Solo Gaming

[abhorsen950]

Hello everyone, I've got D&D 4e Starter set staring at me, crying out to be played and the new Red box might be on the way. With no players around me (don't panic ill be roping in my brother soon) I wanted a way to play solo. Now I was wondering what your ideas were to play D&D Solo.

My ideas so far for a simply dungeon crawl are:

• Roll a D6 for how many rooms this floor of the dungeon has
• Roll a D6 for each room as you enter it, to see what monsters are in the room.
• Say you get a 3, for how many monsters are in the room, roll a D6 3 times and have a list of monsters 1 - 6 And that is how you find out which monsters are in the room.
• Send you guy in on a hack and slash spree.

Obviously, these are just my silly ideas I've thought up, but it could work? I might change the D6 to a D10 for more variety in monsters. Would love to know what you guys think. Your input, or maybe you way of playing solo?

Cheers
Steve

 

[thejc]

This could be a problem since 4e builds up encounters a little differently. It is always difficult to solo game a dungeon you create because it is impossible to be objective. You know the door to this room is trapped.

Maybe you could run some pre-builty encounters or just take some a character and run them gladiator style. Just so that voice can be satiated.

 

[Canor Morum]

The Dungeon Masters Guide has a section on playing without a DM. Basically you use tables and roll dice like the examples you gave. You can also make encounter cards and shuffle them into a deck.

 

[Canor Morum]

It is always difficult to solo game a dungeon you create because it is impossible to be objective. You know the door to this room is trapped.

There are mechanical ways to resolve this. If you created the dungeon on the fly using die rolls or some other random room/encounter generation method, you wouldn't know what was next.

See Castle Ravenloft.

 

[nedjer]

It's pretty easy to apply the system inside the Treasure RPG to help run solo play on most systems:

Decide which parts are going to be generated 'on the fly'. E.g. a pre-designed general layout of chambers can help keep the action going.

Drop in chamber features, random races and monsters, and treasure from tables or hastily made cards.

Give races and monsters a range of preferred actions, along the lines of:

1-2 open to discussion or off to get help
3-4 defensive or opportunist attacks
5-6 no holds barred

Then just switch to the stats block or the like for the named monster or race in the system of choice.

The play might then involve a known basic layout, rapidly dropping cards for chamber features and monsters onto the layout and turning then over to reveal encounters, a quick roll to see how the monster is likely to act or what the fountain, etc . . . you've revealed does.

This approach ain't going to match a GM by a long way, but it takes the constant stop and start of rollingout chambers and encounters as you go and lets you focus on the action against opponents which won't all act identically.

It's not difficult to translate this into 4e with the use of random encounter tables. Alternatively, you can take a Word copy of Treasure, keep the chapter with the design tables and edit them in Word or openOffice to get a custom set of feature, encounter and treasure tables. With the latetr you just switch into 4e mode when a monster is named. Don't have time to check exactly but there's a lot of groundwork done with some of the D6s tables which have options up to roll 7 or 8 D6 for an outcome.

HTH

 

[The Shaman]

You may be interested in the Mythic Game Master Emulator.

I'm using it as a tool for running my Flashing Blades game and I plan on running some solo Traveller with it in the not-too-distant future.

 

[Haltherrion]

That's a start. I'd suggest more detailed tables that allow for stairs and other stuff in the room, wandering and static monster tables, treasure tables. Certainly could be amusing for a while until you get your brother in there, especially if you are looking to master a new rule system.

 

[abhorsen950]

Thanks for your input guys, its been really helpful and I've taken it all into account. Ill most likely add your ideas in and keep building on the game etc.

 

[Carbon]

I, for one, am now a fan of the phrase "Send you guy in on a hack and slash spree."

 

[abhorsen950]

Ahahahahaha :')