Inkwell Ideas is at work on a system agnostic solo/co-op framework to use with their upcoming sets of dungeon geomorphs, their existing sets or your own dungeon generators. From their blog post, here are some of the high level points:
- It isn’t its own RPG system–it supports your system of choice.
- We identify 4 roles for solo/co-op play (in addition to players having characters of their own): Story: Develop the adventure setup for the adventure and run any non-combat NPCs; Setting: Develop and explain the surroundings; Foes: Generate, customize, and run opponents & traps; Rewards: Generate and interpret treasures to find.
- You can split the roles among the player(s). Someone good at improv can be the setting person; someone who knows the RPG system well can run the foes, etc.
- We have an oracle and charts to support each role.
- We have a quickstart guide which include a general version of the charts.
- A key thing is what we’re calling the “ladder”–a list of groups of foes to encounter. You might make ordered list of 8 or 10 of them appropriate to the setting with a boss at/near the bottom, and each time you encounter a foe you cross that line out they progress in difficulty in general but not exactly.
- We also have a random encounter counter which you roll each time you come to an empty room or corridor or take time to search or rest. You also increment it each time you take extra time to be stealthy, search an area, or each time it finds nothing–so your chance to encounter something gets higher and higher. Its a way to pay a price for spending extra time.
There’s more over at Inkwell Ideas, including a quick-start rules PDF, an example using a tomb location, and a preview of the new dungeonmorphs (coming soon to Kickstarter).
There are definitely some solo play concepts I’d love to try out some time on the stream and now I will add this one to my list. Solo RPG folks, what do you think?