(A Lonely) Knave | Ep. 2 | DEEP WATER | Solo TTRPG OSR Zero Prep Random Table Campaign

Overthinking is the curse of the solo role-player, so what better way to break the habit than to launch right into the middle of the action - no preparation, worldbuilding or prior thought required.
We use Knave, its solo supplement A Lonely Knave and a host of other random table heavy books - mostly centered around the OSR sphere - to go back to basics and embrace the spirit of letting the dice take the lead.
This approach works well with systems like Knave, original (A)D&D or the various B/X clones (e.g. Swords & Wizardry, Old School Essentials, etc.).
All you need on top of that is some way to emulate a DM (e.g. Mythic Emulator, A Lonely Knave, Solo Adventurers Toolbox), some kind of bestiary to draw monsters and the occasional random encounter table from and you're off to the races.
Let the rolling begin!
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[@scrapperlock9437]

Your descriptions are unbelievably evocative for doing them off the cuff as a result of random rolls. I tried doing this for many sessions of Ironsworn and Starforged but I could never be this vivid without taking the time to really think about descriptions. I also like how you aren't afraid to deliberate and take your time fleshing things out before making the next "game move." That's another thing I struggle with - I want to "move the session along" so I rush the fleshing out part, but that is really part of the game too, as you demonstrate.

[@killtenratsrpg]

Hey, thank you very much! That's not at all how I perceive it myself, as far as the quality of the description goes, but I'm also way up in my own head about this kind of stuff so I don't take my own opinion too seriously. What I can say is that I probably got a bit better at this just by doing it a lot over two seasons of Ironsworn and some other videos. It is fairly "what you see is what you get" despite the editing. There will be the occasional mid-sentence freeze as I look for a word that I snip out or false start, but generally I don't think too much about what I want to say, just conjure up the cornerstones of the scene in my head and describe what I see as best I can. As for the deliberation, yeah... it has its pros and cons. When I say I want to start "in the middle of the action", I also include the whole "prep is play" aspect as part of the action. So while the actual story might not move forward significantly, we still learn a lot about who we're dealing with, what world they're in, why they're in their current predicament, etc. It goes a bit against "show, don't tell" but this is fairly difficult to do in a game where I don't know what will happen next any more than the audience, so narrative exposition through action is usually not possible unless I make my rolls in secret and know more than the viewers, which isn't a format I'd personally enjoy making. I feel like as long as the session ads to any aspect of what makes the game engaging (action, world building, character building, etc.), it's a successful one even if we didn't cram five new scenes in. A good mix is certainly preferable but at the start of a campaign, there's still a lot of framework to set up so you'll end up leaning a bit more on lore, world building and character exploration. I've already recorded two more episodes and that's where we'll get a LOT more of the action...

[@scrapperlock9437]

@@killtenratsrpg Yes, I need to be more willing to take my time with the building part. I guess Yoda would say that I need to learn patience.

[@crapphone7744]

@@scrapperlock9437 enjoy the process, no hurry. Part of the beauty of doing your solo is it's all part of the game it's all play. It takes you 10 minutes to come up with the description but you want to spend the time doing that, no big deal, enjoy doing it. If you want something quick or you can probably find a random table that will help you with descriptions. Check out the perilous wilds, one of the best supplements ever you can come up with a city or county a monster a dungeon, whatever you need!

[@husermitchell]

Your skill at story weaving is excellent. I love the way you work through all the details and flow with the rolls.

[@perplexingruins]

another great video! love how a solo game can just spiral into weirdness. thank you so much for the support, just really made my day to see the campaign notebook show up in your game! thank you

[@killtenratsrpg]

Thank you very much! Definitely going to get some weirdness in this one, it's a bit too on the "incoherently random table material" side not to. I'm still recording ahead a bit right now and a few episodes from now I'll be playing around with the dungeon elements and some of the random tables, that should be fun!

[@juauke]

Your storytelling is really impressive! I'm loving this much more than I thought I would!!

[@brianmella4156]

your editing and set its fantastic! I hope one day Solo Rpgs become as awesome as this on the regular

[@killtenratsrpg]

Thank you, that’s very kind! I’ve certainly put a lot of time into developing the presentation style over the last year or so. Learned a lot, changed things quite a bit compared to the first bunch of videos I uploaded - still very much a novice though! Happy to hear it’s the type of content you enjoy! I try to make the kind of video that I’m searching for myself, there’s definitely others out there with a similar approach (and certainly more advanced in some cases). The solo scene seems to be growing!

[@samuraionedaymore]

this is awesome im making my legend of the five rings character and working on her backstory. looking forward to more content.

[@Mr.Daniel297]

This channel deserves more subscribers. Love this series and the Ironsworn series. Your flow is awesome man. I hope to see you get huge in the solo RPG circle. Your production value is also top notch

[@killtenratsrpg]

Thank you! Considering the channel's age, the size of the niche and the fact that I don't really promote any of this I'm pretty much "above and beyond" in terms of growth as far as my expectations went. I headed into this thinking "if I have 100 subs after a year it'll be great" and wound up just shy of 1000, mainly due to being unable to upload for a while. This is already pretty "big" if you just look at solo rpg actual play as the benchmark. We'll see how far it can go!

[@torry3861]

Man I could get MY hands on that ultimate tool box

[@killtenratsrpg]

It’s certainly a shame that it’s been out of print for so long, pdf copies are nice and all but there’s something to just flipping through randomly and stumbling into a cool random table accidentally

[@shrimpisdelicious]

I'm enjoying this series so far! This system feels a little looser than Ironsworn.

[@killtenratsrpg]

It’s definitely less structured, partly by choice. I could run this more like Mythic and set up structured scenes, story factors that affect whether it plays out as expected or not etc. but I’m quite happy in this series to just wing it and see where it leads. If it needs more structure at some stage we’ve got enough tools to introduce it regardless.

[@brads2041]

You have an amazing imagination.

[@jiroorzo2019]

i do wonder how he does that sort of,, background panning faster than the foreground thing on some shots?

[@killtenratsrpg]

One of the cameras is on a track with a little motor that drives it back and forth automatically at a speed and distance defined by an app. It’s set to loop back and forth between two points and does that constantly while I record.

[@dahiiro2119]

Hey there. Mir scheint, du sprichst Deutsch.

[@killtenratsrpg]

Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if it was a long time ago. I had to step away from KZbin for a bit and got a little frustrated by that, so I wasn't answering comments like I should have. Apologies for that! Und joa, ich spreche Deutsch, Kölsch und ein bisschen Nederlands!