Band of Blades Solo Play?

Has anyone else considered running Band as a solo RPG?

I’m thinking the missions could all be resolved by engagement rolls. I would add one die to the primary mission to represent that those are generally more successful.

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I did a brief solo actual play. Posted an in-fiction account here: https://community.bladesinthedark.com/t/the-fall-of-aldermark-a-band-of-blades-story/1103

I will say, there are SO MANY THINGS to keep track of :stuck_out_tongue: and that resulted in me burning out on the game. I think your instinct to simplify the process is a good one, but I found the missions were the real “meat” of the story where the characters could be in peril and had to contend with their beliefs.

I’m curious what perspective you’d view the game through as a solo experience? Like for example if you play it with the soldiers, the game focuses more on battle and survival, but through the lens of the Legion roles the game becomes more about strategy and resources. Would you just have one character as the player character or an ensemble?

Thanks!

I would focus on the Legion as a whole, though I would do so through the lens of the Commander, Marshal, etc. I agree that BoB is best when you get into the nitty gritty. I am just in the mind to check out solo rpg play in a variety of ways.

As a side note (Randy) that’s how John and I playtested a lot of the earliest concept versions of the game. To balance new supply metrics and see how they feel we’d just run through the campaign making all the high level decisions and resolving a lot of the missions with just a few rolls (we were testing for wounds and stress usage on primary and basically doing an oracle like: what is the obstacle, ok roll, ok interpret).

The soldier level runs into a lot of the czege principle problems for solo play… I think you’d want a 2-player game there (player and GM) at the very least.

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