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It's a situational thing, I feel. When I'm recording a game it's certainly more convenient than mapping, generating room content and encounters while diligently following a set of dungeon generator rules, etc. It'd take over the episode entirely, so unless I'm making it explicitly about that (e.g. the Dungeon23 videos) I'll very likely resort to point crawl and perhaps spotlight-generate individual rooms occasionally (which I did in the Knave series, for instance). When DMing for a group or playing by myself, I usually prefer working with a map and going room by room, level by level while fleshing everything out, especially if it's a dungeon-crawl heavy game like an OD&D clone or something like Pathfinder 1E. It all depends really but the dominance of point crawls in my recording is very much a question of medium and episode flow.

It's certainly an option. I got my physical copy of Moria today actually, so that's quite exciting. The solo rules in there for managing a group of dwarves look great! Time's a bit tight right now since I've got a few other series cooking that I've been working on behind the scenes for a while but I do eventually want to give One Ring a whirl. It's frankly too good to ignore forever.

Yeah! I definitely want to work the verticality of the battle space a little. Maybe I need to make up another system for it on the fly. Oh no.

Looks like it's playing games with me too, only saw your comment in the Creator section but got no notification to alert me to its existence. It's certainly one of the video hosting websites of all time. Thank you! Hope you're having a good time with it!

Played a dwarf minstrel when Lord of the Rings Online came out, I've heard that character yell out "baruk khazad! khazad ai-menu" so often it's burned into my brain permanently!

It's honestly one of the most enjoyable discoveries for me in solo gaming: making up rules for certain scene types on the spot, preferably by cannibalizing existing mechanics from other systems. Bit wonky sometimes but very fun! Oh and unless I'm mixing up some user names between here and on reddit: I believe you highlighted this series to the one true Kobayashi over there? I was rather floored to see that he's aware and seems to be happy it exists so... thanks for bringing it up! Much appreciated!

@@killtenratsrpg Thanks to you! I am learning a lot from your videos and having a great time at the same time. I am looking forward to seeing the developments of Oksana's adventures! I understand that Kobayashi's appreciation must be very rewarding for you, and I also think that for a game designer there is nothing better than seeing stories that wouldn't have existed without their games. The solo world really is a community, in its own bizarre way....

That’s a very fair point! I briefly considered naming the captain before rolling the stats, then figured they’d die pretty much instantly with the min roll and didn’t bother. The dice obviously had other plans. Now watch me name them and have them perish the next time I make a crew rating check!

That was quite a shock to be honest. Or maybe a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one! I also immediately bought the booklet of course. I've been a big fan of the ruleset and spanning the gap between 5E and OSR since I got my hands on the ShadowDark Beta pdf so this is awesome indeed!

@@killtenratsrpg It’s great to have you back!

Thank you very much! And praise the void, hail Sithis, etc. etc.!

Thank you very much, that's very kind of you! I feel like making these types of connections is something that I've eased into more and more with experience playing solo. The more prompts I used, the wider my definition of what a prompt could be grew. Rolling for an insulting nickname and then using it as a way to reverse engineer a character trait is probably not something I'd have thought of in 2021 but after playing a bunch of solo games and watching / listening to even more of them on various channels and podcasts, it seemed like a pretty straightforward thing to do. Sometimes it's as simple as seeing a cool looking table and wondering how I could use it. I'm definitely a big fan of little zoomed out scenes like the openers for this series, too. It helps with worldbuilding while staying inside the narrative, especially if you hit upon an idea between sessions. Might not be perfect for every game (e.g. intensely personal horror ones) but works for most.

Oh interesting! Considering their nature, a prophecy like that might not actually thrill the Northern Raiders. I doubt they see being unified under one ruler as a good thing. But a prophecy in general would be a decent option to explain why Drengur never went back to Tarentus for his wife and unborn child. Perhaps some prophecy convinced him it'd be better for everyone if he stayed away!

Thank you! Definitely worth giving a shot, very easy to overthink and never start though - jumping right in with a system that covers all bases (e.g. Ironsworn) worked pretty well for me personally. Good luck and have fun with it if you do!

@@killtenratsrpg this seems to be the essence of why i didnt do it yet :D I have a starforged-pdf laying around, so maybe i'll jump into a cyberpunk solo adventure using CitiesWithoutNumber's generator tools. Do you think these two would match?

@Biblium I still have a copy of an Ironsworn preview from 2017 in a cloud drive and started playing in earnest in 2021 so I guess I’m familiar with the feeling! As for combining Starforged with a cyberpunk world, I’d be surprised if it didn’t work. Some of the world truths and the general vibe of the core worlds are pretty cyberpunk adjacent, I doubt you’ll run into stuff that’s jarring or contradictory.

Thank you! Oh interesting! Yeah the "order of wives" or "level of favour of wives" also makes a lot of sense, depending on whether they're polygamous or he simply omitted that he's got a wife in Tarentus already when getting married to Hjalmar's mother (for whatever reason we've yet to discover). We did sort of get the sense from a die roll result in a prior episode that Drengur and Oksana's mother did in fact get married already though, which is why she's got that tattoo in the first place. So if anything this'd somewhat strengthen Oksana's position and put Hjalmar on the back foot. There's been the idea put forward that the prospective heir has to complete some kind of task to receive the official inheritance status and that perhaps Drengur hasn't put forth the task yet. So maybe the wife favouritism part comes into play when determining the nature of the task itself (which might favour a certain skill set), to which a "first wife" might have some input that others don't. Lots of options here, it's awesome!

I like the task idea, it's been mentioned a couple of times now. Maybe the kicker here is that Drengur hasn't set the task yet because the nature of the task also skews it towards one candidate if it plays into their strengths, so it's a way for the current ruler to give an advantage to a favoured child (and Hjalmar was always juuuust too much on the cusp of falling out of favour). Interesting!

I guess conversely - if we flip that around - , her not having the "tattoo of the heir" (yet) because she never had the chance to meet Drengur could be a reason for Hjalmar not to be worried about her as much and keep things more cordial. Especially if he DOES have it. If neither has it because Drengur hasn't committed fully yet it might make it more competitive. As for Leviathans, I've had some thoughts on where they're coming from and what they represent for the "dying species", yeah! Looks-wise though, hmmm... Mosasaurus would almost be obligatory considering they were discovered down the road from my house lol. But I'm envisioning them like REALLY large. Like "drive a ship down their gullet" large. So maybe a giant sea serpent works somewhat better for this purpose.

Right! He doesn't know whether or not she's got an older sibling perhaps. Huh. Having the designated heir be from the first wife or perhaps even the favoured one (if there are multiple simultaneously) could be interesting, yeah.

That's an interesting one! Would also be a decent rationale for Hjalmar to not immediately seek to kill her. "Well she might be eligible but she's not done the test yet" etc. etc.

Thank you so much! Happy to hear you're doing better now!

@@killtenratsrpg you're welcome 😁

Sounds familiar, isn't that Matt Risby's Ironsworn character?

Yes it is. I can see a tendency of making up fantasy chars haunted by evel girl. Matthew, Trevor and you)) Matt also had infiltrator asset

@dokushiin Oh! I had no idea. That’s rather amusing and perhaps a tiny bit disturbing.

Hey, thank you! That book is Fleaux, another one by Kobayashi who also wrote the Black Sword Hack. It’s a dark, late medieval/baroque style fantasy rpg with early firearms, dangerous magic and such. Very cool and also a very nicely designed book.

Haha, that'd probably exceed my capabilities somewhat. I did take two years of English and German linguistic studies about 25 years ago but they very heavily cemented the fact that this really isn't for me! I do find it very cool if it's done well though. As much of a dumpster fire as the Game of Thrones tv show was, having them at least partially develop a consistent Dothraki language was rather neat.

Yeah he's shaping up to be quite the complex fellow. I'm wondering what kept him from coming back. Probably something I'm going to need to ask the oracle.

Very happy to hear it! I'm a big fan of Saskia and her accidental character arc is the one I think back to the most when I think about this campaign (more so than Kynan to be honest, who was a bit more of a "blank slate protagonist"). This really is where oracles shine, providing this kind of story development. It might've just been an enormous season long side track adventure but it certainly was fun to play!

@@killtenratsrpg your passion while throwing the dice helped me to understand that in Ironsworn, the story is more important than keeping your main character safe. A real lesson ! Please keep entertaining us with the same passion !! 👏

@@sebastienmorand855 Hey thank you, that's very kind of you to say! From what I've seen regarding Ironsworn play, a lot of newer players actually tend to somewhat counterintuitively get both heavily invested in their character while also interpreting Pay The Price way too punishingly for themselves. I've definitely fallen into that a time or ten myself. But I do find that I have the most fun in a sort of "Die Hard" arc where I start a story all nicely put together and five scenes later my character is crawling through tunnels with a torn shirt, no shoes and all bloodied up!

LOL Nice comparison ! I totally get it ! I will keep that in mind for my first play of Ironsworn that I hope to start soon. Stay safe

It was fun while it lasted! Which was unfortunately not nearly as long as it should have.

Yeah exactly. Despite the more comedic angle, there's a seriously large amount of inspiration to draw from in Discworld novels and the "golem type thing walking under the sea" is definitely one of'em for me.