Solo RPG Campaign - 0. Rules and Characters

Back last year (Fall of 2023) I started a solo RPG campaign, around the same time that Jon Mollison began his solo AD&D campaign. Unfortunately, I didn't get very far into it before I found myself too busy to continue. Only now (February 2024) am I getting around to picking it back up again -- more on that later, but I've only just played a third session, while Jon has already completed 50, and has already partially back-burnered the project for newer things. For now, I'm going to retroactively describe where I started, eventually working up to the present.

Rules

At the time I started, my ruleset of choice was Basic Fantasy RPG (BFRPG) which is a great little ruleset that is easily comprehended (and is free). In order to play it as a solo hexcrawl, I used the Hexcrawl Adventures supplement available of the BFRPG forums. Specifically, this contains random terrain charts that base the next hex's terrain on the current hex's terrain. On top of that basic chassis, I also applied the Mythic Game Master Emulator (GME) as an oracle and random prompt system, along with an occasional roll on the Universal NPC Emulator (UNE) if I wanted to flesh out a particular NPC. I have previously used this combination in a collaborative solo west marches discord to great effect, and I am reasonably familiar with all the rules. For dungeons, I will start out using a handful of extremely simple d6 tables from a product called OSR Tables and Dungeon Generator, except to roll the room size as 1d6 x 1d6. However, I'm currently in the process of replacing this process with the more complete Sandbox Generator.

Long term, I am hoping to eventually move into more advanced domain play. Originally, I was considering supplementing the above with Filling in the Blanks and Into The Wild, both products I've had for a while that seem promising, and that I've been itching to take for a test drive. They were originally written for Old School Essentials, but most OSR games seem similar enough that I'm sure they'd be compatible with BFRPG as well. However, there was an alternative system that was also tempting me: Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS) by Autarch, which has support for domain rules and mass combat baked directly into the core system, rather than added on top, and which promised to be more complete than BFRPG in other ways as well.

Unfortunately, I had the poor misfortune of starting this project shortly after all the rule systems were getting upgraded. Mythic had come out with a second edition GME that, while adding hundreds of pages of rules and additional tables, lacked the concise charm and simplicity of the original. Meanwhile, WOTC had made a decision that will live in infamy by trying to revoke the OGL, and all of the OSR clones were frantically scrambling to move away from that. BFRPG had just finished up their new 4th edition under CC-BY-SA, which was nearly identical their 3rd edition but without the OGL. Meanwhile, Autarch had announced an upcoming kickstarter for ACKS II which I was very interested in. But I didn't want to stop and wait for this, nor did I want to take time to learn the first edition of ACKS if it would superseded in a few months. So in order to begin play as soon as possible, I decided to stick with what I knew (BFRPG + supplements) while keeping an eye on ACKS II. Conversion could always be an option later.

Characters

I rolled up characters on August 20th -- so says the church bulletin that I scribbled the stats down on. I wanted mostly human characters, so I rolled for race with only a 1-in-8 chance for each of the core demi-human races, and a 5-in-8 chance of human. As you can see below, the dice had other things in mind. Later, I saw the rule for creating NPC parties, which suggests 80% human, and is probably what I should have gone with.

Around the time, there was an ongoing twitter debate about using goofy names for characters. I generally prefer more sensible names for my characters (but have no beef with players who prefer otherwise). But in the spirit of the debate, I tried to lean in to the funny side with some of these names (side note: the name Marzipan is a direct riff off Vance's Mazirian). It's OK but still not really my thing. Humor is a funny thing.

Incidentally, Chadonius' stats as rolled were so rubbish (all below 10, with three 5's) that I had to invoke for the first time, BFRPG's rule to flip all scores (subtracting from 21), which gave me a set of stats with three 16's. Much better! I also invoked for the first time the optional rule to drop a stat by 2 to raise the prime stat by one. I did this twice to get my first 18 in strength, but it felt kinda cheap to do it, and I'm not sure I like this rule in general.

  • Chadonius, first of his name (Human Fighter, STR 18, Weapon Specialization: Spear)
  • Marzipan the Melifluous (Elven Illusionist)
  • Grimace, son of Groin (Dwarven Cleric)
  • Edelweiss (Female Halfling Scout)
  • Timbo (Halfling Thief)

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