0

Credits
Written By: Peter Rudin-Burgess

Art: Publisher’s Choice Quality Stock Art © Rick

Hersey/Fat Goblin Games

1
Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 3
How Does Solo Work? ............................................................................. 3
Sandboxes ..................................................................................................... 4
The Basic Question ........................................................................................ 5
Critical Result .............................................................................................. 5
Likelihood ..................................................................................................... 6
Advanced Questions ...................................................................................... 7
Optional Tables .............................................................................................10
NPCs ..............................................................................................................10
Enemy of My Enemy is my Friend ...................................................11
Locations .....................................................................................................12
Record Keeping .............................................................................................13
NPCs ..............................................................................................................13
Locations .....................................................................................................13
Quests ...........................................................................................................13
The Narrative ............................................................................................14
The Universe ..................................................................................................15
Characters........................................................................................................16
Lack of Skills ..............................................................................................16
Balanced Encounters .............................................................................17
Starting Out ................................................................................................17
Solo Tips ...........................................................................................................18
OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a .................................................20

2
Introduction
I have always had a soft spot for games that use character
facing rolls. By that, I mean games where you roll to attack
when it is your action, then roll to dodge or evade when things
are coming at you. This frees up the Game Master [GM] to
wreak havoc with the universe all around the characters in a
group game.

Character facing rolls naturally lend themselves to solo play.

You are already doing half the GM’s job anyway. It doesn’t take
a great leap to take on the rest of the responsibility.

How Does Solo Work?

The Black Hack describes the role of the GM as this, “They [the
GM] control the Movement and Actions of the Non-Player
Characters (NPCs) and Monsters, presenting the world to the
Players, helping them navigate it with fair rulings and dice
rolls and describing the events that happen during play.”

When you are solo playing, the movement and actions of the
NPCs and monsters follow what you would expect them to do,
morale checks will influence that naturally, but as you picture
the scene, the monsters will behave as is natural to them.

The idea of Fair Rulings is easy. Rulings are mediated by the

dice. If you want to know if something is possible, you roll for
it. No amount of bribery or coercion has ever made a role
players dice like them. The question of fairness is a separate
issue. These rules are set up to favor the character. Any
situation that is probably a 50/50 or toss of the coin is handled
as a 60/40 with the weighting in the character’s favor. The
logic being that it is generally accepted that the GM’s role is to
say yes to the player’s ideas more often than they say no. The
60/40 split bakes that balance into the rules but is easily
modified for an impartial 50/50 if you prefer.

The idea of the GM presenting the world to the players is one of

solo playing strengths. There is no loss of fidelity between how
the scene looks like in the GM’s mind and how that same scene

3
appears to the player. This is the only time when the player’s
vision of the scene and setting will be perfect.

The GM is emulated using just a few rules. You can roll to

answer your questions about the world, the result will give you
an answer, and you then have to give that answer context. It is
not dissimilar to the magic 8 ball toy. You shake the ball, and an
answer appears in the plastic window of the toy.

The main requirement from you, the player, is improvising

when you get that answer. You need to take the answer and
your story so far and merge the two, even when the answer is
unexpected.

You will get unexpected answers. This is an important part of

solo play. If your solo adventures just proceeded down a linear
and predictable path, they would be no better than reading a
story where you know the hero survives because this is the
first book of 20.

Sandboxes
Solo play suits the sandbox style of play. You can go anywhere,
do anything, and either you will find adventure, or it will find
you. You don’t need an overarching plot, you can have one if
you want, but otherwise, these will manifest themselves
through your play.

4
The Basic Question
The easiest questions to ask of these rules are yes-no
questions. The mechanics of the question are exactly the same
as an Attribute Test in TBH. In this case, we are going to use a
default value of 13 for everything. This is the 60/40 bias
mentioned in the Introduction. Think of this as ‘standard
mode’. You can play TBH in Hard Mode by making question
rolls 50/50 and an Attribute Test of 11, or Easy Mode with an
Attribute Test of 15.

I recommend using 13, and these rules all reflect that value.

A basic question can be answered with a yes or no answer.

You formulate your question such that the answer that is best
for your story is the positive or yes answer. The yes may not be
the best result for your character.

If the question interacts with an Attribute Test, maybe you are

looking for traps around the entrance to an ancient tomb,
imagine your character searching and how they are doing it,
test the attribute, then ask the question. If you fail your
Attribute Test. You don’t know if there is a trap or not. Now ask
the question, Is the entrance trapped? Roll a d20 and 12 or less.
The answer is yes!

In some situations, you may never need to ask the question. If

you are looking for tracks and don’t make your Int test, there is
no need to ask if the tracks exist or not. It makes no difference.
You cannot act, even subconsciously on the information you
don’t have.

Just like any attribute test, rolling a 1 or a 20 is special.

Critical Result
Treat these as the most extreme yes and no, or a Critical Yes
and Critical No. If you were asking about traps, it could be a
really bad one, or maybe not a trap at all, but you triggered a
secret door?

5
Critical Results are an opportunity for you to inject something
new into your game world. Think of it in terms of yes or no...
because of this…

Likelihood
The default position in these rules is that of 60/40 in favor of
yes answers. That is how you should treat a 50/50 question.
That may sound odd, but it works. Some questions are much
more likely to be yes or no. You are much more likely to locate
a fence for stolen goods in a city than in a dwarven fortress.
Palaces have many more guards than villages, and so on.

Questions that are obviously skewed one way or another are

rolled with Advantage. Roll two d20s and chose the result
closest to the most likely outcome.

6
Advanced Questions
Advanced Questions are those that you cannot answer with the
simple yes-no mechanic. What is in the box? What does the
diary say for yesterday? What did the necromancer tell her
lieutenant? These are all questions that cannot easily be
answered with the basic question rules. You could ask, “Is the
Orb of Obliteration in the box?” “Does the diary say if they met
with Elric?” or “Does the necromancer send the Luitenant back
to the gatehouse?”. Sure, that would work, but only as long as
you have a clear idea of what you expect to see, hear, or find.

Answering these open-ended questions with the basic question

rules also misses an opportunity to stretch your imagination.

The solution is a Quality Table. The table uses d12s. Each result
represents a different quality of the answer, the size, colors,
subjects. You can either take two d12 and drop them on to the
table or roll two d12s and combine the answers.

This is not too dissimilar to finding the hit locations in combat

if you choose to do that.

Once you have the two words, you can put them together in
any way that “makes sense” or play word association with
them to get something you can use. Once you have two words,
you use them to drive your improvisation to create an answer.

Here are the three example questions from the top of this
section.

What is in the box? I roll for two words and get Develops +
Waste. What does this mean to the contents of the box? Well,
the box that I am imagining is a small box of mementos. I
decide that it is full of things that someone had discarded, like
memories of a long lost lover, a lock of hair, and a bundle of
unopened letters.

What does the diary say for yesterday? This time the words are
Exposed + Split. My first instinct says that the diary is about a
row or argument exposing infidelity and leading to a split.

7
What did the necromancer tell her lieutenant? This time the
words are Lung + Scar. Lung implies breathing. This is a
necromancer. The lieutenant is being scolded for the damage
to the lungs that they procured for the necromancer’s project.
They are being ordered to got and get a new fresh set of lungs,
preferably still breathing!

The key to this technique is to not agonize about the correct

meaning of a phrase. If Lung + Scar doesn’t make sense, can
you do a word association and go from Lung to
breathing or breath?

If you cannot think of a good meaning inside

20 seconds, abandon the roll and
either scan down
the list
until a word
appeals to you,
or go with what
you wish was in the
box, in the diary, or
was being said.

These are
prompts, not
rules. Hopefully,
they will suggest
new things to feature in
your game, ideas you
would not otherwise
have included. This
is part of what
makes solo play
so much more than
just writing fiction.

8
Improvisation Prompts
Split Repair 1 Long Short
Gash Sew 2 Milky Clear
Dirty Clean 3 Missing Found
Big Small 4 Most Least
Zig-Zag Straight 5 Damage Perfect
Off On 6 Heart Soul
Stump Reach 7 Deep Shallow
Cool Hot 8 Crown Purse
Fountain Dry 9 Puncture Repair
Scar Smooth 10 Visible Hidden
Develops Decays 11 Messy Tidy
Gone Here 12 Jewels Waste

Lack Shattered 1 Winded Ears

Red Busted 2 Shredded Skull
Orange Mangled 3 Disemboweled Teeth
Yellow Exploded 4 Crushed Arm
Green Wrenched 5 Popped Knee
Blue Splintered 6 Pierced Ankle
Indigo Broken 7 Pulverized Jaw
Violet Ruined 8 Dislocated Hand
White Ripped 9 Smashed Kidneys
Light Cracked 10 Fractured Lung
Dark Twisted 11 Snapped Eyes
Palid Bruised 12 Exposed Sternum

9
Introduction
I have always had a soft spot for games that use character
facing rolls. By that, I mean games where you roll to attack
when it is your action, then roll to dodge or evade when things
are coming at you. This frees up the Game Master [GM] to
wreak havoc with the universe all around the characters in a
group game.

Character facing rolls naturally lend themselves to solo play.

You are already doing half the GM’s job anyway. It doesn’t take
a great leap to take on the rest of the responsibility.

How Does Solo Work?

The Black Hack describes the role of the GM as this, “They [the
GM] control the Movement and Actions of the Non-Player
Characters (NPCs) and Monsters, presenting the world to the
Players, helping them navigate it with fair rulings and dice
rolls and describing the events that happen during play.”

When you are solo playing, the movement and actions of the
NPCs and monsters follow what you would expect them to do,
morale checks will influence that naturally, but as you picture
the scene, the monsters will behave as is natural to them.

The idea of Fair Rulings is easy. Rulings are mediated by the

dice. If you want to know if something is possible, you roll for
it. No amount of bribery or coercion has ever made a role
players dice like them. The question of fairness is a separate
issue. These rules are set up to favor the character. Any
situation that is probably a 50/50 or toss of the coin is handled
as a 60/40 with the weighting in the character’s favor. The
logic being that it is generally accepted that the GM’s role is to
say yes to the player’s ideas more often than they say no. The
60/40 split bakes that balance into the rules but is easily
modified for an impartial 50/50 if you prefer.

The idea of the GM presenting the world to the players is one of

solo playing strengths. There is no loss of fidelity between how
the scene looks like in the GM’s mind and how that same scene

3
gives Fought, Illegal, Wizard. Adding in a few joining words
gives me Fought against an illegal wizard. This could be where
our necromancer comes into the story.

The objective of this table is to give every NPC you interact

with an interesting background. Your character may not know
what this background is, but it gives you something to work
with. Something you can hang their attitudes and opinions
from.

Roll Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

1 Raised Poor Street Child
2 Escaped Being Held Useless Prisoner
3 Won Freedom Destitute Valor
4 Reputation Ruined Vices Wizard
5 Fleeing Broken Noble House
6 Sold Wealthy Child
7 Fought Distant War
8 Smuggler Illegal Goods
9 Chosen God’s Instrument
10 Survived Arcane Disaster
11 Child Political Exiles
12 Lost Heir Old Throne

Enemy of My Enemy is my Friend

As your story progresses, you will identify villains and foes. As
you roll for NPC backgrounds, these may align with these
friends, allies, and foes, creating natural affinities and
opponents.

Suppose you are trying to hunt down a necromancer, and this

NPC has fought against them in the past. In that case, they
could become a natural ally or a source of information.

The opposite situation can also happen. The Child of the illegal
wizard puts you in a very different situation.

11
Locations
This optional table fills in a missing blank in the random
adventure generator. It gives the suggested destination for a
quest.

The Quest Hook Generator in the rulebook gives all sorts of

details but not where the quest ends. This table slots in at the
end of the process in the book [page 60].

Roll Destination
1 Citadel
2 Castle/Keep
3 Tower
4 Town
5 Village
6 forest
7 swamp
8 island
9 mountain
10 Lair/Cave
11 Crypt
12 Dungeon/Ruins

12
Record Keeping
Just as a GM would keep campaign notes, it will help you keep
track of your game and solo campaign If you keep a journal or
record.

NPCs
I have suggested that you only roll for the barest of details for
NPCs when you meet them. It helps keep a list of the NPCs you
create, where and when you met them, and any established
facts. After the game session, you can revisit these NPCs and fill
in more details for NPCs you think will recur in your game.

Locations
A location does not need to be an entire castle, temple, or
dungeon. Locations are any clearly identifiable place. A castle
could give you many locations if you frequently end up in the
dungeon, the grand hall, and the lady’s chambers.

A potted summary of each location will help you remember

and visualize each location. As you build up more facts about
the location, you can record these and maintain the continuity
between games.

Quests
Quests can be big or small. In a solo sandbox, they have a
tendency to multiply. A question that throws up an unexpected
answer can make you wonder why? Then you have another
avenue to investigate.

Record actual and possible quests and loose threads that your
adventures create. After a session, you can look over this list
and decide if some of these ideas can be linked together and
form a bigger quest, one that is proceeding ‘off-camera’. Simple
questions like “Is he telling the truth?” or “Is everything as it
seems?” can create all sorts of loose threads for you to explore.

13
The Narrative
No collection of lists can sum up your adventure. Keep a brief
story or sequence of events that make up your adventure. Keep
a record of questions, the answers, and what they meant to
you. I keep a simple bullet list. I don’t like to write too much as
it slows my games down. I know solo players that write in a
long-form, almost as if they are writing a book. How much or
little you write is a personal choice.

Read through this before each session. It will help you get into
character and pick up the thread of your adventure.

14
The Universe
A solo game is about you and your character. In practical
terms, it can mean that nothing exists until you encounter it. If
you are not there to experience it, it ceases to exist.

To counter that effect, the rest of the universe has a Usage Die.
If you are sneaking into a temple, you do not want to have to
make Int tests for every acolyte or temple worker to see if you
have been spotted, overheard, or signs of your incursion have
raised the alarm. Instead, you can use a Usage Die.

In the case of chances of being discovered, consider the quality

of the spotters. Elite royal guards are likely to be much more
observant than lazy goblins after a night out on the town. The
better the quality of the spotter, the lower the Usage Die.

Whenever you do something that could be spotted, overheard,

or noticed, make a usage check. Suppose you knocked out a
sentry on your way in. In that case, their body could be
discovered, or their absence could be noted. If you force a lock,
a patrol could notice; if you fail a Dex Check when sneaking,
that could be overheard. All of these will cause a usage roll.

When the Usage runs out, your luck has run out, and the alarm
has been raised.

The same method can be used for a villain’s plans. At the end of
each session, roll a Usage die for each villain. If the Usage runs
down, their schemes to take over the world or summon their
dark god or assassinate a rival has taken a step forward.

A campaign story arc could be a Ud12, a session arc may only

be a Ud6, Elite guards only a Ud4. If you choose too low a dice,
you will find it difficult very quickly, too high, and there is little
tension in a game.

15
Characters
I recommend that you only play one character at a time. Do not
attempt to solo play an entire party. This does throw up two
considerations.

Lack of Skills
No one character can do everything. This is less of a problem
than you may expect. As the adventure is created by you, for
you, it is less likely that you will create a scene where your
fighter has to face down hordes of undead. That is a better
challenge for a cleric.

When you do need a broader skillset, you can use hirelings.

One option is to reduce the hirelings to a single attribute test. If
you hire a thief to retrieve a key for you, make a
suitable attribute test, Dex or Wis, and on a
success, they got the key.

The second option is to put your main

character aside for a moment and play that
thief during their mission. In this option, you
will need to roll up the thief character as if
they were a player character and solo play
the mission. After the mission, you out that
character aside and return to your primary
character.

I call this second option body-hopping. It

is an opportunity to play different
classes. It can add breadth to a game—
a chance to explore different locations.
You could body-hop into a character
for two minutes while they fast-
talk a guard into turning a blind
eye for a while, or you could
play out a session or two with a
different character.

16
Body-hopping can lead to fascinating games reminiscent of
movies such as Pulp Fiction or Sin City, with a cast of inter-
connected characters each following their own agendas but
crossing paths as the fiction evolves.

Balanced Encounters
One character trying to take on the challenges and risks
intended for a party is in for a hard time. Balancing encounters
is something you can choose to do, but it is often better if you
don’t.

TBH already takes into account the party size. Encounters scale
to a point. A solo character has to play smart. Frontal attacks
against hordes of monsters will get you killed in short order.
Solo characters do have one advantage, and that is that the
world does not exist as a fixed thing. You can ask if there is
another route you can take, if there is cover you can use or a
chandelier you can swing from. The more creative you are, the
more opportunities you will create for yourself.

Some battles simply cannot or should not be won by a lone

hero. Save dragon-slaying until you get to play with a group. It
will be more satisfying than defeating a dragon when you have
either toned down its abilities or loaded yourself down so so
much magic that the battle was meaningless.

Starting Out
Without contradicting the advice in Balanced Encounters, I do
suggest that a solo character starts one level higher than
normal. It gives you a few additional HP and the chance of a
stat bonus.

This is a one time bonus. The character will still need to meet
the requirements to get from level 2 to 3.

17
Solo Tips
The following is a set of tips that I have accumulated over the
years.

Don’t ask too many questions to drill down to an absolute fact.

When you ask a yes-no question, it is as much a prompt to your
imagination as any other. If you ask if there are any guards, if
you get a yes, just imagine how and where guards would be,
given the context. Do not keep testing if there are guards by
each exit or how many guards there are.

Do not get hung up on an answer that isn’t working. If you roll

an answer and it seems to break the fiction, the fiction comes
first.

The previous tip doesn’t mean that you discard everything that
goes against your expectations. It is the answers that push us
that can make solo games so exciting.

When you start solo playing, it is not unusual for the game to
proceed slowly. Solo playing is a skill, and that skill needs to be
developed and honed.

Some people have said that solo roleplaying can feel like
playing a game about playing a game. I think this is the impact
of the GM duties that you take on. It can lift you out of being in
character. As long as you are having fun, this is not a problem.

I find solo play the most enjoyable when I place the point of
view about 20’ away from my character. I think of this as the
Director’s Chair position. It helps me imagine NPCs’ locations,
actions, and positions, and I can see and imagine the NPCs’
interactions.

There is no right or wrong way to solo play a game. If you want

to go gonzo, high power, high magic, saving the world, do it. If
you want to play an entire game based around a single night in
a haunted house, you can do that just as easily. Solo play lends
itself to exploring situations and styles that may not work at a
regular table.

18
Regular play frequently involves compromises. A group and
GM are all there to have fun. Solo play is a chance to be totally
uncompromising and selfish. This is your game, your world,
and your chosen style of play. Just have fun with it.

19
OPEN GAME LICENSE Version 1.0a
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Open Game License v 1.0 Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
The Black Hack Copyright © David Black 2018
Hack Solo Copyright 2020, Parts Per Million Ltd. Author Peter Rudin-Burgess

21