Hey Daniel, Thanks for the support and kind words about my book, Wanderings. I’m at work on others of this ilk. I appreciate your showing it on your channel, along with other great solo RPG resources.

Solo rpg isn't a science, it is an art. The rule is simple, if you are having fun, your doing it right.

Thanks for covering these solo RPG's and showcasing Geek Gamers work!

I know this is a late suggestion, hopefully it's useful. Regarding the race with the rival treasure hunter, everytime your character makes it to a "checkpoint", "milestone", or resting spot, roll a d2 or d3. The d2 would determine if the rival is 1 step in front or behind your character, and the d3 would add the possibility for them to be even with your character.

Your racetrack idea could work with a cribbage board and a modified deck of normal cards (red for you, black for your rival - only aces, twos and threes from each suit maybe?). At the end of your 12-hour cycle, draw a card. If it’s red, move your character peg up the track like 5 holes (a normal cribbage span), if black, your rival’s peg 5 holes. If your rival gets the dagger first, maybe you have stats for that rival and the game becomes about chasing that rival using that same peg system. You could have events or items like Tracking: you manage to find a set of footprints, move one span closer you your rival or Entangled: your rival has been slowed in the bush, move his peg back one span. If your rival manages to get past a certain point, they’ve gotten away with the dagger and then maybe the next session is attempting to infiltrate where the dagger is being kept in order to steal it? Just some random thoughts!

You could use Ironsworn's progress tracking in the base game. Just add some things like clues to help you fill in more boxes. Then, you just have to roll 2d10 to figure out what happens when you feel the adventure has gone long enough.

I’ve never heard of Fantasy Trip before… 3 hours later… Now I’ve gone down a rabbit hole.

Those Fantasy Trip cards look amazing! Regarding ways to track rival status, I won't recommend using progression bar (like Ironsworn) as it seems too much work for me and not adding enough “gameplay”. Instead, I would recommend design around the existing core "Gameplay Loop”. From what I see in the video, there are 3 phases that form your core gameplay loop 1. "Quest card" 2. "Weather card" 3. "Day event". The "Quest card" and “weather” seem like good place to start with.

 The first thing I can think of is using your weather cards that you are already rolling on everyday. For example, “all clear” would progress your rival's quest (if there is a rival at work), while some other adverse weather may hinder their progression.
 On the Quest card, I would use D6s to track the rival status. Every progression they gain from the weather card would give them a D6 on the quest card. At the end of each day / turn, you can roll the D6s on the card and see if there are any doubles / triples (based on difficult), which means your rival has finished their task, this can also be modified by rival’s ability, for example a common enemy may need to roll doubles 5+ while an elite only need to roll double 3+ etc. 

This will open possibilities to adopt classic board game mechanics like - using your luck to re-roll your rival’s quest progression dice etc. which hopefully won't make the game feel bloated while keeping it interesting. This also allows you to read the Quest dice roll to tell "how close" your rival is getting to their objectives i.e. rolling double 2s while they need double 3+ could mean they are narratively very close to their objective. Removing the need to ask the oracle (which sometimes take me out of the game)

First thought for me is that you adapt the urban adventure system from Scarlet Heroes. It could have been used already during the travel by seeing how you did in the challenges on the way but I could see it still working on the caves.

Str:17; Dex:17; Con:16; Int:12; Wis:12; Cha:14 ....sure you did. Maybe your GM should be a witness next time you 'roll' those stats 😉

My idea for the race would be to roll 2 dice for every skill roll related directly to traveling, one for your hero and one for the rival. It would (in my mind anyway) symbolize how they’re racing neck to neck, each facing their own version of each challenge. I imagine two dotted lines moving across a map, like old-school adventure movies. Then you can make it more or less detailed, counting successes and failures, and giving whoever has the most successes a head start at the artifact site (1 hour per success, or whatever seems appropriate). Or count how much they succeed the skill rolls by, and subtract the lower total from the higher, and make whatever’s left the number of minutes of the head start. Another potential feature would be that if the hero and the rival roll the same number on one of the opposed rolls, then they’re actually in the same place at the same time, facing the same challenge. Maybe they sabotage each other’s attempt at overcoming the challenge, or perhaps it’s so dangerous they form a temporary alliance? I think that, and making the skill rolls opposed/competitive would add excitement.

Great video Dan! Thanks for sharing all these tools.

You could use a nice pool system for the competitor. Every day you take to get to the objective is another die added to the challenger's pool. Set a target number at the beginning of the adventure based on how many days you expect to take to finish. When you reach the objective roll the competitor's dice pool to test against the target number to see if the competitor got there first. Difference between the roll and the target could be when the competitor got there. Tie means she is still there. Close means she arrives soon or was just there and you can catch her.

I really enjoyed this video! I’m in the same process of gathering resources for my own solo sessions and this gave me a few extra things to look into. Yes to Geek Gamers! I’m definitely into the same type of storytelling, and Wanderings is on my list of next to buy’s. Plus she’s awesome.

I got The Fantasy Trip cards about a month ago. SUPER useful for random events in solo play.

Glad to hear you like the Labyrinth Encounter Cards!

Very late to the party, but here's one simple way to track the race: A single "Tracker" card could be split into numbered, horizontal rows. You have a second card to represent your own progress, and a third to represent your rival's progress. The position of the 2nd and 3rd cards on top of the "tracker" would indicate who is further in the race. The idea is inspired by SpaceShipped's $ tracker, seen here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/oJ2mftaZz8vXoGw.html You'd just be placing 2 cards on top instead of 1. Bonus: A single double-sided Tracker card could be used for many different races: just specify how many "Steps" (or rooms?) are in the full race. You could also specify that any time 1 racer gets to a specific room/slot on the Tracker, some kind of event occurs -- that could either be built into the tracker itself, or specified as part of that race/macguffin/dungeon.

For the race, every time you battle, you can roll a d6. On d1 she completes 2 turns faster, d2-3 she completes 1 turn faster, d4-5 she completes one turn slower, d6 2 turns slower. Any time you reach a dead end, engage in battle with her with your current stats, if you win she losses 2 otherwise she gains 2 (remove all damage from that fight for both)

An excellent video. I really like the look of some of the products you showcased. I picked Deborah’s Wanderings as well but I like the look of some of the others. For your race with the dwarf opponent in your solo game have you thought about a progress chart for your character and the opponent? Each day/encounter you could roll a D6 for each. On a 1-2 they get -1 progress, 3-4 0 and 5-6 +1 progress (or vary the range) and you keep a running tally of the total. When you reach the final cavern in the adventure compare progress, if your character has a higher number then he’s there first, if the dwarf’s is higher she’s been and gone or, if their numbers are identical they both arrive at the same time. I look forward to hearing how the game turns out.

I think an interesting way to keep track of the rival's progress could be an extra tool for dice mitigation. If you fail a check you could change it to a success, possibly indicating that it took you more time to complete, and that moves your rival forward one on the track. The number of times you could do that before your rival overtakes would definitely need to be tuned to the system you are using. Maybe it could be equal to the adventure threat.

Two ideas come to mind to track the race to the MacGuffin. Not sure if somebody mentioned these so bear with me if they did. 1. Tie the race to the overland travel cards you are already using. When you pull one for yourself, pull one face down for your competitor. When you get to your destination flip the competitor's cards over and add up their total travel time compared to yours and whoever has the shortest travel time got there first. 2. Use a regular deck of playing cards to do a similar thing deal yourself a card face down, after each day of travel, and do the same for your competitor. You could use these cards in different ways to sort out who got there first. One way would be to play "war" one deck against the other, and whoever wins the most cards, you or your competitor, got there first. In any case if it does turn out that your competitor got there first, you could then have another set of roles or car draws to determine if they could be followed, did they leave clues behind, etc, for you to pursue. Or did they make a clean getaway. Or are they waiting there to ambush you. So even if the competitor got there first, there could be other gameplay options.

Ive been going through LMoP/DoIP 5e with some homebrew and DM Yourself. Meanwhile im trying to mishmash sci fi rpg games to create something akin to an encounter-rush where im playing as a lone mercenary doing contracts solo whether on the planet via foot or vehicle or in space. Its gonna be a sorta mid sci fi setting where kinetic and energy weapons are side by side alongside mechs and tanks have their use (also fighters and larger class ships) but no psionics and it was the fallout of a larger war. Inspiration was Armored Core, Battletech, Drox Operative and Dirty Bomb. Systems must support sci fi and use only a d6 though for the latter id give exception to worldbuilding systems. So far i have Stars Without Number, Tiny Frontiers 2e, a game using the Lumen system from itchio, lasers and six siders and oneDice space. Im inspired by your peril of cymbaline isle tbh for this mess im doing. Edit: in a basic fantasy game i solod the track i used is that less than 10 of a d20 roll, my character has to do an encounter and i add up the value up to a certain value where i reached the target. I also set a three month time limit as well.

Thank you Daniel ! I'm looking for resources to play solo myself, very interesting as usual :-)

Dear Daniel I sometimes use Excel to aid with games. If you use the randbetween function you can generate a random number say between 1 and 30 or whatever range of numbers you want. Maybe this might be helpful.

Loving the channel just grabbed mork borg after watching you show it off

I use these decks as well!

Great video. One suggestion though, if possible, would be to include links to all the materials you use in your videos. Even better if you could include your own affiliate links as another way to support the channel.

Those cards look interesting, but all very focused on the standard issue fantasy setting. Have you looked at Storyforge cards, which generate people, backgrounds and story beats independent of genre? The cards come with a booklet of patterns that you use to interpret the cards meaning for different purposes - kind of like a tarot deck. They're a great spur to the imagination.

Hey Daniel youve convinced me to give Scarlet Heroes a go. I intend to run some old BECMI modules that me and my friends never got round to playing in the 80s. Im 52 now and still love D&D, board games etc. Sadly two of my old school friends who I played D&D with have now passed on. I intend to make 3 bad ass characters and complete B5 Horror on the Hill, sonething we never got round to completing. Anyways all the best from Lancashire, the UK. Please keep doing your videos. Love your channel.

Great video with a lot of info. What are those cards you are writing on? Where did you get them?

Have you ever tried the "once upon a time" story game. Great material for story generation. It has plot cards, twists, character archetype, items and other stuff.

In your race for the "mcguffin" come up with a version of the victory track in Scarlet Heroes since you already have it. Or get the Delve version of Ironsworn, and use that Threat track. Me. Myself and Die uses it eventually in his second season.

The story engine is brilliant for this kind of thing/

I don't s'pose you have a video where you're showing us all those decks you've got there? :D

Will you be doing more Scarlet Heroes content?

What's your take on ironsworn?

Where can I find Deborah/Geek Games? Is it just a KZfaq thing?

Opening an encounter with a quote from Cool Air is never a good sign. SAN Check mandatory.

Set your threat level with a number to lower number higher pressure the bigger the number less pressure for example a threat level of four both parties 108 opposing DS once per turn roll to d20 one for you going for her the one who reaches 108

The NPCs (edit: in the deck of NPCs) seem to be largely attractive 20 year olds.

You need take a look on my game bro!

Out of this world! 👽!!! Do not waste your time = Promo>SM!!