using B/X D&D.

• A Wasteland Story: a gritty, hard-hitting solo role-playing story set in the Fallout universe (matching tone with the original Interplay games) using the Fallout 2d20 role-playing game. 

• A Game of One's Own: featuring a range of indie TTRPG games played solo and turned into audio dramas to showcase them, including Mountaintop Isolation, Dragon Dowser, To the Bitter End, Pitcrawler, Death of the Author, Hedge Witch, Universe at Your Door, Forgery, Why We Fight, and Knockoff

• Errant Adventures: a series of solo games played in Ironsworn, Starforged, and Traveller, often intrigue-heavy science fiction adventures. 

• Stories from the First Watch: a grimdark fantasy with a rich story played in B/X D&D.

• Legends from the Fireside: an extremely old-school D&D adventure that really captures the 80s gaming vibe played with Old School Essentials. 

• Soul Operator: a surreal survival horror story focused on human relationships in the face of Lovecraftian horror played with Welcome to the Habitrails.

• Reflections in the Darksome Mirror: a tense and dark fantasy survival story played using the Darksome Mirror TTRPG. 

• Echoes of Eshaton: a post-apocalyptic primal punk scifi game played as short mini-series and snapshots that build on each other to paint a picture of a world rising from the ashes with Degenesis.

• The Lone Adventurer: a high-octane manapunk spy and crime thriller using D&D5e, Blades in the Dark, Chasing Adventure, and Warbirds - changing system to suit the needs of the narrative.

• Roll by Myself: a long-form game that alternates between actual play and audio drama based on it featuring two-session plays of solo journaling games such as Grandpa's Farm, Blood on My Name, and Deadline: A Clockwork Press. 

• The Chronicles of Nephes: an high-fantasy epic with intense storytelling played in  Nuovarden 

• The Solo Roleplayers Podcast: A podcast that is a mix of actual plays, interviews, and how-tos on playing solo TTRPGs. Includes playthroughs of Shadowdark, Forbidden Lands, Starforged, and Crown and Skull,among others.

And more being added all the time,

Product Review: One Shot in the Dark: Return to Duervar (& OSitD Expansion Module Maker Kit)

Author: Jon Cohen

Engine: One Shot in the Dark

Publisher: Tale of the Manticore

Marketplace: DrivethruRPG 

(Expansion Module Maker Kit DriveThruRPG)

I have recently had the privilege of being a playtester for Jon Cohen on One Shot in the Dark: Return to Duervar and I really had a blast doing it.

By way of full disclosure, Jon and I have been collaborating along with a few others to create a network for solo semi-actual-play podcasts, and he has been a voice actor on my podcast, so it is fair to say I consider him a friend and colleague. And I am a massive Tale of the Manticore fan. Portion your salt appropriately.

One Shot in the Dark is an ultra-light solo RPG scenario that allows you to have a pretty satisfying solo dungeon crawl in 15-50 minutes using a deck of cards and some D&D dice. You can read my review of One Shot in the Dark here. Suffice it to say that it is a great way to scratch the dungeon crawling itch, makes very few demands on your time, and costs as much as a large coffee. It is good fun, and I have played it a few times over the years.

An Atari-inspired Campaign for Traveller/ Cepheus Engine

I have been tinkering with a new campaign to play at home with friends and family inspired by my current binge of old Atari games and retro sci-fi. I wrote it specifically for Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition from Stellagama Publishing, but it should run with almost any form of Traveller with a few tweaks.

8 want something lighthearted that captures the kind of fantastical popcorn Space opera that you see in the premise of 80s SF movies like The Last Starfighter or in the manuals and comics that came with early console games.

The bad guys are vile, the good guys fly cool ships, and the stakes are very high. It is definitely not like the Third Imperium... although I decided to keep some of the best ideas of that setting.

Here's my pitch:

Cepheus: IRATA

A Solo Play Report: Death in Space, 51 Ehlee

So, last night I wanted to break in the Zoom H5 I got for an early Christmas present and have fun with a solo RPG at the same time. I'd played Death in Space a couple of times, but I hadn't really managed to try everything the game had to offer, so I decided it was high time to really give it the shakedown it deserved. And its dark, apocalyptic setting seemed the perfect cure for the Holiday blahs. I coupled it with Mythic Game Master Emulator 2e, and dove in.

I recorded my entire 1 hour and 37 minute session, with the idea that maybe I could turn it into bonus content for Swords Against Madness; I would record me figuring out the game Extemporanneously, and then redo it as a story and cut them together in the style of one of my favourite RPG podcasts: P.J. Sack's A Wasteland Story.

That is a podcast well worth your time if you like the older Black Isle / Van Buren Fallout setting, by the way.

As it was, Death in Space lived up to its name, and I didn't make it more than five encouters into the game before my PC died horribly. And you know what? It was incredible fun, but I just don't have enough for a good podcast episode, so Instead I decided I would write it up as a short story to share with you all.

The story includes a couple of horrible torturous deaths, exsanguination, piracy, and inappropriate treatment of a corpse... but I don't think I need to sell it too hard.

Welcome to the Deathtrap: Year 4 in Review

I have been writing Welcome to the Deathtrap for four years! I can hardly believe it has been so long!

In the last year I've put out a couple of light games, like Drakken and Dragonette, I've nearly completed my complete edition of Deathtrap Lite, and have a couple of other rules light games in the works in my spare time. I haven't spent nearly as much time as I would have liked on reviews. I have a backlog of books I've read, or have almost finished readings, but haven't had much of an opportunity to review.

The ebb and flow of the 'blog has definitely reflected the good and bad times in my life. In the past year and a bit, I have partially lost use of my hands, feet, and lips, and developed chronic fatigue due to a brain injury, I've been forced to move once, and nearly had to do so a second time. I've lost 28 lbs. I've tried to go back to work, and found myself too ill to do so effectively. I've learned a new skillset, and I'm starting a business.

My A.I. Gm Experience: "Day Tripper" pt.1

 It is no secret that I love playing around with machine-learning models to create images, songs, and the like. "Generative A.I." is entertaining, even if its products are usually dull and uninspired. And you can get some damned good results with ethically sourced tools.But the moment you try to create anything too complex with it you end up witnessing otherworldly horrors beyond human comprehension.

(Believe me, if my hand's weren't fucked up, I would be doing my own illustrating! It would be less traumatic.)

I seriously doubt that an A.I., especially one trained by a large corporation, could do a great job running a game. But could one carefully trained by an indie developer do a halfway decent job? Recently I tried out the Scifi LLM "A.I." role-playing experience "Day Tripper" by Tod Foley, designer of Core Micro and Uniquicity, (and generally fun interlocutor.)

I am still processing my experience with "Day Tripper" and I am going to present a transcript of my first adventure here. And then I will pick Tod's brain to clarify my thoughts, and share my analysis of the experience with you in my next post.

All Hail the Kingslayer!!

Let me play the proud father for a moment and tell you the tale of Nargle the Kingslayer!

My oldest son has earned a ban on all screens except to practice coding in Scratch this week, so to keep him entertained in the mornings before school I decided to run a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics for him every morning, powered by a mix of Donjon and the Mythic Game Master Emulator. I am playing three PCs and he opted for only one. We agreed once the campaign was rolling that we would switch from me doing all the interpretation and game planning to sharing it.

We rolled them up using the Tatterdemalion's Heroes method at 1st level, and he got a character with a pretty solid 15 in Intelligence and Stamina, and a whopping 18 in Luck, but a low Agility. While I encouraged him to consider a Dwarf or a Halfling, My son, however, has only one class he ever plays: Wizard. And so was born Nargle, the Neutral rope-maker-turned-Wizard. Of course, it helped that that insane Luck bonus got added to all spell damage rolls based on his character's lucky sign.

Nargle has become one of the most destructive, world-wrecking lunatics I have ever had the pleasure to GM.

Current Project

 When it comes to my hobbies I don't so much choose my project is they choose me. I come up with an idea and I chase it as far down the rabbit hole as I'm willing to go. Because of this, some projects get done very quickly, some get put on the back burner. I have several books I'm working on that I do in small doses because they are either such a huge project doing it all at once would be masochistic,, or because I don't feel any time crunch to do the . The ideas that capture my imagination usually get the Lion's share of my energy.

Over the Summer I spent a fair amount of time running a solo game. I used the Mythic GM Emulator, Alone Among the Stars, the Science Fiction Codex of Lists, and RPG Pundit Presents #100: Star Adventurer as the engine let me scratch my itch to explore space in a tiny spaceship with a small crew.

One of my goals was to discover a rich, and lore-filled campaign setting over time. I wanted the joy of discovery as a part of how I was playing. To that end, I use the 'Codex and some random online tables mixed with the Alone Among the Stars to create the worlds I would visit and the alien races I would encounter. Whenever I encountered an alien species or culture, I use the 'Codex to flesh it out until it at least felt like something you might read in a Star Wars is extended universe Wiki entry.

I even used AI to help me enhance the experience. And wrote computer software inspired by the random star system generation tools of Traveler, the Cepheus Engine, the random space jobs generator from Donjon, and the jobs and commodity generators from the 'Codex. Once I had a bare bones, I would let my imagination run wild for several hours to flash in more details until I had entire worlds and cultures built up for my characters to explore in.

It has been a really engaging experience that took up much of the copious free time I had while on vacation in July. Because I was using random alien species in a Sci-Fi setting rather than creatures with a folkloric basis like in Dungeons and Dragons, I was constantly surprised and rewarded by what I learned. And my notes can now comfortably fill a whole role-playing game or a TV series "setting bible."

I even taught myself to use some AI tools to help generate some of the content for myself.

As you can imagine, I have been dying to share more of it with you all. I have a blog of the individual adventures with some of the notes to cover my first five voyages in the setting before I lost my crew to a TPK.

But, as of late, much of my energy has been directed towards building a unique role-playing game that borrows elements from White Star, Star Adventurer, Cepheus Engine, the 'Codex, and far more.

As I've written in the past, one of the biggest obstacles to a good SF setting is its total lack of predefinition. Fantasy games have the benefit of several canons of folklore, pagan mythology, and established conventions to work on, science fiction does not. Science fiction has to put effort into building a world and informing the reader, the viewer, or the player about it well enough that they can immerse themselves in the setting. This is time consuming. The only shortcut that ttrpgs have to this is to build a game based on an existing franchise.

This is why, the majority of SF games are built on franchises such as The Expanse, Star Wars, and Star Trek. Generic science fiction role-playing games are not as common, nor are they usuallysuccessful. Where a science fiction game tries to build itself out of whole cloth, it generally has to do so by spending an immense amount of energy on lore. 

Some games have been quite successful at this. Traveler, Shadowrun, Rifts, Numenéra,, and the Strange have done a great job of building enough lore that players can dive in. In the case of Traveler, Rifts, and Shadowrun, they have done so through years of slowly building a sizable canonwith the help of fan engagement. In the case of Numenéra,, it has been done through very intelligent World design and conventions.

Some science fiction games suffer from over-development. For example, Shadowrun has so much lore now that a player who knows the ins and out of the setting has an even better advantage over a new player that it is even more important than mastery over the rules. The same is definitely true of Rifts. 

I find that sits in a sweet spot where there is enough to go on to run the game well, but it is flexible enough to allow you to put almost anything you want for your scenario in it. You can learn all you need to know by reading just the core book. That is the balance I strive for. Enough information on aliens, culture,and technology to let the players have a sense of what they might be able to accomplish, but, not so much that I am being prescriptive of how the game plays, or giving advantage to someone who memorizes the lore.

I also decided to build my game on PANZA, as the race / background / class  / subclass structure of PCs is actually pretty close to olde-school SF games like Traveler, and that 5e-style engine can actually a lot of fun for a grognard like me, if you throw out a few things. Personally,  I am making the following changes:

• Characters are reduced to 4 attributes instead of 6: Wisdom has become conceptually meaningless, and STR and CON should be interlinked.
• Pcs have randomized starting HP 
• Death saves are gone
• CHA serves as a measure of luck, as well as attractiveness and savoir-faire
• RP inspiration is optional
• B/X D&D morale & NPC reactions (modified slightly) are imported 
• Diplomacy is now a skill governing protocol,  trade, and information gathering, it cannot simply change NPC reactions.
• Doman level play is incorporated by adding rules for colonizing a Star System
• A slot-based encumbrance system is added as non-optional
• Sense Motive, Investigation, and Perception skills are removed; these can be handled by askimg questions from a high-info GM.
• Formalized random encounters are imported to feel more like AD&D's Structure
• Only a few character options grant psionics, rather than the widespreaf magic use of modern systems
• XP system is simplified, CR is discarded
• Monster stats are simplified
• My own eight classes will replace the fantasy-themed ones, each with 2-3 subclasses .

I am hoping this offering will offer a new, original Sci-Fi game experience.  I ha e also built in a way that my game Eternal Ocean can take place in the setting. 

Solo RPG Podcasts

 One of the things I have come to really enjoy in the last year are solo play podcasts and comics. I first stumbled across them when I was looking for an example of play of a couple of games, and was immediately hooked on them. 

In particular, there is a bevy of podcasts that play OSR games that I look forward to. i check spotify every morning to see what is updated, and then spend much of the morning in anticipation of when I can steal a few minutes to myself to just relax and let the story wash over me.

If you are interested in solo gaming, most of these podcasts go into great detail about what is going on "Behind the screen" in break segments. They discuss their toolkits, their oracles of choice, rules adjustments, etc. as they play.

My Solo Play Evolution

 I have done a lt of solo play in TTRPGs over the last three years. It honestly never occured to me to use my games for solo adventuring until I started writing this blog and needed a way to test the games that I was reviewing.

Delve 2e has built in solo gaming to introduce itself to the player, borrowing a note from the Mentzer Basic Dungeons & Dragons set that I though was a clever stroke. Some of my early reviews, like Tunnel Goons and Index Card RPG Core 2e were tested with my wife, but she doesn't have my head for rules and finds too many new games overwhelming. 

When Lucas Rolim sent me Pacts & Blades: Moorcockian Fantasy for review, she tapped out, and so I needed to figue out how to give it a really good shake. That's when I thought about by experience with Delve 2e, and decided to try playing it solo.

Random Dungeon Crawling

My first solo run involved logging into Donjon, and generating a random AD&D dungeon. I tend to stick to 

• Tiny size
• Medium Rooms
• Polymorphic Rooms
• Square Grid
• Errant Corridors
• No Stairs
• Peripheral Entrance
• Dungeon Level 1
• Crosshatch Map Style

This is especially handy when you are playing an OSR games, as the monsters will be immediately usable with the game you are playing.

Donjon includes a tool for star systems, outer space freight jobs, aliens, blade runner cases, and much more these days. You could probably run almost any game you are looking for with Donjon or a similar tool.

How this method works:

Game Review: Mythic Game Master Emulator

Author: Tana Pigeon
Publisher: World Mill Games
Marketplace: Amazon 
System: System Neutral 

Because I test every game I review for at least one adventure,  I have found myself playing solo TTRPGs a great deal. Before my review of Pacts & Blades, I'd never played solo in my life, and it has been a very strange journey,  finding what works. Running through a dungeon made in Donjon without reading it first is all good and fine, but you require more if you want a rich experience that really let's you kick a game's tires.

I started expanding my experience using Parts Per Million's Dungeon Crawl Solo. It's oracle system was handier than just grabbing a tarot deck or assigning a 2-in-6 chance to everything. Once I started using an oracle of some sort, I started having a much richer experience. Combined with a big hex-crawl setting like The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putresence or What Ho, Frog Demons! I could get a lot more spontaniety of play. Threads and plots emerged of their own accord once in awhile that kept play surprisingly fresh.

I have been searching for another toolset that does so with even more torque and less emphasis on dungeon crawling for awhile now. I picked up Tom Scutt's DM Yourself last Summer, and was quite disappointed in it. I have also been using the tools from the free version of  Scarlet Heroes on occasion, which I have enjoyed. I've not reviewed the free version as I have been meaning forever to pick up a full - preferably print version, and keep putting it off. Scarlet Hereos does a much better job of spontaneous emergent play, but it is very much focused on the lone hero, which isn't what I am looking for as a playtesting tool.

I've been hearing about Mythic GME for some time now. and I listen to a handful of solo RPG podcasts that use it to great effect. I decided that I would pick it up this month and give it a try. And I am very impressed.

Play Report: Arête

Medea

 I wanted to give an account of my solo experience with the adventure module Arete, which I reviewed in my previous article, to give you an idea of how this high-octane, high-powered first level adventure played out for me. 

Not having OSE on me, I grabbed Swords & Wizardry for most rules and my brand new AD&D Monster Manual for treasure types and In Lair rolls. I established that I would treat 0hp as unconscious and dying, and -3hp as dead, and otherwise keep to vanilla S&W, although I used the Monsters' saving throws published in the module.

I chose to run the game using a party made up of Hector, Bellerophon, Perseus, and Medea. 

On Deathtrap Dungeon, the Joy of Escape, and My GM Philosophy

Minimalist Cover Design for
Deathtrap Dungeon by
Guilherme Gontijo
(©2021 Guilherme Gontijo) 

I wanted to share a quick personal anecdote today. For no other reason then it's been on my mind. When I was 10, I fell between two boulders that I was climbing on and put my foot directly through the top of a wasp's nest. I was stung almost 40 times before I got my leg free. I spent part of that summer limping, because I had so many stings in the one leg that my muscle had seized up as a reaction to the venom. You can only be stung so many times by bees, wasps, or hornets before you become allergic to their venom.

I spent part of that same Summer with friends in the house in the Gaspereau Valley, my older friend Peter and I shared a passion for Dungeons & Dragons, but while I only owned the Basic Set, which is all I've been playing with for 5 years, Peter had the full set of AD&D1e manuals. He also had introduced me to fighting fantasy games, of which he had a lovely collection, including the entire sorcery set. I spent that summer enjoying the illustrations and ideas in Peter's huge collection of Fighting Fantasy game books. That is, whe  and I wasn't engaging him in lengthy battles of Games Workshop's Battle Masters game, or exploring some of Nova Scotia's parks.

During one of the expeditions we made to the sand dunes of Kejimkujik a bumblebee became very focused on Peter's leg while we were climbing a dune. It circled his leg over and over again and he was paralyzed out of fear that he would be stung.

Solo Play: What I have Learned

For the last few weeks, I have been playing a more in-depth solo game of BECMI Dungeons & Dragons using a DM simulation tool from Parts Per Milluon. To this point, I had used solo role playing entirely for play testing. For example, when I wanted to understand the mechanics ig Pacts & Blades: Moorcockian Fantasy, I ran a couple of dungeons out of Donjon in order to get a feel for it in play. I've done the same with Index Card RPG Core 2e, Overlight: A Roleplaying Game of Kaleidoscopic Journeys, and Tunnel Goons. 

Because it was so purpose driven, I missed a few things how about solo play that doing so for pleasure has taught me. Although, in retrospect, the way I reported my second and third play tests of Pacts & Blades should have told me how much I enjoy it and what I had to gain from it right away.

So here are a few observations for people who never tried it. Because it is very different from what you might expect.

I will start with the caveat that I went into play hoping to have something to share at the end of the day. I have been inspired by the Keep on the Borderlands comic, Roll to Save's Mörk Borg solo, and above all, the Tale of the Manticore podcast. All of which have created something truly enjoyable. Playing solely for yourself is a different experience as well.

Playing a Solo Game vs. Playing a Game Solo

First off, there's a big difference between playing a solo dungeon crawling game like One Shot in the Dark or Four Against Darkness, and playing a TTRPG made for a group of players using a solo dGMng tool.

Solo Dungeon crawlers are not built with a lot of depth in mind. They provide you with a challenge and a tactical puzzle or two, as you build up a map. You don't really get invested in the characters very much, and the experience is usually a simulation ofabout as vanilla a D&D game as you could ask for. That doesn't mean they're not satisfying: they are a great way to spend a quiet hour, and a great way to generate dungeon maps.

Other games designed for solo, Ike Alone Among the Stars, are purely journal exercises. Most of these provide no challenges and no puzzles, just a way to meditate while writing in a journal. Not my cup of tea, but I could see how some people would enjoy it. I'm not sure I would qualify it as a role-playing game by any stretch of the imagination.

Playing a traditional role-playing game, with all of its open systems and narrative requirements is a lot more challenging. And rewarding and very different ways.

I might put it as the difference between "Playing a Solo Game" and "Playing a Game, Solo."