Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Solitaire Adventures - DM'less Play

Yoyorobbo's "Solo Module - Conquered?" post got me thinking about the dearth of these solo modules.

I think all but one of TSR's solitaire modules were meant to be used with included magic marker pens - MV1 came with a special invisible ink viewer. Check out Yoyorobbo's other earlier post which goes into more detail and has links about some of these solo adventures. I'm digging out my old copy of Tunnels & Trolls (never played it) I picked up at a second hand store fairly recently now that I've found out from that post that there were solitaire modules made for it too. That thing looks used.

D&D solitaire play was a pretty cool idea, taking the whole "choose your own adventure" books up several notches. I'd love to see if a small company like Brave Halfling could accomplish something like this. Maybe the production costs would be prohibitive, but printing these out and then covering the to be hidden sections with sticky notes by hand might be a lo-fi way of making them (even though very time consuming). Another way it could be done would be with printed cards (it always comes back to my index cards!) - map area numbers on one side, description on the other, meant to be placed face down with the numbers on top and kept in numerical order. If that sounds crazy, look at Jim at LOTFP's labor of love and the time and effort put into his Green Devil Face.

So someone out there reading this, hop to it and make and sell one of these for all of us isolated players wanting to scratch that gaming itch between group sessions!

3 comments:

Fun at the Library said...

There are probably 50 solos available for T & T now. Even I haven't played them all.

--Ken St. Andre

Telecanter said...

Years ago I made a solo adventure for a friend who lived in a different city. I drew pictures and had text for each room and then sealed them all in envelopes. Bunches of them, although it was a relatively small corrupted monastery.

Fun making that. I wish I had made copies, I had riddles and moral dilemmas and everything.

As far as solo play itself, that will require a full blown post on my blog, it is my own questing beast, so to speak.

yoyorobbo said...

A little late on this comment, but upon seeing that Ken St. Andre himself has popped in here (Wow! Very cool!), I thought I'd mention a post of mine from late last year where I met Rick Loomis at U-Con (here in Michigan).

He was very, very, very cool and signed one of the solo books I snagged (I grabbed a few that day). Anyway, I love seeing the makers/writers/etc of the games we love pop into blogs here and there. It's a very nice vibe, ya'know?

BTW, thanks for the plug for my blog posts on solo mods. I swear (and this time I mean it...hehe) that I will be posting the conclusion of the M1 Blizzard Pass entry very soon.

Gonna follow that up with some T&T soloing too. In fact "The City of Terrors" module (actually the pocket book version of it, including some condensed rules - nice and travel-worthy eh?), the Judges Guild T&T mod "Jungle of Lost Souls", and the 5.5 T&T rulebook are all staring at me as I type this, as it sits on my desk here at work. I think I might need to take along lunch today. Sound good?

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