Tools

Tarot for Solo RPG: Conflict

Spencer 2018-09-10 12208 Comments Off on Tarot for Solo RPG: Conflict
Resources

Some time ago, I discovered a free game called Dungeon Solitaire: Tomb of Four Kings. It’s a “dungeon delve” game played with a deck of poker cards, not wholly unlike the Solitaire you’ve probably played before but obviously with a dungeon crawling theme behind it. I enjoy the game and I’m grateful to have it in my head (the basics are quite simple) for those times when I’m bored and a pack of cards is at hand.  To get on with the point, I shortly found out there are expanded rules for the game, called Labyrinth of Souls, which uses Tarot cards in…

Cards and Role-playing Games

Bicycle Black Tiger Playing Cards
Spencer 2018-07-03 15186 Comments Off on Cards and Role-playing Games
Resources

  A few days months ago on the Lone Wolf Roleplaying G+ Community I inquired as to whom might be using cards in their RPG sessions. I’d started out shying away from cards, preferring to soak up the nostalgia of rolling polyhedral dice, but have recently become more intrigued by cards thanks to playing the Dungeon Solitaire games. I started snatching up cards left and right and now have several decks piled about, including the complete GameMaster’s Apprentice decks from the recent Fantasy Deck Kickstarter. Cards in Solo RPG The results were somewhat surprising, to me at least. A good 60%…

Hero Kids Compatible Encounter Generator 0.1.19 Released

Spencer 2018-02-23 3914 Comments Off on Hero Kids Compatible Encounter Generator 0.1.19 Released
Family Gaming

I’m not sure if anyone actually uses it, but I’ve updated the Hero Kids Compatible Encounter Generator web app (henceforth known as HKGen because that’s too much to type out every time…). It’s set up as an offline, responsive javascript web app using an appcache manifest. You don’t necessarily need to know that, but you should see a popup asking if it should reload any time you visit the page after the code gets updated. I actually had issue with this on my Android phone and had to go in and clear the cached data in the mobile Chrome browser…

The Big [Solo Campaign] Bang

Spencer 2017-12-04 5840 Comments Off on The Big [Solo Campaign] Bang
Solitaire Gaming

Thanks to work, family, and general life happenings, I spent most of SGAM thinking about solo gaming, rather than actually engaging in it (I squeezed in some Four Against Darkness plays, so I suppose it wasn’t a total bust.). I did manage to find some time to read through a few interesting texts, however, which have me contemplating something bigger than I’ve endeavored to undertake before: a solo campaign, complete with world building and all that jazz. Namely, continuing Vincent’s story. KABOOM! When you think of the Big Bang, you likely picture in your mind a black, empty space, crammed full of…

How I Format Actual Plays (and How You Can, Too)

Spencer 2017-10-10 3957 Comments Off on How I Format Actual Plays (and How You Can, Too)
Community

Not much to see here, I just wanted to point you to my latest community contribution: ap_shortcodes.js. It is a drop-in JavaScript solution for easily formatting your actual play reports with custom BBCode/WordPress-style “shortcodes”, such as [story] to wrap your narrative elements, that get replaced out with HTML+CSS to consistently style them across your site. Check it out at the link, and also check out the GitHub project, where you can contribute code or to the Wiki (or, dare I say, report bugs). I don’t actually use it to format my posts here, but I do basically the same thing with…

The Wheel of Fate: a Mythic Fate Chart Alternative

Spencer 2017-09-28 10621 Comments Off on The Wheel of Fate: a Mythic Fate Chart Alternative
Resources

The Wheel of Fate is a volvelle representation of the Mythic: Game Master Emulator’s “Fate Chart”. A volvelle is also known by other names: wheel chart, “dial-o-matic”, info chart, dial chart, calculator, and more. While the term originally referred to such tools created for astronomy (and became rather popular in the Middle Ages up through the twentieth century), volvelle seems to be the universal term for them now. You’ll find them employed for everything from baseball stats to oil filter selectors. To use the Wheel of Fate, one simply turns the “dial” to indicate the current Chaos Rank, and then…

Rolling Solo – Chapter 6, Part I: Mythic Game Master Emulator

Spencer 2017-09-22 11961 Comments Off on Rolling Solo – Chapter 6, Part I: Mythic Game Master Emulator
Rolling Solo

  Here’s our first step into the big leagues with the Mythic Game Master Emulator — the “gold standard” of solo engines — which I’ll be using alongside an old-school-inspired “sword & sorcery” game called Sharp Swords and Sinister Spells (Pay What You Want). Chapter 6 will be broken up into 3 parts: Mythic GME overview, SS&SS overview, and an Actual Play example putting the two together. If you’re only interested in the action, you can jump over to the actual play. If you don’t know what solo role-playing is, you may want to start with Chapter 1, which gives…

Hero Kids Compatible Game Master Screen

Hero Kids Compatible Game Master Screen
Spencer 2017-08-09 13769 Comments Off on Hero Kids Compatible Game Master Screen
Family Gaming

Hey everyone! As you may well know, I play the Hero Kids role-playing game frequently with my “elder” two kids, ages 3 and 4. I’ve also used it with great success while learning the ropes for solitaire play — I already knew the rules, so it was super easy to let them fade into the background while I focused on writing, asking questions, and generating random elements. Stay tuned for more posts detailing my experiences with both styles of play sessions. Meanwhile, you can be playing with these freebies! Hero Kids Compatible Game Master Screen In the course of such events,…