u/mustaphamondo

I've not read a ton of graphic novels, but recently I've been reminded of how great they can be. I tend to like long, epic, fantasy/scifi series: Nausicaa, Saga, Sandman, Bone, Coda, Locke & Key, Wicked & Divine, and Girl Genius to name some favorites. Not huge into the cape and cowl set and tend not to like things too grimdark - though I could be talked into something great.

I just finished my first game of Morkin (I died...) and was disappointed to find the combat was basically the same as Four Against Darkness - as in, roll the same dice over and over again until one side's HP are at zero. There's a bit of complexity with an action points system TBH but the best option really seems to be to just spam basic attack. It got real tedious real fast.

I've played Ironsworn and while I do like the narrative-forward/cinematic combat in that, it does leave me wanting more crunch.

On the other hand, I don't necessarily want to go all the way to tactical miniature skirmish fighting either.

Are there any solo games/systems that hit the sweet spot in the middle? Complexity, flavor, and interesting decisions in combat, without it turning every fight into a 2-hour bucket-o-plastic affair?

I've been having fun with Ironsworn lately but would like to try something with a bit more crunch, some predetermined (if randomly rolled) encounters, and of course hexcrawling. I watched The Dungeon Dive's guide to solo hexcrawling and Morkin, Forbidden Lands, and Riftbreakers were the three games/systems that stood out the most to me. But how do I narrow it down from here? I'll be going the PNP route if that makes a difference.

I've been trucking along merrily with my first ever solo play of Ironsworn and have - so far - been really on board with how the mechanics and narrative intermesh. But my character has just arrived at the sinister ruins in the deep forest and...I'm just not totally sure how to run things. Like, I think I'd like to do a bit more granular crawling (first check out the ruined cathedral, then the vine-choked well, then the crumbling tower, etc.) but I don't see the rules being too supportive of this sort of thing. Any advice?

Maybe this is old news to everyone; I haven't been solo rping long. But I recently got into Ironsworn and discovered what an amazing tool the basic voice-to-text function on my phone is.

Before, my experience had mostly been with journaling games (1000 Year Old Vampire, Koriko, etc.). The writing was great! For Vampire, I practically wrote a novella, in long hand. But of course, it's super time consuming. Most entries would take a few hours to write. And I wanted my prose to sound good, and make sense, so there was a lot of striking out and writing edits in tiny script between the lines.

All good fun for something more pensive and novelistic, but not exactly great for fantasy action. I looked into alternatives but wasn't thrilled with what I found. The bare-bones mechanical record strikes me as so flavorless - I still want narrative heft - but anything that captures that narrative slows the whole action enterprise down.

Anyways, not to belabor the point: voice to text. Brilliant! I can speak into the mic in real time as I'm playing. It transcribes what's going on, narratively and mechanically. And there's a text log, so unlike, say, with an audio or video recording, it's easy enough to scroll back if I'm trying to remember what happened two sessions ago.

I also like how I can do it on my phone without actually needing to be absorbed into the screen. I press the button to start and can roll dice, consult my (printed) oracles, and stare up at the ceiling and imagine out loud.

It's not perfect. Though I've been amazed by how good the transcription is 95% of the time, it does get things wrong. One particular struggle is names - the further away from standard English, the less likely it is to get them. So my character Katje normally shows up at Cartier, and her companion Rolf is usually RF. It's not a clean script, is my point. Anyone looking for perfect, polished prose should look elsewhere.

But on the whole I think it's been a great find. The other day I took my kids to an indoor playground and spent three hours in the coffee shop, rolling dice, fighting bears, and investigating the great evil that befell Pineridge, all narrated into my phone. It's not exactly that text-to-voice made it possible. But it sure as heck made it better.

Basically I'm looking for some interesting restaurants to try when I'm in town. I live in Suzhou, which is fine, but you can count the decent foreign restaurants on, like, three hands.

For instance, I know there's one or two Nepali restaurants, an Israeli place, etc. What else is there like that? No need to list the 37 best Italian restaurants, thanks. We got Italian in Suzhou.

And while we're at it, if you know any rare, super-regional Chinese cuisine I can get in Shanghai, I'd love to hear about that too.

I know how adored Spirit Island is in this community - this isn't about that. I've had it for a while, played it a fee times, enjoyed it but not really Loved it. Still, it's one I'm looking forward to getting back to, now that the initial sologaming honeymoon phase has worn off and I'm not buying new stuff faster than I can really appreciate it.

That said, I've noticed a bunch of expansions in my local market, and I was wondering how much I should prioritize picking one (or more) up, given the publisher is defunct (?).

I'm not usually someone who gives in to FOMO, but I think there's a difference between an all-in KS pledge for an untested game and this.

Does anyone have recommendations for websites I can order foreign-language books and have them shipped to China without an ID card? The ones I knew that worked for this have long since closed.