Solo Playing 5e with Zero Prep Methodology

In this post I want to share all of my thoughts and advice in regards to solo playing D&D and similar TTRPGs. I've solo played both 1e AD&D and Chainmail + OD&D this way, and I’m confident 5e can be solo played with the same approach. In fact, I believe there is a very high amount of overlap between Zero Prep methodology used to run D&D, and being able to effectively solo play D&D.

As a result, this post will touch on a variety of related topics, while I provide the rationale for my approach, so that similar results can be recreated by the dedicated reader.

A rough list of what I'll cover in this post:

• Solo play, gamification, and TTRPGs

• Oracles for solo play

• Zero Prep methodology

• Random tables

• Random encounters

• Solo play procedure

• Campaign rules

In a separate, related post I will be providing:

• 5e solo play report & retrospective

Solo Play, Gamification, and TTRPGs

The concept of solo play has been growing recently, especially around the OSR, but it is all rather disjointed, a melting pot of several different approaches which do not mix well, and ultimately suffers from the same issues which drove the whole recent OSR resurgence in the first place (and which the OSR too fails to address, but that's a separate topic). But as all these ideas are floating around TTRPGs and solo play, I must address them in order to define a starting point.

Firstly, the idea of solo playing TTRPGs is not absurd at all. It's quite possible, it's just simply unusual and not well understood these days. Solo playing D&D is not much different than solo playing both sides of a game of Magic The Gathering. You know the rules of the game, and how you would play each of the decks independently, but now you must artificially limit your knowledge when playing either side, so that neither side has an unfair advantage over the other.

Solo play can be executed in a variety of ways. Once a process such as journaling has been gamified, it can be solo played. Solo play journaling games have seen some popularity when solo playing TTRPGs is discussed, but these are by no means the same thing at all. If the rules of a TTRPG are not being used, but rather an alternative system such as gamified journaling, then that is no longer solo playing the TTRPG, but it is solo playing a journaling game. Whether these other games share a fantasy D&D setting is not important here, as it is the rules which define how a game plays, and wholesale replacement of those rules changes the whole game.

From these assertions we must conclude then that to solo play a TTRPG, we must play an actual TTRPG. TTRPGs which include a plethora of random tables, such as D&D, are especially ideal for zero prep solo play. TTRPGs without random tables, especially without a variety of random encounter tables, will require more work to solo play. 

In order to play a TTRPG, we must know its rules. The conventional advice for people who get this far is to solo play a “rules light” TTRPG. This is very poor advice, especially for solo play. Rules light TTRPGs simply shift the burden which those missing rules would have carried on their own, onto the prospective DM. You are left with more work to do, and less actual game to play.

TTRPGs have been solo played since their inception. Official rules to aid solo playing D&D, titled “Solo Dungeon Adventures”, were included in the very first Strategic Review, before iconic classes like the Thief and Ranger even existed. While more recent games may not acknowledge solo play or account for it in their rules, both possibility and precedent for it remains. In fact, a modernized version of that very same dungeon generator from Strategic Review is included in the 5e DMG, as Appendix A, and I’ll be showing you how to utilize it!

Expect to play a party of characters, perhaps picking one of them to be your “main” at any given time. This is admittedly more difficult in newer editions of D&D, where every character will have an assortment of unique abilities. If you want something simpler I recommend the OD&D clone “Delving Deeper”. Otherwise you'll simply have to bite the bullet and play multiple 5e characters and juggle the dozens of abilities they'll collectively have, or play one 5e character and use NPC stat blocks to fill out the rest of your party. Not using optional rules such as Feats will also help reduce the complexity here. More options to reduce complexity will be discussed in a later section (Campaign Rules).

If your preference is to play a single higher level character, rather than a whole party, I would still recommend you to play that character with a cadre of hired henchmen in tow, but there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a shot.

For the remainder of this article when I use the term “solo play”, you may assume I am referring to solo playing TTRPGs specifically, and not to any of the other sorts of solo play described above.

Oracles for Solo Play 

A common recommendation in solo play TTRPG discussions is about which “Oracle” to use. The explanation is that the Oracle is needed to fill the role left by not having a DM. For the uninitiated, oracles generally are used to answer “yes/no” questions, and for facilitating swings between times of order and chaos; which roughly emulates narrative story structure. In other words, there is a valid purpose which an Oracle serves.

However oracles tend to be generic, and they are unnecessary for Zero Prep Solo Play. D&D contains many mechanics and tables which will offer superior answers to an Oracle’s generic Yes or No. Furthermore, an Oracle's narrative capabilities are a bad fit for Zero Prep Solo Play, which is a sandbox in nature, not an orchestrated story.

In short, there is nothing an Oracle has to offer that you couldn't do by picking a probability of likelihood and rolling a d6 to determine whether it is true or not. That's it. That's your Oracle. And if you can’t figure out what to do next after using it (you’ll know what I mean when it happens), you’re straying too far from the rules of the game and need to get yourself back on track.

Zero Prep Methodology 

The stumbling block of figuring out how solo play usually starts with figuring out how to delegate the DM’s all-important duty of designing some overarching adventure or mystery. The solution is fortunately quite simple: a Zero Prep game is a sandbox experience, not a narrative one. There's no need for a narrative arc to be planned in advance. A Zero Prep DM is able to run game sessions without preparing anything at all. The Zero Prep DM does not need to know what is coming up; but they are able to keep players entertained for 4+ hours at a time anyway.

Zero Prep methodology is thus the ideal way to solo play. As a player you don't know what's coming up next. You don't know what's behind the next door or down the stairs. You don't know what's motivating the mayor or the goblins. You're as likely to encounter a friendly troll who needs your help, as to be betrayed by the porters you left to guard your treasure. This is the stuff adventure campaigns are made from, and at the end you'll have your own cohesive story to tell, despite how impossible all of that may seem right now.

The overlap between zero prep DMing and solo play are so great, that simply by solo playing this way, you will find yourself improving as a DM; or if you are not yet a DM, you may find you very much have the capacity to be one!

Learning the Zero Prep methodology is straightforward. It will require time investment on your part; not in preparing content for sessions, but in reading and becoming proficient in navigating the rulebooks. Instead of preparing content for just one session, this time investment will gain you the ability to generate an endless stream of content, for innumerable sessions.

The requirements of the Zero Prep Methodology:

• RTFM - you must read the rulebooks in order to know what they actually contain

• Book Control - you do not need to memorize rulebooks in their entirety, but you must be able to navigate them with familiarity, to find the rule or table you need, when you need it

• Use the rules, not rule 0 - the rules of the game are robust, use encumbrance rules, track torches, ammo, and time; do not ever fudge dice or ignore rules

• Random Table Proficiency - you must know how to harness the immense powers contained within random tables

• Faith in your Mind - the human mind is amazingly capable of quickly detecting patterns and creating explanations for even the most absurd of circumstances; you will unlock this superpower easily if you just give it a chance

• Faith in the Process - it may seem implausible that a cohesive play session can come about from “just some random tables and dice”, but not only does it work, it works very well

• Do Not Prepare Content For Sessions - solo or otherwise, do not prep!

Required Reading for 5e D&D

For 5e D&D, you must first read the Player’s Handbook from cover to cover, skipping only the second half of Chapter 6 (if you take my suggestion and opt to not use feats), Chapter 11 (spell descriptions), and merely skimming the Appendices.

Next, you must read the entirety of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, ignoring all of its narrative advice (of which there is much), and skipping the list of Magic Item Descriptions in Chapter 7. You will not be constructing a campaign narrative, nor will you be using Challenge Rating to construct combat encounters (you will not be constructing combat encounters at all); however throughout the entire book you will find random tables for all sorts of things: catastrophes, NPCs, adventure hooks, dungeon purposes and themes, and so on. These random tables are your most important tools as a Zero Prep DM, second only to the rules of the game themselves.

Unlike the 1e DMG, the 5e DMG lacks several important tables for solo play, the most important of which can be found on Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, page 92, the Random Encounter tables.

Next is the lack of Wilderness Encounter distances, which can be found on the Screen in the 5e Wilderness Kit. This is frankly ridiculous. Use between 2d6 (in dense jungle) and 4d10 (in mountains) depending on visibility conditions, x10 feet, to determine how far away random encounters occur.

Optionally, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything Chapter 2 (Patrons) contains random tables for a number of classic agencies including Military orders, Guilds, and Academies.

Take solace in that while the 5e DMG offers almost nothing in the way of good advice for the Zero Prep DM, it offers a spread of random tables which in many ways exceed even the 1e DMG; and these tables are of exceptional value to the Zero Prep DM.

Required Reading for 1e D&D

For 1e D&D, you must read the Player’s Handbook from cover to cover, skipping only the spell descriptions. Then read the Dungeon Master’s Guide from cover to cover, skipping spell descriptions, magic item descriptions, and monster lists, and following along in the Player’s Handbook as you do (their order correlates highly between the two books). Unlike the advice in the 5e DMG which can largely be ignored, the advice throughout the 1e DMG is pure gold, and should be thoroughly read.

Required Reading for OD&D

For Chainmail + OD&D, you must skim Chainmail, then read Book I, and then Book III, looking to Chainmail for answers throughout the process. OD&D was a supplement for Chainmail, and so can only be correctly understood within that context. You will quickly find that all OD&D clones, including Delving Deeper, take some liberties and make changes to the original formula. My preference is for playing Chainmail + OD&D (just the first 3LBB), and using them with the SOLO DUNGEON ADVENTURES tables included in the first Strategic Review. If you must play a clone, Delving Deeper is currently my recommendation. If you are reading this in the future, be on the lookout for Wight-box by The Basic Expert (not to be confused with White Box by Seattle Hill Games), which is rapidly shaping up to be an even better clone than Delving Deeper.

Required Reading for All Editions

Read Appendix N. Yes, of course, you’ve probably read some Tolkien and Lovecraft. 2 of the 28 authors listed in Appendix N. There is fourteen times as much fantasy that exists in this list alone that you have no concept of. The “fantasy” you understand is narrow in scope. Discover fantasy all over again in Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, and again in Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars, Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon, Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer.

Every step of this will grow your appreciation for bits of D&D that you might not have recognized or understood before. It will also demonstrate, repeatedly, that what you worry about being “too absurd” in the results you get from random tables, are actually not as far fetched as they seem.

Recommended Reading for All Editions

• 1e DMG - especially if you’re playing 5e. The 5e DMG is an advice-void, and Gygax’s advice in the 1e DMG is transferable to any edition of D&D, not just 1e, and is even helpful for other TTRPGs all together.

• The Monsters Know What They’re Doing - adds depth to your combats and world as a whole, as this book teaches you monsters behavior patterns based on their stat blocks, and then goes into detail about specific 5e monsters

Random Tables

Random tables are a central component of zero prep and solo play, filled with the themes and tropes you would expect from pulp fantasy stories. By using these tables, you distribute these themes throughout the campaign world, which is an amazing thing to think about. Without having to prepare a map, invent tribes, nations, histories, etc, in advance, they all exist in the campaign world somewhere anyway, you may just not know where they are yet!

Most random tables are presented with an intended purpose, for example Random Encounter tables are sorted by a variety of environments, intended to be used for deciding what the party encounters during their adventures in those environments. Know where your random tables are! These are answers the designers have prepared and given to you, but you need to know they exist, and be able to find them, for them to be of any value to you.

Random tables are full of answers. And if you know them well, you can use them on the fly to answer questions they weren't intended for, to great effect!

For example, you may use the random encounter table to discover who lived in an area long ago. You may roll on that table again to learn what displaced them or caused their demise. If you encounter an injured NPC, you could use that same table to determine who or what injured them. Need a rumor of something causing trouble locally? The random encounter tables have you covered.

How about the treasure hoard and magic item tables, what else could they be used for? Well, besides using them to determine actual loot, use them for rumors or legends of loot! When I'm rolling up a new random dungeon, I like to roll up a magic item that's rumored to be deep down in there somewhere. When the right circumstances show up in the dungeon to match the rumor, then that's where the magic item turns up. Or what if that doesn't happen? Maybe the rumors were simply wrong, or it was true at some point but things have changed since then.

The encounter tables and treasure tables are excellent for quickly creating interesting rumors to pick from. The 5e DMG in particular has much more specialized tables for this in Chapter 3, starting with tables for Dungeon Goals, Wilderness Goals, and Other Goals, which are goals NPCs may ask the party to pursue on their behalf. The following tables of Villains, Allies, and Patrons establish even more details about those potential adventures. Remember that you'll roll these up right at the table. Cycle through these rumors, even while they're incomplete, as the players are “listening to rumors”, and only when they find one to be interesting, finish fleshing it out with all the other rolls for things the players may need to know at that point in time.

Some tables, like the Adventure Introductions and Ideal Adventure Climaxes, are intended to be used for forcing narrative onto the campaign. Obviously, don't do that! But these tables may still be useful for rolling up prophecies or legends on the fly. Next up is Event Based Villain Actions, which may be useful to determine what any would-be trouble makers are intending to get up to, or perhaps what they're in the middle of doing. Framing Events is full of tropes for events which plots or quests can be centered around.

When you find each table in the DMG, consider what kinds of questions you could use it to answer. Even if you're a very creative person already, you are still prone to biases, and all humans are actually pretty bad at faking randomness. Make random tables your first line of defense, saving your creative juices for when they're required, and you'll be running sessions for hours without having any content prepared from the start.

In effect, these random tables are your specialized oracles, answering your questions with specific, thematic, and varied responses.

It is important to respect tables and their results. Have a specific question in mind before you roll on a table, and when you get a result, do your best to use that result to answer your question. Take this opportunity to connect the result with other context you already have in the world. For example, if the players have found a shrine and you need to determine what was worshiped there, you might roll on an encounter table and get “bats” as a result. You may choose to connect this with a vampire faction that's in the campaign, and further respect the result by noting that bats in particular are prominent in this shrine, or that it serves some special purpose for bats, etc. If it makes more sense in your campaign, perhaps instead this is where vampires were brought and sacrificed, killing them permanently.

Random tables are some of the best preparation you can do for a campaign. Encounter tables for a specific region, city, otherworld, etc, are possibly the most useful of all.

Random Encounters

Random encounters will bring your campaign world to life. Encounters are not always hostile. In fact, at least half of them are inclined to be neutral or friendly in disposition. When any creatures are randomly encountered, use 2d6 to determine disposition: 6 to 8 being uncertain, higher being more amicable, and lower tending towards hostility; 12 and 2 indicating friendliness and immediate hostile action respectively. These dispositions need not match the creatures’ typical behaviors. For example, “amicable” orcs may be tired, wounded, or even distracted, willing to let the party pass without trouble, or they may even be in trouble and desiring the party's aid, willing to bargain. An amicable evil dragon may still consider the party to be his dinner, but is open to playing a game of riddles with his pets in the meantime.

Random encounters need not be interpreted in an outrageous way. For example, shortly upon leaving town, the level 1 party may encounter a hostile dragon. You may take this as an angry dragon spotted in the distance and headed towards the town, there is no reason the dragon would be pissed off at this party in particular. Now, instead of being a TPK, this encounter is an interesting choice for the players: do they want to warn the city and perhaps even help with the defenses, or do they want to make themselves scarce, saving their own hides and leaving the town to its unfortunate fate.

In order to use random encounters, it is necessary for you to keep track of time as it passes. You need not alert the players to the passage of time, until it is something they would notice, such as a torch burning low.

In the wilderness, roll two to four checks per day, depending on how populated the area is.

In a dungeon, track time in intervals of 10 minutes, making random encounter checks based on how populated the dungeon is, and whether the occupants are on high alert or not. Intervals of 10, 20, or 30 minutes are common for this. In dungeons, also make random encounter checks if the party causes commotion, such as by smashing through a door, as these things tend to draw attention.

In 5e, encounters occur on a result of 18 to 20 on a d20, while older editions use a simple 1 in 6 chance. Older editions include encounter distances in their rulebooks, but 5e has only included them on their wilderness DM screen. Within the confines of a dungeon, encounters are better placed based on context.

How Many Creatures Encountered

Some encounter tables will include a quantity, like d3 Giant Rats, these usually presume a party size of 4 characters. If your party is double that size, then double the number encountered as well, as that many characters are likely to draw relatively more attention. Other tables don't include encounter quantities, so here I will share a simple technique which works in all editions of D&D, based on Hit Dice.

Hit Dice are the number of dice rolled when calculating a creature’s HP, not counting any modifiers after that, so 4d8+12 is a 4 Hit Dice creature.

Dungeon Level is what floor of a dungeon you're on, where deeper floors will be more dangerous. You may count days into the wilderness as dungeon level, if you want to treat the wilderness as a sort of dungeon (you should!)

Roll a d6, and multiply it by the dungeon level. That's how many Hit Dice of creatures appear in the encounter. So for dungeon level 2, a roll of 6 means 12 hit dice are encountered. If the encountered creature only has 1 hit dice, then 12 of those appear; but if it has 3 hit dice, then only 4 of them appear.

For a party of 1-4, use a d6 for this. Add another d6 for every 4 after that: 2d6 for 5-8, 3d6 for 9-12, and so on.

Remember to roll encounter distance, disposition, and whether either side has surprised the other.

Gamified Encounter Tables

Encounter tables are a great thing to create live at the table! When the players enter a dungeon, you probably have the seeds for an encounter table already, based on whatever clues led players to the dungeon in the first place. As they descend into the first floor of the dungeon, write the numbers 1 through 4 at the start of 4 lines, title the table “floor 1”, and fill out the first one or two lines with creatures you already know can be found there. Leave the rest of the lines blank, they can be surprises even to you! To use the table, roll a d6. If it's a result from 1 to 4, use the entry on your table. If that entry is blank, roll again on the generic encounter table, and add that to your table too, you'll likely be seeing them again. If the result is 5 or 6, just roll on the generic encounter table, but don't add it to your table, it's just a very unusual occurrence on that floor. In this way, your dungeon floors will have both innate consistency and variety. When the players move onto a different floor of the dungeon, or between regions on a single floor, start a new random table!

If you are creating these random tables live, it has become a part of your game as well. Listening for rumors in town or finding tracks in a dungeon might let you fill out more of the random encounter table (so you better know what to expect) without actually having to encounter it first.

Solo Play Procedure

Have an Overarching Incentive for Adventure

Earlier editions of D&D provided an obvious overarching incentive, by rewarding players with XP for recovering treasure to a safe place. This is a great system even for Good and Lawful parties, because treasure is incidentally gained in the process of successful adventuring. This is a great system for sandboxes (and Zero Prep!) because treasure (and adventure) can be found anywhere in the world. D&D also rewards XP for successful combat encounters, though this is usually secondary compared to the XP reward for treasure.

5e only offers a system for rewarding XP for combat, with other sources of XP dependent on DM fiat. I recommend codifying that fiat as a reward for obtaining treasure, based on the “GP for XP” incentive of earlier editions. Considering the amount of XP required per level, and the amount of treasure the DMG advises will be found at each tier of play, I suggest rewarding 4 XP for every 1 GP of treasure found in 5e. So if a party of 4 finds 100 GP and splits the treasure evenly, every character will receive 25 GP and 100 XP.

Roll Up Characters

Decide what kind of adventuring party you want to play. If you have all of the characters already, that’s great, but some characters may have died in a previous session, or maybe you want a different party composition, or to include a class you don’t have in your repertoire yet. Leave some characters in town, roll up some others to include, etc.

I recommend starting with a party of 4, picking one of them to be your “main” to focus on roleplaying for that session. In future sessions, you may choose to have a larger or smaller party. You may also be able to afford to go on an adventure with a single character, who has hired several mercenaries to help them.

Listen For Rumors

While your party is in town, they are listening for adventure opportunities. Use the random tables in the DMG to roll up the seeds of adventure. Let the party use their skills to learn more about the adventure, where a successful skill check reveals more aspects of the adventure at this point. For failed skill checks, do not roll on those tables; those things will be discovered incidentally down the line, but only once they matter (which is how adventurers would discover them anyway).

For a party’s initial adventure, and especially if this is your first time using the Zero Prep Solo Play method, I recommend taking the 1e DMG’s advice for the first session: adventure into a dungeon that’s within a half day’s walk of town. This will allow your party to return to town at night to rest and resupply, and adventure again the next day. The 5e DMG offers many tables in Chapter 5 to help with this initial dungeon. You may use Chapter 3’s Adventure Villains and Adventure Allies to determine what legend surrounds that dungeon (if any), and roll once on Magic Item Table G to determine a treasure supposedly located in the dungeon. (referee’s note: such a treasure would only be found on or below the 4th floor of the dungeon) Relate the treasure to the Hero or Villain, and consider that the item would probably now be wielded or guarded by a dungeon inhabitant.

Prepare For Adventure

Now is your chance to go shopping and hire any specialized help you think you’ll need. It’s also another chance to switch up the party to something that might be better suited for the adventure you’re going to pursue.

Preparation is a very important part of adventure. Map the course and figure out how many days it will take to reach your destination, how much food and water you need for the journey, and other issues related to encumbrance. Food and water may be less of an issue if you’re journeying through places with sources of water and access to foraging, but environments like deserts should not be taken lightly. Grab some torches, refill your lamp oil, carry along some extra arrows!

A few coins to hire some wagons will solve many problems, and a few more coins for guards can keep things safe. (See the 5e PHB, Chapter 5, Expenses - Services table for hirelings and mercenaries) When you’re in the wilderness, having a safe camp nearby will be a great boon. It’s also a great spot to source some extra manpower or new heroes despite being in the wilderness, if your party’s own ranks thin unexpectedly.

Make it a goal to get back to safety by the end of your gaming session. This will make it easier on you next time you intend to play, allowing you to refine your party and their equipment before they head back out on their next adventure. It gives you frequent chances to pivot to new adventures which you may find more exciting; this is a sandbox and there is no plot you must play through, you are adventurers experiencing many facets of an ever-changing world, and leaving your own mark upon it as you go.

Embark On Adventure

Once your adventure begins, you’ll usually be switching between two main modes of play.

The first is an overland or wilderness travel mode, where you will count off days and make wilderness encounter checks along the way. If the distance is very short, like a half day’s travel, you may make a single wilderness encounter check. Having to retreat at this stage may simply cost you a day, if you are near town; but hopefully you have accounted for delays if you are leading a whole caravan.

The second mode is dungeon exploration mode. Here you’ll track time in 10 minute intervals, as described earlier. Light your torches, and establish two marching orders: single file (for 5ft passages), and three abreast (for 10ft passages). This will make it easier to manage multiple characters, as you can assume they are acting in formation by default.

Establishing Adventuring Play Patterns

Extending on the idea of established marching orders, you will soon desire to establish other default processes as well. Perhaps for every door, you want your rogue to search it for traps, disarm those traps if found, and unlock the door if necessary. List those steps out, and you can roll down that list quickly for each door. If the search for traps is successful, then roll to see if the door is trapped, to get your answer. But if the search is unsuccessful, then wait until the door is opened, to roll to see if the door is trapped.

You want to be able to make unbiased rulings, so how do you decide whether the characters step on a pressure plate, for instance? 1e offers us an easy solution here. Using marching order, front to back, there is a 50% chance each character will trigger the pressure plate, so roll until someone triggers it, or perhaps everyone gets lucky! If the trap is triggered, resolve it accordingly, targeting that character (and perhaps also the characters nearby, depending on the sort of trap it is), rolling saving throws, etc, as usual.

Random Dungeons with Appendix A

The first Strategic Review gave us the “SOLO DUNGEON ADVENTURES” tables, which were included later in 1e (near verbatim) and 5e (with some adaptations), as Appendix A in each. Read the appendix before attempting to use it.

In general you will begin by descending into a Starting Area, which immediately branches your dungeon into multiple directions. Be careful not to roll up any more of the dungeon than you can actually see! Leave the passages unfinished, and the other sides of doors unknown, until you shine a torch down those directions, or until you open those doors.

For OD&D or 1e, you may read my guide on that dungeon generator here. https://alchemicraker.substack.com/p/how-to-solo-play-1e-appendix-a-dungeons The remainder of this section will be for 5e specifically.

Take special note that rooms typically have doors for their exits, while chambers have passages as exits instead. When finding where a passage leads, use the Passage table, and when you open a door, use the Beyond a Door table.

When you discover a room or chamber, then roll up its exits, purpose, and “Dungeon Chamber Contents”. If there is treasure, do not roll it until any monsters have been defeated. If there are traps, those will trigger unless they are found first.

As usual, only roll on tables if the party should now know what the result is, otherwise keep it a mystery. For instance, wait until you successfully parley for an encountered creature’s aid, before rolling a “Monster Motivation” to determine what it wants from you.

As a simple rule of thumb, the party takes about 10 minutes to look around a new room, and another 10 minutes to rummage and loot it. Every door or 10x10 area of floor or wall searched thoroughly, such as for traps or secret doors, is another 10 minutes. Retracing their steps through areas they've already explored is much easier, counting only 10 minutes per ~10 rooms retraced.

Remember to roll random encounter checks every 10 to 30 minutes in the dungeon, depending on the dungeon’s level of activity.

Treasure should never be freely accessible. If treasure is discovered without a monster, then there will surely be traps or hazards protecting it, which must be braved before the treasure can be had.

Session Wrap Up

As I’m often short on time, I tend to wrap up sessions after finding a good treasure haul. 50 coins weigh 1 pound (in 5e), and you'll need to get the treasure back to town before you get XP for it! So after loading up on treasure, we’ll take the shortest path back to the surface and head back to town to collect our XP and spend our gains. Hopefully your dungeon has ended up with multiple paths back to the surface, these can make it very convenient to resume exploring your dungeon without having to walk back through the entire thing every time.

Now’s a great time to level up your characters (if they have enough XP) and do some shopping. If your party has any special weapons or tools they need made, now is a great time to put in orders for those things, so they can be ready for your next session. (Because you’re playing with 1:1 time, right?)

Campaign Rules

The rules of the game are your playground as a player. You are free to roam within them, and when you poke the world, it can react accordingly, without needing fiat at every step. It is important that you follow the rules of your campaign, beginning with the rules of the system you have decided to play. If there are some rules of the system which are truly horrendous, then establish an alternative campaign rule in its place. You will be respecting that campaign rule as though it were any other in the core rulebook, as far as things are concerned.

Do not be quick to remove rules which may seem tedious, such as encumbrance, counting ammunition, and tracking torchlight. Those are not only constraints which emulate the pulp fantasy adventure experience, but they are also rewarding when your planning works out well, and sources of tension and excitement when they dwindle low. Even in Lord of the Rings, Legolas runs out of arrows, and it is quite significant when the hobbits obtain elven bread.

It is good to determine an order of precedence and scope of rules for your campaign, for example my own 5e campaign uses the 5e PHB and DMG, referencing the 1e DMG to fill in any gaps. I’m also using Arcana of the Ancients, with a 1 in 6 chance to use AotA treasure tables in place of the DMG Magic Items tables, and Veins of the Earth, for if the party ever decides to go deep underground.

My own preference for 5e is to make adventure preparation more important, which I solve by limiting darkvision and cantrips. I also prefer faster combat than the HP slug-fest 5e provides by default. You can see my full list of Zero Prep 5e campaign rules here. https://alchemicraker.substack.com/i/139438357/campaign-rules

Gamification and Expanding Campaign Rules

If you find yourself getting into territory not well covered by the rules, large or small, you may resort to augmenting your campaign with additional rules from another existing source, or even designing your own. It is best not to get too sidetracked by designing rules here, or your campaign will grind to a swift halt.

Remember that D&D has you managing many different limited resources, including time, money, and expendable equipment like arrows, torches, and rations. Consider which resources you are spending when you attempt to do things that aren’t clearly handled by the rules. While you cross the island for a specific tool to defeat your enemy, your enemy may very well have escaped or increased their defenses. If you are not sure of an exact time limit, decide on a chance instead, such as a 1 in 4 chance that the thieves guild robs the target each night this week, and so you may need to keep watch on multiple nights before encountering them.

For another example, you may decide that for a mystery you are trying to solve, you will put all the pieces together and head to one location which you hope will be the correct one, but very well may not be. Decide then that every “good and logical” attempt has a 1 in 6 chance of being right, and roll that check each time until you find the culprit; or perhaps you do not find the culprit within a time limit and they ultimately escape! Decide also that finding significant clues along the way increases your chance of success by +1 per major clue. Upon finding and confronting your foe, the gig is up, and if they get away (or if you have to flee), your search will have to begin from scratch. This simple gamification of the mystery can now be run without fiat, and is as much a rule in your game as any other (for the duration of the mystery, anyway).

If gamification is something you are comfortable and proficient with, then you may augment your campaign in this way. Otherwise, you should prefer to play to your choses system’s strengths: where rules exist. It is possible, though unfortunate, that you are not able to achieve the sort of experience you are looking for, with the system you want to achieve it with. You may need to find another system whose rules better emulate that actual experience. I will repeat an earlier warning here as well, that a “rules light” system provides even less support, and thus will probably be even worse for generating that experience you are looking for.

5e Solo Play Report & Retrospective

A solo play example of this playstyle, complete with retrospective, can be found here: