Solo Dungeon Crawler - Solo DnD Tutorials

It's no secret to most avid solo roleplay (or "roll" play) enthusiasts that enjoy old school that random dungeon generation has been around since at least the spring of 1975 and can be attributed to the co-creator of D&D, Gary Gygax himself. If you're familiar with any of my content then you'll know that from time to time I mention Gary's method as it appeared in the TSR newsletter known as Strategic Review (the first issue to be exact). What is perhaps less known is another method introduced in the Autumn of 1977. This method of generating random dungeons on the fly was published in the third ever issue of UK's White Dwarf magazine. Famous these days for focusing solely on Warhammer products, but interestingly enough at its inception it was focused primarily on Dungeons & Dragons. Roger Moores'’ "Solo Dungeon Mapping" from White Dwarf #3 Roger Moores'’ "Solo Dungeon Mapping" from White Dwarf #3 (November 1977) presents

There are many examples of “gods, demi-gods and heroes” listen in the final OD&D supplement written by Rob Kuntz and James Ward, but throughout the previous OD&D books there are also various clues pointing to some implied or supposed deities, belief systems, and mythologies that might be expanded upon also. It’s evident that many of these “snippets” of information will have later been fleshed out in AD&D and the official material pertaining to the world of Greyhawk. However, it’s interesting to see what was mentioned prior to 1979 and think about how these various scraps of information might have fuelled the imaginations of the early adopters of D&D. Implied, Supposed & Suggested OD&D Pantheons It’s a given that D&D was heavily inspired by various works of pulp fantasy and science fiction. We are all familiar with Appendix N, but there was actually an earlier list in Dungeon Magazine #4: “Anderson, Poul (Three Hearts and Three Lions) Blackwood, Algernon Brac

I've recently been experimenting with 1:20 scale combat in my own solo OD&D campaign. This experiment was prompted by a few lines of text in the 1973 OD&D draft which states that when normal-types are fighting fantastic types, "It is suggested that the 1:20 Combat Tables be used." but such an approach is not so straight forward in practice due to the Post Melee Morale system that should technically apply to any melee conducted in this manner. The Post Melee Morale system is used to test whether one side of the melee will move back, rout, retreat or surrender. The problem with the Post Melee Morale system in an OD&D context is that it relies on specific Morale Ratings for individual types of creatures, i.e. normal troops (light foot, heavy foot, armoured foot, cavalry and so on), fantasy creatures such as elves, dwarves, goblins and of course the stronger monsters. The Morale Ratings in CHAINMAIL do not cover all the monsters and super-normal (character types)

 In OD&D's "Underworld & Wilderness Adventures" movement rates are given as numbers of hexes per day which can be travelled according to type. This is followed by a suggested scale of 5 miles per hex. So, a figure on foot who has a rate of 3 hexes of movement per day would therefore travel 15 miles in a day. This works fine when making longer journeys on a typical referee's wilderness map, but what about if a journey is being taken to reach somewhere that is only a few miles away? For purposes of time keeping you may wish to compute how much time this would take. OD&D Movement Speeds as Miles per Hour To calculate how many miles per hour a figure can move first you need to figure out how many hours are in a typical day. Presuming a medieval European setting the day would be measured from dawn until dusk, so we are really only dealing with the daylight hours between. For a temperate climate you would typically have about 12 hours of daylight in spring, 16 i

There are almost endless challenges to forming a suitable set of rules to enable solo play of Dungeons & Dragons. This hobby has kept me fully occupied in trying to solve many of the problems I have come across so far and I wouldn't want to change that. It is very much part of the fun! A recent challenge for me has been handling positive reactions rolls by monsters. What happens? In a group game this is left up to the referee who gets to keep the players on their toes. This is difficult to recreate in a solo experience. However, I enjoy the challenge of giving it a go! OD&D Handling Positive Monster Reaction Rolls in Solo Play One approach I have recently been experimenting with is allowing myself (as the solo player) to decide what the outcome of a positive reaction roll will be. To make this work a finite number of options should be available that best represent what is typically offered in an OD&D game. Studying the rulebooks inside out is the best way to decide what

 I've come across some examples of solo TTRPG enthusiasts attempting to create what they sometimes call a "Monster A.I.", which is designed to determine the behaviours of monsters when encountered in a game of solo D&D or the like. It got me thinking about OD&D and how in those earliest rulebooks monsters behaviour is already (albeit in a very simple way) codified to some extent. OD&D Default Monster Behaviour for Solo Play To begin with are some basics to setup a typical Wandering Monster encounter. Typically the circumstances of the encounter are determined as follows: A roll for Surprise is made. To quote Underworld & Wilderness Adventures "A Condition of surprise can only exist when one or both parties are unaware of the presence of the other. Such things as ESP’ing, light, and noise will negate surprise. If the possibility for surprise exists roll a six-sided die for each party concerned. A roll of 1 or 2 indicates the party is surprised. Distanc