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Showing posts from February, 2021

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 8 - Settlements, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Hello reader, Tom here... Welcome to my blog, ' Solo Dungeon Crawler ' and this series of articles titled ‘ How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo .’ This series will explore the concept of playing a Dungeons & Dragons solo campaign . This means playing the game completely by yourself with no Dungeon Master. How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 8 - Settlements, a Solo DnD Tutorial In previous articles I have been building up a complete solo DnD ruleset using the DnD BECMI rules published in 1983 and written by Frank Mentzer. So far I have touched on choosing a suitable ruleset, creating characters, generating random dungeons, tracking time, handling combat encounters and adventuring out in the wilderness. In this article I am going to cover generating settlements. Generating Settlements In my previous article, which covered various topics on wilderness adventuring, I mentioned settlements and imparted a method for handling random hex mapping, which i

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 7 - Encounters, Climate, Rivers, Coastline & Roads, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Hello blog readers, Tom here, welcome to my blog, ' Solo Dungeon Crawler ' and this blog series ' How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo .’ In my last article I expanded further on the concept of wilderness adventuring in a solo DnD campaign. In this article, I am going to expand on solo wilderness adventures even further! I want to cover: Wilderness Encounter Tables Climate Rivers and Large Lakes Coastlines Roads And a brief example of a Wilderness Adventure How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 7 - Encounters, Climate, Rivers, Coastline & Roads, a Solo DnD Tutorial Wilderness Encounter Tables The next obvious step in creating solo DnD rules , which cover adventuring out in the wilderness, is creating a suitable method of determining the encounters that will take place. The Dungeons & Dragons Expert ruleset provides a very useful set of wilderness encounter tables which are perfect for my needs, but first they need to

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 6 - Deeper into the Wilderness, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Welcome to my blog "Solo Dungeon Crawler" and this series of tutorials, where I will demonstrate how to play Dungeons & Dragons solo using the BECMI ruleset. In this article I'm going to expand on the solo DnD rules I've developed so far, which handles adventuring out in the wilderness. How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 6 - Deeper into the Wilderness, a Solo DnD Tutorial The Procedure The Dungeons & Dragons Expert Set Rulebook contains lots of useful information, which I will adapt and incorporate into my Solo D&D rules . Firstly, it has a useful checklist, which can be used to ensure proper procedure is being followed when handling wilderness exploration. In the previous article, I introduced a simple method in the form of a table to check whether the party or single character becomes lost and a check for an encounter. This new procedure will replace that to provide more depth to the game. Here is the procedure, which I'v

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 5 - Random Wilderness Rules, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Welcome to my blog ' Solo Dungeon Crawler ', addressing all your solo dungeon crawling needs, in particular, showing you how to play Dungeons and Dragons solo , as a one person unit, without a Dungeon Master, completely by yourself. My aim is to make this experience as fun and immersive as possible. In previous articles, I covered the basics of choosing a rule system, creating a character, mapping out a random dungeon on the go using graph paper, how to handle combat scenarios and how to track time. I'm going to build further on this simple system by introducing a means of adventuring outside of the dungeon, in the wilderness. Let's get going. How to Play Dungeons & Dragons - Part 5 - Random Wilderness Rules, a Solo DnD Tutorial To build wilderness from scratch I need to find a random way of generating it, which makes logical sense. Luckily, I already know of such a method. If I cast my attention back to 1979, Gary Gygax and Mike Carr created the Advanced

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 4 - Combat & Time Tracking, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Welcome to my blog ' Solo Dungeon Crawler ' and the fourth post in a series called ' How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo ', dedicated to developing a solo rule system for playing Dungeons & Dragons by yourself using the D&D Basic set from 1983. Specifically the BECMI/Mentzer Basic rules. I've been using these rules in conjunction with ' Solo Dungeon Adventures ', written by Gary Gygax, to procedurally generate my dungeon. How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 4 - Combat & Time Tracking, a Solo DnD Tutorial So far in this series of blog posts I have covered choosing a ruleset and why. Character creation and specific rules for solo DnD campaigns , and generating a random dungeon to explore. I also briefly touched on tracking time. In this session I will continue to explore my random dungeon (generating further as necessary) and briefly look at how encounters will be handled. I am also going to develop a suitable method for tra

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 3 - Dungeon Generation, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Welcome to my blog, How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo , dedicated to playing Dungeons & Dragons solo using Basic D&D rules. This series of blog posts is based on a YouTube video series I started back in July 2020 and is all about working out a way to play solo Dungeons & Dragons games . The aim is to develop a suitable rule system so that a game of D&D can be played without the need for any other players or a Dungeon Master. How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 3 - Dungeon Generation, a Solo DnD Tutorial In the first post I discussed the different iterations of the game, which are available, as well as which one would be the most suitable to use for a solo DnD campaign . I've decided to go with the BECMI Basic D&D rules written by Frank Mentzer and published in 1983. I also briefly talked about the stationary and equipment needed to play. I recommended the use of stationary over digital tools to encourage playing in an old school way, bu

How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 2 - Character Creation, a Solo DnD Tutorial

Hello and welcome to my blog " Solo Dungeon Crawler " and the second article in a series of articles which explores “ How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo ”. In the previous article I chose a suitable version of Dungeons & Dragons to use for a solo game system . I also discussed the " Solo Dungeon Adventures " article which was written by Gary Gygax in 1975. I decided to use this to form a basis for generating random dungeons for a solo game of Dungeons & Dragons . How to Play Dungeons & Dragons Solo - Part 2 - Character Creation, a Solo DnD Tutorial In this article I will focus on the process of creating a player character for the BECMI/Frank Mentzer Basic D&D game, following the character creation rules given in the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set Player's Manual (published in 1983). Stationary First I'm going to cover the stationary you might need to play a solo DnD game , and we all love stationary I'm sure! Especiall