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For a gameplay with less flair, which is more realistic than playing for audience, I recommend Moses from Wilona's Cave channel. My own playstyle is influenced by both him and Trevor although far more crude and far less budget and flair.
I like Trevor. His new game would have got my money if Monolith didn't make a new Conan game at the same time. He'll probably still get my money, just not in time to fund the Kickstarter.
I started playing solo using the Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox over a year ago after watching Ginny Di’s video about the system. I freaking LOVE it. It got me started and showed me how to play on my own. Eventually, I started building my own random generation tables that better fit the circumstances of my campaign, although I still use the Toolbox’s tables as well. For game mechanics, I’ve learned them well enough that I no longer need to consult the Toolbox for the simpler stuff. I’m now 14 months into a solo play campaign with a three-character party. As I played, I wrote stuff down. Occasionally went back to fix things when I discovered I made mistakes on how the rules work. Edited for consistency. I now have a freaking 700-page novel that isn’t close to being finished yet. This is the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. I love my homebrew world, story, and characters, and when this campaign is finally over, I’m going to start all over with a new campaign. Edited to add: my campaign is very heavy in social interaction, so people who prefer that to combat-dominated play really ought to give the Toolbox a try.
As others have said, using Mythic is a great way to play solo. A few comments state that it's random, but that is only partially true. The prompt will create surprising plot twists, but always with an eye toward the existing fiction. Everything is interpreted in context with what has come before. It's also definitely worth taking a look at RPGs that are designed to be played solo, such as Ironsworn (which is available for free), Ker Nethalis, or Four Against Darkness.
@@theDMLair with more coming every day... It's worth noting that Mythic is a GM Emulator, which means you can use it for any game, including D&D, Pathfinder, or whichever game you prefer.
@@theDMLair In particular, I recommend Mythic Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition. To help keep players from abusing Mythic to get gold or magic items, I've added in the Shared Campaign rules from Xanathar's, and we're having a ball.
Obvious Mimic has three (about to be four) full length solo D&D games that are a lot of fun. You can play as any type of character you want, you roll to make choices, and even get to do combat. Highly recommend if you want some rails on the story, don’t want to make everything up yourself, but still want to roll and make your own character.
I've have a solo Shadowdark/Mythic GME game going for months and I love it. I play whenever I want for as long as I want and with Mythic everything is random. I strongly suggest watching Trevor Devall on Me, Myself and Die.
I play solo all the time and have never made my own adventure ahead of time. I've also only played a published adventure once. Any veteran solo player learns to use the oracle and tables to keep things surprising and fresh. I start with a prompt and them let dice and randomizers tell me if there's monster here, which type it is, did the NPC lie to us, etc. You get the hang of it as you play. It's a ton of fun.
I am a solo TTRPG player, I love using the Mythic GME 2e (you can get it on drive thru RPG). It has rules in place to where you can actually be surprised by plot twists and the like. Me myself and Die here on TH-cam has great examples Thanks for making a video about it Luke!
Yeah, MGME is the first stop for this kind of thing - for any TRPG. The twists and varied events are top notch. Later, you can add extra stuff like Perilous Wilds and other options to get more thematically focused details to add. Yet you only need MGME (and an RPG) to get started.
@@RIVERSRPGChannel I make good use of it for homebrew worldbuilding, and planning npc encounters in towns and whatnot. I think my favorite use has been creating bougie-ass menus for my upscale taverns, then telling my currently-destitute players that they're too poor to afford anything, and to kick rocks to the fishery.
@nandomax3 I had it thrown together a "discount" magic shop, with a bunch of defective, cursed, and half-assed magic items the players could buy for half price.
ChatGPT has way too many restrictions. Run something like KoboldCPP locally and you'll get better results, though you will need to keep reminding it of your stats. Every option has downsides.
Hey luke! Love the videos. Just wanted to comment that I appreciate that your business model on youtube doesnt rely on external sponsors but instead your own content you produce in house. I dont mind sponsors as I know youtubers gotta eat and pay rent but I didnt realize how refreshing it is to have a sponsor segment that is actually relevant to the video. Unfortunately I probably wont purchase anything at the moment since I always run my own homebrew stuff but If I ever get the urge to run a module Ill pick up one of yours for sure. Thanks for the great content!
I play solo using The Gamemaster's Apprentice as an oracle and Deck of Many Dungeons. Nothing is prepared in advance other than the characters. But it's worth remembering that there are two ways to play solo; as a DM and as a player.
As someone with an IT background the history of GPT is that it started as basically a proof of concept. The people developing it, and still to an extent, basically asked “could you make a language model that can accurately follow individual instructions given in plain English?” Which has obviously applications for accessible ways for users to interface with their devices. And what they produced first did that as best as they could make it. The subsequent versions aimed to fix issues where it struggled. But when you’re asking it to follow not just a single command but apply a set of instructions that interact with eachother in complicated ways, and to not only do that but remember and recall the events that come to pass, you’re vastly leaving the scope of what it was designed for. I’m not surprised at all that it struggles here, it’s effectively trying to run a game on a device that doesn’t meet the requirements.
Also the thing i want to do is a "Defend the Outpost" campaign where you spend time managing and upgrading the outpost between harder and harder enemies attack. Put random events on cards, shuffle them and.. go crazy
Paul Bimler, the author of the Solo Advanturer's Toolbox, has a series of 5e choose your own adventure books that you can create a character and play by yourself.
The 'guided' style of solo is pretty much the best in my opinion. And what I like doing is whats called "Co-Op' gameplay in which two people play with 1 person as temporary 'acting GM' who does the oracle rolls and interpretations, then after a 'scene' (or when they feel like it) they will pass off the role to the other person. That, and journaling, it really helps solidify what your 'doing' in game.
I run a D&D-like game for myself, and I don't use any of that stuff. I make up the character(s) I want to play as and the basic premise of the campaign, and then I use Donjon's random encounter generators to find out what problems and situations the characters run into along the way. I can also make my own tables, listing as many possibilities as I want and using dice to choose randomly from among them. One factor I love about this method is that it can be as rules-light or as rules-heavy as you want. My first solo campaign was very rules-heavy, using multiple spreadsheets to track my character's equipment, spell points, and encumbrance, down to the last copper coin. In my current game, I haven't even nailed down what classes all the characters are. I just rattled off vague descriptions of what they're good at and roll 1d20 (with no modifiers) to determine how much good or bad luck will help or hinder them when they try to do things. I also love the narrative freedom solo play gives me. Since I, as the solo DM, only have to cater my solo game to one player (me), I can make my game about whatever I want. If I want to be a pirate, I can make a pirates campaign. If I want to do sci-fi, I can do a sci-fi campaign. I even ran a campaign where I rolled up a new party of 2-5 characters every session. My game can be whatever I want it to be, and I love the freedom that that gives me.
In the UK they had a series called Fighting Fantasy which was like our Choose Your Own Adventure but with dice. There is an official app that uses the original books virtual dice and comes with one free adventure (I think new ones are $5 each). They're HARD.
The way I run is a hybrid of ChatGPT and Dungeon Master aids. I use Mythic GME for most things, but I have a ton of random tables from things like the Solo Adventurer's Toolboxes and the DMG to move the story forward; I do this all within my VTT so the roll tables and stuff are already there and I don't have to look things up; if I had to have PDFs or actual books for all the sources I use, it would be ridiculous. Then, I take all the randomly rolled prompts and NPC traits and stuff and feed it to ChatGPT so it can handle NPC interactions as well as fleshing out the scene. If I have a question that I actually want to have a little control over, I'll ask Mythic first and tell ChatGPT what happened; if I don't, I'll just ask ChatGPT while we're chatting.
For Choose Your Own Adventure books, I highly recommend the Lone Wolf Adventure books by Joe Dever. While you are always the same main character, you get your pick a number of skills to help open choice options. Additionally, you can pick up gear during the game to help your quest. Becsuse you maintain a character sheet that carries over from book to book, skill choices and gear can make a big difference and helps with replayability. In addition to just choices, your character can get into combat, which is resolved through a series of d10 rolls. The writing is good and there are like 30 books. I've played through the series numerous times since I was first introduced in the 80s. I love these books
There is one more method that comes to my mind: solo GMing. Read an adventure, create a party to play it and roll for their actions and decisions. Pros: you are surprised by the decisions of your players (like in a real table), and it's a great training session for new GMs. Cons: you are not playing as the characters, and that's one big reason many GMs turns to solo RPG, to taste the other side of the table. Thanks for this video!
I trained my friends to play DnD by having a built character and making my own short adventure with one/two social interaction encounters and one combat encounter. I made the plot myself, the NPC myself, and the enemies myself. I controlled the tokens since I played on an online canvas in Discord. I essentially play DnD on my own, but I made that the PC's choice were up to my friends. "The PC encountered a pack of wolves that would devour the PC's master. What would he do?" I knew the ending, but not how it would end. It would still depend on my friends' decisions and the dice roll. The first impression might not sound good since I had to narrate the NPCs, the enemies, and the PC. But after some dice roll, it got interesting. I wouldn't know that the old grandpa NPC who fought to his ded would score crits twice in a row with his own fist. I wouldn't know that the PC would dance to his deceased master. There were still some unexpected things happening, and I was glad to run that very short campaign that technically played it on my own.
I tried solo RPG just 2 days ago using solo adventurers toolbox and their adventure module The Dead Don't Sleep, which is basically just the roll tables you'll need. I skimmed through the Toolbox, just to understand the very basics and started to play. I had SO MUCH fun! It was great, and I had some awesome moments because of the dice rolls. They really want to tell a story :D I will continue on this solo adventure. I'm so glad I tried this and I highly recommend it. Especially if you are a forever DM or someone who can't find a game with other people.
15:00 Arguably you don’t have to make your own adventure. Alternatively you could lean FURTHER into the procedural generation and make a procedural hex crawl. Make it an emergent adventure discovered through play. This has the advantage of solving the “No surprises” problem that you pointed out. 1e had some material for this in its appendices. And it works more or less. Effectively the table was just “it’s very much more likely that the current terrain will continue into the next hex, with a non-zero chance of changing to something else, and terrain that shouldn’t occur next to eachother won’t.” And you had to hand place oceans, large lakes, and rivers, because there was no easy way by that method to randomly generate those. Of course it also had random loot tables and dungeon generation in this same section of the DMG. I never used those for solo play but this video has inspired me to perhaps try it. But not right away because I’m preoccupied with prepping a game for my group. But perhaps when I get that off the ground. One thing I will say is that suggests rolling random monsters per room of the dungeon… which tends to result in things that don’t quite make sense. So I would perhaps stop after the first few rooms and begin randomly selecting one of those initially generated groups to be in a given room on that level. If the room isn’t empty. Or perhaps have chance of continuing with more of the same or changing to a new monster type. Some way to cut down on the over-variety.
I've recently played 1e solo with just the tables and appendices in the DMG, no GM emulator or anything. It does work well for really any type of D&D game you want to have mechanically(dungeon delving, wilderness exploration, urban conflict, etc.). You _are_ limited in surprises when it comes to stories, but only by your own imagination - I've experienced this with things like Mythic GM Emulator as well. There are books like Tome of Adventure Design or Knave that are pretty much just a bunch of tables with ideas for different aspects of an adventure to roll on. As for encounters that don't make sense: It's stated pretty bluntly in Mythic GM that if a random result doesn't make sense for the situation, then you very well may want to re-roll. In the AD&D 1e DMG, it doesn't state this, rather it's assumed that a well-read young adult or adult(at the time of its publication in 1979) would read it, understand that you're operating under the honor system, realize that you're only beholden to yourself, and that you're free to re-roll, use different tables, etc., basically whatever you want when the only person's enjoyment you have to consider is your own.
I grew up soloing my way through published and homemade adventures. I remember solo adventures. Some of them had invisible ink pens to reveal things as you played. The king of solo games when I was a kid, however, was Tunnels and Trolls.
New Tunnels & Trolls edition reportedly in the works, too. I still have the previous 'big book' and quite a few solo adventures but I'm wondering how many Solos they'll be releasing for the new edition, and whether some will be new.
I play solo D&D several times a week, but I don't use any of the above methods exactly. Currently, I'm adapting the Age of Worms to 5e so I'm playing through it ahead of time. And I do run exploration and social encounters more than combat. My oracles are both cards and dice, and the cards include decisions for questions with random odds based on likeliness. I also use random tables not to generate results but to add flavor too them like two creatures being in the middle of an argument when I encounter them, or a parent teaching a child to do something. For social encounters, Yes, I talk to myself, but also I use the oracle and skill checks to determine success exactly as I would with a full group of other players. I judge what idea I came up with for the speaking character vs the NPC in terms of difficulty and make the rolls. Do I know things? Yes. Do my characters? No. That's roleplaying. I make decisions and say things the character would say and do, not things that I the solo-player would say and do. Even without plot surprises that's fun, because it has success/fail surprises, and it still exercises my imagination muscles. I have to think about would this character say this and would that other character agree with them or not? In my current solo-group, for example, two of the characters are forming a clique against the team leader and trying to convince the rest of the group to put them in charge. I'm the same player but the characters are all different. For exploration, hex crawling involves random encounters and that includes random locations. Even side quests and plotlines that help me develop the story around my quests. Again, my oracles are used a lot, and have various results. Therefore, I'm often surprised and as my current campaign I'm running every other week for live players are coming up behind me they're having different experiences than I did. For dice I use the Ravenloft Dikesha from the Forbidden Lore set (you can convert these to tables or make your own). The "Encounter Building Cards" by Eric Bright on DriveThruRPG (all decks). And Nord Games' card sets "Objects of Intrigue", "Treacherous Traps", and "Wandering Monsters". Plus a bunch of OSR books for random tables. I get surprised a lot, and I just play. Unrelated. With ChatGPT, rather than trying to have it DM a whole session or adventure at a time, I get better results by prompting one scene at a time. Then I do the remembering for it based on the prompt. That includes prompting it to determine difficulties for different options rather than asking if if I succeed and expecting it to roll for me. Convert the difficulties into DCs using the 5-10-15-20-25-30 rules from the DMG/PHB skills section and roll yourself. Then send the next prompt based on the results. Works better, but does take more work.
One of the first things I did with ChatGPT and at the first versions of the AI, it actually works very well, I had an travel adventure from a city to another kingdom, with a sidequest of a secondary party on the side and on those times it didn't keep forgetting to often and it had difficulties and had more intensive plot. But one thing It works still at this day, is playing as a DM with an Ai, asking for actions and decision is way easier than keep remembering them the story, characters, locations and even tipe of campaing (I tried a couple weeks again and it jumped to cyberpunk, it really don't works anymore as DM)
Hi Luke and team! Thanks for the video and thanks for the good advice, I will certainly look into some of these options. For my part, I started a solo game based on the suggestions of a certain channel (Bandit's Keep) It is using the original rules of the game just as its creators used them, for my part I have made some adjustments since I use PF1 but they have served me a lot of inspiration and I am currently using it to generate a background world for the adventures
As a game master and creative writer, I have dabbled in this a bit using the method involving oracles and random tables. I use some of these same tools in my actual D&D games with my players for random encounters or complications. The solo playing I have done can best be described as “journaling”. As well as a character sheet, I write an ongoing story (a journal) of the adventure events as I go. I also track reputation with different factions as I would in my normal games. In my opinion, some of these better journaling game runs could be tidied up someday into a LitRPG book.
Can recommend the Toolboxes 1 and 2. 1 lends itself more to dungeon crawls, with 2 expanding a lot more into other styles of games like hexcrawls and open ended play. There is a heavy emphasis on your own creativity, but the interpretive style means you still get surprises as you try and come up with weird ways to make seemingly unrelated things come together somehow. It’s not group D&D, and that’s ok - it essentially becomes its own medium, and taken like that, it’s fantastic. Supplementing with GM’s Miscellany series or Tome of Adventure Design, you’ll never run out of random tables to spice things up and keep things moving. I would advise making your own creature tables (either in a spreadsheet or via a website that has bestiaries on it) by CR for thematic consistency, but if you just want classic D&D the stuff in the books is perfect. I’ve just found that having. Curated list of thematically appropriate creatures and NPC options helps with immersion. Happy gaming.
There are also some choose your own adventure style Solo Adventures available on various sites that are targeted to an older audience and allow you to bring your own character, so that would overcome some of your cons. Still not as great as being in person with a bunch of friends, but still fun. They can even be a way to do individual side quests when the group can't get together.
The best way to play DND solo is playing it alone. I never played DnD solo, but Knave 2e encourages rolling random stuff to your solo campaign and creating the lore around the results
I find chatgpt is really good for bouncing ideas on. It makes a lot of nonsense if you let it make an adventure by itself cut and print (and likes naming NPCs Elara) but it gives you good skeletons to build on. I personally think it's good for using as a tool as much as AI scare is rampant on the internet. It's really useful for making notes the players find.
I've played through the first two books published by Obvious Mimic while my group was on summer hiatus and really enjoyed them. I'm a relative beginner, so really helped getting to grips with the mechanics.
what ive learned with chatgpt as a dm myself its very usefull to give you ideas for an adventure plot like i asked for an idea for an isekai dnd campaign and it gave me some ideas and now i have a god game sorta campaign with gods taking people from other worlds to compete in a competition on there behalf
I tried solo rpg during the weekend with llama 3.1. It went well. All started when I went to sewer after some thieves and ended on my character losing his mind on some cosmic Cthulhu horror and the whole city was destroyed (including me). It was awesome 😅 Best thing of course was that it was completely free (excluding price of the GPU of course…)
Playing a solo 5E Waterdeep Dragonheist and Tomb of Annihilation solo campaign using Mythic GME as a hybrid system with ChatGPT to build out the story. The 2014 DMG and other random table books are also a huge help. I’m still trying to iron out my overall process.
Words are hard! :) There were solo adventures released by TSR, they were so much fun! There are also a lot of Gamebooks that were released since the 80's!
I have a module made in the 80s I can't remember the name at the moment, but it came with one of those invisible ink pens. (The were usually used with puzzle books sold at truck stops). Anyway as you played through you used the invisible ink pen in a box on the paper to show the results of your actions. I don't know if more than one was ever made.
It's not D&D but I used to play the old Star Wars Missions books and they were like solo Star Wars RPGs for young people, choose your own adventures but you had a choice of iconic Star Wars characters with unique stats, equipment and die rolls for outcomes
Ooh! I played solo before. The best methods in this video is 3 and 4 by a long shot. I have done a bit of both. I have soloed with my own adventures. They are super basic adventures. I also played a bit of Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure in the Starter Set. This is the set with the green dragon on the box cover. In order to play DND solo, I got to use the same materials a group would use. I mean duh. I got a ton of DND 5E books. So I am good to go. I also have books for Pathfinder and Tales of the Valient. I see Luke has books for these same three games in the background. Neat. The downsides of playing with the DND books don't bother me. Sure the player has to be thier own DM. However it isn't an issue for me, because I am fascinated by the role anyway. I will jump at the opportunity to create my own adventures. Using module books will work well too. I can even think of it as DM training wheels. There is a huge pro to make up for the downsides. I get to playtest houserules. That is something that I thouroughly enjoy. I have been focusing more than that then making big grand adventures. I hope I will get to the adventures someday. I have been writing a ton about magic in my DND journal. So I haven't played solo in a while. I look forward to playing with the new DND books. I got the Player's Handbook and the DM Guide. That would be enough to get started. The Player's Handbook has some stat blocks in the appendix. That can tide me over until the new Monster Manuel comes out. I am not touching AI with a ten foot pole. I think this has the same reason why I don't touch online DND. If I wanted to play and RPG using a computer, video game RPGs are right there. They are so much better. They are easier to work with and the visuals provide powerful immersion. If I was going to play DND, I want to do it the old fashioned way. This video did explain that an AI adventure falls short compared to human DM adventure. That is a big deterrent for me. This may be a case of technology going too far. Video games don't go that far. They are hand crafted by teams of human designers and programmers. A AAA game is a whole big production with a whole team of people. It is like produciong a blockbuster movie. An indie game still has people too. There is just one person or a few people. A video game has the same human touch as DND and tabletop games in general. The humans can put thier skill into making a good product. DND is its own big production with a big team. I have watched videos on the official DND channel about the new books. I got the impression of the big production. AI probably isn't to the point of replacing one human DM let alone a big team of human designers. Even if it could, this replacement is a bad idea. It takes away the jobs from all those people. That is so cruel. I didn't get to reading the new DM guide yet, even though I just bought it. I do plan to read it soon. From what I heard on TH-cam, there was an effort to make the book more approachable and helpful for new DMs. I think this effeort is a much better way to address the DM shortage than AI.
Obvious Mimic creates solo adventures. They currently have 3 adventures for sale with another on kickstarter right now. I have enjoyed these very much.
The problem is that you generally don't want chat gpt to be able to say no. Imagine you actually want to know something and it just says "No". So the save way is to write into the code that it should never go against what the customer says.
Added this as a comment below but should have posted it. DM guild has the solo adventures by 5e solo - death knights squire series and wraith wrights eight petals argent series that are fantastic. Both series of modules allow for your own character creation and feel much more like a traditional games or 1on1. Don't have to play them in order either. Would like to have seen your take on these as they are definitely 4.5/5 in my opinion for how well written and immersion. Not only that but replayability is great with various characters/classes.
Can highly recommend the ones by 5e solo - death knights squire series and wraith wrights eight petals argent series. These both allow for your own character creation and feel much more like a traditional game or 1on1. Would like to have seen your take on these as they are definitely 4.5/5 in my opinion for how well written and immersion. Not only that but replayability is great with various characters/classes.
Old school D&D was geared to use solo as well as group play. Kinda hardwired into the rules. Mythic GME is one of the best systems for solo gaming with any rule set.
@@theDMLair I think the mythic GME v2 is definitely worth a look if you are interested in solo play. It, together with ironsworn/stareforged, are considered the gold standard for a reason. Ironsworn is its own game while the GME works with any system. If you aren't averse to checking out something other then dnd then ironsworn is also a must read. It has the added benefit of being completely free while being one of the best ( if not the best) fantasy solo RPG system out there. I think its great that you introduced your followers to the concept in general. I have gained a lot through solo play and believe it is more then the next best thing if you don't have a group. It has helped me to be a better GM by giving me tools to break out of my own narrative patterns, worrying less about prep and getting better at improvising at the table. It has also given me the chance to easily check out games I'm curious about to see if I would enjoy running them without having to convince my players to switch game systems every 3 months. I think the more people hear about solo play being an option and checking it out the better for the RPG hobby as whole, so thank you for your video it´s worth a lot.
I tried playing with chat gpt with me as the DM and Chat gpt as the player character. It was interesting, bit once I had run out of prompts for the current model and had to use the older free model it felt like my player had suddenly taken stupid pills and became super boring. It wouldn't do anything even tesembling creative. It just had the character follow the most obvious path and didn't try to do any actual problem solving.
AI is great until you need it to remember...ANYTHING. It's 20 years from being what all the corporations are telling you what it is today (think blockchain...remember blockchain changing the world?).
It easy, just set the board and 2 chairs. Move your bois and try to wipe out the "enemies", move chairs and have the heroes try to outlast and whale the bad guys back.
Using only Core Books: "There's no surprised. You created the adventure yourself. What could possibly happen?!" People with dementia: "Ha! Jokes on you. I have... I have... I have...? Oh, dementia! Why? Did you ask about it? Ooh! Premade adventure!"
I had a idea, why not do a mind mapping program like Obsidian, fully create the adventure and let it "cook" for 4 months so you forget and bam. Ez Or ask your friends to make stuff up and email it to you. But that requires you to not be friends with "I dont want to do group work" bois
A pro of the DM Aids method is that it preserves the sense of discovery that makes being a player fun. I disagree that there are no surprises. using the dice and a good tool or set of tools you can defintely create surprises and plot twists. Dont build the whole map/dungeon at once, but do a few rooms/hexes at a time, or just one at a time. Build backstories over time etc. Most DM aids out there can be used this way so there are so many to pick from. in fact a con is there are too many tools out there that you can experience choice paralysis.
I use those books and Chat gpt. It helps to have two pcs and yeah you kinda have to really go into a role and yeah instead of talking you write the dialogue so it is a more active bookwriting kinda.
Just one thing to the subject: RPG videogames exist. They can surprise you, they DM for you, they give you options for your character and roleplay (to an extent). I literally see no pro for solo ttrpg over a game made specifically for one player. Also, you can just write a book and have an adventure that way! Who knows, maybe even someone would read it eventually besides you...
Yes, I 100% agree that ChatGPT helps you out when you need to brainstorm but is basically a yes man. However, you can upload entire rulebooks and bestiary PDFs and make prep go faster.
It's interesting... Everyone who solos RPGs seems to want to take on the role of the player, and have an oracle for the GM. I've never seen a system designed for soloing as a GM, and letting an oracle run the PCs. I guess that's because most people would rather play. But I have started thinking lately that it might be easier to be the GM, make up some PCs (using random tables if you want), and then use oracles to just decide what the players do when confronted with the various challenges in the adventure. This avoids the problem of spoilers, and I suspect it might be good practice for a newbie GM to run through an adventure and see what it's like.
Someone made such a thing, called "The Solitary GM", for automating the players. I think it's PWYW or free on DTRPG. I've not really checked it out yet, so I don't know how well it works.
This is how I’m playing, personally. Even if I tried playing with a GM emulator and having my story be random, by the end of the session, my mind would come up with several ideas of how the story would continue and end. So I just ended up creating a simple plotline for my characters and using the dice to decide whether my PCs head towards the quest goal. Also since my plans are so broad, I let random tables fill in the details which creates a fair amount of surprises. For example, I had planned for my main PC to leave on a simple quest with two NPCs. I just randomly thought to roll for the amount of NPCs that join and ended up with 3 additional NPCs that have now changed my story. I had them go through a small dungeon to find a magic item I placed. I used random tables to determine the contents of each room and my PC ended up finding 2 other magic items (could’ve got a 3rd, but he didn’t find it). He found an item that can detect lies (although because he barely succeeded his roll, he knows what it is but doesn’t know how to use it) and an item that can grow an instant 6ft tree wherever it’s thrown.
@@AeridisArt Yes, this is the sort of thing I mean. Instead of "I am a player, are there any items in the room?" (roll oracle), it's "There are these 3 magic items, will the PC search for and find it?" I may need to try this... just need oracles for player behavior. I wonder if it would be worth making a "min maxer," a "drama lover," a "combat wombat" and other player types to run the PCs... There is the Motif Character Engine, which is a good start, but I'd probably need something a little more extensive.
@@scrapperlock9437 There’s the Player Emulator with Tags, though I couldn’t get my head around it honestly. I feel like it creates this strange middle man, where you’re emulating a player that’s emulating a character. I don’t know if the Motif Character Engine is similar, but I personally prefer to just emulate the character. It feels much more direct.
What's funny about CGPT is that I uploaded a bunch of PDF's from Paizo and it's been nothing but helpful in parsing it out and using it to do campaign stuff, including agreeing to run a solo campaign for me. The times it just arbitrarily decides to ignore copyright law is astounding, considering it's programmed to, you know, not do that.
@@hectorvivis3651 I do. I use it more than I probably should to plot out possible scenarios my players will get into, and it's been great for getting prepared for their shenanigans. It's also been great for helping me flesh out a homebrew world I've been working on. Worth the money, IMO, especially as it's started learning exactly what I want out of it.
Playing solo can be great, but i wouldnt recommend 5e solo Roll under systems, and rules light systems are going to be far easier to run due to not needing to know ACs or other monster stats. You dont want to fight 5 goblins by yourself in 5e (not unless you just want to imagine fireballing everyone all the time). If you know your going to hit your average enemy rolling under a 15 and then you can raise or lower that depending on how fast you want them to be, your game runs a lot smoother. Then you roll to dodge or block so you get to just be your character as much as possible.
With any AI it is important to be explicit. Especially GEN AI. Your prompts need to be specific and often they need to be broken down and specific in a modular format so the AI can “think through” things in the manner you want. One of the things you can do with ChatGPT and CoPilot is make subject matter experts. So in the case of of DM you would want to make a prompt like this. Make a dungeon master for D&D5E. Use these resources: DMG5E, PHB5E, MM5E. Use these options…note them. Always use rolls based on the rule set and tables to resolve any ability checks, skill checks, saving throws, and combat roles. Then test it to make sure there is not any quirks. I don’t run 5E and prefer PF1E with a set of house rules. I don’t do solo but I do use mine to test encounters and and such. And have done so with my group’s party (since I have a copy of their character sheets). And it does a good job of allowing me to develop encounters and tweak them… You can even have them set up specific characters and how they will interact (basic). It takes some work to fine tune your prompts…
You're better off playing a Computer RPG. First time play you'll be surprised by the Story. Further play you can make different choices, dialogue options, or even character abilities to try different tactics. Change difficulty. Eventually you might get boredom fatigue, but you would have had many, many hours worth of fun play time. Put the game away and come back a month or so later. It's still familiar, but nostalgia will make it fun.
If you used chat gpt you would have better luck making a custom GPT and put all of those stipulations. It will remember it then. You then put your accomplishments into it as well and then it will remember it.
Yeah I remember trying to play DND with chat gpt. I became the most OP mfker 😂. Almost every confrontation ended with just me using the "blink of doom" 😂. Even descended that world into chaos by using the "stomp of destruction" 😂 yeah I spammed that shit, I became a god that everybody feared basically 😆
So as someone with a bit of experience with AI in professional settings, I find that gpt looses context. Try using a self hosted model, and experiment with hidden prompts and RAGs.
I tried chat GPT, but it's glaringly obvious there's not a single thought behind those lines. It makes a lot of logical mistakes and most importantly it has no idea how the rules work. It may sound like it when it appropriately calls for a Stealth check but that's about it. I think it'll be years before we have a good AI GM. And I don't really mind that. I'm not too keen to create memories and bonds with a computer.
@theDMLair I play from the characters perspective and the tools generate the NPCs responses. Depending on how deep you want to go with the tools, you can either generate a general tone of their response, or deeply simulate their ideas, attitude from moment to moment, reactions, and topics.
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I highly recommend the channel Me, Myself & Die if you want to see solo role-playing in action.
I've played games with him at cons!
Seconded. Trevor is the GOAT at this stuff. Amazing.
For a gameplay with less flair, which is more realistic than playing for audience, I recommend Moses from Wilona's Cave channel. My own playstyle is influenced by both him and Trevor although far more crude and far less budget and flair.
I like Trevor. His new game would have got my money if Monolith didn't make a new Conan game at the same time. He'll probably still get my money, just not in time to fund the Kickstarter.
Me Myself & Die rocks! Trevor also includes links to fantastic resources you can use to solo.
I started playing solo using the Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox over a year ago after watching Ginny Di’s video about the system.
I freaking LOVE it.
It got me started and showed me how to play on my own. Eventually, I started building my own random generation tables that better fit the circumstances of my campaign, although I still use the Toolbox’s tables as well. For game mechanics, I’ve learned them well enough that I no longer need to consult the Toolbox for the simpler stuff.
I’m now 14 months into a solo play campaign with a three-character party. As I played, I wrote stuff down. Occasionally went back to fix things when I discovered I made mistakes on how the rules work. Edited for consistency.
I now have a freaking 700-page novel that isn’t close to being finished yet.
This is the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. I love my homebrew world, story, and characters, and when this campaign is finally over, I’m going to start all over with a new campaign.
Edited to add: my campaign is very heavy in social interaction, so people who prefer that to combat-dominated play really ought to give the Toolbox a try.
@@jancatperson8329 What do you use to handle interaction between your characters?
@ I play them the way I play my character in the weekly group campaign I play in. That goes for the three PCs and all the NPCs.
As others have said, using Mythic is a great way to play solo. A few comments state that it's random, but that is only partially true. The prompt will create surprising plot twists, but always with an eye toward the existing fiction. Everything is interpreted in context with what has come before. It's also definitely worth taking a look at RPGs that are designed to be played solo, such as Ironsworn (which is available for free), Ker Nethalis, or Four Against Darkness.
sounds like there are quite a few solo RPGs out there
@@theDMLair with more coming every day...
It's worth noting that Mythic is a GM Emulator, which means you can use it for any game, including D&D, Pathfinder, or whichever game you prefer.
@@theDMLair In particular, I recommend Mythic Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition. To help keep players from abusing Mythic to get gold or magic items, I've added in the Shared Campaign rules from Xanathar's, and we're having a ball.
Obvious Mimic has three (about to be four) full length solo D&D games that are a lot of fun. You can play as any type of character you want, you roll to make choices, and even get to do combat. Highly recommend if you want some rails on the story, don’t want to make everything up yourself, but still want to roll and make your own character.
I've have a solo Shadowdark/Mythic GME game going for months and I love it. I play whenever I want for as long as I want and with Mythic everything is random. I strongly suggest watching Trevor Devall on Me, Myself and Die.
I play solo all the time and have never made my own adventure ahead of time. I've also only played a published adventure once. Any veteran solo player learns to use the oracle and tables to keep things surprising and fresh. I start with a prompt and them let dice and randomizers tell me if there's monster here, which type it is, did the NPC lie to us, etc. You get the hang of it as you play. It's a ton of fun.
It takes a special kind of mind to play solo.
Esper the Bard does videos of himself running solo adventures.
I am a solo TTRPG player, I love using the Mythic GME 2e (you can get it on drive thru RPG). It has rules in place to where you can actually be surprised by plot twists and the like. Me myself and Die here on TH-cam has great examples
Thanks for making a video about it Luke!
Yeah, MGME is the first stop for this kind of thing - for any TRPG. The twists and varied events are top notch. Later, you can add extra stuff like Perilous Wilds and other options to get more thematically focused details to add. Yet you only need MGME (and an RPG) to get started.
You bet! Sounds like there's a lot more ways of solo play than I even knew about! :D
Same for me and using GME 2e with published adventures is also super easy and something I enjoy doing.
I'm glad someone mentioned the Solo Adventure's Toolbox, its a great resouce that I cannot recommend enough as a great entry point into solo DnD.
I’ve found Chat GPT is good for adventure ideas but that’s about it
@@RIVERSRPGChannel I make good use of it for homebrew worldbuilding, and planning npc encounters in towns and whatnot. I think my favorite use has been creating bougie-ass menus for my upscale taverns, then telling my currently-destitute players that they're too poor to afford anything, and to kick rocks to the fishery.
Yeah chat gpt refuses to actually challenge you
I'm also using it a lot. I like to ask him to flavor my magical itens with drawbacks and lore relevant to my camping
@nandomax3 I had it thrown together a "discount" magic shop, with a bunch of defective, cursed, and half-assed magic items the players could buy for half price.
ChatGPT has way too many restrictions. Run something like KoboldCPP locally and you'll get better results, though you will need to keep reminding it of your stats. Every option has downsides.
Hey luke! Love the videos. Just wanted to comment that I appreciate that your business model on youtube doesnt rely on external sponsors but instead your own content you produce in house. I dont mind sponsors as I know youtubers gotta eat and pay rent but I didnt realize how refreshing it is to have a sponsor segment that is actually relevant to the video. Unfortunately I probably wont purchase anything at the moment since I always run my own homebrew stuff but If I ever get the urge to run a module Ill pick up one of yours for sure. Thanks for the great content!
thank you so much! Happy to hear you're enjoying the content!!!
I play solo using The Gamemaster's Apprentice as an oracle and Deck of Many Dungeons. Nothing is prepared in advance other than the characters. But it's worth remembering that there are two ways to play solo; as a DM and as a player.
Call of Cthulhu solo adventures are really good.
I love CoC!!!
@@theDMLairYou need to open up that starter Set.😂
I'm fascinated by the rise of Solo ttrpgs.
But i'm to busy playing games with people all the time , working & making videos.
As someone with an IT background the history of GPT is that it started as basically a proof of concept. The people developing it, and still to an extent, basically asked “could you make a language model that can accurately follow individual instructions given in plain English?” Which has obviously applications for accessible ways for users to interface with their devices. And what they produced first did that as best as they could make it. The subsequent versions aimed to fix issues where it struggled.
But when you’re asking it to follow not just a single command but apply a set of instructions that interact with eachother in complicated ways, and to not only do that but remember and recall the events that come to pass, you’re vastly leaving the scope of what it was designed for. I’m not surprised at all that it struggles here, it’s effectively trying to run a game on a device that doesn’t meet the requirements.
There's a game on Steam called AIRougelite that uses AI, but keeps track of stats and quests to try and make up for the AI limits.
Also the thing i want to do is a "Defend the Outpost" campaign where you spend time managing and upgrading the outpost between harder and harder enemies attack.
Put random events on cards, shuffle them and.. go crazy
Paul Bimler, the author of the Solo Advanturer's Toolbox, has a series of 5e choose your own adventure books that you can create a character and play by yourself.
The 'guided' style of solo is pretty much the best in my opinion. And what I like doing is whats called "Co-Op' gameplay in which two people play with 1 person as temporary 'acting GM' who does the oracle rolls and interpretations, then after a 'scene' (or when they feel like it) they will pass off the role to the other person.
That, and journaling, it really helps solidify what your 'doing' in game.
I run a D&D-like game for myself, and I don't use any of that stuff. I make up the character(s) I want to play as and the basic premise of the campaign, and then I use Donjon's random encounter generators to find out what problems and situations the characters run into along the way. I can also make my own tables, listing as many possibilities as I want and using dice to choose randomly from among them.
One factor I love about this method is that it can be as rules-light or as rules-heavy as you want. My first solo campaign was very rules-heavy, using multiple spreadsheets to track my character's equipment, spell points, and encumbrance, down to the last copper coin. In my current game, I haven't even nailed down what classes all the characters are. I just rattled off vague descriptions of what they're good at and roll 1d20 (with no modifiers) to determine how much good or bad luck will help or hinder them when they try to do things.
I also love the narrative freedom solo play gives me. Since I, as the solo DM, only have to cater my solo game to one player (me), I can make my game about whatever I want. If I want to be a pirate, I can make a pirates campaign. If I want to do sci-fi, I can do a sci-fi campaign. I even ran a campaign where I rolled up a new party of 2-5 characters every session. My game can be whatever I want it to be, and I love the freedom that that gives me.
In the UK they had a series called Fighting Fantasy which was like our Choose Your Own Adventure but with dice. There is an official app that uses the original books virtual dice and comes with one free adventure (I think new ones are $5 each). They're HARD.
The way I run is a hybrid of ChatGPT and Dungeon Master aids. I use Mythic GME for most things, but I have a ton of random tables from things like the Solo Adventurer's Toolboxes and the DMG to move the story forward; I do this all within my VTT so the roll tables and stuff are already there and I don't have to look things up; if I had to have PDFs or actual books for all the sources I use, it would be ridiculous.
Then, I take all the randomly rolled prompts and NPC traits and stuff and feed it to ChatGPT so it can handle NPC interactions as well as fleshing out the scene. If I have a question that I actually want to have a little control over, I'll ask Mythic first and tell ChatGPT what happened; if I don't, I'll just ask ChatGPT while we're chatting.
For Choose Your Own Adventure books, I highly recommend the Lone Wolf Adventure books by Joe Dever.
While you are always the same main character, you get your pick a number of skills to help open choice options. Additionally, you can pick up gear during the game to help your quest. Becsuse you maintain a character sheet that carries over from book to book, skill choices and gear can make a big difference and helps with replayability.
In addition to just choices, your character can get into combat, which is resolved through a series of d10 rolls.
The writing is good and there are like 30 books. I've played through the series numerous times since I was first introduced in the 80s.
I love these books
Those sound cool!
Loved those books as a kid. I died so many times. There is actually a website where you can play them online but i don't remember what its called.
There is one more method that comes to my mind: solo GMing. Read an adventure, create a party to play it and roll for their actions and decisions. Pros: you are surprised by the decisions of your players (like in a real table), and it's a great training session for new GMs. Cons: you are not playing as the characters, and that's one big reason many GMs turns to solo RPG, to taste the other side of the table.
Thanks for this video!
Great video and excellent research!
Thank you so much!!! I credit Ed with nearly all the research. Thank you, Ed!!!
I trained my friends to play DnD by having a built character and making my own short adventure with one/two social interaction encounters and one combat encounter. I made the plot myself, the NPC myself, and the enemies myself. I controlled the tokens since I played on an online canvas in Discord. I essentially play DnD on my own, but I made that the PC's choice were up to my friends.
"The PC encountered a pack of wolves that would devour the PC's master. What would he do?" I knew the ending, but not how it would end. It would still depend on my friends' decisions and the dice roll. The first impression might not sound good since I had to narrate the NPCs, the enemies, and the PC. But after some dice roll, it got interesting. I wouldn't know that the old grandpa NPC who fought to his ded would score crits twice in a row with his own fist. I wouldn't know that the PC would dance to his deceased master. There were still some unexpected things happening, and I was glad to run that very short campaign that technically played it on my own.
I tried solo RPG just 2 days ago using solo adventurers toolbox and their adventure module The Dead Don't Sleep, which is basically just the roll tables you'll need. I skimmed through the Toolbox, just to understand the very basics and started to play.
I had SO MUCH fun! It was great, and I had some awesome moments because of the dice rolls. They really want to tell a story :D I will continue on this solo adventure. I'm so glad I tried this and I highly recommend it. Especially if you are a forever DM or someone who can't find a game with other people.
awesome! great to hear you enjoyed it!
15:00 Arguably you don’t have to make your own adventure. Alternatively you could lean FURTHER into the procedural generation and make a procedural hex crawl. Make it an emergent adventure discovered through play. This has the advantage of solving the “No surprises” problem that you pointed out.
1e had some material for this in its appendices. And it works more or less. Effectively the table was just “it’s very much more likely that the current terrain will continue into the next hex, with a non-zero chance of changing to something else, and terrain that shouldn’t occur next to eachother won’t.” And you had to hand place oceans, large lakes, and rivers, because there was no easy way by that method to randomly generate those. Of course it also had random loot tables and dungeon generation in this same section of the DMG.
I never used those for solo play but this video has inspired me to perhaps try it. But not right away because I’m preoccupied with prepping a game for my group. But perhaps when I get that off the ground.
One thing I will say is that suggests rolling random monsters per room of the dungeon… which tends to result in things that don’t quite make sense. So I would perhaps stop after the first few rooms and begin randomly selecting one of those initially generated groups to be in a given room on that level. If the room isn’t empty. Or perhaps have chance of continuing with more of the same or changing to a new monster type. Some way to cut down on the over-variety.
I've recently played 1e solo with just the tables and appendices in the DMG, no GM emulator or anything. It does work well for really any type of D&D game you want to have mechanically(dungeon delving, wilderness exploration, urban conflict, etc.). You _are_ limited in surprises when it comes to stories, but only by your own imagination - I've experienced this with things like Mythic GM Emulator as well. There are books like Tome of Adventure Design or Knave that are pretty much just a bunch of tables with ideas for different aspects of an adventure to roll on.
As for encounters that don't make sense: It's stated pretty bluntly in Mythic GM that if a random result doesn't make sense for the situation, then you very well may want to re-roll. In the AD&D 1e DMG, it doesn't state this, rather it's assumed that a well-read young adult or adult(at the time of its publication in 1979) would read it, understand that you're operating under the honor system, realize that you're only beholden to yourself, and that you're free to re-roll, use different tables, etc., basically whatever you want when the only person's enjoyment you have to consider is your own.
@ well good to know that it could be fun.
I grew up soloing my way through published and homemade adventures. I remember solo adventures. Some of them had invisible ink pens to reveal things as you played. The king of solo games when I was a kid, however, was Tunnels and Trolls.
New Tunnels & Trolls edition reportedly in the works, too. I still have the previous 'big book' and quite a few solo adventures but I'm wondering how many Solos they'll be releasing for the new edition, and whether some will be new.
@ Cool, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for it.
was not aware of Tunnels and Trolls. cool
I play solo D&D several times a week, but I don't use any of the above methods exactly. Currently, I'm adapting the Age of Worms to 5e so I'm playing through it ahead of time. And I do run exploration and social encounters more than combat. My oracles are both cards and dice, and the cards include decisions for questions with random odds based on likeliness. I also use random tables not to generate results but to add flavor too them like two creatures being in the middle of an argument when I encounter them, or a parent teaching a child to do something.
For social encounters, Yes, I talk to myself, but also I use the oracle and skill checks to determine success exactly as I would with a full group of other players. I judge what idea I came up with for the speaking character vs the NPC in terms of difficulty and make the rolls. Do I know things? Yes. Do my characters? No. That's roleplaying. I make decisions and say things the character would say and do, not things that I the solo-player would say and do. Even without plot surprises that's fun, because it has success/fail surprises, and it still exercises my imagination muscles. I have to think about would this character say this and would that other character agree with them or not?
In my current solo-group, for example, two of the characters are forming a clique against the team leader and trying to convince the rest of the group to put them in charge. I'm the same player but the characters are all different.
For exploration, hex crawling involves random encounters and that includes random locations. Even side quests and plotlines that help me develop the story around my quests. Again, my oracles are used a lot, and have various results. Therefore, I'm often surprised and as my current campaign I'm running every other week for live players are coming up behind me they're having different experiences than I did.
For dice I use the Ravenloft Dikesha from the Forbidden Lore set (you can convert these to tables or make your own). The "Encounter Building Cards" by Eric Bright on DriveThruRPG (all decks). And Nord Games' card sets "Objects of Intrigue", "Treacherous Traps", and "Wandering Monsters". Plus a bunch of OSR books for random tables. I get surprised a lot, and I just play.
Unrelated. With ChatGPT, rather than trying to have it DM a whole session or adventure at a time, I get better results by prompting one scene at a time. Then I do the remembering for it based on the prompt. That includes prompting it to determine difficulties for different options rather than asking if if I succeed and expecting it to roll for me. Convert the difficulties into DCs using the 5-10-15-20-25-30 rules from the DMG/PHB skills section and roll yourself. Then send the next prompt based on the results. Works better, but does take more work.
I've been thinking of picking up solo play as a way to exercise my DM muscles. I believe this guy will give it to me straight, so let the show begin!
One of the first things I did with ChatGPT and at the first versions of the AI, it actually works very well, I had an travel adventure from a city to another kingdom, with a sidequest of a secondary party on the side and on those times it didn't keep forgetting to often and it had difficulties and had more intensive plot.
But one thing It works still at this day, is playing as a DM with an Ai, asking for actions and decision is way easier than keep remembering them the story, characters, locations and even tipe of campaing (I tried a couple weeks again and it jumped to cyberpunk, it really don't works anymore as DM)
Hi Luke and team!
Thanks for the video and thanks for the good advice, I will certainly look into some of these options.
For my part, I started a solo game based on the suggestions of a certain channel (Bandit's Keep)
It is using the original rules of the game just as its creators used them, for my part I have made some adjustments since I use PF1 but they have served me a lot of inspiration and I am currently using it to generate a background world for the adventures
You are very welcome. Happy to help!
As a game master and creative writer, I have dabbled in this a bit using the method involving oracles and random tables. I use some of these same tools in my actual D&D games with my players for random encounters or complications. The solo playing I have done can best be described as “journaling”. As well as a character sheet, I write an ongoing story (a journal) of the adventure events as I go. I also track reputation with different factions as I would in my normal games. In my opinion, some of these better journaling game runs could be tidied up someday into a LitRPG book.
Can recommend the Toolboxes 1 and 2. 1 lends itself more to dungeon crawls, with 2 expanding a lot more into other styles of games like hexcrawls and open ended play. There is a heavy emphasis on your own creativity, but the interpretive style means you still get surprises as you try and come up with weird ways to make seemingly unrelated things come together somehow. It’s not group D&D, and that’s ok - it essentially becomes its own medium, and taken like that, it’s fantastic.
Supplementing with GM’s Miscellany series or Tome of Adventure Design, you’ll never run out of random tables to spice things up and keep things moving.
I would advise making your own creature tables (either in a spreadsheet or via a website that has bestiaries on it) by CR for thematic consistency, but if you just want classic D&D the stuff in the books is perfect. I’ve just found that having. Curated list of thematically appropriate creatures and NPC options helps with immersion.
Happy gaming.
I love ALL the DM Lair videos!!!! ❤
There are also some choose your own adventure style Solo Adventures available on various sites that are targeted to an older audience and allow you to bring your own character, so that would overcome some of your cons. Still not as great as being in person with a bunch of friends, but still fun. They can even be a way to do individual side quests when the group can't get together.
aaaaand the moment your first big idea was using chat GPT i was out.
but, but, #4 will SHOCK you!
@@theDMLair AI stuff is garbage and using it is morally and ethically bankrupt.
The best way to play DND solo is playing it alone. I never played DnD solo, but Knave 2e encourages rolling random stuff to your solo campaign and creating the lore around the results
I find chatgpt is really good for bouncing ideas on. It makes a lot of nonsense if you let it make an adventure by itself cut and print (and likes naming NPCs Elara) but it gives you good skeletons to build on. I personally think it's good for using as a tool as much as AI scare is rampant on the internet. It's really useful for making notes the players find.
I've played through the first two books published by Obvious Mimic while my group was on summer hiatus and really enjoyed them. I'm a relative beginner, so really helped getting to grips with the mechanics.
what ive learned with chatgpt as a dm myself its very usefull to give you ideas for an adventure plot like i asked for an idea for an isekai dnd campaign and it gave me some ideas and now i have a god game sorta campaign with gods taking people from other worlds to compete in a competition on there behalf
I tried solo rpg during the weekend with llama 3.1. It went well. All started when I went to sewer after some thieves and ended on my character losing his mind on some cosmic Cthulhu horror and the whole city was destroyed (including me). It was awesome 😅 Best thing of course was that it was completely free (excluding price of the GPU of course…)
Playing a solo 5E Waterdeep Dragonheist and Tomb of Annihilation solo campaign using Mythic GME as a hybrid system with ChatGPT to build out the story. The 2014 DMG and other random table books are also a huge help. I’m still trying to iron out my overall process.
Words are hard! :)
There were solo adventures released by TSR, they were so much fun!
There are also a lot of Gamebooks that were released since the 80's!
I have a module made in the 80s I can't remember the name at the moment, but it came with one of those invisible ink pens. (The were usually used with puzzle books sold at truck stops).
Anyway as you played through you used the invisible ink pen in a box on the paper to show the results of your actions. I don't know if more than one was ever made.
It's not D&D but I used to play the old Star Wars Missions books and they were like solo Star Wars RPGs for young people, choose your own adventures but you had a choice of iconic Star Wars characters with unique stats, equipment and die rolls for outcomes
I love the idea of solo play might start doing this soon
I'm kind of surprise you didn't talk about the Lone Wolf solo RPG book series which was of course designed to be played by one person.
I will give Tunnels and Trolls a shout out here.
That's solo game?
@theDMLair That was one of it's original selling points. There is a phone app where you can play most of the original print solo adventures.
Great video, thank you!!
Glad you enjoyed it! 😄
Ooh! I played solo before. The best methods in this video is 3 and 4 by a long shot. I have done a bit of both. I have soloed with my own adventures. They are super basic adventures. I also played a bit of Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure in the Starter Set. This is the set with the green dragon on the box cover. In order to play DND solo, I got to use the same materials a group would use. I mean duh. I got a ton of DND 5E books. So I am good to go. I also have books for Pathfinder and Tales of the Valient. I see Luke has books for these same three games in the background. Neat. The downsides of playing with the DND books don't bother me. Sure the player has to be thier own DM. However it isn't an issue for me, because I am fascinated by the role anyway. I will jump at the opportunity to create my own adventures. Using module books will work well too. I can even think of it as DM training wheels. There is a huge pro to make up for the downsides. I get to playtest houserules. That is something that I thouroughly enjoy. I have been focusing more than that then making big grand adventures. I hope I will get to the adventures someday. I have been writing a ton about magic in my DND journal. So I haven't played solo in a while. I look forward to playing with the new DND books. I got the Player's Handbook and the DM Guide. That would be enough to get started. The Player's Handbook has some stat blocks in the appendix. That can tide me over until the new Monster Manuel comes out.
I am not touching AI with a ten foot pole. I think this has the same reason why I don't touch online DND. If I wanted to play and RPG using a computer, video game RPGs are right there. They are so much better. They are easier to work with and the visuals provide powerful immersion. If I was going to play DND, I want to do it the old fashioned way. This video did explain that an AI adventure falls short compared to human DM adventure. That is a big deterrent for me. This may be a case of technology going too far. Video games don't go that far. They are hand crafted by teams of human designers and programmers. A AAA game is a whole big production with a whole team of people. It is like produciong a blockbuster movie. An indie game still has people too. There is just one person or a few people. A video game has the same human touch as DND and tabletop games in general. The humans can put thier skill into making a good product. DND is its own big production with a big team. I have watched videos on the official DND channel about the new books. I got the impression of the big production. AI probably isn't to the point of replacing one human DM let alone a big team of human designers. Even if it could, this replacement is a bad idea. It takes away the jobs from all those people. That is so cruel. I didn't get to reading the new DM guide yet, even though I just bought it. I do plan to read it soon. From what I heard on TH-cam, there was an effort to make the book more approachable and helpful for new DMs. I think this effeort is a much better way to address the DM shortage than AI.
Obvious Mimic creates solo adventures. They currently have 3 adventures for sale with another on kickstarter right now. I have enjoyed these very much.
Obvious Mimic publishes Solo DnD adventures, with dice rolling, risk, treasure and dialogue.
I have backed several.
'Love what you do Luke
Thank you!!! :D
So you Zorked it out in the end.
The problem is that you generally don't want chat gpt to be able to say no. Imagine you actually want to know something and it just says "No".
So the save way is to write into the code that it should never go against what the customer says.
Added this as a comment below but should have posted it. DM guild has the solo adventures by 5e solo - death knights squire series and wraith wrights eight petals argent series that are fantastic. Both series of modules allow for your own character creation and feel much more like a traditional games or 1on1. Don't have to play them in order either. Would like to have seen your take on these as they are definitely 4.5/5 in my opinion for how well written and immersion. Not only that but replayability is great with various characters/classes.
Thanks for letting me know! Was not aware of those.
There are Solo Adventures on the DM's Guild as well.
Can highly recommend the ones by 5e solo - death knights squire series and wraith wrights eight petals argent series. These both allow for your own character creation and feel much more like a traditional game or 1on1. Would like to have seen your take on these as they are definitely 4.5/5 in my opinion for how well written and immersion. Not only that but replayability is great with various characters/classes.
Old school D&D was geared to use solo as well as group play. Kinda hardwired into the rules.
Mythic GME is one of the best systems for solo gaming with any rule set.
Good point, this guy went about solo play in literally the worst way possible.
This guy will do better next time.
@@theDMLair I think the mythic GME v2 is definitely worth a look if you are interested in solo play. It, together with ironsworn/stareforged, are considered the gold standard for a reason. Ironsworn is its own game while the GME works with any system. If you aren't averse to checking out something other then dnd then ironsworn is also a must read. It has the added benefit of being completely free while being one of the best ( if not the best) fantasy solo RPG system out there.
I think its great that you introduced your followers to the concept in general.
I have gained a lot through solo play and believe it is more then the next best thing if you don't have a group.
It has helped me to be a better GM by giving me tools to break out of my own narrative patterns, worrying less about prep and getting better at improvising at the table. It has also given me the chance to easily check out games I'm curious about to see if I would enjoy running them without having to convince my players to switch game systems every 3 months.
I think the more people hear about solo play being an option and checking it out the better for the RPG hobby as whole, so thank you for your video it´s worth a lot.
What's the best way to practice DM-ing solo? I have a perfectionism and inferiority issues that solo practice could help.
I tried playing with chat gpt with me as the DM and Chat gpt as the player character. It was interesting, bit once I had run out of prompts for the current model and had to use the older free model it felt like my player had suddenly taken stupid pills and became super boring. It wouldn't do anything even tesembling creative. It just had the character follow the most obvious path and didn't try to do any actual problem solving.
Suggestion for solo game books. Fighting Fantasy. Lone Wolf. Fabled Lands. Destiny quest.
I exclusively play solo. I have played with friends and strangers, but solo is the best.
AI is great until you need it to remember...ANYTHING. It's 20 years from being what all the corporations are telling you what it is today (think blockchain...remember blockchain changing the world?).
It easy, just set the board and 2 chairs.
Move your bois and try to wipe out the "enemies", move chairs and have the heroes try to outlast and whale the bad guys back.
Using only Core Books:
"There's no surprised. You created the adventure yourself. What could possibly happen?!"
People with dementia:
"Ha! Jokes on you. I have... I have... I have...? Oh, dementia! Why? Did you ask about it? Ooh! Premade adventure!"
As a DM, when I don't have a group, I just create worlds.
I had a idea, why not do a mind mapping program like Obsidian, fully create the adventure and let it "cook" for 4 months so you forget and bam. Ez
Or ask your friends to make stuff up and email it to you.
But that requires you to not be friends with "I dont want to do group work" bois
A pro of the DM Aids method is that it preserves the sense of discovery that makes being a player fun. I disagree that there are no surprises. using the dice and a good tool or set of tools you can defintely create surprises and plot twists. Dont build the whole map/dungeon at once, but do a few rooms/hexes at a time, or just one at a time. Build backstories over time etc. Most DM aids out there can be used this way so there are so many to pick from. in fact a con is there are too many tools out there that you can experience choice paralysis.
I use those books and Chat gpt. It helps to have two pcs and yeah you kinda have to really go into a role and yeah instead of talking you write the dialogue so it is a more active bookwriting kinda.
Just one thing to the subject: RPG videogames exist. They can surprise you, they DM for you, they give you options for your character and roleplay (to an extent). I literally see no pro for solo ttrpg over a game made specifically for one player. Also, you can just write a book and have an adventure that way! Who knows, maybe even someone would read it eventually besides you...
Scarier thought, what if it did check to see if you were the copyright holder.
why's that scary?
Yes, I 100% agree that ChatGPT helps you out when you need to brainstorm but is basically a yes man. However, you can upload entire rulebooks and bestiary PDFs and make prep go faster.
It's interesting... Everyone who solos RPGs seems to want to take on the role of the player, and have an oracle for the GM. I've never seen a system designed for soloing as a GM, and letting an oracle run the PCs. I guess that's because most people would rather play. But I have started thinking lately that it might be easier to be the GM, make up some PCs (using random tables if you want), and then use oracles to just decide what the players do when confronted with the various challenges in the adventure. This avoids the problem of spoilers, and I suspect it might be good practice for a newbie GM to run through an adventure and see what it's like.
Someone made such a thing, called "The Solitary GM", for automating the players. I think it's PWYW or free on DTRPG. I've not really checked it out yet, so I don't know how well it works.
This is how I’m playing, personally. Even if I tried playing with a GM emulator and having my story be random, by the end of the session, my mind would come up with several ideas of how the story would continue and end. So I just ended up creating a simple plotline for my characters and using the dice to decide whether my PCs head towards the quest goal. Also since my plans are so broad, I let random tables fill in the details which creates a fair amount of surprises.
For example, I had planned for my main PC to leave on a simple quest with two NPCs. I just randomly thought to roll for the amount of NPCs that join and ended up with 3 additional NPCs that have now changed my story. I had them go through a small dungeon to find a magic item I placed. I used random tables to determine the contents of each room and my PC ended up finding 2 other magic items (could’ve got a 3rd, but he didn’t find it). He found an item that can detect lies (although because he barely succeeded his roll, he knows what it is but doesn’t know how to use it) and an item that can grow an instant 6ft tree wherever it’s thrown.
@@AeridisArt Yes, this is the sort of thing I mean. Instead of "I am a player, are there any items in the room?" (roll oracle), it's "There are these 3 magic items, will the PC search for and find it?" I may need to try this... just need oracles for player behavior. I wonder if it would be worth making a "min maxer," a "drama lover," a "combat wombat" and other player types to run the PCs... There is the Motif Character Engine, which is a good start, but I'd probably need something a little more extensive.
@@scrapperlock9437 There’s the Player Emulator with Tags, though I couldn’t get my head around it honestly. I feel like it creates this strange middle man, where you’re emulating a player that’s emulating a character. I don’t know if the Motif Character Engine is similar, but I personally prefer to just emulate the character. It feels much more direct.
What's funny about CGPT is that I uploaded a bunch of PDF's from Paizo and it's been nothing but helpful in parsing it out and using it to do campaign stuff, including agreeing to run a solo campaign for me. The times it just arbitrarily decides to ignore copyright law is astounding, considering it's programmed to, you know, not do that.
It a thug life person who coded it.
Interesting. Do you use the paid version ?
And now I'm wondering how to do it with a self-hosted LLM too.
@@hectorvivis3651 I do. I use it more than I probably should to plot out possible scenarios my players will get into, and it's been great for getting prepared for their shenanigans. It's also been great for helping me flesh out a homebrew world I've been working on. Worth the money, IMO, especially as it's started learning exactly what I want out of it.
Interesting...
I have a few endless quest books.. they are fun.. I wish, however, there was a version of the old fighting fantasy books but with 5e rolls
This episode had me laughing out loud.
Was it my face? I've been trying to do something about that... ;)
Playing solo can be great, but i wouldnt recommend 5e solo
Roll under systems, and rules light systems are going to be far easier to run due to not needing to know ACs or other monster stats. You dont want to fight 5 goblins by yourself in 5e (not unless you just want to imagine fireballing everyone all the time). If you know your going to hit your average enemy rolling under a 15 and then you can raise or lower that depending on how fast you want them to be, your game runs a lot smoother. Then you roll to dodge or block so you get to just be your character as much as possible.
With any AI it is important to be explicit. Especially GEN AI. Your prompts need to be specific and often they need to be broken down and specific in a modular format so the AI can “think through” things in the manner you want.
One of the things you can do with ChatGPT and CoPilot is make subject matter experts.
So in the case of of DM you would want to make a prompt like this.
Make a dungeon master for D&D5E. Use these resources: DMG5E, PHB5E, MM5E. Use these options…note them.
Always use rolls based on the rule set and tables to resolve any ability checks, skill checks, saving throws, and combat roles.
Then test it to make sure there is not any quirks.
I don’t run 5E and prefer PF1E with a set of house rules. I don’t do solo but I do use mine to test encounters and and such. And have done so with my group’s party (since I have a copy of their character sheets). And it does a good job of allowing me to develop encounters and tweak them…
You can even have them set up specific characters and how they will interact (basic).
It takes some work to fine tune your prompts…
Just started to try Solo 5e.
I am surprised that the obvious mimic solo dnd adventurers aren't mentiomed. They seemed to be the ones everyone else points to for this.
Yeah, I wasn't aware they existed until now.
Biggest problem with solo games is there is no one else to bring you bacon!
100% agree. based on that alone, solo is out.
Like to hear more about solo too kit.
You're better off playing a Computer RPG. First time play you'll be surprised by the Story. Further play you can make different choices, dialogue options, or even character abilities to try different tactics. Change difficulty. Eventually you might get boredom fatigue, but you would have had many, many hours worth of fun play time. Put the game away and come back a month or so later. It's still familiar, but nostalgia will make it fun.
I grew up playing RPGs on the computer. Love that stuff!
Dungeon Hack. Ultimas. even text-based ones. all great.
If you used chat gpt you would have better luck making a custom GPT and put all of those stipulations. It will remember it then. You then put your accomplishments into it as well and then it will remember it.
SP OL LA OY MY FAVORITE!!!
Yeah I remember trying to play DND with chat gpt. I became the most OP mfker 😂. Almost every confrontation ended with just me using the "blink of doom" 😂. Even descended that world into chaos by using the "stomp of destruction" 😂 yeah I spammed that shit, I became a god that everybody feared basically 😆
yep, it's the easy button. lol
So as someone with a bit of experience with AI in professional settings, I find that gpt looses context. Try using a self hosted model, and experiment with hidden prompts and RAGs.
That's beyond my tech level, unfortunatley. :D
@@theDMLair I get it! It is an option. Been wanting to play PF2e solo, not as much content for the platform. Thanks for the content by the way!
I tried chat GPT, but it's glaringly obvious there's not a single thought behind those lines.
It makes a lot of logical mistakes and most importantly it has no idea how the rules work. It may sound like it when it appropriately calls for a Stealth check but that's about it. I think it'll be years before we have a good AI GM. And I don't really mind that. I'm not too keen to create memories and bonds with a computer.
I miss the characters. Specially the stabby stabby rogue
I, Torin, was recruited against my will by the power of chat GPT
I'm sorry....
When I tried playing with AI, I liked the results better when I was the DM and it was a player.
Nice
Cry in a corner is always a good option.
I do it nearly daily. It's great.
Heavy disagree on the "no social interaction" point. There are a million tools out there to enable this. Mythic includes several.
And you're not just talking to yourself? How do the tools work?
@theDMLair I play from the characters perspective and the tools generate the NPCs responses. Depending on how deep you want to go with the tools, you can either generate a general tone of their response, or deeply simulate their ideas, attitude from moment to moment, reactions, and topics.
0:14 um... phrasing? 😂😂
Is it too late to make a "playing with yourself" joke?
SPOLLAOY
I tried the endless quest books for 5e with my son and they are pretty bad.
Obvious Mimic Press
And yes Luke!
Thanks for creating your content and this video… also thanks for the research by Ed Robinson ❤
did not know about them! thank you!