Hands-Free RPG
A downloadable game
Hands-Free RPG is a game you play entirely in your head. You can play while in the shower, mowing the lawn, or lying in bed. Not recommended while skydiving.
Currently in active development. Any feedback welcome!
System features:
- Play all in your head
- Genre-agnostic
- Word stroke die emulator
- 10%-90% probability setting
- And/But/Fault
- Inspirational word generator
- Random events
- Mnemonic lookup tables
- Procedural lookup tables
- Fast "codenames" to jump start your game
Download
Development log
- Hands-Free updated to v0.157 days ago
- Hands-Free updated to v0.1418 days ago
- Uploaded Markdown43 days ago
- Uploaded printer-friendly version54 days ago
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
This is absolutely brilliant! It actually scratches an itch I’d didn’t know I had. I think a big part of playing solo is getting so immersed in ideas and thoughts about the game, even when you’re not playing. For example, you played an inspiring session the night before and engine is still running, tank full of gas, inside your head. Can’t really break out the dice and go into solo mode at work right? Now I have rules to continue the game at anytime. Just switch from my tabletop solo engine to my brain solo engine (every solo player plays with multiple engines and rules anyway). This is going in the Essential Folder. Thanks!
From the tiny bit I've managed to parce from the PDF I think this is going to be awesome. I love seeing the story someone else has ctreated with this. I'm always looking for things like this to do when out and about especially because I am blind. That said, I wound like to pretty please request a Word Doc or Google Doc version of this? I think there are tables in here that would not translate to epub orp lain text files well. I ask because the PDF does not read well at all my with screen reader. I can't OCR it to pull the text either, it is fairly jumbled and unfortunately I have no one who would be able to read it or shorthand it all to me in a more accessible format. I love what you have planned here and want to be able to share it with others. Thanks for your consideration!
I saw your request over at /r/Solo_RolePlaying. Making the document screen-readable sounds like a great idea for a system like this. A Doc version is a bit hard to do because it's all in Homebrewery Markup, but the markup is a text file and in itself might be interpretable by a screen reader. I'll upload it here.
hello there! I really enjoy your game, its very easy to play. I've been looking for a game that's solo, gmless, diceless, and unpredictable (to an extent), and it looks like I've found it! I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to play in their own solo game world that keeps growing, where things don't always go as you'd expect! (thanks goodness for Events!)
The rules are only 10 pages long and it says at the bottom that you don't have to learn all the rules at once, which is a good message for people like me.
The only thing I changed for my game is that I use Odd for nO and Even for yEs, cause that's easier to remember (for me, at least). I've only played one session (day) and I already love it!
In short, I love it, and if you want to see my adventure so far, you can reply and I'll write it here. Thank you for making this game, scriptorum!
I would LOVE to hear what you've done with it!
Sure! This is gonna be a VERY long comment btw, but if you wanna hear it here it is!
So I'm a Wizcoon, a wizard raccoon. The starting situation is that i'm in a forest, and I got a LITTLE TOO RECKLESS with my magic and accidentally turned a bobcat into a human. And now it's MAD, so I try to pet it!.... Buut I 'roll' over the %, so I call for reinforcements! I roll a 1, and not only get my own band of fellow raccoons, but the Bard lulled the bobcat-turned-human to sleep. Then we (the Lab rats who have human smarts = Brio the bard, Mason the medic, Wick the wizard, and there's also Berry Eir, the strong gal who's just a regular raccoon) vamoose!
We arrive at our home base in a trench coat, which is, according to the 'roll', a overgrown mansion that people party in on weekends! The people there do not know that we are 4 raccoons in a trench coat, and they call us the mailman. BUT, I thought to myself, 2 of our band members are girls (Berry and Brio)! Will Brio (the only girl capable of understanding English) leap out of the coat and blow our cover?? I 'roll' a 6, and she keeps quiet. But why, unless it's important to be SEEN as the mailman!
Small plot twist; we are not actually employed by the Postal Office! Instead, we steal the beer from the mailman who's delivering it to the mansion, and carry it the rest of the way, so we can make social connections under a ALIBI! BUT THEN... Someone bumps into us at the doorway. We turn around and it appears to be... THE OG MAILMAN!
"I'm here to deliver my message." He says, and a party goer responds "Who are you?" I try to intimidate him into silence using 'Tall' as my roll (because he looks shorter than me), and.... I 'roll' a dupe. Plot twist!.... since it only LOOKS like I'm taller, maybe he's in a disguise?? A MAGIC DISGUISE?! So he pulls me off to the side and says to me, "Now that we're alone, I'll show you my true form, ye Raccoons!" and then he turns into a towering humanoid made of sticks and stones! "I'm here to tell you to STOP BEING RECKLESS WITH MAGIC! jeez, you lot never learn, do ya?" but then we tell him that we didn't know any other magic creatures even EXISTED! And then he's like,"oh man, I must've delivered this message to the wrong raccoons. well, consider this a warning then." and leaps off into the woods.
We follow him because we needed to wear a mask to interact with people, and we might not have to do that with magic folk! Then I'm like, wait a minute i should probably 'roll' to see if we're being followed. And guess what?
One of the party members is looking for us, or at least our alibi! They only see a bunch of raccoons though, so they're like, "hmm I wonder where the trench coat guy is?" so i use my magic to speak and be like, 'Hey I'm Over Here!' but in English and also in the other direction. they follow it long enough for us to get the trench coat on, and then we go talk to them to be like, "hey, so I'm going to be gone for a while, there's gonna be this replacement Mailman that'll come here every weekend, so goodbye." and then we walk off and look for the messenger's trail.
We find it, and it leads to a cave! and then I'm like, I should probably 'roll' to see if this is a magic portal. And it is! So we go in, and we find a bunch of mushroom dogs! For some odd reason, they understand Raccoon, and since Berry speaks Raccoon the best (being a native and all) , she tells them that we mean no harm and only want a safe place to rest. And then they lead us....
Somewhere. I still haven't decided exactly where, but I figure that since that speak Raccoon but there's no raccoons nearby, they probably ran away from the raccoons that used to own them because they grew delicious fungus mushroom tails and the raccoons wanted to eat them!
So yeah, if you'd like to add to this part (cause i can't come up with anything rn), feel free!
That's awesome!
Zoltar is a great way to ask for more information without yes/no. Instead of asking "Is there a magic portal?" you could ask, "What do I discover?" In one shot, the resulting word could lead you to a magic portal or a dwarf in a tree or just an eerie silence.
good point! I guess I just had a LOT of ideas for where they would take us, but no ideas on what would happen afterward. I was thinking about it as a STORY, not a game, and that was my issue. I'll try it out! Thank you!