A downloadable game

This is a 38-page toolkit compiled and edited together from several sources to help a solo player experience Old School Revival (OSR) games like Basic Fantasy or Old School Essentials or other 0D&D inspired games.

This toolkit includes:

  1. Updated character creation rules
  2. A short list of moves to provide opportunities for "soft" GM intervention or manipulation to make the game more tense or exciting, but are not necessary for play.
  3. Sources of inspiration like Shawn Tomkin's excellent Action+Theme Oracles from Ironsworn (used with permission under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), an expanded version of his Aspect+Focus Table from Delve, Necropraxis' Hazard Die, Twist mechanics from FORGE by Oliver Fradgley, and travel moves inspired by The Angry GM.
  4. New combat mechanics that take a different approach than the classic "1 hit can auto-kill multiple 1 HD enemies" where the damage you receive is modified, but the damage you deal is not. This makes it harder to kill you, but also harder for you to kill your enemies, helping to retain the OSR feel
  5. Survival Mechanics inspired by Kevin Crawford that includes Exposure, Illness, and Exhaustion. As well as Gear Degradation and Repair that forces you to decide just how much punishment you're willing to put up with before retreating from the dungeon.
  6. Solo Magic rules involving Focuses (expensive) or Blood Magic (dangerous) in case you dont want to play a Mage. 
  7. Encounter tables that will help you design encounters on the fly that are appropriate for your level, but not necessarily survivable if you decide to slug it out. Includes an expanded "what are they doing?" table and a Trouble table to build a narrative encounter beyond just combat.
  8. A Combat Actions table inspired by Shawn Tomkin's in Ironsworn Delve (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) in case that narrative involves your death.
  9. A d66 Dungeon Design set of rules that helps you explore a dungeon as you go, a trimmed down list of Dungeon Themes, Dressing, and Environments, a history and theme list, and a huge list of random tables gathered from reddit to help fill in the dungeon


And more!

This is a free toolkit published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 to help people enjoy this hobby as much as I do. I feel some adjustments I made to other toolkits I have seen make the game run smoother, and provide more opportunities for roleplay. I wanted a system that helped capture the quintessential OSR feel: a normal person against abnormal odds.

Download

Download
Just One Torch v1.02.pdf 1.9 MB
Download
Solo Character Sheet.pdf 48 kB

Development log

Comments

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(1 edit)

Reading your last update, I honestly think you should turn this into your own OSR game. Cause what you got here is really impressive.  Thanks for your work.

Awesome! I've been looking for something like this. 

(+3)

Well done!! You managed to really put together the best parts of other solo-centric RPGs into OSR games - something I always wanted to do but couldn't!!! Good job!

(1 edit) (+1)

Great stuff! Love the "Encounter Builder" section for OSR games, gonna use it for my WhiteBox FMAG game!