Hi!
I've been delving deeper into the solo RPG world and decided to have a bash at creating a super simple mini game to play myself and have created Simplequest!
I spent a couple of days drawing some maps, characters and locations on small pieces of card and bodged some rules together to see how I got on!
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| The Maps |
The maps are all connected by roads that allow your character to travel along, exploring new locations as the adventure develops but not all maps connect the same way, possibly resulting in the adventurer getting lost. I've currently got nine map tiles (I've still to take pics of the last three!) which gives a decent amount of variation and variety for a game.
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| The Locations |
The locations are the destinations the characters are seeking, be it to deliver something, collect an item or fight a monster.
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| The Bard, Rogue, Peasant, Farmer, Alchemist and Witch Hunter |
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| The Shopkeeper, Mercenary, Squire, Cleric, Knight and Herbologist |
For the characters, I went for an absolutely random mix of archtypes rather than the traditional as I wanted to make some more interesting quests and I really enjoyed drawing them too!
With these visual prompts and a bit of scribbled suggestions, I set about having a bash!
I began the game drawing a random character and ended up with my Herbologist who I named Greenflower. The adventurer has a number of stats such as Fight, Armour, Charisma, Magic, Forage and Delve which I initially gave 3 points to add to which would give a bit of flavour.
As I had a Herbologist, I gave 2 points to Forage and 1 to Magic as I figured she'd be pretty good at finding stuff in the wilds and have some level of magical knowhow.
She also gets 10 points of health and 5 days of food (she can forage for more!) and I pulled a random map tile for her starting location and then a random location for her to reach.
Greenflower finds herself in the Druids Grove and is charged with finding the Mill and collecting some rare moss that grows on its walls which the Chief Druid has offered her a reward for recovering for him (I have a small table of reasons for questing and rolled a D6 to see what she was doing!)
With this the game begins and I draw the first encounter card and got the Creeping Silence which gives her -1 to all her stats next turn which was possibly an ill omen to start ones adventure with but hey ho!
Leaving the grove she enters the hill country to the east and encountered a foraging peasant who spooked as soon as he saw her and ran off, fortunately leaving a food item behind (I've just realised that I couldn't have travelled this way as I'd started in the grove which doesn't connect to this road but maybe the druid gave her directions through the wood!)
Unfortunately her next encounter was less benign as she moved south along the road into the swamps where an Orcish pitfighter challenged her to a fight. Despite this being rather unseemly, she didn't have much of a choice and drew her potting trowel and did battle with the brute and surprisingly defeated him, despite being utterly useless at fighting and taking a bit of a beating herself. Better yet she looted the fallen brute of some handy armour and thus equipped continued on her way.
As she leaves the swamps behind and moves into a landscape of rolling hills and small farms she encounters a will o' the wisp which tries to lure her back to the boggy land she's just left but her botanical magic defeats the strange glowing orb and she finds an old cairn that conceals a magical artefact that gives her trowel +2 to fight (I rolled on a random loot table and did surprisingly well!)
As she continues west along the road toward her hoped for destination, he is surprised by a deer bursting out from the undergrowth next to the road, the massive stag rushes her but she deftly sidesteps and brings the majestic beast down with a swipe of her battle trowel. Pausing here she decides to forage and manages to find some healing herbs which she puts to good use recovering some of the health she'd lost in the fight with the Orc.
As she reaches the mill, she sees a group of bandits appear to be attacking it (handily I managed to miss taking a photo here!) and is forced to yet again fight. She prevails over the bandits, recovering some gold from them but is reduced to a single point of damage but has reached her destination. She then forages and finds the moss she has been hired to recover and begins the next stage of her journey.
The next stage of the journey would be to meet the druid in the small village of Fellside so she heads out in search of the road north.
Unfortunately her way is blocked by a slime which seeks to dissolve her or her mossy specimen and she is forced to once again fight but tired, muddy and injured she is in no mood for the creatures nonsense and promptly slays the slime and stomps into the Fellside Inn for a much needed bath and rest.
I'm pretty pleased with how things went for a first go and have set about further tweaking the game to better reflect different characters strengths and weaknesses and have created some new tables for foraging and town encounters to add more variety to the game.
Its still in very early stages but its been a really fun way of playing out adventures and even if it doesn't work out, the characters, encounters and locations will come in handy for other games!
All the best!
