So, last night I stumbled upon a video by YouTuber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXrCLxlxXk8 wherein he was using an Oracle system for Tabletop Solo Play that was new to him created by
Perplexing Ruins - a well known indie creator in the ttrpg space.
If you're not familiar with solo ttrpgs, the concept of an Oracle might be foreign to you, but it's actually pretty simple. An Oracle is a means of making randomized or semi-randomized choices or outcomes. It allows you to play through what may traditionally be a group-based tabletop game on your own (like D&D, Pathfinder, any B/X or OSR clone, etc.). Functionally, they act as a means of answering a question you might have or providing a prompt to keep the narrative going. Since most TTRPGs rely on the social back-and-forth roleplay you get in a group of 2+ people, these Oracles work to fill the gap when you're playing solo.
The most basic oracle might simply be a 'Yes/No' answer, where you reach a situation during play and have to ask yourself "Do I take the left fork, or the right fork in this hallway?". During group play there'd be discussion and you'd come up with a choice together, but solo, you could grab a coin or a random dice and decide "if it's heads, I turn left" and then flip the coin (or roll the dice), and then you'd follow through with whatever result you end up with.
So, with that basic understanding out of the way, the reason I point this out is because he has put forward a solo ttrpg challenge for 2024, and it begins with "use an oracle that is new to you".
I was already planning to make 2024 my year of chewing through the frankly absurd number of solo ttrpgs I've collected both physically and digitally, and this challenge is definitely going to help with that I think!
Now, I've used a variety of oracles in the last year or two of diving into the indie ttrpg scene and getting into solo gaming - but there are a ton that I haven't (including the one by Perplexing Ruins).
For the challenge today though, I'm going to do a one-shot test of a game that I just received yesterday:
RIG by Michael Elliot (
NotWritingGames).
Per the Kickstarter and Itch.io descriptions:
RIG is a single-player souls-like mech tabletop RPG. You pilot a dead core, a mech murdered and reclaimed long ago. You'll explore a dark science fiction wonderland full of threats, lore, and survivors. Fight enemy rigs and worse, get new equipment, and collect lore that lets you piece together the history of the world. RIG uses a standard deck of playing cards to create an endless combination of battles, and gradually fill in the world with more challenges, mysteries, and cards, as you interpret what has happened on Recombinant Earth.
I'm counting the playing card battles as my 'Oracle' system for this, as it provides a random choice means of propelling the story forward and that is the heart of every oracle system so I believe it counts!
For this one-shot today, I'll be following the author's advice and simply choosing the default equipment for my rig, which provides us with a gun, shoulder-mounted rockets, and a basic core and legs.
The core book has some fun little worldbuilding elements to it, so I think in future runs I'll give my rig a proper name and randomize the equipment, as I think there's enough meat on this to make for a fun narrative in addition to the combat-focused gameplay offered by rules-as-written. That said, today we're sticking to just the basics, and that means moving on to the actual core gameplay loop.
The gameplay loop centers around drawing three cards per round, dealing with the results of the draw, and continuing until you run out of cards in your deck. Once you're all out of cards, you move to the next 'level'.
We begin on The Firmament, and our Local Admin (the guide built into the book), has us pull specific cards for this first round.
The first card we draw is Location, which gives us our 5x5 grid layout for the upcoming combat. We are instructed to pull an Ace for this exercise, which we will do.
Pretending that we randomly drew an Ace (of any suit) we can reference the appropriate Locations page for The Firmament, and we see that our combat map is the following:
We have a helpful legend provided as well, to give us an idea what each of these icons means:
And of course, since this is a tabletop game, we have some printable sheets and tokens that we can use for representing our battle grid. The star icon is of course us, but since my buddy Zak is a big fan of 3d printing and has given me a ton of minis...
I'll be using this fancy chap to represent my Rig:
One day I'll paint these, hand to god.So now we have our Location set, and it's time to look at our next card, which represents "Churn".
Churn can be more obstacles, spacetime anomalies or modifications, useful materiel, or even new
equipment for your rig.
We're instructed to draw a 3 from our deck by the Local Admin.:
Card Reads: AMBUSH! When you determine threats, if possible add 1 more of this encounter’s threats in your rig’s starting square. If it is not possible, or if you drew a face card, discard both cards and draw another churn. +3 ammoSo we are being ambushed which means +1 to whatever threat we're about to draw, but also gives us +3 ammo IF we survive the ambush. I'll take that deal.
Location and Churn done, it's time to draw our Threat.
Ananzer Tanks. Threat alone this puts 3 enemies on the table in grids B1, D1, and E2, but we had that Churn Ambush that also adds a fourth Tank in the same space as our Rig. Whew, that's a lot of enemies!
So, now it's time to resolve our combat round. First, we roll a d6 for each Threat which will inform us what move they're going to make. Second, we move those Threats into effective range (assuming they have enough movement). Third, we activate OUR Rig and make any actions we want to. Fourth, we move our rig. Fifth, and finally, we resolve all damage at the same time.
Typing it out sounds clunky and confusing but it's honestly not.
Rolling for our four enemies, I got:
6,6,6,4.
So, if we refer back to the Tank description we note that on 4,5,6 they have: Move 3, Harm 2, Range 2/3.
Next we move our enemies around so they're in the optimal range for firing, and then I choose what my Rig is going to do. I can activate any piece of equipment on me Once per turn, and can roll as many die as I want, though it costs 1 heat per d6 rolled and we have a max of 10 heat before we start taking damage.
My first activation is free, and I'm going to roll every other dice I have with me for a total of 6 dice, which converts to +5 overflow heat.
Active your rig. Start with 1d6. Mark 1 heat on your rig sheet for
each additional d6 you want to roll. If your heat is at it’s max, mark
damage instead. Roll and assign each die to equipment that has a
matching value. You don’t need to use every die. Each part of your rig
can be activated once per round. You may add die values together. For
example you’ll need a total value of 7 to activate your blade core.
So, with my total dice rolled, I'm able to activate everything I have right now. This provides us with 3 total movement (2 for core which we activated with a 6 and a 1, and 1 for legs which we activated with a 1).
It also provides us the ability to do effectively 3 attacks to the enemies on the field. We're going to take some damage, but since the enemies moved before my Rig, we're able to mitigate that a bit just based on the flow of mechanics. [Which, as a minor note, does feel a little like cheating to me. I can't think of how I'd reasonably improve this at a first glance, but I thought I'd mention it anyhow as my single complaint so far.]
Our first action is going to be to dash down to the lone enemy that had been occupying my space prior to it needing a range of 2 or 3. By moving down to occupy the same space it's in, we trigger the next phase of action which is resolving Harm.
For my own brain to handle this, it's easiest if I just go from top of the grid to bottom resolving each Harm. To that end, we're going to start with Enemy 1 and Enemy 2, which are jointly occupying Grid C1. Their attack has a range of 2-3, and since I am effectively in Grid C5 with Enemy 4, I am out of their range and thus take 0 damage.
Enemy 3 in Grid E3 also does not have me in range, since by the rules there is no Diagonal - all attacks are in straight lines Left/Right/Up/Down (orthogonally).
Enemy 4 also is using an attack with explicit range of 2-3 squares, so since I'm in the same square, I think I'd take 0 damage, Rules As Written?
Range N-1/N: Can hit targets exactly N-1 or N squares away. Squares
are counted orthogonally. Threats always target your rig if able
I, however, can activate my Blade Core which has the trait of "Harm Heat Same" - which means that whatever value my current Heat is at, is the damage I do to the unit sharing my Same space. Which in this case, is 5.
These enemies have HP of 4 each, so this attack wipes him out.
I chose to activate my Bullpup as well mistakenly thinking I could diagonally attack, but since I can't I assume I wildly shoot towards C1 and hit nothing. -1 ammo.
I also have my rocket-pods which have Volley on them (which allows me to attack behind cover if needed), but more importantly has a range of 4. So I can reach the pair of units in C1 with this, dealing I assume two harm to each of them. -1 ammo again.
At this point, we re-start the combat cycle. I won't walk through the rest of combat, but by the end of turn 3 I had taken 2 damage and destroyed all 4 enemy units.
My Thoughts:
And, that effectively concludes my playtest of this game. Having beat that first combat, we'd simply pull 3 more cards and begin a new combat, repeating that cycle until we had run out of cards and it was time to move to the next level of the game.
Overall, this is a very fun little grid-based tactical game. I know for myself, when I next play through more of this which I will definitely be doing, I'm going to want to add in some narrative elements that aren't part of the core rules. The lack of story elements feels like something that is missing to me as I find it personally jarring to move from combat to combat without location descriptions or story beats to help prop up why I'm moving through these combats. Thankfully, I've played enough solo games that I'm not worried about adding that in myself. Heck, maybe I'll make it into an oracle of it's own and offer it for other players who also want that story-driven element.
My other minor complaint is the one I voiced above: Once you see how the flow of battle works, it is very easy to just get out of range and invalidate attacks. I have some ideas on how to make that more challenging, but I want to run a few more games with the rules-as-written first before I monkey with that too much. If, after a few combats, I'm still finding that it's too easy to cheese my way to victory my initial thought is that you could modify the combat flow so that enemies choose their attacks, you choose your attacks, and then you roll a dice or refer to a yes/no oracle to see what order each unit including yourself moves in. This would make it far more likely to give enemy units a chance to move after your character and ensure they can damage you.
Both of my "complaints" (and I use that term very loosely) are extremely minor and easily solved. Overall, I think this is a
very fun game, that I'll definitely be doing more with in the future. I'm very glad I backed this, and I absolutely recommend
buying it on Itch for $15 USD.
I know a lot of you folks in this community are Warhammer wargamers, and I suspect you'd get a kick out of this game. (I also think it'd be fun to offload the enemy turns to a second player, and see how that goes!)
If you made it all the way through this gigantic blog post, thank you for reading. If you pick up RIG, ping me if you do a post about it or feel free to drop a comment here (or on bsky, twitter, etc) and let me know what you think!
I'll be posting more solo TTRPGs in the days to come, so watch my [bsky] page (
https://bsky.app/profile/oblivioncubed.bsky.social) or follow me here to enjoy that!
