Eryssel's Journeys

You can tell I really like Scarlet Heroes because I'm always bringing it up. Not only was it the very first solo RPG book I bought, but also I find myself going back to it, time and time again, despite having other titles in my collection.   The illustrations of the book are also fantastic, in my opinion! Due to its origins (see my previous article for a quick overview on this), Scarlet Heroes is easily customizable and adaptable. This is exceptionally useful if you're playing entirely on your own.  By default, the game comes with the monsters, spells, and lore of the Red Tide , an original campaign setting by Kevin Crawford (the one man behind Sine Nomine Publishing), which was made available as a Labyrinth Lord supplement around the time Black Streams: Solo Heroes (Scarlet Heroes' predecessor) was originally released. The world of the Red Tide was inspired by Southeast Asian myths and culture. When the full Scarlet Heroes was released via Kickstarter, the Red Tide setti...

It's been a bit more than two years since my last post, but I'm back! This time, I bring you a small guide on how to play DnD 5e using Scarlet Heroes. First and foremost, this guide will focus on solo roleplaying . That is, you playing your RPG of choice on your own without a GM or another player. I make this clarification because not everyone may be aware that this is a possibility. Nowadays, you can play any tabletop RPG on your own, and there's a wide variety of tools and games that help you do it.  Scarlet Heroes is precisely one of the most well known games/tools to help you play solo. The book comes with everything you need: both a ruleset (which includes character creation, items, monsters, etc.) and a set of oracles and random tables. Oracles and random tables are key when it comes to solo roleplaying. They essentially provide the answers you would normally ask a GM during a standard game. There's an element of surprise to them too, so that you can get the impr...

In this post, I will be adding some random creatures I may come up with every now and then to use with Labyrinth Lord RPG. This means the post will be updated whenever I design a new one. For now, here's one:

I know it's been a while, but work has been keeping me quite busy. Anyhow, here's part 4 of Xena and Gabrielle's adventures in the world of Bivius! I hope you enjoy it, and stay tuned for part 5...  ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Previously on Xena Xena and Gabrielle meet Ion, a former jeweler made bandit, who informs them of the plans Callisto and her minions have of conquering these lands. This confirms Xena’s fears of an unforeseen attack on the prosperous farmlands of Stagira and its surroundings. Now, our heroines, accompanied by Ion, have decided to visit the nearby town of Stratoniki to warn their inhabitants, and maybe, find some help. SANDBOX MODE Urban sandbox Initial location: Stratoniki (Terrain) Plains (Settlement) Town A <religious government> - B <authoritarian leader> = A A <typical food> - B <at risk of enemy raids> = A The group arrives at Stratoniki,  a town commonly ...

RPGs tend to use dice, lots of 'em! So, it's common to find, as part of a gamer's collection, some tools and gadgets specially designed to ease all that rolling. The two most common are dice trays and dice towers. However, buying them can be expensive, and depending on where you live, getting either of those can cost a bit of $$$. Of course, there's always an alternative because with a little bit of patience, and some random household items, you can craft a dice tower and a dice tray yourself! After searching all over the web for possible methods of crafting (and pretty much discarding all those that required complex carpentry tools or other advanced skills), I found two wonderful solutions. DICE TRAY: For the first one, all you need is a cheap photo frame, some felt fabric (or any other type of fabric that has some soft thickness to it), and a pair of scissors. Essentially, all you have to do is to remove the glass from the frame, and instead of framing...

Hello! It's been a couple of months since my last update. But fear not! Here's a new entry for all of you. Today, I'd like to delve into the realm of tiny yet flavorful role-playing games. I have been reading, collecting, and studying a bunch of minimalist RPGs that are available for free for the past year or so. There are LOTS of different options available, and most of them take but a couple of minutes to read. Because I'm a solo RPG enthusiast, part of my research has focused on the possibility of being able to play those games on my own. And, I've found two systems that I consider to be a true delight: Bivius and USR! BIVIUS The first one , I've already referenced here on the blog. I'm talking about Riccardo Fregi's (AKA Lost Pangolin) glorious and minimalist: Bivius What makes it so great? For starters, it's main aim is solo gaming, which means that you need no special circumstances to play, as long as you have the time to do so. Al...

I've seen this question pop up time and time again in forums and similar websites: How do you convert 5e material into OSR games? This applies mostly to monsters, foes, and other creatures that sometimes are hard to convert into older systems because of the concepts of AC (Armor Class) and HD (Hit Dice). Modern 5e foes use HP (Hit Points) as opposed to HD, and their AC is ascendant (which means that the higher the AC, the better). So, whenever you're playing a module, things go smoothly until you encounter your first enemy, and then you're lost because how do you transfer such a detailed enemy into a much simpler system, while ensuring you're keeping it relatively balanced? Well, here's one way how you can do it. I'd like to share with you a very simple conversion system, that will allow you to convert 5e foes and other creatures to OSR games with a descending AC (such as Labyrinth Lord). This also works with other games such as Scarlet Heroes (more info ...

So far we've learned about the Generative GM Method and its steps. We've also explored some examples on how to find information about the location for the adventure and its plot hooks. Now, for the last part of the planning, I'm going to focus on the characters I'll be playing with.  When it comes to solo RPGing and player characters, there are two main schools of thought from what I've learned so far (here's an interesting example that explains some popular methods briefly):  You play your PCs as you normally would in a cooperative RPG session, consciously separating their actions and knowledge from those you have as GM. (the PC/GM-in-one approach) You emulate the PCs with the use of tools to keep the randomness of actual player decisions while focusing on GMing play as you would in a cooperative RPG session. (the PC-as-NPCs approach ) I've played as the PC/GM-in-one approach before, and even though it's interesting, I wanted some random...