The other day, I had the pleasure of running a solo tabletop session with PITH, a free set of TTRPG rules by Free Thrall Games over on itch.io.
PITH's a fun, streamlined 2d6 system where characters have to roll over a target number chosen by the referee. Characters are differentiated by player-defined qualities, consisting of their personality traits, motivations, and background. These qualities can get called upon to add bonuses to rolls, in addition to extra bonuses conferred if they use an item to help themselves complete an action.
I picked PITH as my system of choice partially because I was somewhat tired of playing d20 systems, as I have with D&D 5e, Lancer, and FORGE, but also because of its simplicity: the entire ruleset fits on two pages. As this was my first time playing a TTRPG solo, without a GM or any other players, I thought that having as little friction between myself and the rules to be important.
PITH is largely setting agnostic. The rules for resolving challenges and the rules for defining your character are extremely freeform, though there is a short section with optional magic rules tucked in the section for referee advice. I chose to run a medieval fantasy session, but I could easily see the system be used for sci-fi, horror, or even just plain modern settings.
In addition to PITH's rules, I should also say that I leveraged some extra tools to make running the game a bit more smooth. There's a lot of solid oracle tables for answering questions during play in place of a DM, but I settled on CRGE (that's the Conjectural Roleplaying GM Emulator, for those keeping track at home) for my purposes. I'll probably talk about CRGE more thoroughly another day, but for now just now that it helped with setting scenes up and hashing out finer details without having to come up with everything on the fly myself.
Playing the game was fun, even if it took a little bit of getting used to at first! I found that it helped to think of the game as a creative writing prompt with gamified elements to help guide the process rather than a standalone game outright. Eventually, I settled into a flow where I prompted the CRGE tables with some leading questions, filled in the blanks as necessary, and roleplayed my characters as I saw fit under PITH's ruleset.
The session proper was fairly simple. I had two characters, a nobleborn spellcaster and a fighter sworn to defend him since birth. They were traveling in search of an ancient artifact after a vision from the gods, only to be ambushed by a pack of bandits! Terrifying situation, but luckily our erstwhile heroes were able to fend them off thanks to a quick sleep spell and a few strikes of the sword, with the bandits fleeing shortly after their leader fell. Fast forward through a few scenes of self-roleplay and some ominous foreshadowing courtesy of CRGE involving a dead deer carcass, and that's where I left off the session.
PITH has been very fun so far, with none of the rules getting in the way of play. I suspect I'll be picking up on where I left off soon enough, and I'll be sure to keep you guys posted when I play again, hopefully with some more substantial commentary next time.
