Stat It: Bettin’ Bullets

So, I visited a friendly local game store that hosted a “create your own character” event. Of the games that I built a character for, one of them was left out due to me being one of the only people to attend the event: Bettin’ Bullets.

The reason is that it can’t reasonably be made with just one player as per the rules. However, I will challenge this notion by running a solo character creation session. Note that I will be playing through this game blind which means I will be going over the entire book up to the character creation rules.

We get a foreword that explains the unique premise for this game. The creator’s dad was a major fan of westerns and, more importantly for this game, auctions. While the creator wasn’t a major ‘cowboy’ himself, he decided to make a game entirely dedicated/for his father to enjoy.

Now, how exactly do auctions function in this? Well, with task resolution, the GM holds an auction. Now you can see how this couldn’t easily be played solo, as you need other people to bid, even with the GM having a ‘secret bid’ that is essentially the difficulty class. What I like is that there’s different outcomes depending on the situation of whether you bid more bullets than the secret bid or more bullets than you actually have.

Finally, it’s time for character creation. When we were talking about Bettin’ Bullets, the store owner said that we needed two others in order for this to happen, so I’ll keep that in mind while I go over the rules and formulate a plan of action.

Solo Gaming Appreciation Month Spotlight: Monthly PUM

So, for Solo Gaming Appreciation Month, I was most likely going to just vibe out for November, maybe even try to get one solo project as my contribution…

But then Jeansen Vaars, creator of the Unfolding Machines, came out and introduced Monthly PUMs. Scenarios created that facilitate the PUM Companion program. Having been an early adopter of the program though not really using it much outside of a Dungeon Crawl Classics game, I decided to jump in.

Though, deciding what game system to run was an issue. As much as I like to run GURPS, hunting down the specific splatbooks just to play what would amount to a one or two-shot game would be a logistical nightmare. Also generating NPCs would also be a nightmare, though by that point I’d just have to say what rank they have in a certain stat and say “yeah”.

For one reason or another, my idea went to creating my own system. The name having stuck to a rather easy one: Stonehack, a riff on how OSR games would often name themselves [blank]hack. The base premise is also very OSR: A roll-under system where the attributes double as your DC.

Another idea that I added in was the idea of incorporating class features into species (given this being a setting where Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, among other proto-humans, coexist, the substitute name for race makes sense here), a concept I thought was interesting enough to do here.

Though, this was all after I had created my campaign. I hadn’t really thought of an idea for one despite wanting to play, but one idea stuck out after seeing the name of another player’s character (for those wondering, it was Khayos): Kratos.

Okay, granted, it’s not the Kratos because he would definitely be 10k years too young to be in the Neolithic times, but essentially a character who shared his name and some basis of how both his Greek and Norse versions act, since his Animistic version hasn’t exactly had an established character outside of “owes a life debt”.

Which, I guess I should get to now.

So, Kratos in this setting owed a life debt to the village chieftain who died after a landslide. He was told of this landslide via an ancient mammoth spirit known as the Old Whispering Soul. As he arrived, he helped as much as he could, but was told by the elder that the next in line for the Chieftain, Hidden Sun, was lost in the commotion.

Because the debt was never paid, Kratos decides this would be the repayment and so he goes to look for her. By this point, I decided to overhaul the impromptu system and this is where I spent the better part of November, creating a system that at least covers 50% of the possible niches I would need to handle such as creating more characters, handling skill rolls, or how the rune system would work mechanically.

I think a main reason why this was the case was because I needed to really flesh out how his skills worked and that the attributes felt way too silly originally (they were stuff like “hit, thunk, ugh”, things you’d do for a Gonzo/Loonie RPG and not something more serious like what’s going on here).

After a series of good rolls, Kratos finds Hidden Sun, but the PUM adds that there’s a complication. My conclusion was that Hidden Sun wasn’t doing okay. I rolled a Nat 20 on a medicine check.

Normally, this would be a good thing. If this were any other D20 game.

But this is a roll under system. This is like the Mirror Universe of D20s, so a Nat 20 here is a Critical Failure and so, Hidden Sun was not saved and she is dead.

Kratos proceeds with a ritual for leaving her dead body to the elements, but unfortunately, someone catches him and assumes the worst. The character is, based off the description given by PUM and Vaars themselves, essentially an evil Samwell Tarly, so I named him Quiet Snow. While Kratos was able to convince him that it’s not what it looks like, Snow still uses it as leverage to blackmail him into being his muscle.

Rolling up what the quest will be, it turns out that he wants me to f up the Chieftain’s son, Shaking Earth, even if it means angering the Old Whispering Soul in the process, as Quiet Snow believes it’s for the benefit of his own village…

And that’s what I did so far this month. Honestly, I had a blast playing this and I definitely will continue playing this to see how this game ends. I’m also thinking of expanding the game to include more Species (though I best be careful with how many I include because too many and I will end up needing to figure out which Class Features to put onto them without either running into duplicates or making them overpowered) or even implement the Pet system from Mother of Origin.

I definitely know that, if and when the next PUM comes out, I’ll be pulling from Sony’s mascots for inspiration, an old tactic I did back when I played that Press Start game, though with less Foghorn Leghorn.

With that, I wish you all a happy Solo Gaming Appreciation Month! Bon Voyage, Gamers!

Casting a Spotlight on: Marching Order’s Kickstarter

So, originally I was going to make a Marching Order actual play or at the very least a Stat It, but unfortunately, a lot of things held me back from completing it in time, so I figured, on the last week of the Kickstarter, I would instead link you to its page.

As of this writing, it as well kicked off its goal, but any amount helps, especially as we have two stretch goals left to clear: a redefined loot table and six more challenges for the sewers of a dungeon that I will be doing for my Marching Order mini-campaign.

Having read the material I was given a while back, I can honestly say this is a really good game to play solo and I am very eager to share my Actual Play with you all once I finished it, but for right now, this Spotlight will have to do.

Why I REFUSE to Play the Racist RPG Wizards Won’t Let You See

In all honesty, I was gonna write up this whole article about the secret third RPG that was so bad that I electively didn’t want to play it, but as I looked more into it, the plot twist became more that even if I had that morbid curiosity to, just once, do play it, I can’t.

At first, I would write this as a sort of creepy pasta “the RPG that Wizards wants you to forget” where I would talk about this RPG disappeared off the face of the earth, but it can found in, and I cannot be making this up even if I tried, a court document.

Yeah, things are about to be hectic. Remember the Racial Holy War RPG I elected not to play due to the fact that it was borderline impossible to play if you removed the titular element? Yeah, now we have that IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Yep, today, we’re gonna take a look at Star Frontiers: New Genesis, an attempt to reboot the old school game of the same name (barring the subtitle, that was their addition and will be referred to as such henceforth to avoid confusion with the OG Star Frontiers) by a new company sporting the title of TSR.

I’m sure there’s people more educated on the rise and fall of this quote-unquote “rebirth of TSR”, but to make a long story short, Ernie Gygax, Gary Gygax’s son, helmed the revival of TSR, the company that used to make D&D before a bunch of business deals and CEO decisions sunk their ship.

Unfortunately, Ernie was far right, possibly even alt-right at that. Prior to the release of New Genesis, a separate TSR had to end up switching names to Solarian Games just to avoid associating with all the crap that Ernie was saying… and, well, because there was two TSRs running.

All of this was foreshadowing for what New Genesis had in store. Though, before I delve into the contents, I had to say, it was hard to find this game to take a look at it for myself. See, the game was so infamously racist (among other things) that Wizards of the Coast sued the living crap out of them for trademark fraud, which is ironic given they were gonna try and sue them for something trademark related.

Along with this, they went on the offensive and removed all copies of the game from the internet, making it hard to find. I can’t even call this “the game that time forgot” because I’ve seen half of Thunderegg Productions’ products go poof overnight and their names erased from Google’s SEO. No, I call this “the game Wizards wants you to forget”. And no, 4^th Edition doesn’t count because that is getting some comeback via one of the many 5e clones that are coming out in 2025 thanks to the OGL debacle…

Now, that aforementioned court paper is by far the only preserved copy of the game that I can find… but its in excerpts. Bits and pieces from the playtest that was subpoenaed and then just shown the highlights with literal highlighter to showcase the worst comments. Every single attempt to find the game is either a dead end or some messed up rabbit hole into Conspiracyland like how the racist comments were added in via a “bad actor using Google Docs” despite the edit being done seconds ago.

That last part alone lost my interest in seeing just how bad the game is because if the story behind it is a convoluted game of trademark infringement, weird supportive fans who try their darndest to create false flags, and a cease and desist so large that the game is blown off the face of the earth save for file I found off a podcast, I think I’m better off just playing the original.

But even going into the game’s rules itself, it’s not even done. I could have saved you this entire story of how this game made Wizards sue NuTSR or how impossible it is to find this rulebook, but the fact of the matter is that the contents consist of just character creation and ability checks. Hell, I don’t even know if they even made a section for ability scores and checks because either they stopped writing there or the excerpts stopped there because there wasn’t as many juicy details as the character creation.

This is like a monkey’s paw situation. I look for this game to roast and I can’t find it. I find the only copy in a court paper, but it’s mostly in excerpts. I try to find the full version, and I have to make a sanity roll because all I get is glimpses of a past flame war that I was not a part of. I decide to actually read the “book”, and I find that it’s practically barebones even with the excerpts.

Welp, here we go.

World War AI

AI. A lot of people have very strong opinions on using them in the world of creative writing but I found it has a use in Solo Roleplaying, be it as a makeshift Dungeon Master or a Driver/Tool for use in helping move along the game, like what I did in having characters react to Zer0bi in my Overpowered games.

However, one interesting avenue I want to checkout is how AI does with just playing RPGs. Flip the script and make the AI the players for once. This is, paradoxically, what I call a Nolo RPG, as there’s no real player at the helm, but rather an algorithm reacting based off instructions and context given to it.

Inspiration struck me when I was working out and understanding the backstory for my character in Dead Stick so that I may get the feel for his character when writing the journal entries.

As of November 2023, there are now three main AI in the competitive market and so, as a neat little experiment, I’m going to have all three of them play Dead Stick to see which one would be suited for solo play or even nolo play.

But first, as a sort of getting to know section, I figured we let the AI introduce themselves so we know what we’re dealing with.

Dead Stick: The Perfect Journaling Game For Remembrance Day

Let me preface this with the elephant in the room. At the start of October, 2023, the Israel–Hamas war became plastered over the news and fresh on everyone’s minds as fear loomed over the horizons. The main reason for this is because of a third-party that got caught in the crossfire: Palestine and the Gaza Strip, as the conflict had killed thousands of Palestinians, many of which were children.  What’s worse is that Israel’s war “effort” is the very cause of those casualties, to put extremely lightly.

This, coupled with the last year’s Russia–Ukraine conflict (of which is still ongoing) and even several close calls that had been strung together since the start of 2020, a lot of fear regarding WWIII had increased and, personally, I can’t help but sympathize with the people who are afraid that one day, they’re gonna wake up to hear that war has been declared.

With that and just how recent the event was overall, my thought was to just cancel this year’s Solo RPG Remembrance Day altogether, since war was the last thing on everyone’s mind right now, even compared to last year with the Russia–Ukraine conflict.

However, when I was reviewing last year’s post, I came across this quote from past me:

In hindsight, some may argue that me not doing a solo game surrounding war might be for the best given the real-life war that is going on right now in Ukraine, but isn’t that more of a reason for why I would need to do one, to honor those who are currently fighting to ensure peace for the country?

Though, it’s a blessing in disguise, as I can get these feelings out, because at one point, I also asked myself “why exactly did I keep this tradition going when there were so many others to keep going?” and thanks to this […], I was able to understand why.

It was to recapture some of the nostalgia I had with some movies I watched so long ago and live them out once more in solo roleplaying, but also to step in the boots of those who have fought and died for peace, even if it was behind a screen and some virtual dice.

https://solorpgvoyages.wordpress.com/2022/11/11/why-do-i-do-remembrance-day-posts/

I was put into this exact situation before last year and I found a brand-new meaning by looking back at my old archives. That’s the reason why it’s called Remembrance Day, as it gives us a chance to remember that we’ve been in these situations before where it seemed like the entire world would destroy itself but ultimately peace, freedom, and justice won.

And so, let us not look into the future, but rather the past, with the game Dead Stick. It’s a journalling RPG that puts us in the shoes of, not a solider, but rather a crew mechanic who fixes up the aircraft for soldiers to go off in. Skimming through the PDF, there were some really intriguing moments in here that really speak to me in a style similar to Thousand-Year-Old Vampire.

So without any further delay, let’s get into this game with backstory creation. This is done by answering some questions via coin flips, so, I shall do that right now.

Overpowering a Cultist Raid

Welcome to part 2 of my playthrough of the Overpowered RPG. To recap, Overpowered is an RPG where you play as a robot clearing through dungeons by neutralizing threats to adventurers. However, during one such scan, a robot named Zer0bi was taken into the Lords’ Alliance by Sildar to be trained into being an asset. Previously, I had used Claude to give me base ideas of how Sildar would react, so I’ll use it to flesh out how the training between Sildar and Zer0bi went.

Overpowering a Goblin Cave

A rather unique solo game hit my notice: Overpowered. The premise is rather simple: You play as a robot that explores dungeons or other such areas and neutralizes threats. As such, the game is applicable to basically any map you can think of from your favorite RPG.

But the real kicker is that this game has a competitive eSport side to it where you’re trying to get the most points. Now, there’s potential in someone using this for mega dungeons like Dungeon of the Mad Mage or even meat grinder dungeons like Tomb of Horrors.

For me, though, I’m interested in another aspect of it. However, for this first run, I’ll play the game as initially intended and whip out a standard module: the Lost Mine of Phandelver. The module features four dungeons, so I will pick the first one for the sake of those who haven’t had the chance to play this module.

But first, a brief introduction to my character, Zer0bi:

“This big guy was abandoned on a battlefield, left for scrap. Boy, did the military miss out. We’ve reprogrammed it and given it the necessary repairs, equipping it with a few extra tools to make it better suited for exploration. It still prefers to keep out of sight, and it’s extremely efficient at neutralizing targets. Just keep the safeties active, for the sake of caution. We’re trying to be non-intrusive, after all.”

Hmm… This gives me some ideas for a potential story arc for Zer0bi, but now, we play.

The first attempt to get an AI to play A Quiet Year (I Guess This Will Be Playing It Nolo?)

What you’re about to read is an attempt I made last year trying to get an AI to play A Quiet Year. It failed due to the Colab facilitating the AI failing and me losing interest in running the project during the time it took to repair it. This was done before the advent of ChatGPT, when AI really took off and while I’ll be using another AI to facilitate the craft (Claude), the below experiment proves to be promising for the next experiment, encouraging me to give this another whirl. However, it will come after my experiment with playing Alice is Missing Solo. For now though, enjoy:

One of the games I had trouble playing solo was The Quiet Year due to how difficult it was without betraying the overall factor of being a scientist observing an experiment. However, with some recent discoveries, I realized that this may no longer be the issue.

A while ago, an avid Twitch streamer by the name of DougDoug created a board game in which he and his chat vied to take over territories and resources to acquire victory points. Not too far from your usual board game, but what throws things out of whack is the manner of which he simulates successes and failures. It’s not via dice rolls, but by an AI writer.

I briefly mentioned this over in my chat about how playing solo isn’t like writing a book at all, but one of the aspects of a non-authoring solo experience is through these AI writers. The tool DougDoug uses is a paid tool called NovelAI which is an extremely robust and sophisticated tool for beginners to try out, but there’s plenty of tools to use if you look hard enough.

To swing this back to The Quiet Year, as you might have guessed, inspired by DougDoug’s videos, I myself will use an AI writer to simulate The Quiet Year in the most hands-free approach possible so no direct interference from me, meaning no inserting myself as a character. However, I won’t be using Novel AI, but rather, it’s direct, free competitor: KoboldAI, though it may require either utilizing python and a GPU or working with Google Colab to utilize it.

Personally, both services are incredibly good, and I’d even throw Dreamily in there for good measure (especially if you use a phone since it’s tailor made for them in mind) and it ultimately boils down to preference. I’d do a whole review on AI writers because I’m that invested in them, but the long story short is that Dreamily is extremely beginner friendly and great for mobile users, NovelAI is the common approach with tons of user-friendly features, and KoboldAI is your free, open-source alternative with some tinkering required, which is what we’re using for this experiment. Word to the wise, though, Dreamily is free to start but by no means is it completely free.

I’ll be using a 13B Nerys TPU Model, but in the interest of both my time and Google Colab’s time, I’ll only be doing 20 total cards/scenarios and be generating a couple of times to see what the outcome is. I did a few test runs to make sure the AI was running good as well as tweak the AI’s settings to ensure it does the generations well enough. This is going to be our first dive into this, so fingers crossed and knock on wood.

To assist in generating definitions, we have ourselves another AI writer that is mostly used for general stuff that will generate on the fly things for our worldbuilding. One stipulation I have is that I cannot interact with the characters in anyway. The only thing I can do is influence the narrative in an omniscient way, much like how a scientist would introduce new elements to the experiment. Without further to say, let’s go.

Stat It: Five Star Wars From Home

Five Parsecs from Home looks to be the best means to play a sci-fi open world campaign (or rather open galaxy?) as it plays out in an episodic story of a motley crew of space-faring mercs with randomized events that go on between different planets, supplying both a gamist and narrativist effect while giving a simulationist feel once you get your boots on the ground in the battle portions of the game.

However, the game is primarily for skirmishes, which means you will need quite a lot of minis and terrains, as well as a different view of how to move units and attack. Basically, it’s less like playing D&D and more like playing Warhammer. Even with the Freelancers Handbook, it feels rather a little too complex for me to jump right into it…

Luckily for me, though, there’s a spacefaring game that I want to play for a very long time and this would serve as the perfect framework. Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG is well known for its unique dice mechanics and character customization and I’ve been meaning to do a solo game on it for a long time. And, to my good fortune, there’s even a solo oracle that works well with the Genesys system, assuming I would need to ask questions along the way.

Let’s get to work with creating our crew first.