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SolumProtocol's avatar

The opening letter was so good, I was immediately like “oh no, something bad has happened this isn’t Idril!” That was a brutal combat, it was only a handful of turns.

The setting of LOTR seems like it would suit Solo play, but the rules do seem like it would be very challenging without running a whole party, and that would be A LOT of book keeping. I suppose you could have a small scope story, where the PCs are only likely to fight a smaller band of orcs, but it’s hard to picture. Sometimes systems don’t click though. I’d still read about Scylda so I can crib your notes for when I work up the courage (and time) to try The One Ring out solo.

If you don’t continue TOR, do you have any other games that are sparking your interest?

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Mylon Pruett's avatar

Thanks! I was really hoping it would quickly become obvious that it was a different author without suddenly being super weird!

The combat was wild, it would be like characters never rolling above a 6 and the enemies getting multiple crits in a round of D&D combat. It was already a very dangerous situation that became impossible after a few rolls.

As for playing Solo ToR, I feel like I must be missing something on my end. It has a huge solo RPG community built around the game, so there's gotta be something they're doing that I'm missing. I do agree with you, though, that the setting is incredible, but it feels like, as written, it would be hard to engage with one character. It might be better if I were focused more on exploration, but that's not really the kind of game I want to play.

If I don't continue ToR, I feel like at some point I really owe it to myself to check out Ironsworn. I have never played with that system, and it feels like the pivotal solo RPG system. I also really want to look into Dragonbane because I hear it has really good solo rules, and I also just like to check the system out.

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SolumProtocol's avatar

I’ve picked up the Strider PDF to try and tackle it at some point, I haven’t made much headway. I get distracted by the art and then by something else haha.

Ironsworn is great, I love that it’s designed from the ground up to advance the story, although I do like a bit more crunch with my combat as a personal preference. Still great though! I own the Dragonbane starter set and I love its vibe but I’ve yet to actually crack it open.

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Mylon Pruett's avatar

Also that is what I am most worried about playing Ironsworn. I really like at least somewhat crunchy combat and I'm worried that it will feel unsatisfying.

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SolumProtocol's avatar

The weakness is real, and sometimes it feels like the less time I have, the more games I somehow discover. The backlog is reaching critical mass at this point!

I will say that the combat for Ironsworn clicked for me eventually. The non combat portions, the exploring and investigation were really fun right off the bat, but it took a while for me to get what I should be doing for the fights, like when to use what moves, and why wouldn’t I just try to hit them over and over again? That kind of thing. You really have to throw yourself into the fiction, and sometimes I didn’t want to do that and I just wanted to hit things haha

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Mylon Pruett's avatar

I see you too suffer from the great weakness that many tabletop gamers do. Owning/wanting to play more systems than would ever be possible given the amount of time you have lol

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