About Solo Games with Savage Worlds

 Solo RPGs are almost as old as the hobby itself. Tunnels & Trolls, one of the oldest games out there, has a LARGE series of solo scenarios that's still going on with the latest adventure released a few weeks ago.

With the constant growing of the hobby, solo games are also growing more and more popular, with dedicated communities on most social platforms.

Not all RPGs have dedicated solo rules or expansions, though.

Savage Worlds has been my first go-to RPG for at least five years now. In my opinion it is a ruleset with great potential for solo games, because of all its meta components and rules: Bennies, Quick Encounters, Support and Tests seem perfect to make engaging and entertaining solo games.

There are a few interesting options already out there, each of them rather unique in approach, let's see what they are.

Deadlands - Crater Lake Chronicles is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book, set in the world of Deadlands - The Weird West, Pinnacle's flagship setting for Savage Worlds. You navigate through numbered paragraphs and make your choice at the end of each. It is a nice, three part story, well written and structured with, perhaps, little replay value. The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach makes for an out-of-the-box, immersive, well structured experience, but you will probably only play through it a few times and then that's it.

Solo Game Guide for Savage Worlds is a SWAG product that offers a completely different approach. It is a 15 page guide with tools to run your own stories and games. In other words, it helps you "be your own GM", and there's no ready adventure here. So, there's endless replay value... assuming YOU come up with adventure ideas. That's primarily achieved with a series of "oracular" mechanics, which answer questions you make while playing, and provide generic, inspirational input you'll have to flesh out to keep the adventure going. It may be thought of as a sort of on-the-fly, generic adventure generator. It is part of a large series of solo guides for many different RPGs, but seems to be well integrated with the specifics of Savage Worlds, with specific setting rules to enhance the single player experience.

Along the same line of oracular play, The Scheme Pyramid might be worth considering. Even though it is NOT designed for solo play, it proposes an "adventuring framework" that might be pretty good for solo games if what you you want is a guidance tool.

     

Gold & Glory is my fantasy toolkit for Old School dungeon adventures, and the G&G line includes a Solo/GMless guide with rules and suggestions for solo playing G&G adventures: with the rules and suggestions in the guide you can play (and replay) any of the seven dungeons found in the Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons book, as well as all the other dungeon adventures that are available for G&G. Replay value is fairly high because G&G dungeons are always new at every game.

The Crypt of Doom is a free online adventure that is ready for solo/gmless play with just the Savage Worlds rules, or expanded with the full G&G toolkit. It is based on the G&G dungeon generation system, but somewhat simplified because well, I'm a total noob at html!

....

And then there's Curse of Aufgarts, which I've been working on for weeks now, which should release in a few months! 

About Brancalonia, The Spaghetti Fantasy RPG

 Brancalonia is a soon-to-be-released setting for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. It launched with a nicely successful kickstarter which ran through April 2020.

The game was funded by 3297 backers, with more than $200.000 and a heap of unlocked stretch goals.

While the crowdfunding is closed, the game is available for preorder on the publisher site, Acheron Books. Oh and there's a neat quickstart folder that's free for grabs! 

Even though I don't play much D&D these days, this setting is pretty close to my interests as it boasts an all-Italian team, which includes my long time friend Mauro Longo, blogger, novelist, rpg author, and gaming scholar (and we created Ultima Forsan and Tropicana together).

And I really enjoy two sides of the project: all that went into the setting, AND how focused the game is going to be.

Here's the amazing map of Brancalonia, by Fabio Porfidia.

If you think this is going all epic and world-shaking like, I don't know, Eberron, think again.

The world of Brancalonia is a “back-to-front” version of Medieval Italy, an unheroic, picaresque and roguish world mixing references from over a hundred works of Italian fantasy tradition, pop culture, and collective imagery. That means it ranges from Pinocchio to Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, from the Sergio Leone movies to Italo Calvino and Dante Alighieri, picking up actual Italian folklore along the way. High brow literature meets pop culture meets tradition, in short, creating a fantasy that breaks free from the the same old dwarves and elves. It definitely is a lower-key fantasy than the usual D&D, with subtle and surreal wonders, depth as well as lots of tongue-in-cheek humor. All that, and stuff like being able to play a Pinocchio-like animated puppet!

Here's how it's described in the KS:

Now to the game itself, I love how they are designing a focused game experience: player characters are going to be a band of knaves working dirty jobs, cutpurses and cutthroats, mercenaries and treasure-hunters seeking the right job, roaming the kingdoms of a fantasy Italy, probably while fugitives from the law and their debts. All of this, while built on the D&D5E engine, is going to be supported with specific rules and useful tools.

Besides the usual and expected new races, classes, feats, spells etc., the book will feature special rules for Companies, Cronies, and Den management, and Bounties, Revels, and Prophecies. Those sound intriguing to me!

This big guy looks familiar... That's cool, right?

Now, as I said, Mauro Longo is a long time friend of mine, so I just had to ask him for some sweet, sneaky, inside-job preview, and he's passed me this: the Fairy Godfather! (art by Lorenzo Nuti)

About Ultima Forsan - Legends

 Yesterday SpaceOrange42 released Da Vinci's Engine, a new adventure for Ultima Forsan written by Mauro Longo and me, with art by Francesco Saverio Ferrara (the same artist of the Gold & Glory book).

Here's the blurb:

Da Vinci’s Engine is an Ultima Forsan adventure for three to six Novice heroes and it is the first scenario of the Ultima Forsan Legends series!

In this adventure, the heroes must venture into the battlefield of Marignano, near Milan, to find the most ingenious inventor of all history, Leonardo Da Vinci, and win him to the cause.

Da Vinci, featured as NPC in this adventure, is the first of the Seven Legends that will be available as Player Characters for the grand finale of Ultima Forsan Legends - Escape from Old York!

The adventure includes an Appendix with rules to buy, modify or create Armillary Armors: 20 feet tall anthropomorphic contraptions designed for the destruction of the living and the Dead!

This adventure is for Savage Worlds Deluxe but includes the Ultima Forsan Conversion Document for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

Ultima Forsan Legends
Gather the Magnificent Seven of the Macabre Renaissance and enlist them into the craziest adventure of all history, a desperate fight against thousands of enemies to free the Pope King, held prisoner by Richard III in Ghastly England! COMING SOON!  

 

So here's a bit of backstory of how this got published.

Ultima Forsan - Legends was released in Italian as a single book featuring two parts: part one features the seven scenarios mentioned above, one for each of the "Magnificent Seven". In each adventure, the heroes must, locate, negotiate, help, and in some cases rescue, one of the Macabre Renaissance Legends: actually Legendary characters that are introduced as NPCs. Who are they?

Leonardo Di Vinci, the most ingenious inventor of all history

The cunning statesman Niccolò Machiavelli

The Spanish soldier, poet and swashbuckler Garcilaso de la Vega

Joan of Arc, heroine of the French Reconquest against the Dead, brought back to life by a mysterious group of heretics

Philippus Teophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, the Swiss alchemist and Plague Doctor

Glyceria of Novgorod, the Saint Huntress, slayer of the Dead in the Ruthenian lands

Wilhelmina Murray-Shakespeare, actress, charlatan, witch, and grandmother of a famous playwright...

Each of them is a mix of historical and fictional, in different proportions.

The series also spans through most of Europe, with the group visiting places in Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Ruthenia, and finally Britain, where the second part of the book begins. And how are the heroes traveling through Europe? They'll fly aboard the Pinta, a flying ship steered by legendary sky captain Christopher Columbus!

The second part of the book is the Escape from Old York campaign, where players have the option of using those Legendary Rank NPCs as Player Characters. After all, the task at hand is a Legendary one..!

Now we're finally able to release the seven adventures in English, and Da Vinci's Engine is the first in the list. The other six scenarios are ready and will be published in the next weeks, one per month!

Each includes:

• The adventure itself
• The Character Sheet for the featured Legendary NPC
• A custom Legendary Edge that embodies the Legendary NPC's true speciality
• A unique appendix with some new options or game tools
• The Ultima Forsan Conversion Document to SWADE.

We decided to add The Ultima Forsan Conversion Document to SWADE because we are releasing these adventures as they were when we first released in Italian, also considering that Ultima Forsan is a setting native to the Savage Worlds Deluxe edition, but the option to play with SWADE is there for those who prefer the latest edition rules.

Mauro and I are very happy with this release. Even though Ultima Forsan hasn't proved as popular, in English, as it is in Italy, Spain and Russia, it's a setting we love, and the general praise it has received and still receives makes us feel proud and also lucky to have been able to make it and share with the world gaming community in four different languages.

And to celebrate the return of Ultima Forsan, SpaceOrange42 has set the Ultima Forsan Setting Book at a discount price, so this is definitely the time to take a look, check the reviews it got so far (spoiler: 31 ratings averaging 4.5/5 stars!), and pick it up, if you want!

10 QUESTIONS TO: Marco Arnaudo

Marco Arnaudo has recently released Four Against the Great Old Ones, a pen-and-paper solo game that pits intrepid investigators against Lovecraftian cults and entities in the 1930s.

But who is Marco Arnaudo? Marco is a scholar of history and culture, a family man, a martial artist, a carnivorous plants enthusiast, and a big time solo-player!

Now, let’s see how good professor Arnaudo is at answering questions.

1 Hello Marco. Tell us about Four Against the Great Old Ones as if you were trying to sell it to your aunt!

My aunts are all dead or insane, so it’s perfect; it’s like they played the game already. FatGOO (also known as “Fat Goo”) is a solo and cooperative narrative game set in the world of H. P. Lovecraft. It is based on the core engine of Four against Darkness, but it is a standalone game, and contains significant deviations adopted to fit the theme. The players start controlling a party of four investigators, and may recruit many helpers along the way. A great ritual is rumored to take place in 40 days to summon one of six possible cosmic horrors. The players must discover the clues to identify the location of the ritual, and must rush there to prevent the completion of the ritual. Happy now, aunt Pina?

2 Let’s talk about design. How long did you work on it? Was it a night job? How would you describe your creative process?


I’ve been playing FaD for a long time, and I had been toying with the idea of a Lovecraftian version for almost as long. Originally I thought of a dungeon crawler in which you’d explore a modular temple, but it felt too derivative, and did not really capture the spirit of Lovecraft’s cosmic dread. In the last year I reread basically all of Lovecraft’s works (including the collaborations), and made notes about the elements I wanted to include. Once I did that, and I was inspired by Four against the Titans to use an outdoors map, I started filling up encounter tables for different locations using my notes. I probably started doing this last January. At that point, I playtested it furiously to tighten and smoothen all parts, create connections between locations, ensure that it was balanced (by which I mean: lethal), and most importantly check that it was fun. By May I had a solid draft, which I sent out to external playtesters. They gave me further recommendations but overall said they really enjoyed the game. And here we are!!


3 Let’s get deeper into design. Four Against Darkness is a dungeon crawl game, and you adapted it to become a more story-driven game. Which was the hardest part of designing FAtGOO? And which was the easiest?

A big change I implemented from FaD to increase the narrative sense is that most events can be resolved only once per game. In FaD you can encounter hordes of goblins over and over again, and that’s ok, but how does it make sense to keep meeting Herbert West or Keziah Mason multiple times, always as if for the first time? I think by making most encounters unique I vastly increased the narrative element of the experience.

The hardest part was to fit all the most fascinating locations from Lovecraft’s world in a single map. I could set the story in the U.S. only, but then how would I include the settings of At the Mountains of Madness, Under the Pyramids, or The Temple? or I could use a world map, but then I would miss the original focus, which still is the U.S. The solution I found manages to hold together these two perspectives (I think!).

The easiest part was where to place most of the content. I wanted to be as faithful to Lovecraft as possible, so things generally speaking are in my game where Lovecraft placed them in his works. In some cases the location is undefined or underdefined in the original works, so I adopted my personal interpretation, and that was fun to decide.


4 Let’s talk about the publishing side of it. How did you get to publish FAtGOO with Ganesha Games?

Since my game was based on FaD, it was a natural choice to approach Andrea Sfiligoi and ask him if he’d be interested in publishing it. Which he did, hooray!


5 Are you satisfied with the reception it got so far?

It has only been 2 weeks or so, but all the reception has been very positive. Early players have spotted some mistakes that had escaped proofreading, and that we were able to correct before we produced the first printed copies. People seem to be having a good time with it, which is the point of course!!


6 Are you thinking of making more games? Are you already working on something game-related?

I am working on the first expansion for Fat Goo, Carcosa Rising, based on elements of the mythos coming from Bierce and Chambers. I also recently had a skirmish miniature game accepted by a major publisher. It is called Pulp!! and it is set in the fabulous world of the pulp fiction of the 1930s. It should come out in 2021, or 2022.


7 You are quite fond of solo and of historical games. Can you suggest a beginners-friendly game, and one for expert players?

For beginners, any game in the States of Siege system. For advanced players, D-Day at Omaha Beach.


8 You frequently play with your kids. How old are they, and what games have engaged them the most? Any tips for playing with kids?

They are 8 and 10. They both like fantasy games and eurogames, and the 8yo also likes historical wargames. The trick to playing with kids is: let them win the first game, to get them hooked, and then play honestly. Also, get them started ASAP, and ignore the age indications on the box. They have zero value.


9 Now let’s get back to your aunt. Please explain to her your book, Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today!

Ok aunt Pina, you haven’t read a single book in your life, and you only speak Piedmontese, but you are really going to enjoy this book in English. Also you hate games, so this is really an opportunity for you to branch out and discover how games learned to tell stories between the late 1960s and now. First wargames influenced the invention of role-playing games, and RPGs in return lent their narrative perspective to board games. The book tells the development of narrative trends in tabletop gaming in the constant interaction between board games and RPGs.

10 RPGs. What are your favorites?

Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. It may make me sound basic, but it is what it is.


11 I know, they were supposed to be 10, but I have one more question before we say goodbye. Please point us to a song you think we should listen to.

Too Many Friends by Placebo!

Great song. Thank you Marco! Bye!

Stay tuned for more interviews! Hit me on the Axian Spice Facebook page, on Twitter or even on Telegram to never miss one! 

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About On Mighty Thews

 On Mighty Thews is a pulp sword & sorcery RPG by Simon Carryer, and one of my favorite "modern" (or "narrative") RPGs.

 OMT is designed for prepless oneshot games or short campaigns. At the beginning of the game, the players and the GM follow a few simple, engaging, fun steps that create a "setting" for your session (it can be a city, an empire, a continent, or a whole world). This is mostly done by taking turns at drawing a map, one element at a time. The map will be used by the GM as a setting for the adventure, so the players have a chance to put whatever they think will be fun to see in the game. Infested jungle? City of merchants? Ruins in the desert? Draw it to on the map...

It is a "modern" game, meaning that the rules don't aim at recreating physics but at producing a fun, coherent story, and it codifies specific situations where players partake of the GM's narrative authority.

With proactive, creative players, this game is wonderful. I know, I've played it a lot! It is not particularly suited for campaign play (no conventional character development), but it's amazing for one shot, prepless games.

A fun trivia about OMT: Savage Worlds was one of the inspirations for the game, and so some of the OMT dice, wounds, and raise mechanics are immediately familiar to SW players!

OMT is available on drivethru!