#solobee journals

[solobeegames]

Just bought a whole bunch of new dice! 😃

I’ve been having a lot of fun in the world of Mothership! I have been doing a lot of prep work, experimenting, play, and writing! I think I am finding a rhythm and a technique for my own free form solo play! It has been lots of work, but SO much fun!

I want to highlight a Mothership pamphlet that I recently acquired called The Sleeper Crew! It is by @chrisairgames! I've been collecting Mothership modules and gaming pamphlets like Thanos collecting the infinity stones, but what I particularly love about this one is that it can be utilized for group or solo play! It is a cryosleep scenario that gives context for your campaign/one-shot and can be woven into any storyline! (I wish more Mothership creators would do this kind of thing!) I've been using it in conjunction with the module Bloom, and it has been working SO well! I'm really excited! I am eager to see how the story unfolds and what baring the cryosickness and effects has on the mission!

Side note, I am in love with the fact that with traditional Mothership gameplay, it always begins with characters waking from cryosleep. It's like a birth/baptism! SYMBOLISM!!

[solobeegames]

Exclusion Zone Botanist by Exeunt Press

[solobeegames]

Bumbling: A Solo RPG

I have so many ttrpgs and journal rpgs in my library right now, I have been trying to find inspiring ways on how I could play more of them. So, I thought it would be fun if I played and reviewed all my bee-themed games from Itch! There are a surprisingly quite a few of them on there! You can see my collection here. The first on my list is Bumbling by Button Kin Games! It is a solo map-making, hexcrawl journal rpg where you play a little bee who just woke up and has to go gather pollen for the hive! It is super cute and cozy! It is great to play for a relaxing and creative afternoon. It is also part memory game as you have to memorize adorable little bee dances as you communicate to the others in the hive about the location of the flowers! I love how the game is very versatile. You can lean into the mapmaking aspect of it as a tabletop game or you can focus more on the journaling aspect and create a sweet little story of your bee! Or you can do both! You can kind of make it what you want, although I do believe the game would really come alive if you make it a story you are telling.

There is still room on my map for future playthroughs! I decided to lean more into the mapmaking part of it and get artsy with my designs! I'm just really into hex mapmaking at the moment, and I love being able to use all my color markers! So, of course, I had a lot fun with this one! Being obsessed with the color pink currently also inspired me to go all in with the pink-themed design of the game itself! My only criticism of the game is that I found the directions, although not complex, to be rather confusing and not intuitive at all in following the game play. I had to keep flipping back and forth between the pages just to figure out how to make each of the different moves, e.g. questing, dancing, learning, finding flowers etc. Finding a way to streamline the directions to follow the flow of the game would go a long way in making this a smoother play through. Otherwise, though, you could play this game endlessly and just have a fun time exploring and making cute stories about your little bee!

I did find it super amusing (and frustrating) that my bee lived up to the solobee name in that no matter how many times I rolled the dice I couldn't get that many bees to watch me dance or to have any animals assist me in finding flowers! 😟 But thankfully my game ended happily as I eventually got the hive's attention and found a big stash of pollen from the flowers! 😄

I also wanted to highlight a new purchase! This gorgeous dice tower! Of course, with the hex, bee hive pattern and shape I just HAD to have it! 😍 Isn't it so pretty? I found it on Etsy from Adventuring Oddities, so definitely check out her shop if you want some unique dice towers and holders! You can also get custom colors too! The shop owner was really nice and helpful in making the dice tower I wanted. 🐝

[solobeegames]

So, I’m kind of obsessed with Mothership, and I am trying to figure out ways where I can play it solo despite there being nearly no solo rules for it. Mainly because I recently purchased another beautiful game by Lone Archivist (Tidebreak) called What We Give to Alien Gods, (also a Mothership module) and didn’t realize until after I bought it that it wasn’t for solo play. *shakes fists at sky* I still adore the game so much, though. It has this alien temple in space to explore, interdimensional aliens, existential dread, and the best part is they created this whole alien language that is based on expressing ideas through glyphs and metaphysical concepts! It also has a mathematical component. You have to learn and decode this language as you are playing, and can even create your own glyphs! There are just so many juicy layers to the game! Think of the movies Interstellar, Arrival, and 2001 Space Odyssey rolled into one ttrpg! 😍

So, my goal is to somehow translate/hack this game for solo mode, but I am going to need to hone my solo gaming skills in order to do so, thus I am teaching myself how to solo “freestyle” with various modules of Mothership.

Thankfully I ran across the YouTuber, Man Alone, who is a very experienced solo gamer. He has a whole channel full of actual plays, insights, tricks, and tips! He has been immensely helpful in giving me a better understanding of ttrpgs and how they work, as well as how I could go about turning any ttrpg into solo play.

So, I chose the Mothership module, A Pound of Flesh, as it is centered on a massive space station with various moving sociopolitical elements. They have three over-arching stories/missions that will give me a foundation on which to build my own story. I’m imagining it as a cross between The Expanse series and Firefly. I already have completed one session of game play and it is actually going pretty well! So, we will see how this progresses! 🎲

[solobeegames]

I’ve been experimenting and playing with hex crawls and point crawls quite a bit of late! Designing my own maps! 😊 I really love exploration games the most, and I still have not found any ttrpg that matches TIDEBREAK: IN OTHER WATERS for me in that regard. (I’ve looked everywhere!!) However, I’ve decided to give the weirdhope crawl, ECO MOFOS, a try! I didn’t know if I would like it at first because it is more of a punk, post apocalyptic setting - but it is pretty fun! At least it satiates my current mood for hex crawl gaming.

Ultimately, I want to learn how the mechanics work as I want to design my own ocean crawl game based on TIDEBREAK, exploring more of Gliese and its ocean life! (Which I found out is based on an actual real exoplanet!😮)

There are currently community copies available for ECO MOFOS!

[solobeegames]

Welcome to my gaming journal. . .

I've made this Tumblr primarily for myself, to play out my role-playing game journal entries and to explore. I was recently introduced to the whole world of solo journal rpgs and I became ADDICTED - FAST. From there, I have developed an insatiable love of table-top rpgs! I just love the whole premise of spending hours in one's imagination, exploring worlds, ideas, feelings, and new ways of self-expression. Solo gaming just opens whole new vistas for my creativity as both an artist and a writer. I do not know where it is going to lead, but I would love to be able to create my own solo journal rpg/ttrpgs in the future. For now, I play. I create. I write.

You can follow me on my itchio page: SoloBee

🐝 Games I'm Currently Playing:

- 32% - GLIDE - Last Tea Shop - Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop - Garden of Memories - Tinyoji - Thousand Empty Light (MOTHERSHIP) - Substratum Protocol - MOTHERSHIP: - The Sleeper Crew - Bloom - A Pound of Flesh - Dead Planet - Dying Hard on Hardlight Station - Polyhedral Garden - In Other Waters: Tidebreak (MOTHERSHIP) - Space Jellyfish Overhead - Echoes in My Hull

[solobeegames]

Interlude I

It has been two months since the Sailshell Attack, and my fungal garden that is keeping me alive hums strangely to me. It is thriving, though. It was hard going there for awhile, but I now have a sustainable food source and the Salerno has become a kind of makeshift home. I have even been adopted by a Gliese family.

I decide to watch the evening's sunset from the surface while Shelly and Scully are out feeding and Pauli is resting. I've gotten used to the ocean environment and wearing my dive suit like a second skin, but I do long to be able to see the open sky and silvery Sun every once in awhile. Gliese has glorious sunsets, and today was no exception as it cast brilliant shades of soft pinks and purples into the sky and shimmering blues and greens within the lapis lazuli waters. Once it becomes dark, however, the stars begin to appear like brilliant snare veil lights all around me. It is so beautiful.

Suddenly, a flash of light makes itself known in the corner of my eye! It is towards the southern edge of the horizon. My first thought is that it is a flash of a ship's drive tail, but then I realize that would be improbable and was more likely just a falling meteor.

For the first time since being exiled here I think about back home and my colleagues that I left behind. I will, most likely, never see Earth or them again. I do not know how this makes me feel. I feel so disconnected from everything human and recognizable. Gliese is unlike any other planet in this galaxy, and I am drawn to it even as I fear it. Could this alien ocean become my home? Something strange, beguiling, and beautiful whispers in my heart that perhaps yes, it can. | In Other Waters: Tidebreak by Lone Archivist.

[solobeegames]

So, these passed several weeks I have found myself completely lost in the world of GLIDE. It seems that for many solo players there is always that one go-to favorite solo ttrpg, and I believe I have found mine! This is a sci-fantasy, Dune-inspired hexcrawl exploration game that is pretty much perfect. There are a couple of aspects to it, but the main crux of the game is centered around Guilds and accomplishing quests to ascend ranks and skills. The purpose of these Guilds is the preservation and restoration of the planet Eridoor, which like Arakkis, is an all desert planet that is filled with secrets (and possibly giant worms!). This is a very relaxing and creative game that is entirely focused on exploration and discovery. There is definitely a resources mechanic, but there are no penalties for running out of water or stamina. Along with gaining specialized equipment, you can also make Camping actions which help with restoring resources. This way you can go as far and as long as you want, and I have been having so much fun with it! I love making my hex map decorative and creative, and I have near 400 hexes of my Eridoor map explored so far! 😵 It has gotten so large and expansive, I had to get a much bigger notebook and create an index for all my locations! (I've gotten lost so many times!) I have five Glide characters created for the game also, and I like to overlap them through my gameplay. Funny Side Note There is an element of the game that your character can hire a Companion to go with them on their quests, and my one character - Paul Dirac - ended up hiring the ex-mercenary Duncan! These characters are randomly generated, so I thought it was amusing that Paul found Duncan! 😄 Glide also has Expansions and Modules, of which I could do an entirely separate post on, especially the solo modules. Glide isn't necessarily solo-specific, although it is heavily geared that way, but the solo modules, The Relic Hunter, The Bounty Hunter, and The Ecologist are SO GOOD. The mechanics and tables are superb and provide for exciting exploration gameplay! They are actually built on EcoMofo's Hardcore Ecologist solo game, which I have also played, but I feel like Sasquatch Games improved on it in so many ways giving it more depth and dynamics. I was playing through EcoMofos actually before I started Glide, and both games are a similar vibe, but for me Glide is the superior game. EcoMofos is definitely more of a group game, the solo mode grafted in, so this is probably why, but it plays out more vaguely solo. I was having a difficult time really getting into it. Sasquatch Games is actually doing a major expansion and update of Glide, completely restructuring its gaming mechanic and adding a TON of new worldbuilding content! Like - so much! I'm so stoked! I can't wait for the release! So, I would highly recommend checking back for that because this game is one of the best on Itch right now! I'm actually working on a Glide supplement game right now myself! My first ever rpg! 😊😁 It is nothing too fancy, but I am really excited to share it soon!

Coming soon!