Credits

Written By: Peter Rudin-Burgess

Cover Art: Image by Valgerd Kossmann
Interior Art: Enrique Meseguer, Stefan Keller

Creative Commons License: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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OSR Solo is copyright © 2021 Parts Per Million Limited, International House,
12 Constance Street, London E16 2DQ.
2•
Contents
Introduction 3
No DM? 3
Tools of the Trade 4
Plot Twists 5
Playing out Twists 7
Scenes 7
Complex Questions 7
NPCs, Friend or Foe? 8
Who Said That? 9
Record Keeping 9
Solo Play Hints and Tips 11
Random Dice Tables 12
Random D6 Table 13
How To: Solo a Module 14
How To: Solo a Module #2 17
 4•
Introduction
These rules enable you to play an OSR, in this case, meaning 0D&D, B/X style
games, without a Dungeon Master. The game you will get using these rules
will be a sandbox-style adventure. You will not need to do any Dungeon Master
[DM] style preparation. However, having a few stock NPCs of an appropriate
level would be helpful.

No DM?
The normal cycle of play is that the DM describes the scene and asks what
you do? The players describe their actions. The DM describes the effects of
those actions, and the cycle repeats.
In solo play, there is just a single character and no DM. You start by imagining
your character in the game setting and play them through all the social
interactions, all the NPCs and events that would normally come up. You will
reach a point where you would normally ask your DM for more information.
Are there any guards? Are there any ways out? What can you hear? At this
point, the solo rules come into play. You pitch your question in a Yes/No
format. The solo rules will then return an answer to your question, much
like a Magic 8 Ball toy. It is then down to you and your improv skills to decide
what this answer mean right now? Often the first thing that comes into your
head is the answer to go with.
If you just got yes and no answers, things would get boring quite quickly.
These rules are designed to throw up twists and turns into your character’s
story.
 • 5
Tools of the Trade
You are going to need just 2d6. It is helpful if they are in different colours
or sizes. In some respects, if you have been a DM before, you should be
used to random dice rolls changing your games’ narrative. When you roll
for wandering monsters, a bad fight can completely change the character’s
chances of success or failure. Rolling for surprise can radically change the
outcome of a fight. All these rolls are just 1d6, and these rules continue that
tradition. The d20 may get all the glory in a battle, but it is the humble d6
that runs the world!
There are several parts to these rules. The most commonly used part will be
the Oracle. The Oracle answers your questions.

Likelihood
Before you roll any dice, you need to decide if the answer is more likely to be
a yes, a no or whether it is a 50/50 chance. If you are in an orc hold and ask if
there are any guards on the exit, the answer is more likely to be yes than no.
Glancing up and down a street to see if there is an unattended horse you can
steal is more likely to be a no (most of the time).
A likely result gives a +1 to your roll. An unlikely result gives -1, and a pure
50/50 question has no modifier.
1 or less No, and…
2 No
3 Complication
4 Yes, but…
5 Yes
6 or more Yes, and…

You can see immediately that there are more than yes and no answer.
The ‘and…’ modifier means that the result is more than you expected. If you wanted
to know if the guards were alert and you get a ‘No, and…’ maybe an officer has just
demanded that the guards follow him and marches off. If you got a ‘Yes, and…’
maybe not only are they alert, but one of them thinks he heard something in your
direction.
The ‘but…’ is the opposite of the ‘and’ modifier. The answer is yes, but it isn’t as
good as you had hoped. Think of it as adding some kind of drawback.
There is also a complication. A complication should stand between the character
and the subject of the question. The Complication is the first way in which the solo
6•
engine can take your game in an unexpected direction. For example, you look down
the street and ask, “Is there a horse I can steal?” The result is Complication, and the
first thing that comes into your mind is that looking down the street, you see your
arch-nemesis riding into town with half a dozen of his mercenary followers.

Plot Twists
At the same time as rolling the oracle d6, you also roll a second d6. On a 1
result, there is a plot twist. Roll both dice again and consult the following
table.
First Die Second Die
1 An NPC 1 appears.
2 Your PC 2 alters the location.
3 An organisation 3 helps the hero.
4 A physical event 4 hinders the hero.
5 An emotional event 5 changes the goal.
6 An item 6 ends the scene.

With your two results, put them together to make a short sentence such as “A physical
event changes the goal.”
Most of these results need some explanation.

An NPC. You should be familiar with what an NPC is. You can either introduce
a new NPC or reuse an existing NPC in your story (See record-keeping below).

Your PC. Somehow the root cause of the even comes from your characters
actions, intentionally or otherwise. Have you ever seen a scene in a movie
where a character leans against a bookcase only for it to shift and reveal a
secret passage? That is the PC driving a twist.

An Organisation. An organisation can be anything from a village council

to an entire army or just a single organisation representative. Most fantasy
settings have guilds and secret orders that easily fit into this category.

A Physical Event. This is an external physical event; it could be a door

opening somewhere in a house that is supposed to be deserted or caving in a
dungeon. A barroom brawl would just as easily fit under this heading.

An Emotional Event. Emotional events are those that force or play on your
character’s emotions. It could be a random act of kindness or something that
plays on your characters back story.

An Item. Characters are surrounded by items and simple machines. You

 • 7
have their own equipment, objects around them as well as traps and unique
items in the world.

Appears. This does not have to mean “as if my magic X appears”. This twist
introduces something into the current scene.

Alters the location. Something happens that should drive the story to
change the location of the action. It could be as simple as learning that the
wizard you are looking for is in a different city or a pit that drops you into a
cavern below the temple.

Helps the hero. The help could be a simple as a farmer allowing the hero
to sleep in their barn to a sage giving up valuable information or a key NPC
offering aid.

Hinders the hero. Is the gate guard cantankerous? The sage refusing to see
anyone. Has a roof collapse blocked the way out?

Changes the goal. This twist can really change your story. Changing a goal,
maybe a piece of information that changes what you were planning to do
next. It could be that someone else completed the quest before you, and now
you need to find them?

Ends the scene. You should see Scenes below for more on scenes. In short,
a scene ends whenever a director would shout cut when the DM would hand
wave away a period of time or the action changes location. When this twist
comes up, something will happen to bring about an end to the scene.
8•
 • 9
Playing out Twists
A twist does not have to happen instantly the second you roll it. You should
rather see it as a note pinned to your character or storyboard. Once you have
decided what the twist would mean for your character, you should try to
work it into your character’s adventure. Sometimes they will be instant. The
best solution will often create so many unanswered questions that they will
drive some amazing role-playing and challenge your improvisation skills. If
you are five levels down in an undead infested catacomb and the dice say an
NPC helps the hero. Where did this NPC come from? How did they get here?
You just need to let your imagination provide an answer.

Scenes
These rules have mentioned scenes. A scene ends when you could imagine
a director shouting Cut! or you feel like skipping a block of time. More
importantly, is your ability to think in scenes. You do not need to play every
scene. If you were sat around a gaming table with friends, you would not
role play every minute of a mundane journey into town. As you are the only
player and the game is for your benefit only you can pick the scenes you want
to play. There is no reason not to skip great swathes of a dungeon crawl
and just play the most exciting scenes, the first meeting with the undead
guards, confronting the dark priests in their temple and then slaying their
horrendous snake god.
You can also jump about in time. If your character died confronting the
priests, you could jump backwards in time and carry on playing the same
character but explore how they came to be on this quest.
When we cover record keeping, scenes are one thing you may want to keep a
record of.
10 •
• 11
12 •
Complex Questions
Not every question can be answered with a yes or a no. If you eavesdrop on
one of the villain’s lieutenant’s conversations, then yes or no is not much use
to you.
In this case, you roll two dice, or one die, twice, and check the following table,
just like building a twist.
First Die Second Die
1 Plotting against 1 an ally or colleague.
2 Uncovering 2 a foe or traitor.
3 Supporting 3 a new force or an old enemy.
4 Opposing 4 old lore or magic.
5 Creating 5 a death or murder.
6 Discovering 6 an alliance or surrender.

As before, you build a short sentence and then try and work this into your game.
Typical complex questions relate to conversations, the contents of scrolls and books
and orders given by officers, but you will come up with hundreds of other uses.
The golden rule is that you consider the story so far, the current situation, the sort of
adventure you want to have and finally, the dice rolls.
Imagine you are trying to gather some rumours in a town. There are a couple of
women sat by the well doing laundry and chatting. You get close by and listen in. You
roll a 5 and a 6, Creating an alliance or surrender. Depending on the sort of adventure
you are having, are they matchmaking and arranging a marriage between their eldest
children, or are there rumours that a battle went so badly that the king has been forced
to accept surrender?
The same rolls made in a tavern’s dockland dive could have two lowlifes negotiating a
ceasefire between their gangs. It is the context that is vitally important.
Ultimately if the roll makes no sense, then discard it or if you have a better idea, go
with that.

NPCs, Friend or Foe?

Not everyone will be your friend, and likewise, not everyone will draw swords
and try and kill you. NPC reactions can be handled using the regular Oracle,
but you can use your character’s Charisma in addition to likelihood modifiers.
For example, if it is highly unlikely that a castle guard will let you pass, but
 • 13
you have a +2 modifier from your Charisma, that gives you a net +1 on the roll.
You must remember that depending on the question. If you ask a negative
question where a Yes will be bad for your character, then inverting your
Charisma bonus/penalty would make more sense.

Who Said That?

Using the Complex Questions tool too often in a game session can lead to too
much repetition. When the question relates to NPCs and conversations, then
here is an alternative. If you can only hear one side of the conversation, just
roll on one side, possibly alternating with each use. If you can hear both sides
roll a first and second die.
Roll Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Roll
1 Strongly Disagrees Strongly agrees with … 1
with…
2 Disagrees with… Agrees with… 2
3 Has news Is shocked by… 3
4 Needs to know… Doesn’t care 4
5 Agrees with… Disagrees with… 5
6 Strongly agrees with… Strongly disagrees with… 6

You still need to improvise what the conversation is about, but this gives you the
speakers position from which you can visualise their attitudes, body language and
tone of voice.

Record Keeping
It is helpful to keep a written log or journal of your solo adventures. This
helps you pick up where you were later. This is no different from keeping
game notes, except there is no planned campaign as a backdrop.
Some people will make a few oracle question rolls and then write up an entire
scene as if it is a chapter in a book. Others will record very little. I personally
just use bullet points and record questions, answers and key points. It is very
terse and would mean nothing to anyone else, but it only has to serve as a
reminder to me. I also find that the less time I spend writing, the more time I
can spend in character.
Regardless of the style of journal you keep, it is helpful to keep a few lists.

NPC List
An NPC list just needs to keep the barest of details, name, race and location
14 •
and a brief note about your meeting. The location is important as when you
revisit a place, it helps if the same NPCs are there. It helps to make the world
more consistent. If you have a list of NPCs and the oracle tells you to introduce
an NPC, it often makes sense to use an existing NPC rather than constantly
creating new ones. For you, a player and DM, not having to create hundreds
of detailed personalities makes life easier.

Scene List
You can number or name scenes as you play them and add a descriptive
note at the end of the scene. Glancing down a scene list is almost like fast-
forwarding through your adventure, but it is also useful if you want to insert
a flashback scene between a pair of scenes you have already played. I record
which NPCs were present as well as what I was trying to achieve.

Loose Ends List

You will inevitably end up with a great many unexplored plot threads or loose
ends. Why did your nemesis ride into town that day? Who was the lieutenant
plotting to kill? Complications can create loose ends; story twists often create
loose ends, and complex questions do the same.
When this list gets to more than half a dozen, it is worth seeing if you can
tie some of them together into a deeper and more complex plot that your
character has just brushed the surface of. Highlighter pens are useful here as
you can group by colour. These loose ends could be used to explain some of
the more unusual dice rolls. If someone is going to be murdered, that could
explain why the wizard you are looking for has fled town!
 • 15
Solo Play Hints and Tips
 The golden rule is do not ask too many questions. Ask a question and possibly
a follow up if you are still not sure but then just start to improvise.
 Do not ask game-breaking questions. Don’t ask if you wake up and find
1000gp under your pillow or a vorpal sword at the end of the bed. If you
need these things, just add them to your character sheet. It is your game; no
one will ever know!
 Playing as a solo hero in a game designed for parties of 6-8 heroes is hard.
You may want to start at 2nd to 3rd level. This also adds more scope for
skipping back into your characters past to play flashbacks.
 Don’t start your first solo play sat in a tavern. Take a leaf from Hollywood
and start right in the thick of the action, a rooftop fight against thieves, in
a runaway carriage careering towards a cliff or surrounded by zombies in a
boneyard. You know the sort of adventure you want to have. Start there and
start in the thick of it.
 The first time you solo play, it will probably be slow and stilted as you don’t
know the rules or what to expect. Don’t worry; this is normal, and the more
you play, the faster and more fluid it all becomes.
 It is useful to have a stock of pre-generated NPCs. When you are learning a
new game, it is useful to make a few characters to understand how the rules
work. Keep those characters and use them when you need an NPC. That
saves breaking up your game to create an NPC at a crucial moment.
 Narrative Description is your friend. Have you ever had a character in a
barroom brawl and asked the GM if there a bottle or chair at the table you
can throw? Or maybe you asked is the chandelier secured by a rope when you
wanted to swing across the hall. In solo play, the answer to all these questions
is yes. It is your story, your adventure; you are a star and director. The props
will always be in the right place.
 Fail Forward. If something goes wrong and the adventure would end, or
there is no way out, ask the oracle. In the movies, the hero faces seemingly
impossible situations all the time and somehow gets out of them. You are the
hero; it is OK to save yourself.
 The questions you ask should be the ones best for the game and not what is
best for your character.
16 •
 • 17
Random Dice Tables
On the following page is a random dice table with nearly a thousand d6 rolls.
You can use them left to right to top to bottom, any which way you like so
long as you use them in sequence.
Random dice tables speed up your gaming, both solo and at a regular table.
If there is a chance of wandering monsters, you can easily scan down the list
and see how long it would be before the monster would turn up, and you can
work that knowledge into your narrative. If you can see that nothing would
happen until midday, you can work with that.
If your players are anything like mine at a regular table, they will regularly
force you into improvising. Suppose you don’t want it to be obvious that you
are improvising. In that case, random tables make it appear you are consulting
game notes when you are actually letting the dice decide.
There is no significance to the numbers being grouped into threes or three by
three blocks. That is purely for ease of reading and highlighting.

Tip. Highlighters will never obscure the number on the page, so you can use the
page once and highlight the used numbers in yellow and then go over them again
in green, then pink and so on.
Random dice tables like these are useful for wandering monsters to see
if elves spot a secret door without alerting them that something is worth
searching for.
If a player suddenly thumps a town guard, you can glance three numbers
along, and you have his strength if he still is standing and wants to thump
the character back.
When used with these solo rules, they can completely replace the dice.
Print off the table of rolls and have it side by side with whatever table you
are referencing. It speeds the game up immensely and doesn’t break the
suspension of disbelief nearly as much as making multiple dice rolls.
18 •
Random D6 Table
3 6 3 1 1 1 2 6 6 5 4 6 2 4 3 6 1 6
2 4 3 3 5 3 2 1 3 4 3 2 6 5 1 2 4 1
3 4 4 3 6 3 4 4 3 1 1 3 6 6 1 4 4 3

2 1 3 3 6 5 2 6 6 3 2 2 2 3 2 6 3 3
6 3 3 1 4 5 6 6 2 6 4 1 3 6 6 2 6 5
6 2 3 4 4 1 4 6 1 4 1 6 3 5 1 4 1 3

3 1 5 2 5 5 2 4 3 6 6 1 3 3 1 1 5 3
6 5 3 1 4 3 1 5 3 1 5 3 4 3 6 4 6 1
4 5 3 6 5 1 2 3 2 4 2 5 5 2 1 4 1 1

1 1 1 1 6 1 2 2 2 1 1 4 5 6 2 5 1 1
3 6 6 3 6 3 5 2 2 5 2 2 6 3 5 3 2 4
1 5 2 5 5 1 5 1 1 1 4 4 1 2 3 5 2 4

4 6 2 4 2 5 1 4 4 6 4 4 5 6 4 4 3 6
2 4 1 5 1 6 4 6 6 1 6 6 5 3 1 3 2 4
5 3 2 5 1 3 3 1 2 3 6 5 4 4 5 5 2 1

6 4 5 1 1 6 3 2 6 3 3 6 3 6 1 3 2 2
3 1 1 6 4 5 5 3 6 2 2 3 4 6 3 5 1 2
4 4 4 6 5 3 1 4 2 2 4 6 1 5 6 1 4 1

6 1 5 1 6 5 3 3 2 2 1 1 3 3 5 5 4 5
3 2 5 6 5 3 1 3 1 5 3 6 4 4 3 6 6 6
2 2 2 2 4 5 6 2 6 2 1 3 5 2 5 1 6 4

1 3 3 4 1 4 1 3 6 3 1 4 6 3 4 1 6 5
4 2 3 5 5 5 2 4 3 6 2 1 4 3 3 1 4 5
5 5 6 6 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 4 3 5 2 4 2 6

5 2 6 1 5 2 5 1 5 1 2 1 4 6 4 2 6 5
3 3 3 5 1 3 5 6 5 5 1 6 6 4 3 3 6 5
2 1 2 6 4 6 2 3 4 1 5 4 6 5 6 3 4 1
 • 19
How To: Solo a Module
I will confess right from the start that my preferred style of play is an open
sandbox where adventure is something that sweeps the character up, rather
than a published module that has a defined start, middle and end.
Having said that, my regular group is doing a middle way, where I have salted
the world with plot hooks that will feed them into modules, and they can do
or not do. It is their choice. They also don’t know what modules they have
done and what they haven’t
Solo playing a module is different from putting a regular group through one,
but some of the same prep needs doing.
Firstly, you need at least a passing knowledge of the module. I suggest reading
it all; if you can skim read and get all the salient points, that may be enough.
I am a huge fan of the humble post-it note/sticky note.
20 •
Organise the Adventure
Next, you need to create a flow diagram of the key points in the module. These
are the things that MUST happen if the module is going to be completed. Put
each one on a post-it.
Mounting each key point on a separate note means that they are easily
rearranged if your solo journey goes slightly off course. I arrange rumours
that are likely to either impart essential information to help the character
survive or plot hooks to get your character involved in one group. Key
locations into another and encounters into a third.
Taking B2 Keep on the Borderlands as an example of a classic module. Some
rumours would instantly attract a magic-user (A powerful magic-user
will destroy all cave invaders/A magic wand was lost in the caves’ area). In
contrast, others would attract a fighter (Piles of magic armour are hoarded in
the southern caves.) and so on. Knowing your character and the hooks likely
to get them involved cues up some of the role-playing scenes.
There are then a set of wilderness encounters, the hermit and lizardmen etc.
These can all be treated as scenes in the solo play. You can soon map out a
likely path for each adventure. Roleplaying events in the keep leads to this
rumour being learnt, which leads to this expedition and this encounter.
When the Caves of Chaos are introduced, distinct tribes are essentially
separate adventures. The caves cannot be explored in a single sortie. These
you can break down into essential encounters and challenges.
Applying the solo rules means, first and foremost, not asking questions that
you know will break the module. Many questions you could ask of a theatre of
the mind game will not be required. You have a map that tells you the exits or
the contents of rooms.

Group into Scenes

Having a map or diagram of key events that are required gives you objectivity.
If you were DMing a group and an event was essential, you would move the
NPC to the right place or move a room to put it in the character’s way. You
can group your post-it notes into scenes.
Scenes are the essential building block of solo play. Some oracle questions/
plot twists may say, “xxx end the scene”. You can still use this because you
have organised the module into scenes.
If you know that the next room contains an ogre and you roll a plot twist
that says, “An organisation changes the location”, the organisation could be a
small as an orc ordering the ogre to attack. As a low-level solo character, I can
 • 21
assure you an attacking ogre WILL change your location, probably rapidly
backwards!

On the notes above, I have already sorted out the numbers of encountered
and in what locations, the numbers in brackets. Being organised means that I
don’t have to break up my solo play too much to fit into the module.
Building Blocks
I cannot reiterate enough that the basic building block of the solo game is
the scene. You build them before you play the module; you play through them
in the order that makes sense. Some scenes will be pre-planned, some will
evolve naturally.
Keep on the Borderlands could look like this
Scene 1: Arrive at the Keep
Scene 2: Interview with the Castellan
Scene 3: Find the Raiders
Scene 4: Spiders!
Scene 5: Meanwhile, back at the keep
Scene 6: A magic wand, you say?
Scene 7: Kobold Attack!
There are bits I have time jumped, parts that I want to play in detail. I like my
games role-play heavy and combat light. Keep on the borderlands encourages
characters to take alternatives to combat and build relationships within
the keep, as it becomes their operations base. If I played this module, the
wilderness exploration would be played down, and life in the keep would be
played up, but that is me and the beauty of solo play.

Levels and Encounters

For an adventure marked Levels 1-3, I would use a character at the top of
the scale. My PC would be 3rd level. For the encounters, I would divide the
numbers encountered by 4 with a minimum of 1 and round any fractions up.
So 5 goblins would become 2, 5 divided by 4 and rounded up the next whole
goblin. The logic is that most modules were written for about six characters,
and taking the middle level as an average would give 12 player levels. A third
level character is then balanced by quartering the number encountered.
22 •

How To: Solo a Module #2

There is a second approach to soloing a module. In this option you run the
adventure as the DM for an emulated character.
You wear the DM hat, and imagine the scenes, and the character, just as if you
were the player.
The player character is controlled using the Yes-No question tool. Your basic
question is “Will the character do the obvious thing?”
What the obvious thing is will depend on the personality of your character,
their class and their adventures so far.
More than one character can be controlled in this way. They enter a room and
you ask yourself, what would the ranger do next? Roll the question, and then
interpret the answer. Now ask what the magic-user would do, then the cleric.
This method can be combined with a mix of sandbox play, when you are all
player and emulating the DM, and when you use something published you
swap to DM mode and DM your character.
 • 23
Solo for Prep
The DM your character method is a useful method test an adventure that you
intend to run for a group of players. If you want to run an adventure for five
1st to 3rd level characters, you can run your adventure for exactly the group
you intended, and you can run the adventure for several groups of different
composition.
Your experience will be different every time because the characters will do
different things, and you will have no control of them. Sometimes they will
search for secret doors, sometimes they will run away from a fight that they
could have won.
If you hit a problem repeatedly at the same point, that will an area you need
to address.
For some people having to be the DM when you are solo playing will be a turn
off, but for others this option will work well.

THE END
24 •