Time for Solo and Co-Operative Wargaming!

Games may seem trivial in a time of crisis, but they are anything but. Keeping our spirits high, continuing to smile and enjoy our hobbies, and having other, more enjoyable things to focus on, is going to be necessary to get us through.

I can't deny it, it is looking bad for the hobby at the moment. Adepticon and Salute have cancelled. Most wargaming clubs are going into hibernation. If you aren’t already in some kind of isolation, you likely will be in the coming weeks. Thankfully, the mail order places are still running at the moment, and anyway most of us have a pretty good backlog of painting to do. (Yes, even I, a wargaming minimalist, have a ordered in a couple extra boxes of plastic minis, just in case.)  But, for most of us, just modelling and painting is not enough, we need to play something…

It just so happens that I have written several solo and co-operative wargames, including fantasy and science-fiction...

The most well-known is called Rangers of Shadow Deep. In it, you create a ranger, gather a band of followers, and do battle against the forces of the dark realm known as the Shadow Deep. You can order the Deluxe Edition from North Star or Modiphius or pick up the PDF on DriveThruRPG. The basic game includes over 15 scenarios to play, but if you manage to make it through all of those, I’ve released four supplements with additional adventures: Blood Moon, Temple of Madness, Ghost Stone, and Incinerator! You can get all of them in either PDF or Print-on-Demand on DriveThruRPG.

If you are more of a science-fiction player, I wrote a solo game of soldiers fighting alien bugs on a doomed planet, called Operation: Last Train. I made the game freely available as part of a charity project I ran last year.  You can find all of the details about it here. There are three scenarios, and you can find some more fan created ones on the associated Facebook page.

If you aren't ready to dive into a new game, but you are interested in solo gaming... well, I've got something for that too! It’s called Frostgrave: Perilous Dark.  Okay, the book is written specifically for Frostgrave and includes ten solo or co-operative scenarios, but the meat of the book is ideas, tips, and techniques for designing solo scenarios for any skirmished-based wargames, even historical ones. You can get the book in print from North Star or Amazon or buy a PDF straight from Osprey.

I’ve also included several solo Frostgrave scenarios in past issues of Spellcaster Magazine.

Just because you are stuck at home, isolated from all your gaming buddies, doesn’t mean you can't get a game in. There are plenty of adventures that await! And if you don’t think solo wargaming can be as good as player-versus-player, you’ve never had a ranger down to his last point of Health facing a pair of gnolls, blocking the only exit…