On a Solo RPG Friday entry, Daniel (@dungeondive) walks through how he is bending League of Dungeoneers into a freeform solo experience. The game already provides the bones: a hex-and-settlement sandbox, a card-driven dungeon crawl when you arrive somewhere worth fighting in, and a stat/skill check foundation strong enough to support persistent-world play. What he wants to strip out is the bookkeeping that comes with running a full party of four heroes through every encounter.
His proposed house rules are pragmatic. Play one full hero on the map, with three mercenaries abstracted out — their skills become utility tools (the absent thief picks the lock), their HP becomes a damage pool to absorb hits for the lead, and their stats hand out re-rolls and small bonuses. Settlements get journal pages; named mercenary NPCs are pinned to home villages with a d6 ‘is he in town?’ check, and a roll he is out can become its own side quest. Daniel also lays in third-party tools — outdoor encounter cards, Table Fables, Untold Encounters of the Random Kind, Inkwell side quest cards — to thicken the world around the official rules.
How do you abstract a full party down to one protagonist without losing the things that make each hero feel different?