You can spend those points freely on any of the 26 skills. You are not restricted to just the base career skills at that point.
OneTorch
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Each skill has a starting bonus equal to the associated attribute (pg 6, pg 9), which should be between +0 and +2. So if your Agility and Education are +1, and you rolled an Agent, you would increase each of the Agent skills by +1: Sleight of Hand, Observation, Acrobatics, Stealth, Manipulate, Survival.
This means your Stealth starts at +1, and because of your Agent training, increases to +2.
> 3 terms
3 terms gives you +3 skill points to spend to increase your skills. You could spend 1 point to get Stealth to +3, but you cannot spend 2 points to get it to +4. You can spend those 3 points however you want.
> Are these the only skills you get?
You will have access to all skills all the time. This is a skill based game, so you will want to write down your total skill level for each skill. You don't sum together ATR+Skill for each roll, as it is just 2d6+Skill (pg 21).
Because it's Foolish. Ha. Anyway
- The Fool is a great card to utilize as a Reshuffle Indicator, like the Joker in SWADE since it is valueless
- While it can mean New Beginnings or listless direction, I feel that for what generators I was designing, it wasn't entirely fitting. I tried to match what I could to fantasy/fairytale themes or concepts when using the Major Arcana, and "nursery" for a dungeon just felt disparate.
- Depending on the game you are playing, The Fool is either a card or great fortune, or great misfortune. I didn't want to cause issues with game tone, so it was easier to ignore
Thank you for pointing this out! It turns out I had saved my picture under the wrong attribution. The cover is actually John Batten, from Europa's Fairy Book. The one I used as the background for this web page is Warwick Goble. Still public domain at least.
https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/wounded-dragon/
Just One Sword is a complete, solo-first, standalone game that does not require anything else to play. It has all the rules, procedures, tools, Bestiary, oracles, etc. necessary to make the game run. It is not a supplement or toolkit.
Just One Torch is a toolkit for taking an existing OSR RPG (Shadowdark, OSE, BFRPG, Whitebox FMAG, etc.) and converting it into a solo game. It is primarily oracles, a few procedure changes, and some recommended adjustments to make your game of choice more survivable. It is not a full game and will require a game of your choice to run.
Thanks! My entire goal was actually to make a Solo Rules expansion so I am really glad to know I succeeded!
Rumors are primarily going to be tied to the type of adventures you are trying to have, so I didn't write up a whole table for them, but there are workarounds:
- The faction rumors will be related to their current activities. So if you have an Orc clan trying to roll a river valley into their territory (expand goal), you will start to hear rumors of troop movements, or scouts, raids on the local inhabitants, etc. That one you'll just have to use your imagination along with the main oracles
- The other rumors are likely going to be how you hear about quests! So you can use the Quest Design, or the Adventure Quest design. Alternatively, it could be a Settlement Event and you'll hear people gossiping about it.
The document is fully bookmarked with relevant page references linked. I will see if I can squeeze in a simple Table of Contents, but I may not be able to without breaking the page layout and document size (right now it prints to booklet pretty easily).
Really glad you're enjoying it though! I am always open to hear more suggestions as well
Yes, you read the dice separately. So with 1 unmarked progress, your target number is 2+, meaning each die must read 2 or higher to count as a success. So yes, a 1 and a 4 is a partial with a 3 and a 5 being full. Double 1s is just bad luck.
Yes, any attribute+skill combo you can reasonably argue as relevant (players choice) can be used to make a check. So if you have Swim, and need to argue your ability, you could use your knowledge of how to swim (i.e. the Swim skill) to argue it. Skills are not tied to any specific attribute.
Sure! Glad you're enjoying the game!
Let's take an 8 room dungeon. So when we get to half size (4 waypoints explored), we start rolling a d8 on room 5. If we roll an 8 while exploring waypoints 5, 6, 7, or 8, we will find our goal and can leave the dungeon.
However, let's say we don't find it. So we look at all our unexplored waypoints (places where there were exits we did not take) to search last. At this point, the dungeon can no longer expand. All those waypoints have to either connect to each other, or exist as a dead-end. Let's say we have 3 unexplored waypoints.
- So we move to the first one and roll d8+1 (one room above size) looking for an 8 or 9 (7+1 or 8+1). We don't roll that so we move on.
- In the second one we roll d8+2 (2 rooms above size) looking for an 8 or 9 or 10 (6+2, 7+2, 8+2). We don't roll any of those again so we move on
- The third room doesn't require a roll because it is the last possible waypoint. The dungeon has been fully explored, and so this room must contain our goal. There is nowhere else to explore
This might mean your dungeon goal was right beside the entrance (it has happened to me), but that's a fun "I should've taken the right at Albuquerque" situation that does exist in real dungeon crawls.
This was a 'rulings over rules' situation in the game so I didn't want to make a specific list as it could get quite long, and I run the risk of forgetting things. "Does it make sense my character can do X while maintaining focus?" If yes, then you can. If not, then MIND save.
I would rule walking doesn't break focus as humans are quite literally built to walk. However, walking over terrain that would require your attention (rubble, steep hill, etc) would require a MIND save.
Unlocked Door? No. Stuck/Locked Door? Yes
Mostly just maintain internal consistency. Don't rule it one way one time, then another way another time.
If you die from pushing yourself well beyond your Fatigue limits, there was likely a reason you pushed yourself so hard. The tension and buildup as you slowly wear yourself down hoping to survive just a little longer (like Pheidippides dying after getting the message of victory to Athens) can be a very dramatic, and satisfying end, or a result of spiraling bad decisions. Either way, it can feel earned.
Death in Combat can instead feel like rotten luck, and so I wanted to have the mechanics reflect that. At Level 1, it is possible to roll up an Encounter of 5 Levels, which could be a Dragon Warrior and 2 Footsoldiers (3+1+1). All 3 hitting and rolling average for dmg rolls would be 6 damage, which could kill a level 1 PC before they even got an action. Therefore, combat inflicts permanent wounds instead of death.
All this is to say: Kill (or retire) your PC when it feels right. You would have to drop to 0 several times, rolling poorly each time, before you had to worry about dropping an attribute down to 0, and by that point you may decide your character is just too scarred to keep going. Pass the torch to a new PC who became embroiled in your budding conflict and keep the story going.
I figured this one out. The document won't print as-is for 2 reasons:
- A number of pages are not flattened, meaning there is slight bleed from the cover page
- The bonus dressing tables were originally printed as Landscape and flipped, causing them to still be tagged as Landscape rather than portrait.
To print it on Lulu, you have to print the PDF to another PDF with the option to remove bleed selected and to convert the landscape to portrait.
Thanks! Glad you like it.
There is a quick summary on Page 2, details on recovering Fatigue on page 14, and 41 has details on Camping.
In short: a night of uninterrupted rest recovers 1 Fatigue. In the wilds you need a bedroll, in town you need an inn (or friendly home). If you successfully Camp, you can recover at least 1 FP per watch without a bedroll.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
There are two encounter types in the Encounter Design (pg45): Placed, and Wandering. Placed are much tougher encounters and tend to be fixed to locations. Wandering can happen anywhere. If you review the Encounter Modifier table you'll see what I mean.
To make it work for 2-3 players:
- Remove the Incoming Damage modifier (pg 28) and have all damage coming in unmodified
- You only get 1 initiative roll, and not two (pg 27). Both players act on the same round
- CAROUSING (pg 35): Players can either roll individually, or pool their funds, but they have to share in the consequences.
- ENCOUNTER DESIGN (pg 45): Player Level (PL) becomes Average Player Level rounded to the nearest whole number. Base Strength is calculated by multiplying that by the Number of Players rather than just 2 (steps 1 and 2)
- TREASURE (page 53): Treasure Mod is based on the Average Player Level.
Other than that, I think everything else will translate pretty well. Most of the mechanics and procedures should allow it to handle GM-less play pretty well, or GM'd if one of you wants to take the reigns. Good luck!
Yes, each side is the collective. You and your allies are one side, your enemies are another side. You do not roll for each individual enemy.
Yes, a round of combat includes all player actions and enemy actions. Everybody gets to do their thing per round. Roll Initiative. Side A acts in full. Side B acts in full. Roll Initiative. etc. Obviously the player character gets to Act twice, so that may be AAB, ABA, BAA
You are making it too complicated. One side does 1-5, then the other side does 1-5.
The specificity of the attacks is to help you determine the attack order for the enemies, as well as to help guide your own character's actions. Avoiding archer fire while engaged in melee has a very different feel if the Melee acts first vs the Ranged, especially if you take into account the reaction penalties to avoid multiple attacks during combat.
Yes, that is your Attribute Score / Attribute Bonus so you can track them. There may be times when your Attribute Score or Bonus will be impacted (sometimes permanently) so you need to know both.
Melee and Ranged are your Melee and Ranged Combat Bonuses provided by your STR and DEX bonus (Combat Skills, Page 7).These are impacted by leveling up, as well as magical weapons.








