lstewart4 wrote: ↑Fri Jun 29, 2018 12:37 pm
I have not used Basic Fantasy yet, but I have had success playing solo/gmless using Mythic GM emulator. Also using
https://www.rpgsolo.com/ for gm emulation and randomness. My interest in basic fantasy was for the very reason of solo, a lighter system but still structured.
I see this a lot, when people ask about playing RPGs solo, people say you cant, or that it's a social game, or go play a video game. My current stage in life with three small children I can not find any regularly scheduled time to play. But I can find an hour here and there to scratch the RPG itch. Solo is different, but it is very rewarding. This is a great video about the mindset one should have when playing Solo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfnFp83pvKM
Edit: First and foremost, thank you for the link to that excellent video and channel. Her videos are more helpful than anything I've seen before.
My apologies for bumping an older thread, but I just finished the first leg of what may become a campaign, and did it in more or less exactly the way you mentioned. I'm a solo gamer, too, meaning no one is in the house except for me. For this game, I used things like Mythic GM Emulator (the book), as well as Mythic Variations 1 & 2, and also Universal NPC Emulator (UNE). I also sprinkled in a few NPC characteristics and names rolled from Vornheim, but didn't want to overuse that book, as I'm planning on using the setting and tables in a more dedicated way when I try Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
On one hand, I've barely scratched the surface of the actual mechanics of Basic Fantasy, as the way those solo tools work almost creates a game by itself from whatever images it helps conjure in your head. That can become a very soft game when using a basic RPG like BF, especially if you forgot to use the section of BF that talks about generating village encounters, or if you forgot to incorporate your charisma score into interactions, both of which I did (doh). However, I wrote up pages and pages of Mythic-engineered intrigue after escaping a giant crab spider and finding a small village. I lived that part of the adventure pretty fully, before the game returned to the realm of BF's actual rules.
To illustrate what kind of result you can get from solo playing this way, and to put it very briefly: all I wanted was to purchase a sword or mace, as I had only brought a longbow along for what had been a simple hunting excursion. However, a local girl's mother foresaw my arrival, and when I also decided to buy a blanket, she sold me a blanket of binding - something which was also an invention of Mythic's simple binary answers and word associations - which, while usually used to keep the village's children from wandering off, prevented me from returning home after I'd slept with her drunken daughter, who initially felt guilty about the ruse and pretended to be a harlot. Turns out her father had also sold his armory and was using the funds to build a home for us, and to bribe me into the marriage. At least they cared about her future. I agreed, only to have my Elf/Fighter butt handed to me in a bad way when I took my new wife hunting for none other than that same giant crab spider. Good thing she was there to continue the adventure as a new PC with her sleep spell...managed to grab some nice swag from a couple of stirges.
Most of that was driven/engineered by Mythic and UNE, using just numerical tables and vague word combination tables, with my imagination the glue that bound it all together into something that made sense. The BF rules only kicked in when I bought things, fought creatures, and mapped the spider's cave lair. So, you should be able to see how, given a better understanding of BF rules to put together with those tools, one could create some very solid gaming sessions, or even a campaign...something much better than what I did in this, my very first foray of any kind into RPGs.
