1-Page/1-Hour: Round 2!
Woop woop! The One-Page RPG Game Jam (Opens in a new window) is nearing completion, which an astonishing over-450 game submissions and still counting. I’ve even got a game I’m finalizing and getting ready to post soon. Exciting!
A couple weeks ago I posted the first round of OPOH (Opens in a new window), and today I’m thrilled to post the second set. The premise is simple: I print out a few (mostly-solo) RPGs, play them for an hour apiece, and write about what they’re great at.
On today’s episode:
3 Shining Motes, a solo story experience about light fading across the world
One Hundred Rats Devour A Tavern, a 1-4 player game about murine vengeance
Solo d6 Fantasy, a one-page RPG ruleset for solo OSR-style adventures
Toil & Trouble, a group-friendly-game about young witches with cool spells
Dragon Keeper, a duet/trio game with a dragon and its human keeper
The Fortune Teller, a solo RPG about solving mysteries with cartomancy
Space Vampire, a solo RPG about being a vampire, in space
We’ve got another fun lineup this time around — let’s dive in!
3 Shining Motes, by Daniel Copper
(Opens in a new window)In 3 Shining Motes (Opens in a new window), a dangerous, life-consuming darkness spreads across land, snuffing out civilizations. Your cards lay out over the land, and you watch as towns and cities try to keep the light burning. Can your towns survive until dawn crests over the horizon?
For best thematic effect, I recommend using a deck with evocative, nightmarish visuals!
In addition to an interesting and tight deck balance, 3SM includes journaling prompts for the towns, plus some interesting strategy components. I did find myself wishing I had more control over the game’s results, perhaps by letting every prompt affect the board in some way. But, the game’s take on deck manipulation felt pretty novel, and watching pieces of the world fall to shadow with each round felt pretty surreal.
The developer also mentions they plan to design a System Reference Document — I would love to see more games using this game’s bones! Wretched (Opens in a new window) felt that way with its unique design, in how the player [redacted]. Its SRD (Opens in a new window) spawned a whole bunch of other games (Opens in a new window) with similar design mechanics. I’m really curious to see what a larger, deeper version of 3SM would look like!
Check it out! 3 Shining Motes (Opens in a new window) is available on Itch.io for $1.75. Note, the dev provided me a copy for review purposes.
One Hundred Rats Devour A Tavern, by
The Ravensridge Press
The Ravens behind Caught in the Rain (Opens in a new window) are at it again. They’ve released several free games for this year’s game jam, and in 100 Rats Devour A Tavern (Opens in a new window), you play a horde of hungry, vengeful rats, rising up and taking the fight against those pesky humans!
In 100-RDAT, you construct a tavern with a guided dice-as-rooms dungeon arrangement, then begin devouring it, one room at a time. As you go, you build (and sometimes lose) your horde while gaining food and spending it to feed all the hungry mouths. Sometimes the victims go down easy… and sometimes, rat-catchers and other opponents get in your way.
Not only is this a cute and fun hour-long romp, it’s also an appetizer for an even bigger game. Ravensridge has this to say:
One Hundred Rats Devour a Tavern is designed to be a 'taster' of what's to come. It incorperates the themes and some mechanics from the next large game coming from The Ravensridge Emporium (Opens in a new window), One Thousand Rats Devour a City. You can keep updated with it's development by joining our discord here (Opens in a new window).
If this was a taster, I can’t wait to see what madness they bring out for 1K-RDAC.
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
Solo d6 Fantasy
Okay, if you’re reading this from my thread on Reddit, please direct me towards some of your favorite Old School Renaissance materials. Somehow, I actually don’t have any BX D&D supplements, dungeons, or even rulebooks in my collection — so I had to improvise!
In Solo d6 Fantasy (Opens in a new window), it’s, well, that. It’s got rules, character creation, items & inventory, random encounter tables, and more, all lined up to work with just two 6-sided dice! Rules on setup and play are on the front, and the back, there are additional oracles, tables, and other exploration-focused components.
For play, I rolled stats for “Rori”, a rogueish explorer who fights with a bow. I decided to raid an evil lair currently being built by a nearby evil lich. I picked some locks, fought some orcs and even an evil knight, then hauled my loot back to town to get paid.
Simple, but fun! This rule system comes in a tri-fold that can fold down to fit just-about any travel bag. The only other things you need would be dice and some writing utensils. And, like other OSR games, it’s easy to adapt parts of it to fit your own system, or vice-versa. It even has a Hit Dice converter so you can pair it with existing bestiaries and other d20-based games.
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
Toil & Trouble
Next we have a game about amateur witches who do cool things, but not necessarily the most reliably!
In our game, my SO and I created two students at Salkabar’s Arcane Academy for Arcane Magic — SAAAM! for short. Rumors reached us about a dangerous cult practicing evil magics at SAAAM!, so we had to find them and stop them before they did something awful. After some investigative rolls, we found their place and time of meeting, and set up an illusion to hide us, right up until the height of their evil ritual. Carta used Minor Telekinesis to steal their evil crystals, Aria made a fire distraction, and the two students ran like heck — away from the giant plant-demon-monster-thing hot on their tail!
It was a really cute time. There’s a random mission generator to help spur a GM’s inspiration, the stats are simple (most skill checks are 1d6, ±1), and the spell dice have a cool exhaustion/complication mechanic. Also — I’m so bad at drawing people, but the stick-figure preprinted onto the character sheet just about begs you to have fun and fill it in.
This would be so much fun to play with a kid!
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
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Recently we covered Trekkie Solo Sci-fi, with Welcome Aboard, Captain (Opens in a new window).
Coming up next: Alchemy and Potion-Crafting for the Solo Gamer!
Dragon Keeper
Next we have a more unique game for 2-3 players, one that is asymmetric-by-design. Or rather, additionally asymmetric. You see, this game has two PC’s: the Dragon, and its human Keeper.
This game plays like what I would imagine a game based on How to Train A Dragon would play out as! The Keeper has very-human things to worry about, like hunting, foraging, reading maps, and talking with people from the village. Then, there’s the freshly-hatched baby Dragon. Who will it become? What kind of dragon is it?
Throughout play, the Keeper finds and faces challenges and threats, by using their stats: Brains, Brawn, Grace, Heart, and Forage. Each is assigned a die from d4-d12, which slowly gets exhausted with repeated use. The first time you roll your d10 stat, you use the d10 die. But then it downgrades to a d8 until the next time you rest and reset them all back to full. Additionally, while the attributes are open-ended, you can find items which are single-purpose designed, which can also be used until exhaustion.
Conversely, the Dragon starts with d4’s and a small handful of traits. Instead of exhausting, however, whenever you roll the highest number on the die, that die permanently upgrades, towards a d12. Further, can learn additional traits by spending Grow points — which the Keeper can supply them with!
This game would also play well with children. Unlike Toil & Trouble, this one does encourage fighting more. After all, cooking your enemies alive is part of playing a dragon!
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
The Fortune Teller
Next, The Fortune Teller takes inspiration from real-world Lenormand cartomancy (Opens in a new window) to create a game in which you play a circus performer who, to your dismay, actually has “The Gift”. At least… in the minds of your fellow performers!
Now, I’m far less familiar with this style of divination than I am the traditional Rider-Waite card-reading, and alas, I don’t actually have a Lenormand deck (although now I need to remedy this!) But, never ye worry: this game is played with a regular 52-card deck, with the numbers 2-5 and both jokers removed.
To start, you draw and interpret a Problem, something big enough that the circus ringleader comes to you about, though not strictly-necessarily-extremely heinous. The game’s provided example involves an acrobat’s tampered makeup that led to them suffering a painful rash.
The Ringleader wants to know: Who did it? And why? Yep, you guessed it — it’s on you to answer that!
You then proceed to draw in pairs for the various suspects, along with bonus cards to infer their various relationships with the victim, incident, or towards other suspects. Once you understand the suspects, you move on to the investigation, by asking questions, drawing more cards, and interpreting them.
If interpreting a narrative from a couple of cards sounds difficult, don’t fret! Card divination is an art, not a science; and if you’re already familiar with “oracle tables”, this is that.
Consider the 9 and 6 of Hearts that I drew. Given that the query is to come up with a problem, perhaps the words “Electricity, Rollercoaster, Leave, Architect” leap out at you and “stick”. For me, that’s what my mystery was: the ride lost power, no-one knows why, and the mechanic has gone missing. Where did he go?
With those same two cards, “Stars, Navigation, Road, Arrive, Visitor, Timely, Delivery Person” might also spark your imagination. Instead of an electrical failure, now there’s a mysterious visitor who says it’s his destiny to deliver somebody a message — and it’s urgent.
I really appreciated how this game makes play-pretend out of card divination. It’s a clever idea. Kudos, Stéphanie!
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
Space Vampire
Also from Nicholas Robinia, one of the creators of 100-RDAT, comes Space Vampire, a game about… Vampires! In space! Betcha didn’t see that coming.
This game also has race-against-time mechanics, but here, you’re balancing multiple sets of dice rather than just one. You have your thralls and your vampires, and together, you work to complete your stated Goal, while avoiding the Vampire Hunters.
To play, you build a gathering, make a roll, and start assigning each dice to different actions. After assigning whichever dice you have, you go through each action from top to bottom, making adjustments to resources and adding/removing dice as indicated. For any action you ignore, something happens — prompting you to answer a question about the ways you’re stretching yourself thin and straying further from your goal.
In my game, my elderly black-widow vampire (with an ancient and seductive French accent) managed to build an art gallery, attract a loyal herd, and adapt to station living before the hunters really caught on to her. She did this by turning way too many thralls into peers — and, naturally, getting grants from the council (Opens in a new window).
I think the only thing I struggled with as far as design aspects go, is that the action boxes are on the opposite side as where all the explanations are for what each action means. So, I ended up having to flip the page quite a bit near the beginning. A second print-out would solve this though; plus, after the first few rounds I had memorized all the action steps, so it wasn’t really a big deal.
Check it out now, on Itch.io! (Opens in a new window)
And that’s a wrap!
Does your game belong in the next Roundup? Let me know! If there are enough solo candidates, I might do a third roundup.
Want your TTRPG reviewed next? Reach out!
I’m @faenre on Discord, and you can email me at nicole@play-brilliant.nl (Opens in a new window)
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