I thought of an interesting experiment I’ll be doing in this article. I’ve always struggled to balance my love of simulative, crunchy RPGs with the elegance and “grab off the shelf and start playing” appeal of rules-lite systems. Obviously these design spaces are opposed to each other to a large degree, so it’s not really possible to lean too heavily in either direction, but in this endeavor we shall strive.

I’ve always been disappointed by most rules-lite RPGs. My spouse got me a big book with like 50 tiny RPGs in them, and while the concept is great, there is a 0% chance that I would ever play the vast majority of games in that book. This isn’t an attack on any of those games, necessarily; most are just not for me.

In order to fit all the rules and lore on a page or two, most of them have extremely narrow scopes (basically, the games are about one single thing and that’s it. They’re about that thing every time you play them and there’s no opportunity to set your own goal or try to break out of that game structure). There’s a lot of reasons why you might want to do this: the game can be highly focused; you can experiment with novel game mechanics; they’re board-game like and easy to get that “off the shelf” feel out of.

They’re also completely antithetical to why I play roleplaying games.

For example, one of the games is for 2 players and both players play as…stars who are somehow in love with each other. Yes, it’s a “roleplaying game” where your roles are assigned to you and those roles are inanimate celestial objects.

That’s not a roleplaying game–it’s a storytelling game.

(I’m not trying to be a hater–the game is very well-designed. It just isn’t a roleplaying game by any measure that I find meaningful.)

Another fascination I have is with solo RPGs. How cool would it be to, again, grab an RPG off the shelf and slay some monsters for an hour or two when you’re bored and don’t have anyone to play with?

Alas, this too has left me wanting. Most solo RPGs are really storytelling/journaling games; there are few that even attempt to capture senses of dungeoncrawling, wilderness exploration, mystery-solving, politicking, etc. (There are some, and I have played a fewof them; maybe I’ll review some in the future.)

It’s obvious why–those types of gameplay usually require a GM, and GMing yourself isn’t fun for most people. You’ll always know if there’s a trap in the hallway; you’ll always know what the monster is going to do next. At that point, just write a story.

Well, for this article or series of articles, I’m going to try to design my own rules-lite/solo-RPG heartbreaker. I’m going to do it right here in the WordPress editor, with no outside playtesting or research whatsoever. I’m not going to plan it out in advance. I’m going to sit in front of my computer and design it all out as a sort of stream-of-consciousness, reasoning out my design decisions as I go. At the end I’ll include the “full rules” for anyone who wants to give it a shot. Then I’ll try playing it and come back for a future article with results.

I haven’t brainstormed specifically for this idea beforehand, other than setting the general parameters for how I want to do it. I will not be using external resources like anydice or looking at other games for inspiration; the only tools I’m allowed are a set of physical dice to roll in front of me. The game can require nothing but paper, writing utensils, and whatever dice I decide to use (though I won’t be getting fancy with d14s or anything else that most people wouldn’t already have). And I’m going to record the results here as a sort of development diary.

Clear on the rules? Cool. Three, two, one, let’s jam.

Design Specs

Alright, so first off, most of our content is going to have to be generated procedurally. We don’t have time or space to be designing specific dungeons, NPCs, plots, or goals. I want this game to be open-ended, something that you can “fire up” at any time and play with different results every time.

We’ll file “procedural content generation” away for a bit and think about Game Structures.

The Alexandrian has a great series of articles about game structures that I recall reading. I’m not going to go look at it now, in keeping with my self-imposed rules, but starting with game structure allows me to define the boundaries of the play space I’m working within.

And I want that play space to be as large as possible.

I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel or make something niche and narrow. I want a game that mimics, to the greatest extent possible, the feeling of playing a large-scale fantasy RPG–D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowdark, Dolmenwood, etc. So the player needs to be able to:

• Create a unique character who can “level up” or improve in skill and survivability. Do we want this to be class-based? It’s a double-edged sword because then you need a class system, which bloats the design; on the other hand class systems can act as design focusers as well, which may make them worthwhile. I’ll put a pin in that.
  • To differentiate characters, we’ll need some combination of ability scores or attributes; skills; classes; traits/perks; etc. The more of these we have, the more flexible character creation is and the more mechanics and styles of play are opened up, but these also bring more bloat. I’ll have to be very intentional.
• Crawl a dungeon in search of XP and treasure. This is part of exploration and will probably be our starting point as the dungeoncrawl is essentially the oldest and most tried-and-true game structure in RPG history. We’ll also need to fight the monsters we find down there, so there’ll need to be some kind of combat system.
• Engage with NPCs. I don’t want this to be just a dungeoncrawl–players should be able to shop, talk to NPCs to get clues, flirt, manipulate, politick, etc. This might be the hardest element to design in a way that feels satisfying for a Solo RPG, because procedural social interaction can feel very unnatural, but I’m gonna do my damnedest.
• Explore cities, towns, wilderness, essentially all non-dungeon areas. I may have to get creative here because cities and wilderness shouldn’t be the same either; I’m only lumping them together here to say that I don’t want this game to be “only” a dungeoncrawl.
• Change gear/equipment/items with clear mechanical support. I don’t want items and treasure and gear to feel interchangeable, ie differences between weapons are flavor-only; items and treasure are meaningless outside of their monetary value. We also don’t want huge equipment lists, though, so this’ll be a challenging line to walk.

There may be other elements I’ll want to add, but this is my starting point. I want to be able to create a character and drop them into a generic fantasy world to adventure, meet people, get stronger, and defeat fearsome enemies.

So we’ve got a few game structures in mind — dungeoncrawling, socializing with NPCs, exploring (cities, wilderness). Now comes the ultimate question–how.

Remember, this is not a storytelling game. So I’m not interested in giving the player any more narrative control than is necessary–they have complete control of their character, and as much as possible of what’s left is left up to dice or other procedural game mechanics.

For this reason I want to start with character creation. I tend to start here with new design ideas anyways, but I think it makes sense because this is the area with the most player control and agency. Once its parameters are set, then the rest of the game’s parameters should be easy to figure out.

First off–I like what I call Stats and Skills. Stats refers to inherent attributes or ability scores of a character (your Strength, your Intelligence, your Charisma, etc) and Skills are specific talents that characters have and can get better (or sometimes worse) at. I like knowing how smart or charismatic my character is so that I can try to play them that way; I like knowing how good my character is at haggling or lockpicking and seeing if they can get better at them.

But to design this game well, these character-building elements need to facilitate and synergize with the game structures that this game is about. So I can’t just go throwing them in willy-nilly for reasons of “realism,” “immersion,” “elegance,” “balance,” etc. Game structures come first, then all that stuff.

In a full-fledged system (like the one I’m developing) it’s easy to make Stats and Skills work well together. Your Lockpicking skill is in some way related to your Dexterity, for example; your Persuasion or Speech skill is affected by Charisma.

Here, though, that is going to significantly increase the crunch and mental load of basic action resolution, so I’m going to try to avoid it. I may come back to it later if I feel I can do it in an intuitive and useful way, but for now, I’m going to focus on Stats.

Why Stats and not Skills? While I actually prefer skill systems, they are almost always more complex and require more granularity to model properly. But even more importantly, they are more specific. Stats (attributes, ability scores, etc) are beneath Skills; they are the fundamental traits of a character in the world. Everyone has a Strength score; not everyone has any skill whatsoever in Trap Disarm or Survivalism or what-have-you.

So while my dream RPG would definitely have a Skill system, for now I’m going to focus on ability scores or Stats.

We also want to lighten the load of D&D‘s 6 ability scores. 6 is not really that many, but it’s always easier to add something in later than it is to pull it out once you’ve already been designing around it. So for now let’s start with 4 stats:

• Strength–Physical prowess, melee combat
• Dexterity–Speed, reflexes, grace
• Intelligence–Sharp-mindedness, pattern recognition, mental acuity
• Charisma–Personality, confidence, charm

I’ve dropped Constitution and Wisdom. Constitution never feels interesting in these kinds of games, and I don’t think I’ll be using a Hit Point system anyways (more on that later). And while I like Wisdom, it’s always felt very abstract and undefined to me. If I decide to go back and add in a 5th score, we’ll consider Wisdom or possibly Perception.

Now, there’s a lot that’s hard to model here. What if my character is very intelligent, but has had no formal education whatsoever? Very graceful, but never even seen a lockpick before?

I’ll put a pin in that for now. There might be other ways to model those kinds of characters without a whole skill system. First, let’s start with a list of all of the things characters can expect to have to do in this game, and see if we’ve got a Stat for that.

• Fight. Strength for melee, Dex for ranged, and Int for magic. We’ll use Dex and/or Strength as defensive stats, too. Easy, peezy.
• Explore the dungeon. Dex covers a lot of this ground, like picking locks and moving stealthily, but Strength might be used to clear rubble or break down doors, and Int might play a role in identifying objects or artwork or other clues. There’s going to be some abstraction here, but nothing debilitating.
• Wilderness adventures. This is where Wisdom would normally come in, but I got rid of it. Oops. Oh well, Intelligence (recognizing plants, tracking) and Dexterity (climbing trees, moving through rough terrain) can fill in most of the blanks.
• Social interaction. Con the merchant, seduce the barmaid, advise the duke. Intelligence and Charisma rule the day here.

You get the point. Between those 4 stats, we should be able to cover pretty much anything the characters would want to do, as long as we accept a healthy dose of abstraction.

I do want more ways to differentiate characters than this. As of now, instead of a skill system with skill points and bonuses, I’m thinking a simple skill tag system–you have expertise in a skill, or you don’t. Maybe if you do you get an extra die to roll on those checks. No numbers to keep track of, just a word on your character sheet. We’ll see.

I want character creation to be rapid. While I haven’t worked out the nuts and bolts yet, I’m going to say that to roll up a character, you roll 4d6 and assign the totals to each stat in whatever order you want. (Or, if you want to speed it up even more and aren’t really interested in customizing your character, roll them all in order.) As an optional rule for “easy mode” play we can do 5d6 drop-lowest, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.

That gives us our baseline–4 stats, ranging from 1-6 at character creation. These can probably be boosted later by some method–some RPGs make it very difficult to increase your ability scores, but I’ve never liked that (if I’m fighting a lot, I should be getting stronger). We also know that items and equipment will play into this all somehow, and I have plans to implement an extremely-rules-lite skill system down the line.

But now it’s time to start thinking about game structures, and what these numbers mean, and what we do with them. Next up is Combat.

Part II – Combat

Part III – Skills

Part IV – Character Creation

Part V – Magic