For the last few days, I have continued to solo my way through a hexcrawl using the Prophetess Shinseng. She was having trouble with the mountainous terrain even though she had ropes and climbing gear. When she ran out of provisions, she had to magically blast a Dall mountain sheep for food. Two days later she ran into a group of human miners. She travelled with them back to their village (Amsden). Once there, she stayed with the healer Scentar. This village has a monastery which is dedicated to Argentahl, the god of balance. She discovered that some of the monks were going to travel to other monasteries to trade books. So, she joined this group so that she could get to a town (she has never been to one). They did run into an air elemental, and later the air elementalist. The team won the battles and are continuing their travels towards a town.

I am using the Scrawl revised rules (170 pages). Madness on the Mountain can be found in this document - Scrawl Ultimate Edition (both are free/pay what you want at DriveThruRPG). Give this a try!

For the last few days, I soloed my way through Madness of the Mountain (a fun hexcrawl) available at DriveThruRPG (free/pay what you want). It is for one character and a dungeon master is not needed. The document is 55 pages and 26 pages of it are the rules on how to play. I played the Prophetess Shinseng. She adventured for six days and encountered a hermit, outlaw, giant fly, and some rocs (young and old). She found some coal in a cave and a total of 75 gold pieces. It takes 100 of them to buy a house, so that is what she wants to do. She could have headed back to her home village, but there are some bad memories there. She is now hoping to find a village or town after she gets out of this wilderness area.

This document contains 1 hex map, 32 hexes to explore, 36 abilities, 6 classes, 6 races, 12 spells, and crafting rules. The system runs on one six-sided die. Give this a try!

Impressively done to say the least. An unassuming looking product that is chalk full of everything you could possibly desire to run a solo campaign. When COVID-19 began shutting down everything, I turned back to solo roleplaying, and I have reacquired much of my know-how of what makes a fantastic solo game tick.
Underneath the plain product cover is a powerful solo system that is indepth, yet super simple. There are 36 abilities present and multiple classes/races to choose from. This means you can highly customize your character. The toolkits in the book for building your dungeons/world are thorough. With the world generation and the menagerie of characters to select, you can play SCRAWL indefinitely. Listed as a PWYW, this system should be a no-brainer purchase.

Another creative Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure for low level characters from Stuart Lloyd. As others have said this one has a lot of good humour. It also emphasizes Saving Roll checks over combat, and it's written to incorporate talent/ skill bonuses. I've got a few quibbles with this one andwhile I enjoyed it, I had more fun with some of his other adventures, e.g. Trailblazers.

I've played the Trailblazers T&T solo by Stuart LLoyd a few times now with a Level 1 character. Each time I've had a great time and perhaps equally importantly I've been encouarged to reflect on how differently T&T can be played. As others have noted there is a good section on skills and combat maneauvers in the introduction (not to mention a description of spells and interesting some magical items for sale). The writing style is clear and keeps the reader engaged (and raises ideas for how Trollworld might be settled/ populated). I'm going to give it another go as soon as I finish typing. Worth far more than the small recomended amount and well worth your time.

Quest to stop a blight spreading across a region. Some spoilers follow. Ample clues regarding what to do, although the vital role of herbs to enable the druid to brew potions is not apparent at first. The corrupted creature is tough to defeat without magical aid. Satisfying mechanic for time elapsed during travel and other activities. Definite replay value as certain encounters are only triggered by random rolls; it will take a couple of plays to work out an optimal strategy.

Some possible improvements: entry 44 should direct to 40 after resolution; on reaching 58, gain the codeword Offering; in 84, it would be better if a codeword is given if the shrine is repaired (so you cannot benefit from repeatedly restoring it).

An enjoyable solo; recommended. In play, succeeded at the second attempt.

Solo treasure hunt inspired by the dungeons at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the end of Last Crusade. Many traps to avoid, and much ancient lore to translate; a magic item which helps with the hieroglyphs is easily found. Some tactical decisions to make; many ability checks required. Several nods to the movies, for example having just enough time to pick up your hat before a doorway is blocked. A linear gauntlet, but some replay value as you can retreat from the entrance, walk around and find Satipo: he is an interesting ally. Links seem to work. I would replace the last line in entry 79 with "If you look elsewhere, turn to 81", to avoid repeating an action already taken. Recommended.

Simple but effective solo adventure, saving a farm from demonic possession. More forgiving than some in this series, with plenty of aid and second chances available. Success can be achieved very quickly; some of the more interesting paragraphs are only reached by those that flee or attempt to cast spells from a grimoire.

Recommended.

Refreshingly different and fun solo adventure. A hunt for stolen items in a city, where one of the tasks is to determine exactly what you are seeking. Success will be measured in items found and returned, and monies gained. There are many opportunities for financial gain, and some financial loss traps for the unwary. More martial characters will have opportunities for combat, but it can be (largely) avoided.

Possible improvements: (i) for consistency, entry 25 should refer to a ring rather than a necklace; (ii) you might decide the jewelled broadsword is one of the royal heirlooms you are seeking (and amend entry 50 accordingly).

Recommended.

This book has a wealth of resources and is a great way to pass the time. I am reminded of the old DOS based games of my childhood and I had such a rush of nostaliga while playing this game that I had a smile on my face the whole time. Heck this book can even be used (with some modifications) for other fantasy games as the random terrain charts, sites/dungeons, and other tables in this book are a god send if you need a quick plot! The only thing I would like to see is an option for less sites/dungeons per hexes. I myself prefer a more empty world but that's just me. I made a house rule that you roll a fate die (1-2) there is a settlements, (3-4) there is a dungeon, and (5-6) this is an empty hex.

It's free but I highly recommend to purchase it! It has more value than most books published these days! Get it and you won't be disappointed!

Solo dungeon crawl. Mainly combats, but there is navigation of the maps, and a puzzle to solve to unlock the main treasure room. You can choose a route to the orc boss that minimises encounters, or explore and potentially gain clues to the puzzle. Simple but fun, some replay value.

Worth a play.

Treasure hunt in a mountain range. Good variety in opponent type and physical obstacles. Simple but effective travel mechanics; random encounters (some harsh weather) at night. Reasonably enough, there are a limited number of mountain passes, and the PC is somewhat funnelled, but there are opportunities to pick and choose fights and areas to explore.

Recommended.

Hello, I just picked up SCRAWL last night, and I am loving what I've read so far! There is an utter plethora of tools and tables for single player world building.

If you ever need art for a future edition, I am always available.

https://sites.google.com/site/mc87epidemic/gallery

Cheers!

Anvil of Power

• Starts with variant rules to make the dungeon match the abilities of delvers. This is wrong, a bad practice called "Quantum Ogres", where everything moves around to match your choices, which makes your choices meaningless. Instead, the world should be the world, and the delver takes a chance with the stats they have.
• There are many typos and just incoherent sentences, like: "SPD: If you next round, you may reroll a number of your dice equal to your Attribute Level in SPD."
• The spell listings for each level always have boilerplate lists, even when there's nothing there. "Spells you may use before or during combat: Spells you may use on another, willing target (not too useful) Spells you may use on any paragraph you are not fighting or performing a saving roll:"

• Much of the solo rules are just restatements of the rulebook. It needs 14 pages to do less than the current mini-rules do in 10, or the old solo quickstarts do in 5, or most solos just do by telling you to read the rules, and 1 paragraph = 1 turn.

• So finally we reach the adventure. It really isn't an adventure, so much as a crystal-collecting quest, a town with some shop paragraphs, and then the rules for forging a weapon buried in a maze of paragraphs. A number of paragraphs are just wrongly linked, like 160 sends you from a library trying to read a book to 172, a random corridor. Impossible to know how much of this is just broken, but there's a lot of loops where you meet the same things again.

• The annoying NPC Darej/Deraj ("Jared") is a labyrinth designer (uh huh) who says "And there was one guy who wanted a bunch of puppets in his labyrinth", and references Terence and Philip from South Park. Seriously? Making an oblique reference to Jareth the Goblin King from Labyrinth is fine, pop culture nonsense is really not, and not even keeping your spelling consistent is annoying.

• Magic weapon creation rules. The writing here is often confused, for example: "The formula to work out the cost of a power of a higher level is: The cost of that power – ((The power’s level – your level) x75)

  So if you are a level 1 delver and you decide you want a level 10 power, you work out the discount which will be 10-1 = 9. 9x75 = 675. The cost of a level 10 power is 1000 magic weapon points. 1000- 675 = 325. So it will cost 325 magic weapon points to buy a level 10 power when you are level 1. Let’s hope you live long enough to use it..."

  The cost would actually be 675, 325 is how much you have left afterwards. Unless the author meant to really give a 75% discount for higher level powers, instead of the reasonable 25%.

  This could be simplified, but I think it'd be better removed: It makes these weapons incredibly cheap if you buy ahead and focus on one game-breaking power.

• You can't just turn AP into "Magic Weapon Points", you need an artifact to do that.

• Many of these powers quickly stack to abusive levels: Fire Resistance stops 10 points of fire damage, can be taken every odd level; so by level 9 you can stop 50 points of fire damage, which makes adventures in volcanoes and against fire demons trivial. Clearly not tested or done any math on.

• Meanwhile stat boosts are under-powered. Increase STR adds 1, can be taken at every even level; so by level 10 you can have +5 STR, but your highest stat by definition would be 100+. If it added +Level each time it was taken, that'd be +30, which is a respectable power boost.

• Spell embedding only works for non-Warriors; which makes it somewhat pointless, since you could just cast the spell. A handful of the powers are utilities, mostly equivalent to casting a spell, and these work for Warriors just fine.

• Easy to Wield reduces STR and DEX requirements for a weapon by 7, up to 3 times; which I suppose makes Trollish weapons manageable by average stats, but even by Level 3 a warrior should have better than average stats.

• Some of these powers are useful, but I'd have to analyze each one to see how badly unbalanced it is, and then why? I may as well just do it myself; and already have, in my treasure tables, but I don't let players make their own weapons.

• There's no drawbacks. Great magic swords in myth and literature tend to be just as annoying to own as they are powerful; Saberhagen's Books of Swords illustrate that well.

The basic idea of a forge that lets you turn AP (forget this MWP stuff) into a level-scaling magic weapon — or armor or artifacts, not addressed here — is interesting. This is not a good adventure, and the rules are greatly unbalanced and untested.

★½☆☆☆

Excellant solo system.All of the add on modules make this a must have for solo rpg fans.