Thol Chuldar and Blackmoor, both currently imprisoned at Stanworth Commons for various offenses, have been conscripted to go beyond the Wall to investigate the missing hunting parties.
Greetings, 3WD-verse. DM Chris here! That first thrilling, yet cliche, entry into my Google Doc began a campaign that introduced me to the magic of DM-less gaming.
What?! No DM?! Did Dave and Tony proofread this?
I can understand why it seems odd to many, but the real secret is that it isn’t really DM-less. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. DM-less and solo gaming help us to learn to use our imagination at run-time. So much preparation is geared towards anticipating scenes and encounters ahead of time that we often feel afraid to let the story run its own course. Using a DM-less system like Mythic Role Playing or a solo system like 5e Solo Gamebooks can help develop your imagination in ways to help improvise while the story is evolving.
It’s Not Always Easy to Find a Game
This is the part that first drove me out onto the Internet looking for a way to scratch the D&D itch in the long spaces in-between campaign games. It’s probably a lot more common than I feel like it is when I’m hunkered down in the lab on a Monday night running through a solo campaign. Scheduling for 4+ players can leave you with long waits, but if it’s just you or you and a friend (or significant other) then it gets much easier to fill. What do we DM’s do when we find a problem or conundrum we can’t solve? We go to the Internet and ask the community to see if it’s been solved already.
It’s Easy to Find the Tools
Surfing through all of the amazing user-created content on sites like Dungeon Master’s Guild and DriveThruRPG, it’s easy to find a variety of tools for all of your pressing 5e needs. I had already checked a few blogs to get a lay of the land when it came to DM-less gaming, and decided on the Mythic Role Playing by Tom Pigeon and Word Mill for the campaign. It’s a fantastically intuitive system that can be applied to any RPG. While it was downloading, I also discovered Paul Bimler’s excellent 5e Solo Gamebooks series. Happy accident. I’m going to use these two examples for the article, but dive a little deeper if it sounds interesting. There is a universe of content and advice out there. I’ve probably spent a frankly embarrassing amount of my day googling “dnd 5e [whatever the hell Chris was thinking about at this moment]” and falling down the rabbit hole. Fall down one every once in a while.
What You’ll Need
Not being too corny, the first thing you’ll need is your imagination. But not necessarily like your classic Doug Henning or Spongebob meme imagination, but rather your DM imagination. How to take what’s happening and distill it into a fun and challenging experience.
Second, you’ll need the surrogate DM — the element of the unknown that makes being a player different. You’re not writing a novel. First rule of DM school. But when there isn’t someone else driving the larger story, there needs to be something that creates that suspense. We’re highlighting the two most popular styles, a random engine DM-less style in Mythic Role Playing, and a choose-your-own-adventure solo style in 5e Solo Gamebooks, but as always find what fits you best.
Finally, you’ll want to keep a detailed journal. This is the only record of your adventure that exists, and just like a player’s journal it brings you back into character when you’ve been away. Pencil and paper are a classic, but I’m a tech guy. Try using something different like Google Docs and you can even game at work on the smartphone app (not guilty ;)), or share with friends for a collaborative story.
Honesty is the Best Policy
The one big difference between a traditional game and a DM-less/solo game is the amount of information available to the player. You’ll need to know the monster stat blocks. You’re going to be forced to make decisions that challenge the urge to use this information to benefit yourself. How do we use the meta game information to enhance the solo game, while keeping our player rooted in the world? Honesty, that’s how. Just like your mother always said.
- What would the player know? Make sure you’re keeping them sufficiently in the dark about monster resistances/vulnerabilities, unless they’ve encountered it before. Same with traps, puzzles, and lore. Give your player opportunities to figure these things out with skill checks, but let the dice roll be your guide. If your fighter rolls an 8 on his Nature check, he doesn’t know that trolls regenerate, but as he makes attacks perhaps add some Perception checks to notice the regenerative feature. That being said, if our example fighter isn’t very smart or wise, he may not figure out this helpful fact at all. That’s the fun part, just like a traditional 4 person game. I’m not playing Chris, I’m Chris playing a character. Lean into that (obviously replace my name with yours, first).
- Monsters are intelligent. Those 2 gnoll hunters you just stumbled upon aren’t interested in just throwing themselves onto your blade. Maybe they have longbows, or a terrain advantage? If they are in a no-win situation, why would they act without some thought of self-preservation? In a DM-less/solo game, you’re generally controlling both the player and the monster. As DMs, we can rely on our experience running monsters in traditional games to assist, but when you’re invested as a player it can be even more difficult to make the tough choices. Combat in DM-less and solo gaming can be fairly lethal. Balancing solo encounters is something that will help to give you insight into balancing larger ones. Use your discretion as always, but make sure to give your opponents some agency. For those that want to dive deeper on a great system for managing monsters without a DM, I’d recommend giving the board game Gloomhaven or its starter set Jaws of the Lion a try.
- Logical and fair. Especially with a DM-less system like Mythic Role Playing, you and whomever else is in your party will have to perform some level of the adjudication that we do as DMs in a traditional game. Additionally, you’ll need to interpret situations and make decisions that may involve the success and failure of your actions or the path that the plot takes. This can be one of the biggest issues people have with DM-less, but it doesn’t have to be. We’re capable enough as DMs to play both sides. You just need to follow the basic tenet – when forced to have to decide on something larger than your player’s focus, ensure that you keep the decision logical and fair. Logical in the sense of the world you’re playing in and the amount of realism you enjoy in your game. Fair in that the situation or adjudication is decided using the rules and common sense.
Final Thoughts
DM-less and solo gaming isn’t for everyone. Although you can have a very fun and satisfying combination of exploration and combat encounters, there is a lack of genuine NPC interaction. It can also bring the game dangerously close to becoming a novel, but by using the tips we’ve laid out here that doesn’t need to be the case. Let the dice and your imagination help to guide you. If you get it right, and you will, you’re discovering the story just like the players in your traditional campaigns.
For our more advanced DMs, we recommend trying a random-engine DM-less style like Mythic Role Playing. The stories that spring to life, like mine and DM Dave’s Stanworth campaign, can be just as memorable as any other game experience. For the less-experienced DM, try starting out with a choose-your-own-adventure solo style like 5e Solo Gamebooks. Paul Bimler’s series of adventures is so fun, and wonderfully reminiscent to me of being curled up on the couch as a kid reading The Pillars of Pentegarn, that I still replay them on occasion. Point is, there are a bunch of tools for DM-less and solo gaming out there, give it a try. You might like it. Like green eggs and ham.
One of the best DMs I ever encountered always made his campaign feel as if it continued to run even after the players went home for the night. I later discovered that was actually the case. The DM ran his own solo sessions in his campaign between games with the regular players. So we would often encounter NPCs in the act of doing something interesting (instead of just standing around motionless until the PCs showed up). It added a real feel of authenticity to the game. I used that technique myself once, gaming out an evil wizard’s activities in building an empire of orcs and goblins. So it can definitely be a useful (and fun!) thing to do.