So, I accidentally wrote a solo RPG. Or rather, I wrote an RPG that I didn’t realize was a solo RPG until after I finished writing it. Like literally on the last page. Torch & Blade began as an outgrowth of Maze Rats, by Ben Milton (check out his Substack The Glatisant and his YouTube Channel Questing Beast.) I loved the elegance and simplicity of Maze Rats and while the random charts do make it robust enough to support campaign play, I wanted to write an RPG with a more traditional presentation. That idea eventually became Torch & Blade, which is now been drafted and passed off to my layout guy so we can get it into print-on-demand and PDF release.
So, the central design principle for Torch & Blade was “How do I turn this into a procedure?” To answer that, I had to decide what “this” is. I had to have a strong understanding of the game’s play loop. I asked myself what the play loop of most OSR games is and went from there. The answer to that is pretty self-evident:
Start in a town.
Cross the wilderness.
Go into the dungeon.
Defeat the challenges in that dungeon (typically traps and monsters).
Get the treasure.
Complete the objective.
Return to the town.
Spend treasure.
Advance in level/Recover from injury or resource loss.
Return to Step One.
Now that I knew my sequence of play, I made tables to generate all of it. Being rooted in Maze Rats, Torch & Blade uses only six-sided dice. But I wanted a tad more detail in my character creation, so I added Heritage and Class as foundational elements of the character creation process. Your attributes, heritage, and class are each generated with the roll of either a 1d6 or 2d6. I lifted the attribute generation method directly from Maze Rats, but for the classes and heritage 2d6 is rolled to create a bell curve and thus make some heritages and classes more likely than others. Thus, a PC is more likely to be a Human Warrior than a Halfling Magician. I tend to lean with a more fairy tale or chivalric feel to my fantasy, so Torch & Blade reflects that. Both class and heritage provide a single ability to keep the game simple - but I tried to make these abilities meaningful. This was so that character creation and and the application of those elements of a character were easy to apply in play.
Heritages: Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, and Human.
Classes: Forester, Knave, Magician, Templar, and Warrior.
The commonality of each heritage and class is reflected in the table rolled upon to determine those selections. Because both tables require a roll of 2d6, then a 7 (the most common roll possible on 2d6) results in a Human Warrior. While rarer heritages and classes are found on the respect ends of the bell curve created by rolling 2d6.
Next came equipment and gear. I like that Maze Rats relies on a more narrative driven style of play, but still wanted the importance of equipment to be present in the game without creating a bloated equipment list. To that end, Torch & Blade has three primary (but highly abstracted) forms of equipment: Ration, Supply, and Treasure.
Rations are food stuffs and are spent each day to avoid suffering automatic damage. Basically, don’t starve to death. Supply, on the other hand, is a highly abstracted reflection of any number of items used in adventuring. You spend Supply to gain Advantage on a roll by narratively describing what exactly the Supply item is at the time of use, then make the check. Rope, torches, and a ten foot pole would all be Supply. Treasure is just wealth, whether it be plunder recovered from a dungeon or gold coins. You spend Treasure to purchase Ration and Supply, but its also spent to advance in level on a more permanent basis and to purchase things like a stronghold, hirelings, or a mount. More on those later.
To limit how much of these items a PC could carry, every character is assumed to be carrying their arms and armor and has 10 additional equipment slots. One Ration takes up one slot, as does one supply or one treasure. You could go into a dungeon with an inventory bursting at the seams with 10 Supply, and it would make the challenges you face easier, but then you’d have less room to carry Treasure out of the dungeon. Thus, the game developed this natural economy of resource management between necessary Rations, beneficial but optional Supply, and Treasure being necessary for character advancement.
Next came magic. I rebuilt the magic system in Maze Rats, using specific pre-designed spells and a spell point system instead of that game’s highly abstracted descriptor/narrative based system. Wanna cast a spell? Spend a spell point. But only Magicians began play actually knowing any spells. To give spell points some value to non-Magician characters and to keep some magic items limited in their use, using a magic wand also requires the expenditure of a spell point each time you activate it. Torch & Blade only has six spells described in the core book with a sidebar on designing more spells for using in your own campaign and how to use researching new spells as an adventure hook. None of the spells presented are damage-dealing, though some wands can be used to do damage.
Combat itself remained largely unchanged from Maze Rats. In fact, I’m pretty sure its identical.
Recovering Treasure was determined by giving each monster a Treasure Rating. This is a d6 roll that basically determines how likely a PC is to recover 1 Treasure after defeating a monster. But on a roll of a 6, you recover more Treasure and/or potentially a magic item. Magic items are generated randomly through rolling on a series of tables.
To keep actual play of the game clear cut, I came up with the idea of The Three Realms. These are three arenas of play that increase in danger. The safest is a Bastion. Bastions are civilized places like villages, cities, castles, or even religious abbeys, where PCs can rest and resupply. While in a Bastion they heal faster and don’t need to spend Rations each day. Also, depending on the type of Bastion they’re at, PCs can hire a Companion to join them on their adventure.
When PCs decide to set out from a Bastion on an adventure, it is assumed they’re journeying to some form of a dungeon to recover treasure. To reach this dungeon they’ll need to cross the Wilderness. The roll of a die determines how many days they’ll need to spend crossing the wilderness to reach the dungeon and each day requires a check to avoid getting lose and to determine whether a random encounter occurs. Characters can also choose not to advance across the Wilderness and instead Forage in an attempt to gain more Rations.
When they reach the dungeon, they have entered the Underworld. It costs more Rations per day to survive in the Underworld and the chance of a random encounter is increased. A location in the Underworld has 1d6+4 locations to be explored, with each of these locations being detailed via a few rolls on a few tables. Locations in the Underworld have a “Descriptor” and a “Type.” So you might have an Enchanted Castle, a Fortified Barrow, or an Ancient Tower. Each Descriptor has a random encounter table associated with it, as does each Type. You combine these two tables to determine the monsters present in the dungeon and the dungeon type determines how easy it is to get lost. So for example, you’re more likely to find fey creatures in a dungeon whose Descriptor is “Enchanted,” but if the it’s going to be harder to get lost in an Enchanted Tower than it is to get lost in an Enchanted Mine. This combination of Type and Descriptor, along with associated tables, allows diverse number of dungeons to be quickly and easily generated.
It was only at this point in the design process that I realized you could travel across the Wilderness and explore the Underworld without actually needing a map. I thought that was kinda cool so let it ride.
To keep things simple, I abstracted Companions. Companions can be hired at Bastions to join you on an adventure and don’t have a character sheet. Instead they grant you an ability that can be used X number of times during your adventure. So, if you hire a Guide then your chance of getting lost in the Wilderness is reduced, but a Porter lets you carry more gear. A Man-at-Arms can be hired and that lets you make a few extra melee attacks during your adventure, but as soon as the Man-at-Arms misses then you lose that benefit and narratively, that Companion is killed. Mounts grant extra slots to carry stuff, but won’t follow you into the Underworld, meaning you have to go back through the same location twice and risk more random encounters. And, of course, hiring companions and buying mounts costs Treasure.
Finally, while at a Bastion, PCs can build a permanent dwelling called a Steading. The Steading grants them one unique benefit, but more importantly, once PCs have a Steading they can invest in the Bastion itself. Thus, if they spend Treasure on improving a Village then that Village may eventually become a City.
Finally, Treasure must be spent to advance in level (with the specifics of that being detailed in the text of the game). However, each time you advance in level, you have to roll 2d6. If the number rolled is equal to or below your new level, then you have to go on a thematic Class Quest before you can spend Treasure again on advancing your character.
I was literally on the last page of the draft of Torch & Blade before I realized that every element of the game, whether it be character creation, NPC reactions, wilderness encounters, dungeon details, or magic items, could be generated by rolling on a table. The GM could literally generate an adventure on the fly as the PCs are playing through it. It was this observation that made me realize I’d actually written an RPG that could be both group and solo play. So, in a single sidebar early in the text, I have some slight modifications (mostly to make PCs slightly more robust) for when the game is played solo.
Anyway, I’m hoping to get Torch and Blade out to the public in the next month or two in both PDF and print on demand and as you might have guessed, I’m very excited about it. I hope you will be too!
Sounds like fun. Looking forward to trying this out.
Awesome, I hope it is a small and portable little zine so I can take it with me on trips!