Solo Dragon Warriors

This random encounter lacks balance

Currently I have time for one campaign. Prep time and play time enough for one session a week which is on a Sunday evening. As many of us would I would like to have more gaming time. My friend Alex is an advocate of playing solo RPG. I have been aware of this. For example The One Ring RPG has Strider Mode which is a supplement for you to play alone. 

Playing this way, as both player and GM, flies in the face of my preferred play style. I’m a traditional sort of gamer, I like the GM to provide the setting and the PCs to explore it. Having control of both sides of the equation is to have total authorial control of the game and we’re into the territory of the types of story games that are not to my taste. However I’m firmly of the opinion that unless you try something, your opinion on the matter is fairly inconsequential. For example when I was trying to get a game of BECMI D&D going at an RPG club in the city almost about ten years ago, I struggled for players. So instead I ended up joining a table playing FATE Accelerated every week for fourteen weeks. So I can unequivocally state: I despise FATE. 

So how does this solo thing work? I always want a Legend based game on the go. Dragon Warriors is in my blood after all. I mean for so many reasons, not just because it was my first RPG but the pull of nostalgia is strong. Also this is a setting that lives large in my brain, so imagining myself into it is less of a stretch than something more esoteric like Tékumel. 

In order to get started I took a lot of inspiration from Ironsworn, which is good and free; and conveniently also depicts a downbeat, pseudo Dark Age, low fantasy setting. For solo play Ironsworn uses Oracles, or random tables as I prefer to call to them, to provide prompts from

which to construct the scenario which your character is going to experience. I have conveniently created my own Spark Tables which will come into play here  Also as the themes on Ironsworn are somewhat similar to Dragon Warriors the tables therein don’t require much adaptation for Legend. Random Encounter tables and B/X D&D style reaction rolls are going to be extremely useful as well. 

For mechanics I’m intending on taking a fairly FKR approach to resolutions. There will already be potentially quite a lot of dice rolling involved in consulting tables for scenario construction and developing the environment. I don’t want to get bogged down with mechanics. Ironsworn uses a PBTA approach but fortunately the tables are system agnostic so I can divest myself of those rules and use my own. 

Basically I’ll keep everything to a 2d6 (with bonuses) roll as much as possible and add relevant rules as they come up. 

I’m going to journal the adventure as it transpires. It won’t be literature, or even a play report just recording what happens in whatever format suits at the time. The whole point of this is to be flexible, having short spells of gaming in random slots of free time and seeing where it goes. There is definitely space in my psyche for a game that doesn’t require too much thought or worry. I’m excited to see what happens.