Tag Archives: Solo RPG

Solitaire Storytelling: Fetch My Blade

For years I have served my Master faithfully. A loyal companion, I accompanied my Master through the difficult times, and the good times. Now, I am called in a moment of dire need: a Stranger has challenged my Master to a duel, alluding to time before me. My Master rises to the challenge, calling me forth. This is my moment. I have trained for this. It is time to do my Master proud.

My Master gives me the command:

Fetch My Blade.

I will, of course, obey. After all, I am a Good Dog.

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Two-Hand Path Review: Getting a Grip on Luck and Magic

“After the locusts and pits and boiling seas. After the war in heaven and feasting on earth. After the seven years of blood and forty years of night.

There is magic. Magic and bone.

Where streets grow weeds and skyscrapers stand hollow. Where old gods wake and new gods form in the hearts of the wayward. Where cult and banner flourish. Where the dead, they walk. Where the stars disregard their course and Jupiter’s children are born under powerful new signs.

Mages. Mages like you.”

With rings on your fingers, tattoos on your knuckles, and scars on the back of your hand, you’ll delve into the cursed ruins of a post-fall city and walk the Two-Hand Path.

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SPINE Review: Making A Game Of Getting Lost In A Book

You and Granma were, frankly, on the worst terms. That’s what made it such a surprise when you got a package from your cousin, who had wound up being the executor of her estate. Maybe, your cousin writes, Granma was able to overlook your differences since you had become a fellow academic? Either way, the actual package is a copy from her rare books collection, willed to you. You can’t help yourself, so you start to read the book. It’s a weird one, an anthology of works all talking about books and stories and death and living forever and… rituals? Hold on. You really can’t help yourself. You consider just not turning the page, but you turn it all the same. The notes you’re writing in the margins stop being the words you intended to write. You can feel the book pulling you in…

The book is Siderius Plug’s SPINE – Immortality in Ninety-nine Endnotes.

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It shouldn’t have been called Single Player Mode

Cyberpunk Red has been going strong for around five years now. The game came out around the same time as the tie-in video game Cyberpunk 2077, and represented a return to form after 2005’s Cyberpunk v3 (and 2020 being over 30 years old). Now, R. Talsorian Games has kept the party going with continual Cyberpunk support both free (in the form of Monthly DLC) and for pay (in the form of the Interface Red collections as well as standalone supplements like Black Chrome). Single-Player Mode is the most recent standalone supplement, and your take on it will depend entirely on what you think a solo RPG is (or should be).

If you’re older than a certain age, when you think solo RPG you think something like Mythic GM Emulator, a set of rules that can act as a GM and let you play through modules or combats on your own. If you’re younger than a certain age (let’s say younger than me at least), your first thought of a solo RPG is probably more like a journaling game, or a hybrid narrative game like The Wretched. It’s important to state this because despite its 2025 release date Cyberpunk Red Single Player Mode is firmly the first of those two. There are no campaign framing tools, no narrative generation, and no character supplements. Cyberpunk Red Single Player Mode is built firmly on using an ‘oracle’ to answer questions which allow you to progress forward through your imagined narrative, and also provides tools to let you play out investigations, social interactions, combats, and neutrons all on your lonesome. What it’s truly best at, though, is having a library of random tables which enable you to set up all sorts of premises, missions, and random encounters to make your Cyberpunk solo game more interesting. You may realize as I say this that random tables aren’t just for solo gaming. Not only is that true, it means that while I think Single Player Mode makes for an excellent GM aid and has some good rules additions…it just doesn’t work as an effective solo game.

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HOME Review – Mechs, Monsters, and Mapmaking

“One year ago the Rift opened and the Kaiju attacked. It tore our cities apart, rampaging for days until we finally dropped the bomb. We killed the beast but lost so much in the process. We knew this was only the beginning so we built the Mechs: giant war machines, the pinnacle of human engineering, and our only hope for survival. The Rift is reponing. More Kaiju are coming, but this time will be different. Your Home depends on you. Are you ready, Pilot?”

This is HOME, the Mech x Kaiju Mapmaking RPG for 1-4 players from Deep Dark Games!

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Solitaire Storytelling: The Librarian’s Apprentice

Infinite, ever-shifting, and sometimes dangerous, the Library exists in the space between worlds and times. Among the many who call it home are the Librarians, and only those who truly understand it may join their ranks. I seek to do so.

The path of a Librarian’s apprentice is a long one. My current task is designed to test my skills at traversing the Library and finding information. If I retrieve the six documents requested by my Librarian before the day is out, I will have completed one more step on my journey.

I think I’ll be okay. After all, I stumbled into the Library on my own and survived in the stacks for a while, dodging all manner of dangerous tomes and trespassers. Now I actually have training as an apprentice and the help of my familiar. the tumblefluff Dog ear, a library spirit who helps me navigate the stacks. That doesn’t mean it’ll be an easy task; after all, as the library itself once whispered to me, there are more things twisted here than plots.

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