solo ttrpgs – Page 6 – PopCult Reviews

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – The Electric State Part Two

Check out an overview of the system and the introduction to our travelers in the first part here.

Solo play in The Electric State involves several playing card draws to generate details from tables. I won’t be recording every single card draw, focusing on those related to plots.

Wyatt Butler glanced out the driver’s side window to see the rusted smiling face of Victor Volt staring back at him in the early morning sunlight from across the desert brush. The Explorer quickly passed beyond the final resting spot of that long dead metal hulk and past a hand painted sign that read “California City. Pop: 220. Crystal nervously fidgeted with the zipper on her jacket. Wyatt asked if he should stop or keep driving straight through to make it to Bakersfield by midday. Crystal votes for “keep going”, so does Stella from the backseat. Wyatt glimpses the rearview mirror to see Taco, Crystal’s affectionate pitbull, laying across the seventeen year old’s lap as she thumbs through a tattered copy of Sassy she’s been carrying around since the detective met her.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – The Electric State Part One

The Electric State by Free League Press

Purchase this game here.

Swedish painter Simon Stålenhag has become prominent in the last decade because of his evocative retro-science fiction artwork. Tales from the Loop was turned into an Amazon series set in an alternate reality where humanity made significant technological advances. Things From the Flood was an artbook about a world where the water rose and brought strange creatures into the lives of ordinary people. The Labyrinth focuses on an ash-covered world of ruins where the apocalypse ravaged Earth. Like Tales and Things, the Electric State has been turned into a tabletop roleplaying game by Free League Publishing. Included in the core book are solo rules. I haven’t dipped my toes into Free League’s Year Zero system yet, so I thought this one would be a good start.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Eight

Read the previous chapter here

Plot Thread: Time Cops on Patrol
[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]Oracle: Capture Greed

Tempus Wright got a ping on his wristband. He had returned from a meeting with the police commissioner and Aiden Bell a couple hours earlier. Posing as Thomas Wright, a former CIA operative, he’d convinced them to give him access to the Victory Academy and its files. All that mattered was finding exactly where Jude Olmeda/Kismet altered the timeline to become Epoch in the future. This ping seemed problematic, though.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Solo Liminal Horror Part Four

You can purchase Liminal Horror here
You can purchase Jeansen’s Machines here
You can download the Liminal Horror Solo Starter here

Read the previous chapter here

Scene #9 – (Resolution 1/4)
Modified proposal: Cristian quickly leafs through the old book, looking for a solution – Cause confusion, doubt, and questions.
The GM asks you to: Describe the current location, what the character sees
Oracle: Wooden Love

The cabin has suddenly gone quiet. The rain is still coming down, but a little lighter. The scratching sounds under the floor have stopped. Albert asks Cristian what he thinks that thing is doing. His cousin is distracted by the book. Albert makes a passing mention of “grandad’s old hunting rifle” and that he’s going to see if it’s still in the cabinet in the living room. Cristian doesn’t even notice; the book has taken him in.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Seven

Read the previous chapter here

[Begin a Session: Flashback reveals an aspect of another character, place, or faction]
Plot Thread: Coup at the Academy
Oracle: Evade Superstition

One year ago.

Aiden Bell enjoys the quiet of the Academy around midnight. The new students are settled in at the dorms. Days earlier, they had attended a speech from one of the Victory Vanguard founders, Master Destiny. Bell had chatted briefly with the seemingly immortal man, elderly during World War II and looking unchanged in 2024. Master Destiny mentioned how the Book of Destiny became lost inside the Academy during The Whisper’s siege of the grounds in the late 1970s. Master D had also mentioned rumors of a secret arcane library that had grown organically but is said to only be visible to those it wishes to find it.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Solo Liminal Horror Part Three

You can purchase Liminal Horror here
You can purchase Jeansen’s Machines here
You can download the Liminal Horror Solo Starter here

Read the previous chapter here

Scene #6 – (Confrontation 5/8)

Modified: Cristian is in the local jail as the police process him trying to convince them he’s innocent – Add some trouble or bad news.
The GM asks you to: Explain what’s currently happening – activities around.
Oracle: Eliminate Prison
Doom Clock #2 – The Promethean Fire (4/6)

Cristian sits in a cell at the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department. Officer Fletcher discovered a body hidden in the back room of the crawlspace. During his interrogation, Cristian learned that it was an adult male, so it was not the missing child, and that it had been in the crawlspace for about a week. He told them he had an alibi, to call his secretary, and she would confirm that he had been to work every day for the last week until today. It’s around one in the morning, and he sits in his cell, hoping they get ahold of her ASAP. But he’s wracked by the thought of how a dead man ended up in the crawlspace under his late grandparents’ mountain cabin. And where is cousin Albert?

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Six

I chose to do something a little strange with this one. I wrote up two d6 lists of memories for Jude and Cortex, then scrambled those memories up. In this chapter we’ll float with Jude’s consciousness as it is pinballed through time and see how his power is unraveling reality.

Read the previous chapter here

Kismet – Jude Olmeda – knows he has a body that exists on the physical plane. Right now, all that exists is the endless void. He has no form but feels psychic extensions of his arms, legs, head, eyes, and mouth. There is something else here with him. It is metallic and cold. It pierces through his chest, tendrils linking up with a nervous system that floats aimlessly in the darkness of total oblivion. He has to reconnect with himself – his body to his mind before this alien thing replaces one or both.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Five

Read the previous chapter here

[Begin a Session: External factors create new danger, urgency, or importance for a quest]
Thread: Alien Tech Aftermath
Oracle: Find Target

Everything fell apart for Ryker Vane the day the Space Agents filled the sky above his home world, Essifum. Vane’s tribe consisted of pacifist farmers. It was the Space Agents’ war against Bale and his Deathvoid Inquisitors that ended this idyll. Crops were burnt and houses razed as both cosmic forces battled, taking little heed of the innocents caught in the middle. Ryker would learn that to many, the Space Agents were considered heroes. He found the truth to be far different.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Solo Liminal Horror Part Two

You can purchase Liminal Horror here
You can purchase Jeansen’s Machines here
You can download the Liminal Horror Solo Starter here

Read the previous chapter here

Scene #4 – (Confrontation 1/8)

Random: Deal with a difficulty – Something fails or breaks
Exploration scene: slippery, wet, flood
Skill test: setting-specific
Circumstance: Involves a puzzle, logic
The GM asks you to: Mention the weather or atmospheric conditions

When Cristian gets to the front door, the rain is coming down in heavy sheets. He slams it behind him, feeling water drip onto the floor mat. The only thing that makes sense is to strip the soaked clothes off and change into what he brought. Sopping wet clothes remain piled on the tiled bathroom floor. Waves of exhaustion spill over him, the day’s events catching up. Without looking at his phone, Cristian can’t tell if it’s still daytime or night as the sky is thick with black, rain-bloated clouds. He decides to sleep, hoping that some of this will make more sense when he wakes up. Maybe he’s having a nightmare right now.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Supersworn: The Victory Academy Part Four

Read our previous chapter here.

[Begin a Session: Seemingly unrelated situations are shown to be connected]
Thread: Coup at the Academy & Time Cops on Patrol
Oracle: Initiate Bond

Aiden Bell attends a midnight meeting with Police Commissioner Jeremiah Maxwell at Forge City Central Police HQ. They will further develop their secret plans for the EOD (Enhanced Operations Division), the task force that the Victory Academy will funnel super-humans into. Maxwell greets Bell with a firm handshake, almost an attack, a check to see which man is stronger. Bell half smiles, half grimaces, and squeezes back until Maxwell relents.