I guess I will feel much better if I let this out so here we go…
Disclaimer, this is my first time playing solo a group oriented system paired with an oracle. My experience with solo so far were Ironsworn and 6X6 Tales which constructed to be played solo, so this is a new territory. And this is also the first time I use Cairn, an OSR system unlike D&D 5e or even Ironsworn, which unfamiliar mechanic and basic principles. That is why this session is more like a trial and error experiment and also practice run for my eventual video recording of the playthrough. So if you noticed any mistakes or misinterpretation of rules I apologize and please know that I’m still learning. Also, English is not my first language (I’m Indonesian) so describing thing sometimes is a problem for me. But I tried.
One Page Solo Engine (OPSE) is also pretty good oracle that can be used as companion for playing solo RPG. Ideally I’d rather use Mythic GME 2e but this is sufficient. And I also love how it got app for ease of rolling prompts and even support journalling, which spark the idea of making a blog to save my journal.
For how the story goes, I guess I must admit that I pack experience is forming a story. All prompts need sometimes for me to think about and come up with something. Also, I still trat this as if I’m playing a video games so that is why coming up with consequences of bad decision of rolls failure is a bit hard. Especially when Boroth rolled 20 on his initiative DEX Saves. Also, when I wrongly rolled for scar and got sundered I was thinking about what body part will I let to sunder in order to minimize damage, while maybe some other players rolled for a body part or decide based on logic. Battle in Cairn was also pretty brutal, as I happened to roll for lower stat. But as I already invested into this story I want to see where it goes next, so I will definitely continue to journal here.
Some corrections to mistakes that I made / changes into future playthrough :
– About scars, I was wrong to roll them. What I should’ve done is to calculate total damage I receive to get Boroth’s HP to 0 and check the table for what scar number I got. In this case Boroth suffered 4 – 1 armor : 3 damages to get his HP to 0 and he suffered scar number 3 : wallopped. I made some changes to how the scene goes in the post without changing the conclusion. Yochai Gal, the creator of the game himself, helped me explain this in Cairn RPG Discord server so if you read this, thank you!
– Guys at the Discord server also helped me with explaining what a Fizzled Staff is and how magic works in this world. I didn’t change anything on the post but I have an ide how I’ll use this new info in the next session. I also made Boroth being able to inherently cast Cure Wounds (restore 1d4 STR per day) considering how brutal the 1 battle encounter was. My conscience screamed that it’s borderline cheating, but if Boroth turns out have to continue his quest solo he’s gonna die, so, yeah.
– they also explained about how to handle factors that could potentially affects an action that require saves. In D&D there’s an advantage / disadvantage rolls, but here I need to decide based on the circumstances. He shared some links and explanations about that
https://www.bastionland.com/2020/03/difficulty-in-bastionland.html?m=1
https://dreamingdragonslayer.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/advantage-and-impact/
https://wyrdlands.blogspot.com/2023/04/environment-rules-walking-simulator-rpg.html
So, armed with this new information I am ready to continue the campaign. I already started with the scene opening so let us see where the dice will bring Boroth.
Thanks for reading and see you in the next post!
SamAkechi's Solo Journal 