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NineThePuma
2011-06-09, 01:14 PM
I'm sitting here, with a level 1 gestalt character, a random dungeon generator, and a set of dice. And every part of me wants to put my character through the dungeon, to see what happens by war gaming it.

Am I odd?

Blue Ghost
2011-06-09, 02:56 PM
I'm sitting here, with a level 1 gestalt character, a random dungeon generator, and a set of dice. And every part of me wants to put my character through the dungeon, to see what happens by war gaming it.

Am I odd?

Nope. Go for it, sounds quite fun.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 02:58 PM
Depends.

Odd by gamer standards? Probably not.

Odd by the rest of the world's standards? Don't worry, we all are. :smalltongue:

Yuki Akuma
2011-06-09, 02:59 PM
Yes. Does that matter?

Do it anyway.

Archpaladin Zousha
2011-06-09, 03:02 PM
Depends.

Odd by gamer standards? Probably not.

Odd by the rest of the world's standards? Don't worry, we all are. :smalltongue:

Seconded. We are all mad here!

SleepyShadow
2011-06-09, 03:04 PM
Sounds like fun. I think I shall join in the soloing of randomly generated dungeons :smallcool:

randomhero00
2011-06-09, 03:04 PM
Heck ya. And its frickin awesome!

Comet
2011-06-09, 03:05 PM
You're just bored, probably. And this is not a bad way to fix it, though admittedly not my cup of whatever :smalltongue:

Vladislav
2011-06-09, 03:05 PM
If I had more free time, I'd be soloing random dungeons all day. Possibly parts of the night too.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 03:07 PM
Maybe you should do a Let's Play: Solo Dungeon. That'd be fun. Take input from the rest of the Roleplaying forum, and go to town...er, DUNGEON, that is. :smallcool:

Eldan
2011-06-09, 03:12 PM
Maybe you should do a Let's Play: Solo Dungeon. That'd be fun. Take input from the rest of the Roleplaying forum, and go to town...er, DUNGEON, that is. :smallcool:

We could have guest rooms...
Designed by guest DMs, that is.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 03:16 PM
I'd do one myself, but my narration tends to be a bit...long-winded. I really love descriptions.

NineThePuma
2011-06-09, 03:17 PM
Well, I'm building a Factotum//Crusader, using this (http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon) dungeon generator, and my IRL set of dice.

Stats were rolled, 5d6b3.

If you guys care to join me in some Parallel Play, I'd be more than willing to hear stories, and share mine. =3

(The only issue is, you can't have secret doors and stuff when you're playing with yourself.)

Othniel Edden
2011-06-09, 03:21 PM
Yes

*reads opening posts*

Sounds like a good use of time. But still weird despite that.

Valameer
2011-06-09, 03:29 PM
Yeah, but I've DMed for myself before too.

NineThePuma
2011-06-09, 03:36 PM
Actually, the more I think about it, the more fun a LP: Solo would be.

However, rather than straight up Solo DM myself, maybe I should start a 'competition' like the various dungeon crawls on the board already? Where, in order to play, you gotta offer to DM, since this stuff is randomly generated... Hmm... x3

zyborg
2011-06-09, 03:43 PM
How do you do that? Is there a Solo-er's Handbook somewhere? I'd like to try to DM and play my own games as practice...

Blackfang108
2011-06-09, 06:50 PM
Well, I'm building a Factotum//Crusader, using this (http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon) dungeon generator, and my IRL set of dice.

Stats were rolled, 5d6b3.

If you guys care to join me in some Parallel Play, I'd be more than willing to hear stories, and share mine. =3

(The only issue is, you can't have secret doors and stuff when you're playing with yourself.)

I like this generator.

I think I'll be using it a lot

*because I had so much free time before this...*

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 06:52 PM
I like this generator.

I think I'll be using it a lot
Yeah, I've had that one bookmarked for a couple of months now. :smallwink:

Paladineyddi
2011-06-09, 07:03 PM
Yeah, I've had that one bookmarked for a couple of months now. :smallwink:

You are my new favorite person in the world right now

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 07:14 PM
Thanks? 10 characters.

Notreallyhere77
2011-06-09, 07:21 PM
One of my friends tests his mid-level character builds by pitting them solo against each monster in the Bestiary (this is Pathfinder), and if he wins more than 50% of the time he feels appropriately powerful for combat (read: very powerful indeed). It's not so fun when he DMs. PC deaths are plentiful in his campaigns.

Yuki Akuma
2011-06-09, 07:23 PM
...A solo LP dungeon crawl thing would be pretty fun.

Especially if done in a "choose your own adventure" game style.

Now I want to do one. :smallfrown:

Jjeinn-tae
2011-06-09, 07:26 PM
...Buh-buh I've had it bookmarked for about a year now. :smalltongue:


I have made good use of it, and the dungeons are fun, there is nothing wrong with going through solo. I've considered it a couple times.

Shpadoinkle
2011-06-09, 07:33 PM
That's... actually an interesting idea... I think I'll have to give it a try.

dsmiles
2011-06-09, 07:34 PM
Now I want to do one. :smallfrown:
I don't see why there couldn't be more than one. :smallsmile:

squeekenator
2011-06-09, 07:49 PM
This is rather fun, yet irritating at the same time. I'm sending through my 5th-level gestalt cleric/crusader bad guy for a campaign I'm running and so far the encounters have been... less than level 5 stuff. 2 grimlocks, okay, 3 small monstrous spiders, a bit easy but whatever, and then... 15 small monstrous spiders? I think the encounter generator is a bit broken. :p

Tyndmyr
2011-06-09, 10:44 PM
I'm sitting here, with a level 1 gestalt character, a random dungeon generator, and a set of dice. And every part of me wants to put my character through the dungeon, to see what happens by war gaming it.

Am I odd?

I had this idea once. It ended in a pbp of 50 plus active pcs soloing dungeons. So, if I call you odd, I'm a bit nervous about what that makes me.

NineThePuma
2011-06-09, 10:47 PM
@Squeak: Did you set the dungeon to level 5?

@Tryn: You invented the NED? :P

squeekenator
2011-06-09, 11:17 PM
@Squeak: Did you set the dungeon to level 5?

Yep, it just seems to really like throwing hordes of really weak monsters at you. I'd be rather shocked if it had a room with 15 CR1 monsters in a level 1 dungeon.

On that note, I've reached my third dungeon level and level 9 now. This stuff is addictive.

Tyndmyr
2011-06-09, 11:20 PM
Sort of. I invented The Endless Dungeon, to which tavar(iirc) added the important ingredients of gestalt and better administration to create NED. Adminning 50 dungeons at once led to some pretty bad burnout after a couple months.

NineThePuma
2011-06-09, 11:21 PM
I'm still in finals, but next week I'll have tons of time, and I'll get started on a crawl. x3

@Trynd: awesome. You're my new favorite person with that avatar.

darkelf
2011-06-10, 12:40 AM
no, you're not weird. not really.

and just because i can; i've had that generator bookmarked ever since i wrote it. :smallcool:

NineThePuma
2011-06-10, 01:08 AM
You sir, earn a cookie.

Care to address/comment squeekenator's concerns about the encounter generator?

darkelf
2011-06-10, 01:23 AM
This is rather fun, yet irritating at the same time. I'm sending through my 5th-level gestalt cleric/crusader bad guy for a campaign I'm running and so far the encounters have been... less than level 5 stuff. 2 grimlocks, okay, 3 small monstrous spiders, a bit easy but whatever, and then... 15 small monstrous spiders? I think the encounter generator is a bit broken. :p

its not broken, just fairly random. :) in general, a level N encounter will be one monster of CR N, 1d4+1 monsters of CR (N-3), 2d6 monsters of CR (N-4), or 3d6 monsters of CR (N-5). at level 5, any particular encounter might be as low as EL 2 or as high as EL 7, but should be EL 5 on average.

15 small monstrous spiders is EL 6, not unreasonable for a level 5 dungeon. though probably very tricky for a solo PC, even gestalt.

Eldan
2011-06-10, 02:52 AM
...A solo LP dungeon crawl thing would be pretty fun.

Especially if done in a "choose your own adventure" game style.

Now I want to do one. :smallfrown:

I knew a German site for a while that had several adventures like that. Not just dungeoncrawls, but basically choose your own adventures with D&D rules. Went something like "Do you want to sneak past the ogre? Roll a move silently check. If you win, click "here". If you lose, go to "combat". If you fight go to "combat". If you use turn back, click "here". If you have some other way to get around the ogre, click "here"."

Worked pretty well, actually.

Yuki Akuma
2011-06-10, 04:32 AM
Hmm... so where would one put something like this? Silly Message Board Games, or...?

NineThePuma
2011-06-10, 04:45 AM
Iunno. After tomorrow, I'm prolly going to run it for a bit. It'll probably be in 'dungeon' format, and I'll rope someone into helping.

Shpadoinkle
2011-06-10, 05:03 AM
Hmm... so where would one put something like this? Silly Message Board Games, or...?

Good question...

Gaming (Other) comes to mind, as it's not really a traditional D&D game, but it's not really the same kind of message board game that board was designed for. Basically, it's a campaign log... except you're playing by yourself with the assistance of a random dungeon generator. Personally, I'd say it goes in the Roleplaying Games forum (or one of the subforums based on which system you're using) like any other campaign log would (unless campaign logs are supposed to go somewhere else,) but I'm not a mod so I couldn't say with any authority.

Jarawara
2011-06-11, 10:09 PM
I'm sitting here, with a level 1 gestalt character, a random dungeon generator, and a set of dice. And every part of me wants to put my character through the dungeon, to see what happens by war gaming it.

Am I odd?

Damn right you're odd.

I mean, here you are, held up alone inside in the middle of summer, curtains drawn to shade out the light of creation, avoiding your friends and family and having nothing but a dice and charts and scattered pieces of paper before you...

...and you're only going to run ONE character through your dungeon??? Come on, man-up my friend. Make a whole party of characters! At least four. Make six, in fact. The more's the merrier!

For my solitare games, I made up a list of twenty PC's, and I roll a handful of d20's to determine who the party members will be with each and every outing. This gives me a wide range of differing parties for each adventure, sometimes heavy on one class, lacking in another.

I statted them out for each level, so I can simply select them randomly and then choose the appropriate level for whatever store bought module I am using. Though if you're using a random dungeon I guess you could track experience points for each PC and let them develop naturally.

Of course, running all those solitare D&D games can become monotonous, and can lead to burnout, so I find it important to have other outlets for my creativity.

I currently have a game of Axis and Allies going - Japan is kicking ass and I don't know how to stop them.

I also am running a game of Greyhawk Wars, with my own "Raliskan Hobgoblins" rule added in. We're in about mid-war, and Iuz is looking to win.

I also have a game of Shogun in mid-play. I've stalled on that, but the little green peices seem to have more units in play than the little purple pieces. It's a five-way game, so red, blue, and yellow might all affect the final outcome.

I have a game of Federation and Empire going, only on turn 8, so it's still early in the game. Took me about a year to get here, so expect this one to run a coulple-three more years at least. It hasn't spread to the eastern half of the board, so I set up another shorter scenario there to pass the time. So yeah, I have two games of F&E going at once, all on the same board.

Of course... all of the above games are solitare. Even the multi-player ones.

So basically, nothing wrong with playing games solitare. I've been doing that for years, and almost always have several games set up throughout the house in various stages of mid-play. As soon as Greyhawk Wars is finished, (assuming I don't just restart it again from the beginning), I'll be setting up Scourge of the Slave Lords, with the nine-member pre-gen party in the back of the module. And I'm going to pay attention to the alignment differences of the characters. If the situation demands it, I'm going to RP the character disputes, and wargame the effects of intra-party conflict in the middle of a tournament module.

But running only ONE solitare game, with only ONE PC....?

Weirdo.:smalltongue:

NineThePuma
2011-06-11, 10:25 PM
... Wow, Jara. That made me chuckle.

I think I'll take your suggestion. =3 Build a set of 20 PCs, using the same Gestalt build rules I had. I'll run them solo, but I'll see if I can get one of my friends to sit behind a screen and have a map. Secret doors are hardly secret when I know where they are. =\

Jarawara
2011-06-11, 10:43 PM
While everything in my post is fully accurate, in that I really do play all those games solitare, (well, I might be exaggerating a bit about RP'ing the inter-party conflicts), I do have a word of warning for you...

If you expand from one PC to twenty, you have, well, twenty times the workload. If you want to avoid turning a game into a 'job', just put together a reasonable party of four, or six, or whatever suits your fancy, and run them through games. That way, the game balances out well, and you learn how each character plays best.

My 'twenty characters' are all former characters of mine, so I know what they can do and how best they can work together in an adventure. If I had to make up twenty characters from scratch... I'd play Axis and Allies instead!

NineThePuma
2011-06-11, 10:46 PM
I play in so many games and have so many different bits of lore for character building I could probably do it. But I'll probably cut back down to a smaller number as I eliminate concepts that are too close to one another.

Pink
2011-06-13, 10:15 AM
Weird? Hardly. I'm wondering why I haven't thought of this. It'd be the perfect way to get to know a module from a player perspective and prep it for running. Or just do it for fun.

For that matter, doing a let's play....brilliant. has anyone started one? I might be tempted to do so myself, be a good practice in writing and characterization.

Pink
2011-06-14, 12:29 PM
I didn't see anyone starting one of these, so I thought I might give it a try. Thread over here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203177)

Looking for direction an opinions, so please pop over to give some.

Shpadoinkle
2011-06-18, 01:02 AM
Hm... I've been thinking about this and drew up some ideas for a character. So far I've got this:

(Gestalt) cleric 1/warblade 1 // rogue 1/dragon shaman 1

STR 13 +1
DEX 10 +0
CON 17 +3
INT 15 +2
WIS 12 +1
CHA 10 +0

Special Abilities
Sneak Attack +1d6
Trapfinding
Turn Undead (level 1)
Battle Clarity (INT to Reflex saves when not flat-footed)
Weapon Aptitude
Draconic Aura +1
Dragon Totem (Gold)
Domains: Good (cast good spells at +1 caster level), Strength (raise STR by cleric level, lasts 1 round, usable 1/day)

Weapons:
Morningstar +2 melee (1d8+1, x2, P and B)
Handaxe +2 melee (1d6+1, x3, S)

Cleric spells per day:
-Level 0: 3
-Level 1: 2+1

Cleric Spells Prepared:
-Level 0: Light, Light, Purify Food/Drink
-Level 1: Sanctuary, Sanctuary, Enlarge Person

Draconic Auras:
-Energy Shield (every melee attack against PC causes 2 points fire damage to attacker)
-Resistance (Fire resist 5)
-Vigor (Fast healing 1, cannot heal above half max HP)

Maneuvers Known: 3
- Steel Wind (Strike, IH) (Make one attack each against two different foes, each attack is resolved seperately)
- Moment of Perfect Mind (Counter, DM) (Use Concentration skill instead of Will for Will save)
- Stone Bones (Stirke, SD) (Make melee attack- if the attack hits, initiator gets DR5/Adamantine for 1 round)

Maneuvers Readied: 3
- Steel Wind
- Moment of Perfect Mind
- Stone Bones

Stances: 1
- Punishing Stance (IH): deal +1d6 damage per melee hit, get -2 AC


As you can probably tell, he was specifically designed to be able to solo. I haven't been able to settle on feats or skill point distribution yet, though. I'm thinking Snap Kick, but beyond that I'm kinda out of ideas.

NineThePuma
2011-06-18, 11:11 AM
Factotum//Crusader does pretty well. Healing and lots of fun.

Morph Bark
2011-06-18, 12:39 PM
...A solo LP dungeon crawl thing would be pretty fun.

Especially if done in a "choose your own adventure" game style.

Now I want to do one. :smallfrown:

That makes me think of DMing a PbP for a few solo players, while in another thread the rest of the Playground decides what happens next (as in, pick the encounters, traps, style of rooms and environment).

NineThePuma
2011-06-18, 01:14 PM
That makes me think of DMing a PbP for a few solo players, while in another thread the rest of the Playground decides what happens next (as in, pick the encounters, traps, style of rooms and environment).

Yes please.

*writes name in the first six slots*

RPGuru1331
2011-06-18, 02:19 PM
Might I suggest Nethack or Dungeon Crawl if this gets your fancy?

Morph Bark
2011-06-18, 02:32 PM
Yes please.

*writes name in the first six slots*

:smalltongue:

I could make a set-up for such pretty soon, as my exams are near over. I'd just need to make a ton of premade rooms that I could easily mix and match so I wouldn't get stuck halfway through.

Othniel Edden
2011-06-18, 02:40 PM
He has a dungeon generator in the first post.

Morph Bark
2011-06-19, 11:29 AM
That makes me think of DMing a PbP for a few solo players, while in another thread the rest of the Playground decides what happens next (as in, pick the encounters, traps, style of rooms and environment).

And on that note, I've put up an interest thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203819).

Lycar
2011-06-19, 12:17 PM
I knew a German site for a while that had several adventures like that. Not just dungeoncrawls, but basically choose your own adventures with D&D rules. Went something like "Do you want to sneak past the ogre? Roll a move silently check. If you win, click "here". If you lose, go to "combat". If you fight go to "combat". If you use turn back, click "here". If you have some other way to get around the ogre, click "here"."

Worked pretty well, actually.

Knew? As in: It no longer exists?

Well, that sucks. Or do you still have a link?

grimbold
2011-06-19, 12:26 PM
i play by myself sometimes
so no you are not odd