Tanares RPG 5E Game Master less mode was originally called solo mode. This got me interested in Tabletop RPG and I have started some reading about the Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition even though I have never played the genre before.
Conceptually, I have been convinced that the solo playable 5E game can be viewed as an adventure board game with the complex game rule.
Yet I read many experienced D&D players strongly speaks against solo play D&D. Am I missing something major?The only way to find it out is actually try playing it myself.
So today, I am sharing my own experience of actually playing the first 5E game, which of course is in solo mode.
I have specifically ended up using D&D starter kit campaign with Tanares RPG characters.
Outline
This recording became quite a bit longer than I have originally anticipated.
So I have decided to divide this up into four sections within the episode. If you are only interested in part of my journey, feel free to skip to the corresponding section, which is linked in below.
- Part I: Research
There were quite a few options to investigate before deciding how to start 5E for the first time, especially as a solo player who is looking for the board game type experience. In this first section, I will talk about my research journey explaining how I ended up choosing the D&D Starter Kit. - Part II: Preparation
The second section is the preparation phase. Once I have determined to use D&D Starter Kit with solo play guide, there were a few more choices I had to make for preparing the actual game setup. - Part III: The game highlights
In the third section, I will be talking about my first encounter with highlight moments from the game. In fact, I actually jot down this section while I was playing the game. So you will hear some mistakes and struggle I make as a first time player. - Part IV: My first encounter impression
The last part is the my impression after the very first 5E game in solo mode, of course from the board gamer’s perspective .
Part I: Research
Dragori Games has made sample digital books available for Tabletop RPG gamer including short adventure sample. I have immediately downloaded them and started to read all three sample books.
When I got to the adventure book, one paragraph caught my attention immediately.
The adventure is designed for characters starting at 3rd level (but you can have them start at 1st level and go on a few adventures before beginning the first chapter).
Tanares RPG for 5E Adventure in the realms of madness Sample
From board gamer’s perspective, this means this adventure book starts at level 3 character. I am used to seeing games usually starting at level 1. Although non-level 1 start is not uncommon in D&D campaign books, this made me believe there is clear assumption that players are familiar with 5E rule before getting started with Tanares RPG adventure. So even though this is what I really want to play, I had to find something else as a beginner.
3 ways
There are many online forum posts from D&D players stating D&D is not meant to be played solo. This is a bone of contention.
Instead of an adventure module, the Basic Set rulebooks included a solo adventure and an introductory scenario to be run by the Dungeon Master.[2]
Wikipedia Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set 1981 revision
One thing I found out is that solo play 5E is certainly not unheard of and there are many players out there and in fact it sounds like early ages of D&D even came with solo adventure.
After doing couple weeks of research about solo play 5E, I basically saw 3 general approaches for beginner like myself who have never played 5E.
Another Tabletop RPG
I read a few times people recommending entirely different Tabletop RPG. The name I read the most is Ironsworn.
Ironsworn has free digital download so if you are interested you can certainly give a try.
However, the main issue for me here is that I am not looking for solo playable Tabletop RPG. I am looking for the most versatile, new adventure board game experience.
Solo friendly 5E
There are actually solo playable/friendly 5E campaign books available for purchase on Dungeon Masters Guild. For instance, publication from 5E Solo Gamebooks lists 37 items at the time of this writing.
In fact, I have purchased the first of the series on myself, the Death Knight’s Squire digital version ($9.99).
The description by publisher is followings:
The Death Knight’s Squire is the first in a planned series of solo, DM-less adventures. Unlike standard gamebooks, 5e Solo Gamebooks include a map / token dynamic to make the experience more like full tabletop gaming. Sections of the map are revealed as the PC moves through the adventure, encountering monsters, items and other occurences. The PDF contains clickable links that move you between your choices, keeping you fully immersed. With over 350 separate narrative entries, as well as varied combat encounters, there are innumerable paths your quest could take! Another difference from standard gamebooks is that you roll up your own PC, just like in a normal D&D quest.
The Death Knight’s Squire has been extensively playtested by experienced players of 5e D&D, and includes combat, opportunities for spellcasting, use of diverse class feats / skills and more. The quest should take about 2-4 hours and is designed to be as close to the experience of playing with a DM as possible.
So read the introduction to the Adventure Booklet (do this first), roll up a new Level 2 PC and let’s get playing!
Dungeon Masters Guild D&D Solo Adventure: The Death Knight’s Squire
I think I may eventually play this while I wait for Tanares RPG, but as I skimmed through the first few pages, it was clear the game still assumed prior knowledge and experience about 5E system.
Solo engine/guide
The third option is something I came across at the last. This is basically a system, rule or guide that make routine Tabletop RPG into dungeon master less playable.
This sounded great because this seemed to open up all the available D&D official series for me to potentially play as a solo player. This includes the official D&D starter kit that is written specifically for the players who play D&D 5E for the first time.
There are many options for solo play guide. Some of the highly rated guides I came across during my online research include Mythic Role Playing, MUNE, The Dungeon Oracle, The Solo Adventurer’s Toolbox, Solo Adventurer’s Guide – D&D Solo Engine and others.
Obviously, I have not tried all as there are so many to choose from. I have first started with free one, which is MUNE. This guide looked like written for creating own adventure. I needed even more basic.
So I purchased Solo Adventure Resource: The Dungeon Oracle ($1.99). This 11 page digital book felt enough for me to get started.
Part II: Preparation
Starter Set
I have decided to play official D&D Start Set because it is the official adventure written for new D&D players including new Dungeon Master.
This kit is listed as an ideal for a group of 4-6 with Set including:
- 64-page adventure book with everything the Dungeon Master needs to get started
- 32-page rulebook for playing characters level 1-5
- 5 pre-generated characters, with character sheet
- 6 dice
Player Character Conversion
One issue with the starter set contained adventure for solo player is that it is balanced for four level 1 characters.
Controlling each character in 5E system is much more sophisticated than that of typical adventure board game characters. So controlling four is generally not preferable for the solo player and absolutely not for the beginner.
Here the Dungeon Oracle guide came in handy. It contains a player number conversion table, which is supposedly based on the official D&D dungeon master’s guide.
Using the Dungeon Oracle’s conversion table, I have decided to go with 2 x level 3 characters. The primary reason for choosing this option over 1 x level 4 is that I thought two characters will keep team based tactical element that one character otherwise won’t be able to do such as death saving throws.
Besides, this choice actually conveniently allows me to use Tanares RPG Player’s guide sample cotanining pregenerated characters as they are all level 3.
Learning rules
The Starter Kit includes stripped down version of D&D Basic rule book. The basic rule guide itself is free online, but it has 180 pages in comparison to the 32 pages booklet on the starter kit.
At this point, I have already read actual Basic Rule and even Player’s handbook myself, but if I were to do all over, I’d just start with the rulebook that came with Starter Set.
I would also recommend checking some of Youtube channel like Don’t Stop Thinking’s How to Play Dungeons and Dragons 5e Youtube series and Handbooker Helper YouTube series.
Character Selection
Although being able to create own character in 5E system is intriguing, it is not an easy process. Relatively speaking, player’s handbook devotes first six chapters out of 11 total chapters to the character creation related materials. At this point, I want to dive right into the game and there are still a lot of other things to learn, I’ve decided to use pre-generated characters from Tanares RPG sample book.
I have specifically chosen Dragonblade, Gaknak. As a support, I thought having a healer is a good idea, so I chose M’Bollo.
There are a lot these characters can do. Therefore, unlike other tabletop adventure games like Gloomhaven or Arena: the Contest, not everything is depicted in attack cards. It is suffice to say, each character has their own sets of game play rules.
So I read the Tanares RPG Player’s Guide corresponding to the Dragon Blade section couple times.
The third page of the Dragonblade’s character sheet contains game play related features and traits for easier referencing, but even then, you can see how much materials are there.
At this point, I wanted to dive right into the game so I have decided to not read much about M’Bollo and save that for the future encounter because I was fairly certain for the very first encounter I won’t need healing spell.
Game Setup
Although D&D can be played without a grid map and miniatures, this won’t feel like a board game. So as a board gamer map and miniatures or at least tokens are essential.
However, the D&D Starter kit adventure did not come with pre-printed grid map, miniatures nor tokens. In fact, the first encounter having no real terrain element related effect, they did not even draw the map in the book.
At this point I had two options of setting up the board game type grid and miniatures or tokens. One is physical using my other board game’s grid and miniatures. The other is virtual using one of virtual tabletop simulator (VTT) platform.
I chose the virtual option. The main benefit of this approach is many data tracking involved in 5E can be automated so as a starter, there is less likely chance of me to make mistakes.
Just like everything else to this point, selecting which virtual tabletop simulator platform to use is yet another tough multiple choice question. The options I came across are Roll20, FoundryVTT, Fantasy Ground and AboveVTT.
Since I have purchased digital books from D&D Beyond website, I started to play around with the free account character and encounter creation and tracking tools on it. With this, AboveVTT came to the first choice. This is a free google chrome extension based virtual tabletop simulator that directly integrates with D&D beyond.
Unfortunately, importing homebrew contents like TanaresRPG material into D&D beyond, hence AboveVTT, felt unnecessary time consuming and I thought it was not something I would like to keep doing for future materials. So I have personally ended up purchasing FoundryVTT.
Foundry VTT required $50 one time purchase. It involved some learning but there was a helpful Foundry VTT Basics Youtube Guide by Encounter Library.
One benefit of setting up solo campaign using virtual tabletop simulator is you are controlling everything so you don’t need to worry about hiding enemy, setting lighting, or background music. You can straight focus on putting characters and monsters. It basically required much less skill for the simulator.
Part III: The First Game
Game Setup
Finally after making all the research with multiple choices, this is exactly what I have chosen as the first time 5E solo player.
- Playing platform: FoundryVTT
- Campaign book: Dungeons & Dragons Starter kit
- Character sheets: Tanares RPG Player’s Guide
Now that I got all setup, let’s see how it worked.
Narrative
One of the reason I went with starter kit is that I read, this adventure dives right into the meat of D&D while it does not assume you know anything about D&D. So it explains everything.
The adventure begun with explaining how the adventure starts.
The story narrative is mixed with instruction to dungeon master and actual story narrative.
As recommended by the Dungeon’s Oracle booklet, I have kept reading line by line until I saw the first combat encounter, which was actually just in a few paragraphs from the beginning of the page.
The next paragraph, started “In the unlikely event that the goblins defeat..” so I stopped reading here because I felt it will spoil me the consequence and I also thought the presented material from this point on will be irrelevant until I finish the battle with Goblins.
Even though I got both physical and digital version of this adventure, one thing I liked about the digital format is that everything is hyperlinked to relevant rule book section. For example, this very first combat starts with a surprise encounter mechanics of 5E rule. I can click the word highlighted hyperlink to look how it exactly works.
Combat
Monster AI
In D&D, normally dungeon master controls the monsters. However, in the solo play, I need to control monsters.
This is a familiar concept to me despite I have never played tabletop RPG. It is analogous to the other adventure board games like Arena: the contest or Gloomhaven. The difference here is that in those games, we have explicit guide of how to control monsters, which often has some random element by means of monster AI deck.
Since D&D adventure here is not made to be played without dungeon master, there is no monster AI.
In the case of this very first encounter, all I have is one sentence talking about the general tactics.
When the time comes for the goblins to act, two of them rush forward and make melee attacks while two goblins stand 30 feet away from the party and make ranged attacks.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/lmop/goblin-arrows#GoblinAmbush
Even when Monsters are controlled by DM, there will be variation of the play with some DM are great masterful thematically appropriate tactician and others may be a bit more monotonous game play style.
In fact, there is even a book talking about how to generally control different D&D monsters for Dungeon Masters (ref).
I am sure some of solo play engine/rule guide have some suggestion here but at this point, I have decided to just make up my own rule for the simplicity, especially I know my first encounter involves Goblin and I am already given two are melee and two are ranged attackers. With this guide, each goblin essentially has only one type action it can take.
The monster AI rule I decided to use is to follow Arena: the Contest monster’s basic attack strategy , which is very straight forward but I believe reasonable.
Round 1 Highlights
The combat begun. Goblin movement was easy. I just chose couple to melee attack and the other two go 6 squares away from my characters and perform ranged attack.
Upon completion of the first round, I had one goblin down, and most interestingly, I got my Red Dragon Spirit out.
Since one of the special power of Dragonblade class is Ultimate attack, which unlocks when 3 consecutive attack uses different types of draconic power, I have decided to keep track of this using built in condition icons that looked similar to official Draconic power icons.
I thought I did a fair amount of homework by reading basic rule book couple times before this first game but immediately on my first turn during the M’Bollo’s attack, I got stuck because I wasn’t sure what the keyword “versatile” meant.
So I went to basic rule book and searched Versatile.
Versatile. This weapon can be used with one or two hands. A damage value in parentheses appears with the property — the damage when the weapon is used with two hands to make a melee attack.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/equipment#Weapons
Now reading this raised another question.
I wondered if versatile benefit can be used with the shield equipped status as my M’Bollo does.
According to some reddit post, despite everyone was in agreement that you need to take off the shield to open up the two hands for versatile attack, there were disagreement about doffing a shield whether it is instant process vs. costing an action. I personally decided to go with the official rulebook where it states unequipping an shield takes a full action.
Round 2 Highlights
Now the excitement starts with Draconic Power.
Empowered Dragon’s Revenge
Your Dragon Spirit becomes empowered whenever you use a Draconic Power. At 2nd level, if you or an ally within 15 feet of your Spirit takes damage from an enemy within 60 feet of your Spirit while the Spirit is empowered, you can consume its empowerment (no action required). This causes the Spirit to release a fire breath that affects only the enemy that dealt the damage, dealing 1d6 fire damage for every two dragonblade levels you have, rounded down (with no saving throw for the target).
Well… I think I put my spirit a bit too far initially. So I pretended it was placed a bit closer.
With proper positioning, Dragon’s Revenge power deals straight one six sides die damage. Since missing attack felt common in my current situation, I thought this was pretty good ability.
Round 3 Highlights
In the 5E combat system, attacker rolls first to determine if the rolled number is equal to or higher than the target’s armor class. If the attack was determined as a hit, then you roll for the amount of damage separately.
After going through the full three rounds, I have had total of 6 attack opportunities using my characters. I had only 2 successful hit. That’s 33% success rate and felt a bit too low.
The Goblins have Armor class of 15. With 20 sides die, this means only 1 in 4 attack succeeds. However, this roll is augmented by modifier conditions such as proficiency bonus and ability bonus. So I looked back the character sheet and also log of what I have rolled so far.
It turned out, the way I entered data in the FoundryVTT for my characters did not add the bonus.
For instance, M’Bollo should have got +4 to all hit rolls. I see FoundryVTT was only adding +1. This was certainly another learning lesson.
With +4 hit, 25% hit probability now goes all way up to 55%.
This seems still slightly lower than the typical sweet spot of 60-80% success seen in other tabletop games like drawing a specific card in the Magic the Gathering during a given game when 4 copies of the card is included in 60 cards deck or attack success rate in the Arena: the Contest, but I believe this is due to my characters are still low tier levels and sense of character development in D&D is significant part of game so it must be starting low here .
With the roll log, I could have adjusted all attacks by reviewing the log, but I have decided to just carry the game without doing so as I felt I could still beat this introductory encounter.
Now the excitement comes in.
Since this is the third turn of Dragonblade, I can use its “Ultimate” power. This is like a combo mechanics. By using 3 different categories of Draconic Power, you unlock the “Ultimate” effect on the third attack.
In my case, I have saved up Force Wave by just pure luck but felt probably the best one to use Ultimate power in this scenario.
This special attack is thematically very cool. This power basically states Draconic Spirit is even capable of alleviating the missed attack.
This was my very first use of the “saving throw” mechanics.
I got one of two target successfully hit and killed it.
Two more to go.
Round 4 Highlights
I really like the Empowered Dragon’s Revenge power. This power ignores attack roll nor even a saving throw. Even before my character got their turns, Dragon’s Revenge killed the third goblin.
Now this is where the importance of reading entire encounter description before its start as a solo player comes into play.
Instead of killing the last goblin, this quest ends after the third goblin because the fourth one runs away.
So I have successfully completed my very first dungeon & dragons 5E combat using Tanares RPG characters.
The First Impression
Overall, the game flowed exactly as I have expected. In fact, even with this very first encounter I have felt game mechanics are far more versatile.
For example, after the successful completion of the goblin arrow encounter, I now started reading ahead, and the very next sentence said,
The characters might capture one or more goblins by knocking them unconscious instead of killing them. […] Once it regains consciousness after a few minutes, a captured goblin can be convinced to share what it knows (see the “What the Goblins Know” sidebar below).
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/lmop/goblin-arrows#GoblinAmbush
Even it may seem minor to some, I thought this is very interesting. I am used to just defeating enemies on the board in the adventure board games. If there was an option to capture, the way I have experienced is after the completion of quest, you are given two choice question like “Do you like to kill the goblin or capture?”
In case of 5E, knocking a creature out is actually official part of rule. This means I can technically do this in any encounter.
Knocking a Creature Out
Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#Droppingto0HitPoints
Basically, I felt 5E based adventure board games is definitely possible and has a huge potential as long as the game has a proper game aid and design.
5E as board game check points
Now what are the proper game aid/design? Obviously, this is my personal opinion but these points are where I felt plain D&D adventure game design is suboptimal to be experienced as a solo board game.
- Lack of Monster AI
- Narrative tone
- Rule Complexity
- Many data tracking and stats
The fortunate part of these points are that essentially all could be corrected by supplements rather than changing the 5E core rule itself. Since this whole journey started with Tanares RPG, let’s take a look of how Tanares RPG GM-less mode add-on addressing these points.
Lack of Monster AI
Dragori Games will be making Monster AIs. Unlike generic AI for all or most of common monsters, Dragori Games has confirmed that they will be using unique strategies for each monsters. In fact, they have even stated the strategy would change based on the encounter. This sounds like a A student answer.
Narrative Tone
In case of Starter kit, I actually appreciated the way it is written because writing style for new learning Dungeon Master felt as a good teaching material.
However, once I familiarize myself with basic rules of 5E, spoiler free, narrative written for adventurers perspective would be preferable for better immersion. This is yet another element I am familiar with in other adventure board games including Dragori’s its own game, Arena: the Contest.
This is the exact reason why Tanares RPG is making separate booklet and card deck for GM-less mode. Another “A” grade here.
Rule Complexity
5E is undoubtedly the most rule-rich tabletop game I have played or seen. Individual rule points are not necessary difficult, but there are a lot of options in this game. As such, remembering every parts of rule seems impossible for the most.
I ended up purchasing the Starter kit adventure in both physical and digital format, but during this play round, I used digital version since my whole setup was digital. This turned out to be a really good idea for the starter like myself.
With game being digital, all game rules and keyword were clickable or hover-over hyperlink for quick and easy rule look up.
Since Dragori Games will not be including 5E rule itself in their content, probably due to licensing reason, I don’t think there is much Dragori Games can do in this regard.
I just envision myself with iPad opening D&D beyond basic rule book while I play the physical game for quick reference.
Data Tracking
I’m sure I have said this enough times, but there are lots of data to keep track and stats to look up in 5E game.
Since this was the most basic first encounter, I am sure I had less amount of data tracking than usual, but even such instance I had to keep track of health for all combatants on the board, Dragonblade Ultimate Power counter, status of Dragon Spirit empowerment, and turn order.
Worse part is stats look up. 5E game’s versatility is driven by many stats for each character which are modified by equipments, but this means these numbers are something we won’t be able to memorizing easily.
In my particular case for this first encounter, I played the game using virtual tabletop simulator. With virtual setup, I was able to integrated core 5E data. So all the stats of Goblins and even equipments that I geared on my characters all had proper stats and these were easy to look whenever I needed.
However, I am looking forward to play the game physically for a better immersion with miniatures and physical grid map.
This will require looking up reference to various parts of the game during combat. Without a proper supporting elements, I can see myself feeling dilution of overall game experience due to the number of data look up.
So what parts of data look up and tracking do we see Dragori making to help physical, especially solo game player?
At the time of this recording, stretch goals mention about cards with classes and villain stat blocks. This is a good news as it means we will have required information right on the table for some of the monster stats. However, Dragori Games has confirmed that not all monsters in the book will have corresponding cards. So we will have only part solution here.
I think it is fair to assume stat blocks of all monsters on adventures will also be included because it would seem useless to just have the stats blocks to be limited to add-on pack combatants.
Special attacks will have card representation. I can see this allows easy tracking of Draconic Power combo.
In fact, Tanares RPG even takes care of the challenge of multiple player character control for solo player by “escort” system. This is probably the most cumbersome piece of data tracking player would notice if there wasn’t this system.
I see there are all thoughts of design decisions being placed here to make the game really solo playable by Tanares RPG.
Final impression
Basically, what I learned from this experience are 5E solo playable mode is an adventure board game.
As far as the tips to those of you who are thinking trying this out yourself, I highly recommend starting with D&D starter kit using solo playable engine/guide.
If you are like myself and if Tanares RPG got you this far, then try picking two Tanares RPG pre-generated characters from the sample book.
Spend as much or as little time as you want to get table setup. Whatever you do in this step should pay you back. If you spend minimum time and just have a little square grids with miniatures or tokens on your table, you save setup time. If you setup virtual tabletop like I did, I felt more immersion with Tanares character pictures, but more importantly for me, it was far easier to avoid making mistakes and keep track of data this way.
After all these setup and if you go through the Goblin Ambush and felt the game is not fun then Tanares RPG 5E solo play mode isn’t for you. If you see the potential? Had fun? I think we are off to good start.
Tanares RPG GM-less mode will simply take this whole experience to a new level. After this experience, I am excited about the game more than ever as a solo play adventure board gamer.