Post #1

I remember the joys of spending weekends at my friend Ronald’s when we were in the 7th and 8th grades. Ronald was my introduction to Dungeons & Dragons. Those were heady times, filled with magical things like character sheets and polyhedral dice and Thac0 and armor class.

“It’s a Death Knight. Can you even hit an Armor Class of negative three?”

Skip ahead a few years. I’m attending Western Kentucky University (1989-1994). Yeah, it took me five years to graduate. I changed majors a couple of times.

North Hall dormitory’s rec room, Thursday nights, saw four to six of us (I was almost always there) playing 2nd edition AD&D and — less often — Paranoia, Palladium, or Cthulhu.

The university’s swim team was housed on the first floor of that dorm in the same wing in which the rec room was situated. They’d pass by on their way to a kegger, look in on us nerds, and holler “Suck my d*ck!” To which my fellow nerd, Jason R., would reply, “Which one? The one in your mouth or the one in your ass?” It never came to blows, which is perhaps fortunate for the swim team. Two of us nerds were not shabby martial artists.

What I remember even more fondly than the details of our adventures was the comeraderie. This was in my early twenties. Now I’m approaching fifty-five. I have a really good job that allows me to work from home most of the time. But we live in a rather rural area and my wife and I aren’t social butterflies. Still, a man sometimes wishes he still had the sort of friendship from those days in the early 90s.

Throughout the first two decades of the new millenium, I’ve dungeon-mastered several campaigns on sites such as rpol.net, and myth-weavers.com. Some of them spanned multiple years. I ran games using Dominion Rules, AD&D 2e, and Hackmaster. Some were great fun, but on at least two occasions a munchkin munged the fun.

After my most recent lengthy online campaign in 2023, I resigned myself to the fact that (1) I didn’t have the energy for long-term maintenance of a gaming group, and (2) that solo-gaming would give me the opportunity to write and engage in world-building. And thus, I threw myself into consumption of all manner of titles: Four Against Darkness, Mythic GM Emulator 2.0, and blogs such as Grognardia and Paul Walker’s Substack.

Paul, I want you to know how much I enjoy your posts!

As I waded through various solo-roleplay materials, I moved father down the path of self-discovery that I had begun with my affair with Hackmaster: I came to realize that I now prefer less crunchiness in my roleplay mechanics diet. And in a few exploratory soloing experiments, I found that I lean into journaling. I learned that I loved the process of worldbuilding in conjunction with blogging. Here another term added to terminology, there another NPC added to my Cast of Characters. The North Hall nerd of the early 90s had survived after all.

During the 2025 Christmas holiday, I enjoyed an entire week off from work, and I laid the foundations for a 2026 solo-play that I am calling Endless Rime. It’s set in Earth’s Upper Paleolithic era, and it eschews heavy, complex RPG systems, instead tweaking chaosgrenade’s itch.io Awesome Dice Pool System.

I’ll write more about Endless Rime in my next post, and I hope that it will develop a readership. I’ll see you on my Hacking a Lite RPG post…

Post #2

The subtitle of this post may make you laugh, when you get to reading the specifics on my mechanics. But I maintain that they’re still an order of magnitude simpler than something like 5th edition AD&D, or Hackmaster.

So I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to engage in solo-roleplay consistently throughout 2026.

Do I have the time to devote to this? Yes, on average my wife and I consume about four hours nightly of Netflix or one of its analogues, and I’m rarely as interested in what’s on that screen as I am in what’s on my laptop’s screen.

I shared in my previous post that I’ve come to prefer less crunchy, more narrative-forward mechanics, but I still enjoy rolling dice. Therefore, before Christmas I began perusing free RPG systems. When it comes to these, itch.io is gold. I found chaosgrenade’s Awesome Dice Pool System, and hacked it.

Mechanics

PCs and NPCs have three Attributes that range in value from 1 (below average) to 5, maybe 6 (human peak). The three attributes of humanoids are: Body, Mind and Spirit. Stenn’s Attributes at the time of character creation are:

- Body 3 (above average)

- Mind 3 (above average)

- Spirit 4 (exceptional)

Most NPCs’ Attributes’ values sum to 7-8. Focal NPCs may have Attributes summing to 9, 10, or even higher.

Each of the three Attributes (Body, Mind, and Spirit) has a Stress Track associated with it. The Stress Track has a number of checkboxes equal to that Attribute’s value.

In addition to Attributes, your character starts play with up to three Traits. Traits are personal characteristics, positive or negative, that either add or subtract a die from the Dice Pool when the relevant Trait is applicable.

My character, Stenn, has a trait called Thuggishly Strong that he can use in combat Resolution Rolls.

Resolution Rolls

When rolling a pool of six-sided dice, you are making a Resolution Roll, and all 5 and 6 results are Successes.

Conflicts (such as combat) are handled by having the participants declare what they’re doing and comparing Resolution Rolls against their opponents. This means sometimes it is advantageous for the players to Help one another.

When Helping, both you and the person you’re helping make a Resolution Roll and then you get to apply the better (i.e., the roll with more Successes).

Any ties during a conflict scene are either a stalemate or moot point – this may be an opportunity to role-play a truce or back off the opposing side (or a chance to exchange crude remarks).

A character that (a) succeeds a Resolution Roll in a conflict and (b) whose total successes (count all 5’s and 6’s rolled) exceed those of his adversary/circumstance, gets to narrate how the result of their action either causes Stress or inflicts a Hindrance on their opponent, or how they overcome some circumstance.

Stress harms the targeted character, dealing a number of ticks to their Stress Track equal to the difference in Successes. Opponents only have 1 track; player characters have a track for each Attribute. Mark a tick by a single cross-slash on a box; each box may take 2 ticks (creating an “X”).

- Physical harm deals stress to the Body attribute.

- Insanity, magic or psychic trauma harms the Mind attribute.

- Intimidation, fear, & demoralization affects the Spirit attribute.

Most NPCs’ Attributes’ values sum to 7-8. Focal NPCs may have Attributes summing to 9, 10, or even higher.

Each of the three Attributes (Body, Mind, and Spirit) has a Stress Track associated with it. The Stress Track has a number of checkboxes equal to that Attribute’s value.

In game terms, conflicts (such as combat) are handled as any other action, with participants declaring what they’re doing and comparing Resolution Rolls against their opponents.

Any ties during a conflict scene are either a stalemate or moot point – this may be an opportunity to role-play a truce or back off the opposing side (or a chance to exchange crude remarks).

A character that (a) succeeds on a Resolution Roll in a conflict and (b) whose total successes (count all 5’s and 6’s rolled) exceed those of his adversary/circumstance, gets to narrate how the result of their action either causes Stress or inflicts a Hindrance on their opponent, or how they overcome some circumstance.

Stress harms the targeted character, dealing a number of ticks to their Stress Track equal to the difference in Successes. Opponents only have 1 track; player characters have a track for each Attribute. Mark a tick by a single cross-slash on a box; each box may take 2 ticks (creating an “X”).

When a given Attribute’s Stress Track is filled, your character is out of the action (defeated, killed, rendered unconscious, captured — whatever outcome the Gamemaster decides — or that perhaps the Mythic Game Master Emulator 2.0 decides, if you use that tool).

Obviously, that isn’t something you want to happen to your character. Fortunately, your character begins play with a number of Adversity Tokens equal to their Spirit attribute.

When a player fails a roll against the Judge/GM/Oracle, they receive 1 Adversity Token. They can spend a token on any Resolution Roll – theirs or any allies – to add +1 die against the Judge. Any number of tokens can be applied to a single roll. Remember: at any given time, you can never have more Adversity Tokens than X, where X is the value of your Spirit attribute.

In addition to the single Adversity Token that the PC receives when failing a Resolution Roll, s/he also gets one Adversity Token for each pair of doubles in the failed roll.

Example: Stenn fails his Resolution Roll (it has fewer Successes than the GM’s). The dice come up as follows: 5, 3, 5, 6, 2. That’s 3 Successes (5’s and 6’s are successes). Unfortunately, the GM’s opposed Resolution Roll comes up with 4 Successes. Stenn has lost the Resolution contest. Stenn gains one Adversity Token for the failure, plus another for the pair of 5’s.

What if Stenn had failed his Resolution Roll and the dice came up as follows? 5, 3, 5, 5, 3. How many additional Adversity Tokens would he gain? Two (pair of 5’s, pair of 3’s). The third 5 isn’t part of a pair/double.

The Luck Die

Special Traits – like magical items, high-tech augmentations, or supernatural senses grant a Luck Die.

This is a unique die that stands out from the rest of the dice in the Dice Pool. In addition to providing an extra die to a pool, the die adds the following benefits:

• If the player rolls a Success on the Luck Die and wins the Resolution Roll, the player gets to narrate a Boost — a bonus effect to the intended result of their action. Whenever the player narrates a Boost, add +1 to Experience (XP).

• If the player lost the Resolution Roll, but still scored a Success on the Luck Die, then a Slip occurs. A Slip means the character didn’t succeed as intended, but the Player still gets to narrate an opportunity that arose from their misfortune. Alternatively, the character may exchange the Slip for one Adversity Token.

In addition to spending an Adversity Token to add +1 die to the Dice Pool for a single Resolution Roll, you may also spend an Adversity Token to clear one tick on an Attribute’s Stress Track.

Limitations of Traits

You may not through meta-gaming cleverness gain unfair advantage from multiple Traits. You cannot, for instance, assign traits of Smart, Agile, and Strong and then argue that all three come into play for each and every feint, thrust, dodge, thrust, and parry in a melee.

You could, however, reasonably assert that Smart applies to an attempt to solve a maze, that Strong applies when attempting to bend bars, or that Agile applies when jumping a crevasse.

Advancement

At the end of a Scene, award +0.1 XP; if you are playing solo and the write-up of the scene (narrative, in the vein of solo-rpg journaling games, or due to combat and lots of dice rolls for mechanics) is fairly lengthy, instead award anywhere from 0.25 XP to 1.0 XP.

Advancement occurs in two ways: spend 2 XP to add a new Trait. This cannot be an alternatively named clone of an existing Trait. Don’t try to add Brutish Biceps if you’re already Thugglishly Strong. If you aren’t playing solo, then the referee must approve the Trait and ensure you both agree regarding its scope/limitations. This must be supported by the solo-roleplay narrative/journaling. Remember, a Trait should be fairly narrow, and it adds +1 to the Dice Pool when its use is relevant.

The other way to Advance is to improve one or more of your three Attributes (Body, Mind, Spirit). Body and Mind in NPCs can ordinarily only be improved up to a value of 5 — maybe 6. But for a PC or unique/boss NPC, this limit may be exceeded.

More commonly, if powerful science or magic is involved in bolstering a physical or mental process, it would fall under the category of a special, Luck Die providing Trait.

In a game with a DM and only a single player, or if you are playing solo via an oracle, it’s recommended that Body and Mind be improvable beyond 5 or 6, but that this can only occur if the new, improved Attribute value, when doubled, would not be greater than your Spirit attribute.

For instance, imagine a character has been adventuring for a long time, and has Body 4, Mind 3, and Spirit 7. Assume the player has enough XP to raise either Body or Mind. The player could only raise Mind to 4 and not Body to 5 (raising Body to 5 would require that the Spirit attribute already be 10+).

You may improve your Spirit attribute indefinitely, so long as you can pay the increasingly expensive XP cost.

To incease an Attribute, spend a number of XP equal to the Attribute’s *current* value. As Spirit improves over the long-term course of play, it’s Stress Track grows accordingly, as does the cap of Adversity Tokens.

If you would gain an Adversity Token but you already have the maximum allowed (X, where X equals the current number of un-ticked boxes in your Spirit track), instead convert it to 0.1 XP.

If a situation calls for a Resolution Roll but does not permit the PC to apply whatever special Trait allows for Luck Die inclusion, the PC may choose to Push His/Her Luck. Include the Luck Die in the Resolution Roll, but if it comes up a 1 or 2 (regardless of whether the overall Resolution Roll succeeds or not), you have Blundered.

On a Blunder, something negative in the narrative happens and you don’t gain the usual +1 Adversity Token for the failed Resolution Roll.

Sources of Adversity Tokens:

- failing a Resolution Roll against the GM or Oracle without Blundering (+1 token)

- converting a Slip (+1 token) - slips occur on failed Res roll but Luck Die is a Success

- per pair (i.e., doubles) that comes up when a Resolution Roll is failed (+1 token)

Sources of XP:

- from converted Adversity Points (+0.1 XP)

- from completing a Scene and its write-up (+0.1 to T1.0 XP)

- from getting a Boost on a Luck-die success on a successful Resolution Roll (+1.0 XP)

Uses of Adversity Tokens:

- clear a single tick on a given Attribute’s Stress Track (costs 2 Adversity Tokens)

- add +1 die to Dice Pool (per Adversity Token spent) for a single Resolution Roll

When a given Attribute’s Stress Track is filled, your character is out of the action (defeated, killed, rendered unconscious, captured — whatever outcome the Gamemaster decides — or that perhaps the Mythic Game Master Emulator 2.0 decides, if you use that tool).

Obviously, that isn’t something you want to happen to your character. Fortunately, your character begins play with a number of Adversity Tokens equal to their Spirit attribute.

When a player fails a roll against the Judge/GM/Oracle, they receive 1 Adversity Token. They can spend a token on any Resolution Roll – theirs or any allies – to add +1 die against the Judge. Any number of tokens can be applied to a single roll. Remember: at any given time, you can never have more Adversity Tokens than X, where X is the value of your Spirit attribute.

In addition to the single Adversity Token that the PC receives when failing a Resolution Roll, s/he also gets one Adversity Token for each pair of doubles in the failed roll. Example: Stenn fails his Resolution Roll (it has fewer successes than the GM’s). The dice come up as follows: 5, 3, 5, 6, 2. That’s 3 successes (5’s and 6’s are successes). Unfortunately, the GM’s opposed Resolution Roll comes up with 4 successes. Stenn has lost the Resolution contest. Stenn gains one Adversity Token for the failure, *plus* another for the pair of 5’s.

What if Stenn had failed his Resolution Roll and the dice came up as follows? 5, 3, 5, 5, 3. How many additional Adversity Tokens would he gain? Two (pair of 5’s, pair of 3’s). The third 5 isn’t part of a pair/double.

Well, that’s an overview of the mechanics. Don’t be chagrined if you don’t instant grock the whole of it. If you follow along in my future Actual Plays, you’ll see that you’ll come to grips with it quickly.

Now that I’ve outlined the mechanics, here is Stenn Bearclaw’s character sheet. I’ll give you a chance to read about Stenn, and then we’ll have our first Actual Play!

Post #3

In my previous post, I wrote about the mechanics I have decided to use. You may have only given it a cursory glance. Even if you read it carefully, there are enough moving parts and conditionals that I wouldn’t expect you to grok the system until you’ve seen it in action in a few Scenes. If you stick around for some Actual Plays, you’ll get that opportunity.

Before we can get to those initial Scenes, though, we need to create the character I’ll be using. The setting for the solo campaign is Earth in the Upper Paleolithic. That’s late Stone Age. The year as the campaign opens is 35,386 B.C. To be specific, November 06th of that year — a Monday. Don’t ask…

Now, Neaderthals are believed to have been extinct by 40,000 years ago. So I’m gonna say Stenn is Cro-Magnon (genetically and physiologically homo sapiens). Yes, I’m gonna make him strong. I mean, it’s one of my failings, engaging in stereotyping of early humans.

He has a thick mane of reddish hair and glacial blue eyes. He’s affable, unless he’s angry. Oh, and he hears voices — well, a voice, atually. He may be a burgeoning schizophrenic, but of course he believes it is the Star Spirit, an entity of esoteric and arcane knowledge, that speaks to him.

Okay! Let’s stat him out. Since Substack doesn’t permit use of cascading style sheets, I’ll link to Stenn’s character sheet here. I know, right? Start a petition for Substack to add customized CSS support. I’ll sign it. Got that link pulled up in another tab? Good! Now, I’ll break it down for you.

So, what do we have here? I see we’re looking at the top of Stenn’s character sheet. Dunno if he’s a member of Clan Bearclaws or if “Bearclaws” is some sort of surname. Maybe Moose Rock is his clan, or maybe it just specifies his locale. We’ll discover those details in Actual Plays.

Next, I see three Attributes — Body, Mind, and Spirit. Those are Stenn’s stats, just like Strength, Constitution, etc. are stats in Dungeons & Dragons. Body is the attribute for all things physical (resisting illness, recovering from poison, running stamina). Mind is for resisting magic, healing from psychological trauma, resisting insanity. Spirit is for resisting Fear, Intimidation, Despair.

Notice that Body has three circles. In the roleplay milieu, most people have Body, Mind, and Spirit in the range of 1 (below average) to 3 (above average). A score of 2 is Average. I only had ten points to distribute among the three Attributes. I put three apiece in Body and Mind, and four in Spirit.

Each of the three Attributes also has a Stress Track, and you can see that each Attribute’s Stress Track has as many squares as the attribute has circles. If you need a refresher on Stress Tracks, you’ll find it in my previous post. Essentially, we want empty boxes in all of our Attribute’s Stress Tracks. What we don’t want are tick marks in those boxes. Stress Tracks will become clear as you follow along in the first few Actual Plays.

Traits give a +1 die bonus to the Dice Pool whenever they apply to a Resolution Roll. And Equipment is, well, the equipment he carries.

All that remains of Stenn’s character sheet is a description:

And that’s that. We have our protagonist, and we will follow him on his adventures in the Endless Rime campaign, which I will serialize here on Substack, and also on my other blog.

I invite you to read my next post, which speaks to some of the influences that led to this campaign, and which gives our Opening Scene.

Post #4

title: Endless Rime
ruleset: modded Awesome Dice Pool System
character-creation:
process
character sheets:
original
updated
setting: Cro-Magnon Earth - Adventures in the 35th Millenium BC
player: Bryan Miller (my other blog)
pcs: Stenn Bearclaws (the main protagonist)
start_date: 12.28.2025 (this post)
last_update: 01.01.2026 (The Reddening: Part II)
tools:
chaosgrenade’s Awesome D.P.S.
LonerRPG’s Twist Counter & Dice
themes: exploration, survival, self-discovery
tone: primal, noble, fatalistic
notes: we build the world as we adventure in it

Influences & Intentions

This solo-play will be known as Endless Rime and is set on Earth in the Upper Paleolithic era, as I wrote in my previous post.

Endless Rime features mature content: there is wanton violence, sex (not explicit), and occasional brutality, but there is no cigarette smoking. No animals will be harmed in the creation of these stories. Some animals are harmed in these stories, but usually they are wild animals targeted by hunters.

In some portions of this story, the action pivots back and forth from ~35,000 B.C. to some future time that is clearly far in the future. You may wonder why, given the story’s setting. Gradually, some readers will develop insight. Think Clan of the Cave Bear meets Severance (by Netflix). It won’t be heavy-handed, and hopefully won’t break immersion. By far the majority of posts in Endless Rime will focus IGDT in the Old Stone Age.

Different people format their Actual Play reports in different ways. Initially, I had planned on a separation of narrative from mechanics. My thinking was that this would be advantageous should I ever elect to turn the narrative sequences from my Actual Plays into a book. However, in sampling blogs and opinions I came to discover that many people prefer that crunchies be leavened in freely with narries. And doing it thusly will certainly be easier for me.

To prepare for this solo-play, I read three books: Clan of the Cave Bear, The Dog Master, and Cro-Magnon : How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans.

Other influences: Wolf Packs & Winter Snow, Paul Walker’s substack, Rolling Alone, the RPG called Würm, the old AD&D 3rd edition sourcebook Frostburn, and Kate Korsaro’s substack, Kate Plays.

Themes explored:

XP Award

I’d awarded 3 XP for character concept development, +0.25 XP upon completing Stenn’s character creation by culminating in a character sheet (downloadable from my Onedrive, Box, or website). Now watch as I use meta-game currency to positively reinforce my documenting, here, of influences and sources: another +0.25 XP — Stenn now is sitting on 4.0 XP.

As is often the case, this Substack post is a refinement of an earlier post in another venue.

Below, I’ll set the stage for Stenn’s adventures with an Opening Scene that is simply narrative. My very next post, however, will be a true Actual Play, interleaving narrative with mechanics.

Opening Scene

Although neither he nor his parents knew it, Stenn had begun life as Stenosian Vey. On his Naming Day at the age of twelve, the boy had unknowingly dredged up a moniker from his subconscious: ‘Stenn’. Moose Rock Clan accepted and celebrated it. They were simply thankful to now have a shortened way of referring to Chief Hrowaka’s son other than the lengthy title that roughly translated as Twig of the Branch of Hrowaka Axe-Arm.

It was 35,386 B.C., a cold night somewhere in what would eventually become the Dordogne region of France. The nineteen year old Cro-Magnon man stood next to his mother’s woven sleeping pallet and looked down upon sunken, closed eyes, her pallid face. It was warm enough in the hide-covered dwelling that Stenn’s heavily muscled body gleamed with a sheen of sweat. He was clothed only in a breech cloth. The woman on the pallet shivered.

Norda was gravely ill, and Stenn was not Mog-Ur, nor a shaman. “How is she?” queried a gravelly voice from the other side of the dwelling, where the firelight cast a shadowy silhouette of a man. Stenn’s father, Chief Hrowaka, was weak and stooped, crippled by severe osteoarthritis and by something much worse. Something that Uta, their medicine woman, could not treat.

Stenn felt helpless. It was impossible to guess which one of his parents Gray Coyote1 would take first. A bujant had been troubling the village of late. If it followed the usual pattern of such things, it would attack again some time tonight. 

Ask the Oracle: will the bujant attack tonight?
Exceptional Yes.

Stenn was torn between staying near his ill mother and joining his fellow hunters in searching for the possessed creature.

The chief was very old, sixty-two sheddings of the Bear Tree, if the chief’s memory could be trusted. And so Stenn kept watch over his mother while his father lay addled on kuju2 on the other side of the hide-covered dwelling.

Norda, though delirious (perhaps mercifully) and in and out of consciousness, coughed up more blood. Stenn cradled her head and dabbed at the reddish foam on her lips. A minute went by, and only the crackle of the fire spoke into the darkness. Then Norda was wracked by another bout of coughing, just as the brazen bugling of the bujant shattered the relative quiet of Moose Rock.

Shouts erupted throughout the camp, and there were running feet, peppered with curses, oaths, deprecations, and more than one cry to Ursus for strength and protection. A young woman of the clan, Jenkla, ducked into the dwelling. Her furs were frost-rimed and snow powdered her long, dark hair. “Stenn Pah’et, you are needed!”

Stenn looked up at his mate. “Jenkla Su’hed, Drogan and the others can handle a bu—” His words were clipped off abruptly as Jenkla ran a gloved hand through her hair, dispersing red flakes already beginning to melt in the warmer interior of the frost-den. Blood Dust!3

Jenkla took a step toward Stenn. “It is the Tears: the bujant4 was merely a harbinger! Many will die this night!”

Stenn moved and embraced Jenkla, cradling her for a moment to his massively muscled chest, a powerful hand cradling the back of her neck. Then, releasing her, he pulled on fur-lined leggings wrapped his bear pelt around himself, and donned a dried vine bolo and its wicker scabbard for his club. “Not if I can help it!” he vowed. Stay with them both,” he pleaded as much as instructed, and then he was outside the frost-den and shouting orders.

Meta: see three footnotes below.

I spent a fair amount of time on this post, and it in turn spurred the creation of a Cast of Characters and a Terminology post, so I’m going to award 0.5 XP, bringing new total to 4.0 XP. I choose to spend those 4 XP to increase Stenn’s Spirit attribute from 4 to 5.

I invite you to continue to the next post in solo campaign Endless Rime…

Thanks for reading The Annals of the Simple Solo Roleplayer!

Post #5

In my previous post, the fourth in the Endless Rime series, I wrote about some of the influences on my selection of the setting for this solo-play, and we had our Opening Scene.

Confession: I actually prefer the formatting of my local laptop blog that runs atop HTMLy. If you want to read this Scene it that format, here’s the link.

Ten-Second Rewind

Jenkla took a step toward Stenn. “It is the Tears: the bujant1 was merely a harbinger! Many will die this night!”

Stenn moved and embraced Jenkla, cradling her for a moment to his massively muscled chest, one powerful hand cradling the back of her neck. Then, releasing her, he pulled on fur-lined leggings and wrapped his bear pelt around himself. “Not if I can help it!” he vowed. Stay with them both,” he pleaded as much as instructed, and then he was outside the frost-den and shouting orders.

And The Action Continues…

Stenn burst from the frost-den, pulling his heavy club from the hide sheath he wore high on his back. The Red Snow, Vodor’s Tears, was both a natural hazard and a spiritual crisis, but in Stenn’s mind and those of his fellows there was no distinction. Blood Dust was another moniker for this phenomenon, because those who succumbed to it deteriorated to a crimson, gritty pile of particulates, leaving behind not even a skeleton.

He grimaced as the cold cut through his furs like a serrated flint blade. Stenn pivoted slowly in a full circle, listening for the bujant’s bugling hue and cry; it didn’t escape his attention that the torches around the camp seemed to burn dimmer, as if the very air resisted their warmth.

Stenn saw the hulking form of his friend and cried, “Drogan, to me!” As his fellow clansman drew near, Stenn noticed his shivering and struck him on the arm, then gripped Drogan’s shoulder. “I know, my friend, I know!” Stenn himself could feel a drain upon his stamina, as if his strength were being pulled upward into the sky.

“Fight it!” Stenn growled, cuffing Drogan encouragingly. “I’m going to find the bujant and deal with it before The Reddening. Get Fodor and Gahn and have them re-chalk the sky glyphs quickly, then get them inside and make sure the children are nearest the fires!” He turned and quickly moved beyond the light of the torches, then paused, staring outward away from the camp, giving his eyes times to adjust.

Ask the Oracle: Can I see the bujant anywhere?
No, but the cold may kill you before the bujant can.

Stenn stumbles, the supernatural cold stealing his strength. He calls upon the Spirit of Ursus: “Bear Father, sustain me for the sake of your people!” This depends upon a derived attribute, Anima — the intersection of soul and mind (average of Mind 3 + Spirit 4, rounded up, i.e., 4). An Anima of 4 yields a dice pool of 4d6.

Now that we know the most relevant attribute and its value, we can make a Resolution Roll to see how successful (if at all), is Stenn’s invocation of Ursus:

Two successes! Stenn rallies, and fancies that Ursus’ pelt enfolds him in warmth.

Some of the Red Snow melted on his lip, and he spat vehemently. The taste was acrid, metallic. A thud sounded to his left and he spun with his raised club, expecting the bujant, but he saw that the source of the noise was a dead bird, fallen from the sky. Another hits the ground, ten feet northward.

He didn’t see the bujant, but standing motionless in this cold was a death sentence, so he took off in a lope, making a wide circuit of the camp. Time was short if birds were already dying. The children and elders of the clan would be the first to enter a shivering torpor.

Ask the Oracle: will the bujant attack Fodor and Gahn?
Yes, and here it comes now, darting out of the darkness, into the torchlight, arrowing for the Sky Glyph rocks!

Stenn altered his trajectory to intercept the wolf, and noticed that the bujant was apparently unaffected by the Red Snow — clear evidence that the Void Lord had won many of the lesser malign spirits to his cause.

Stenn’s powerful legs bunched, driving him even faster across the feebly lit night of the camp, club raised in a two-handed grip.

Ask the Oracle: Does the bujant see me in its peripheral vision?
No.

Stenn glanced toward the Sky Glyph rocks. Fodor was nowhere to be seen, perhaps having already completed his work and taken shelter. But there was Gahn, still feverishly chalking the sky glyph on the second of a pair of boulders. This fell beast would rip out his throat before he even knows what hit him! “By Ursus be thwarted!” Stenn cried aloud, again invoking the Great Bear. So soon after the previous invocation means we’ll allow Anima with a penalty of one. That’s a dice pool of three:

A single success, and neither the wolf nor the possessing spirit could do anything to counter it.

The bujant tried to ignore Stenn in single-minded intent to disrupt the chalking, but Stenn’s invocation of the Great Bear caused it to stumble, and almost fall. The wolf righted itself but Stenn was upon it, and combat was joined!

The bujant-possessed wolf has a dice pool of 4. Stenn’s Body attribute is 3, but because he’s running and not braced, he can’t hit as hard as he’d like (hindrance lowers 3 to a 2-die pool). However, Stenn is thugglishly strong (Trait). This adds a die — pool is back to 3 dice. He cannot add a die for the Star Spirit, as it remains neutral in this, not wishing to become embroiled in conflict with the Void Lord. Stenn has 5 banked Adversity Tokens. We’ll spend two of them to add two more dice to the pool, bringing it to 5 dice.

Bujant Wolf’s resolution roll yields a single Success:

Stenn’s resolution roll yields 3 Successes:

Stenn’s margin of success is two (the difference between his 3 Successes and the wolf’s single Success), and he chooses to inflict two ticks on the bujant’s Stress Track:

Stenn’s Adversity Token pool is now 3 of 5.

The dice have spoken: Stenn brought down his heavy club upon the wolf’s hindquarters, injuring it. It yelped in pain, slewed sideways and went down, but quickly stood.

Ask the Oracle: Does the wolf ignore my threat and still head toward Gahn?
No, and it’s decided to feast on Stenn’s marrow!

Stenn was chagrined. He’d hoped to injure the creature badly enough to handicap it, but could see no indication he had done so. Stenn fancied he could see the wolf’s soul struggling against the evil spirit that has possessed it. He rooted for the former, but was unsurprised when the latter won out and the beast sprang at him.

The wolf uses its special Spring attack (+1 die to its pool). And because of the evil influence driving it, the injured wolf Pushes Its Luck (+1 die — a Luck die) when ordinarily it might not do so. That’s 6 dice (the wolf’s normal 4, plus Luck die, +1 for Spring trait). However, I’ll be kind and subtract one die due to injury/pain. I’m rolling this in *Mythic GME Digital* on Windows; we’ll count the final roll as the Luck die:

Ha, the wolf gets zero Successes! And the Luck die came up 2; that’s a Blunder! You’ll note, below, that the Luck Die is distinguished via a dark color, versus the other dice’s white color.

As the player, I meta-rule that the wolf’s Blunder signifies that it has exacerbated the injury dealt it by Stenn’s club and now has a -1 die Hindrance. Stenn, of course, will show no mercy. He might have, had this just been a starving wolf, but he’ll take no chances on a Bujant. Stenn has a dice pool of four for his attack (Body 3, Thuggishly Strong trait). He feels that Morning Dew and Ursus are with him now, so he doesn’t Push His Luck or use Adversity Tokens.

Let’s see how Stenn performs:

His resolution roll comes up two Successes:

That’s a margin of success of two, and Stenn inflicts two more ticks on the wolf’s stress track:

Here’s the narrative translation of the above mechanics: the Cro-Magnon man stepped sideways as the wolf sprang and batted it aside with his club, then was ready when the wolf scrabbled to get itself turned around and attack again.

Ordinarily, the wolf at this point would make a morale check, and possibly choose to flee. I judged that given the evil influence it’s under, that’s possible but unlikely.

Oracle, has the wolf had enough?
Exceptional No!

Not only does the wolf stay and fight, but it is heedless of its own well-being. If it lands an attack it will inflict +1 tick of stress, but it’s hurt and confused (and suffering from the rapidly worsening preternatural cold) and it’s down to a dice pool of two. The possessing spirit whips the beast furiously, and it Pushes Its Luck (+1 die, for a pool of 3) And remember, the final die will always be the Luck die, when/if a Luck die is included in a Resolution Roll:

That's a single success for the wolf, and as it lunges, Stenn defends himself:

Wolf and Cro-Magnon are tied, with one Success each. Stalemate!

Stenn managed to pop the wolf on the snout as it attempted another bite, and the wolf yelped, paused for a moment as if considering...

Oracle, does the wolf want more of this?
No.

This time the wolf does decide it’s had enough. As it runs off, Stenn is too cold to give chase. He counts himself fortunate indeed to make it into the frost-den before he collapses.

In my next post, I take a brief detour to discuss the dynamic tension inherent in capturing needed information as succinctly as possible in Actual Plays, so that we don’t break solo-flow. I’ll see you there, and hope you’ll comment.

That was a fair amount of effort (but a lot of fun): rolling, editing, correcting misspellings, updating Mechanics, Terminology, and Cast of Characters. I’m awarding Stenn one full XP point for this Scene. After-action character sheet snapshot:


Stenn of Clan Bearclaws, Man Out of Time — 35,386 B.C.

Equipment:

Images of dice are compliments of Mike Zuidgeest, and are sourced from flaticon.com

Post #6

Hey, did you take in the previous Scene, Red Snow & Sky Glyphs? Well, if you’re eagerly awaiting the next Scene, The Reddening, rest assured that it won’t be much longer, but there are some other preliminary matters I need to address first.

I hope you’ll read this through and give me your feedback in the comments…


If you have begun to follow Stenn’s adventures (and, admittedly, they are only just beginning) then you’ve noticed that my write-up of Stenn’s Opening Scene really leaned into narrative, while the following Scene, Blood Dust & Sky Glyphs, was a mixture of narrative, dice rolls, and oracle queries and answers.

Now, I love the feel of rolling dice, the tactile experience. The next best thing for me personally is blogging die rolls, like I did in Scene Blood Dust. But … because Substack does not support user-created stylesheets, it is not convenient for me to picture actual dice rolls — not in the way that it is convenient for me to do on my HTMLy blog (where I can use custom HTML and CSS).

This isn’t a bad thing — it just is; part of the appeal of Substack is its accessibility, and by limiting formatting options it can ensure attractive posts that are readable on both desktop and mobile screens.

Therefore, I need a sort of Actual Play shorthand, something that is concise and easily interleaved with little chunks of narrative. And there will be narrative. But what I hope to do as this solo campaign gets warmed up — and moves toward hitting its stride — is to use little clusters of narrative (here, a paragraph; there, two of them) as the Substack equivalent of what cut scenes are in videogames.

So, let’s think about what we want out of our Actual Plays. We want to record what happens to our protagonist in an entertaining manner — hopefully entertaining enough that other people will want to read them. We want to do this in a way that doesn’t slow us down so much that it pulls us out of the solo-flow. Say what?

Solo-flow is the flow state in solo roleplaying that occurs when a player becomes fully immersed in the game, losing track of time and self-consciousness while engaging deeply with the narrative and mechanics. This experience is enhanced by having clear goals, balanced challenges, and immediate feedback, allowing for a rewarding and enjoyable gameplay experience.

I can’t stay in solo-flow if I can’t quickly record things like the following and interleave them seamlessly and nearly effortlessly with prose elements. I need to be able to record what is happening without notably slowing down play. I need to be able to record and track longitudinal changes of game state, such as NPCs, locations, threads (to borrow a Mythic GME construct).

And the shorthand for game state needs to be able to memorialize data; I need to be able to go back and find out what Roderick’s supply of healing potions was last session, how much progress Stenn has made made towards tracking down Navare, where my collapsing dice pool countdown toward the witch coven’s enchantment was the last time I checked on them…

Here’s my starting point for shorthand:

The above are the Five Essentials. Anything and everything else is optional — Scene headers, Campaign headers, tracking of complex plot points, tracking threads. The five symbols above (> ? d: -> => ) handle the Three Main Things: Actions, Resolutions, and Consequences.

If you’re familiar with Markdown, you’ll immediately see how the following example lends itself to that format; but this will work fine if you’re taking hand-written notes.

Example:
S1 Dark alley, midnight

> Sneak past the guard

d: Stealth 4 vs TN 5 => Fail

=> I kick a bottle. Guard turns!

? Does he see me clearly?

-> No, but...

=> He's suspicious, starts walking toward the noise

By putting the above in a code block, we set it off from any adjacent narrative chunk of text. Here’s how it looks on my HTMLy blog:

S1 Dark alley, midnight
> Sneak past the guard
d: Stealth 4 vs TN 5 => Fail
=> I kick a bottle, guard turns
? Does he see me clearly?
-> No, but...
=> He's suspicious, starts walking toward the noise


That’s fairly terse. It conveys quite a bit of information in a small space. The first line above sets the scene for us: it’s Scene #1, we’re in a dark alley and it’s about midnight; line two starts with the action symbol: ‘>’ So it’s understood that Sneak past the guard is an action our protagonist (usually a PC, i.e., Player Character) is taking. Line 3 starts with the letter ‘d:’, which signals us that dice have been rolled to resolve how un/successful we were at sneaking past the guard. In this example, we weren’t. Now look at line 4.

The ‘=>’ symbol says “And here’s what the dice result means… “I kick a bottle. Guard turns!” is our in-the-moment interpretation of the failed die roll. So the guard turns toward the noise, but has he spotted me? Time to ask the oracle. A line beginning with ‘?’ means “ask the oracle”. When we ask the oracle, we’re asking the game-world a question. We roll some dice and see what the oracle replies. The final line above begins with the Consequences symbol, ‘=>’ where we interpret the oracular response.

My decision on whether or not to use this shorthand notation has to additionally take into account that it might prove a deterrent to people reading/enjoying my Actual Plays. And because Substack doesn’t give me much control over formatting, I’d probably wind up condensing it down to something like this, using semicolons to separate elements:

S1 Dark alley, midnight;> Sneak past the guard;d: Stealth 4 vs TN 5 => Fail;=> I kick a bottle. Guard turns!;? Does he see me clearly?;
-> No, but...;=> He’s suspicious, starts walking toward the noise

I can see myself using condensed notation like that if I weren’t blogging Actual Plays but instead was only keeping AP records for my own personal use.

Well, perhaps that’s too technical for some people’s taste, but I need to decide whether to adopt some version of it, or instead write everything out long-form — which inevitably will yank me out of solo-flow. Let me know what you think in the comments!

And now on with the story, in The Reddening: Part II…


Post #7

The hex map above was generated with rules from Atelier Clandestin’s Sandbox Generator and with the Windows Paint.net freeware.

Conventions used:

? a line starting with a question mark signals we’re asking the oracle a question.
→ a right-pointing arrow indicates the oracle’s response
> a right-facing angle-bracket shows PC action
=> shows consequences/outcomes
{ It is I, the Star Spirit, speaking in Stenn’s mind. }
Italicized text without curly braces denote Stenn’s private thoughts.

The above symbols are sometimes omitted when I choose to indicate the same info in longer-form narrative.

Scene: The Reddening, Part II

IGDT: Tuesday, November 7th, 35,386 B.C.

Moose Rock

Stenn got to his feet slowly, painfully. His knee joints popped loudly. Even with the central firepit and the two charcoal fires, the frost-den was rimed with ice crystals all around its base, from ground level to a height of more than three boh-arms. Stenn’s breath plumed white with each exhale.

Surprisingly, Chief Hrowaka had survived the night of intense cold after three solid hours of Red Snow fell. Unsurprisingly, Norda — Stenn’s mother — had not.

Stenn moved gingerly to the central firepit and added another hunk of peat, then he went and checked on Jenkla. For a moment, his heart lurched within his massive chest, but then he saw that she was breathing, after all.

He had suffered considerably through the night by insisting that she wrap herself in his bearskin in addition to layers of skins she already wore. He’d slept not at all, sitting as close as he dared to the central firepit and rotating on his buttocks every half minute in order to warm another quarter of his torso. He would be lucky if he did not contract Frost Lung. If he did, perhaps Uta come minister to him.

Jenkla stirred, and Stenn turned his head to look at her. As she came up through layers of sleep and registered her external environment, Stenn saw her brow knit and her mouth form a moue in reaction to the intense cold. { It is far colder than this, outside. } The Star Spirit had been his companion since he was twelve years old and had brought home his first elk to his clan.

His mate coughed, and Stenn turned concerned toward Jenkla. { She is hale, as is the child. } Stenn arched an eyebrow at this; this was new. A child? But he felt certainty in his chest. It would prove true. The spirit was never wrong, not that Stenn had ever noticed. The knowledge of the child lit a warmth in his heart that the cold of the frost-den could not quench. Emboldened, he moved to check on the chief.

“Father…” Stenn gazed down upon the chief. He scooped up a pelt from the floor to cover the chief’s bare feet.

“No…” croaked Hrowaka.
“You will get Frost Lung,” Stenn remonstrated.
“Cover my feet if you wish. I mean ‘No, I am not your father.’”

Stenn blinked and glanced over at Jenkla, but she was heating water for tea in an animal skull used as a bowl, and didn’t seem to have heard.

? Is he right?
→ Yes, and…
{ You have never seen nor met your real father. }
=> “That may be, but you are my father in my beating heart…”
=> I must seek out the Oracle. There are mysteries here…

“Fath— Chief, Norda is dead.” Stenn’s head sagged.
“She is walking with Gray Coyote,” came the phlegmy reply.
“Yes, she is. I will prepare a place in the Wall of Grandmoth—
“The Reddening has already provided, my son…”

Stenn turned to see that it was true: even as he looked, Norda’s body continued to break down into a rusty particulate, Sand of the Departed. Jenkla followed Stenn’s gaze, then she set aside her tea, rose, and went to Norda.

For a moment, Stenn was very still and hung his head. Then he turned back to the chief. “I thought you said you are not my father?”

“Perhaps,” said Hrowaka, “but you are the son of my heart. Now come kneel beside me, that I may impart my blessing and your vision journey.”