Solo expeditions, part II

 Again we delve into the solo west marches campaign ran on LegendKeeper! Again, I used Goodnotes on my iPad to track the adventure, Shadowdark as the ruleset, and Mythic GME as my oracle. I am using Midjourney to generate artwork on the fly for this. You can click any of the images to enlarge and attempt to read my chickenscratch writing. 

Our intrepid little band of adventurers have decided to head to the rumored Shelin Hill, to the newly discovered entrance to .... something. The band sets out from Lakefield.

The entrance (MJ generated)

As they approach the entrance, something moves...

Excuse me while I gush at that fucking amazing piece of art.

Holy shit Batman, that is kickass!

....and on with the adventure!

The battle continues...

I LOVE being able to reach into the Shadowdark PDF and snip the spells right into my notes. Since I am new to this exact system (yeah, it is OSR, but slightly different here and there), having the spells right there allows me to double check effects, ranges, etc. LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

I also took a moment to draw up a map (in my usual style and means) so that I had a clear idea of what it looked like. At this point I was not sure what we were going to find in the room. Recalling my notes from earlier, I had written "minor danger" in this room, so I quickly thought up a trap that made sense given that a troll lived here and likely came right through this area before we cooked it.

I also wanted to mess with MJ some more and see what it could dream up. Five minutes later, I was not disappointed. Frack me, I am loving MJ to create images to make the game more immersive.

End of "Session 2"

Midjourney artwork

 

Yep, I got bit by the MJ bug too, and holy shit, this is amazing. Yes, there are still weird anomalies and strangeness, but look at these samples I was able to make on my very first day of messing around with it.

If you look closely, you can see MJ trying really hard to evoke Frazetta with the signature in the bottom. So neat!

Please ignore the images below, they used as reference for some MJ projects I am messing around with:

Solo explorations with Shadowdark and Mythic GME

 A bunch of cool people over on the Reddit Solo RPG community started up a co-op West Marches style world on LegendKeeper and I have started a new solo game using Shadowdark set in this world. You can see the original post here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Solo_Roleplaying/comments/13oxqhf/recruiting_for_solo_westmarches/

I have been using my iPad and the GoodNotes app to solo for about a month now, playing three different games and I think I have finally narrowed down a good process. I am not sure how I want to present this to folks (YouTube seems to be the cool kid way to do things these days, so perhaps I will eventually will put together a video in the future). For now, I shall provide screencaps of the pages on GoodNotes. First up are my character cards. I created cards for Shadowdark (see the previous post), these will contain enough details to play without being overwhelming and covering lots of unneeded details. The image was created using MidJourney (the guys running the world have MJ accounts are creating images for us on the fly....soooooooo freaking cool).

Next, I created a page with some screenshots captured from the LegendKeeper (LK hereafter) page. For those familiar with Mythic, the 1/5 thing is my note for tracking the scene - 1 in this case -  and the Chaos Factor - starting at 5 for now -. My PCs are starting out in LakeField, that's the blue shield-looking thing in the lower portion of the hex map. 

The way I am using GoodNotes has 'narration' in black ink and mechanics or oracle processes in red. Die rolls are the red circles. While probably not too useful for you, it helps me keep track of things easily. Names and important things are highlighted with yellow to help stand out from the wall of text.

My party split up as they entered town and some interesting things developed. We discovered why Torga the half-orc opted to NOT enter Lakefield, this could have some interesting implications down the line, thanks Mythic! That is one thing I am really enjoying about solo with oracles (versus scripted soloing like Choose Your Own Path books), the story takes interesting and completely unexpected turns. Before she was a boring half-orc, now she has an interesting backstory!

We also found some rumors about the wilderness that surrounds Lakefield, including one very interesting hilltop that we discovered includes a dolmen begging to be explored! Once I knew there was something interesting at this location on the map, I switched to Shadowdark's random tables to generate the details on the dolmen.

This was played out over the last three days here and there, usually after work for 15-20 minutes. I have been very busy and more focused on work and figuring out how I want to run this solo (structure, how to keep things organized, ruleset, etc). So now that I have this figured out, I think it will go a little quicker.

*** And yes, my handwriting sucks, most of this was done laying in bed instead of at a desk ***

Shadowdark Character Cards

 

I made these little character cards for a solo Shadowdark game I plan on starting this weekend (click to open the PDF). You can print out this PDF, or like I am doing, import into Goodnotes and write directly on it with your Apple Pencil. The second page is optional, I like having lines across the flipside for random notes that come up in game.

Alt link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-9ZyAotcYsBGUw_A1tnwv0M87g-oeIbg/view?usp=sharing

White Box mini character sheets!

 

My pal Chaoclypse posted a video yesterday that has gotten a good amount of traction and people are asking about the WB mini character cards I made a while back. You can watch the video here:

As no one really expressed much interest in these mini cards, I guess I never posted these to my little blog, so I am fixing that right now. Click the image to download the PDF below

(this prints on a 4x6 card)

(prints two sided on a 4x6 card)

(NPC card, more room for notes, prints on 4x6 card)

Shadowdark: fullsize!!!

I decided I wanted Shadowdark in physical format and got a little impatient (since my divorce I apparently have lost all forms of patience), I uploaded to the Office Depot site and had them print the PDF. I really wanted the book with the spiral binding as it allows for laying flat and taking up less desktop territory. As I plan to eventually start another solo series using Shadowdark, these traits will be important to me. 

I was a little upset I could not order the book in digest size, but oh man when I got the book I am very pleased to announce the digest format printed in full 8.5x11 glory is AMAZING. LOVE IT!

Some normal sized d6s for comparison.

Added the dice for size comparison again.

No reading glasses for this old man!