The Buried: A Wretched & Alone Game - Logs 10-14

 (Listen to logs 5-9 here.)

TURN 10

DRAW: 4 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - QUEEN OF DIAMONDS - Rounding a corner you find Todd. You never liked them anyway, they were always sucking up to McManus. Still...it would have been nice to find someone alive.

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - KING OF CLUBS - Some...creature...is following you. You have seen a glimpse of it, but the horror of that quick glance almost drove you mad. All those legs...all those sightless eyes. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if all four Kings have been drawn, then the creature has caught you. You won’t want to be alive for what it’s about to do to you.  Pull: Two 1s.  7 dice remaining.

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 6 OF HEARTS - Someone dropped a granola bar! Just ignore that little smear of blood on the end, it doesn't mean anything, surely.

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - ACE OF SPADES - You are getting a better feel for these tunnels, almost making sense of them. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and from now on rolls of 4 or higher will remove a token from the Ace of Hearts, if you have located it.

Token Check Roll: 4   Remove a token.  Total tokens remaining: 8

===============

TURN 11

Only 15 cards left and I still need to remove 8 tokens. It’s not looking good.  

DRAW: 2 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - 6 OF SPADES - You hear crying, but it sounds wrong. Like something just pretending to be human. Could it just be the acoustics? Do you look? Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 5  Pull  One 1. Six dice remaining.

CARD 2: LIGHT ON 9 (last charge) - ACE OF CLUBS - You have found an altar in the heart of a cavern. The walls are glowing with a pale luminescence, revealing a structure made of human bones. It seems to represent a creature with far too many legs, and a slavering maw big enough to swallow you whole. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if the King of Clubs has been pulled, you can shuffle it back into the deck. Pull  Three 1’s. Three dice remaining.  King of Clubs is shuffled back into the deck.

Token Check Roll: 5 Remove a token. Seven tokens remain.

===============

TURN 12

DRAW: 4 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - Ace: You find the body of McManus. The prick survived the cave-in, but someone got him. There is a pick-sized hole in his head. And whoever did it, didn’t even search the body! You find his pockets full of snacks, and an almost full battery pack with 5 charges. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side to remind you of the 5 charges. Once expended, you can discard.

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - 5 OF CLUBS - Something has been visiting you as you sleep. It leaves you little presents. A severed rat head. A gnawed finger bone. An inky purple stone. Darkness. Pull from the tower. No Pull.

CARD 3: LIGHT ON - 5 OF HEARTS - You hear a trickle of water. You follow the sound, eventually coming to a crack in the wall, where the water is falling. You manage to get a few sips, but hurt yourself. Pull from the tower. Zero 1s.  3 dice remaining.

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - 10 OF HEARTS (Oops, I learned later that I accidentally copied the description for the 9 of hearts. No matter, I’ll just use the 10 of hearts description when I pull the 9) - You are so thirsty...so...so thirsty. Do you suffer the hurt to your sanity by drinking your own urine, or do you suffer the pain of dehydration? Pull from the tower.  Pull: One 1. Two dice remaining.

Token Check Roll: 1 No tokens removed. Seven tokens remain.

===============

TURN 13

DRAW: 4 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - 9 OF CLUBS - You see yourself standing before you. They look as surprised as you are, then horrified, and then they turn and run. You feel compelled to do the same. Darkness. Pull from the tower. No Pull. It really is uncanny how many times I had my light on when I pulled darkness cards.

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - 2 OF SPADES - The path forks. One way heads down, but you think you can hear water. The other, though, goes up, the direction you need to go. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower. Roll: 3 No Pull.

CARD 3: LIGHT ON - 9 OF DIAMONDS - You find Rolly. Your best friend, the guy who’s always had your back in the mines. He’s dying, nothing you can do, but he asks for a sip of water. You can’t refuse him. Pull from the tower.  Pull: One 1. One die remaining.

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - 2 OF HEARTS - Who would have thought that lichen could survive down here...or that it would be so tasty?

Token Check Roll: 4  Remove a Token. Six tokens remain.

===============

TURN 14

DRAW: 6 CARDS.  Well, this is it. That’s the last of the cards. All four kings will have been pulled by the end of this turn.

CARD 1: LIGHT ON (Last Charge) - QUEEN OF HEARTS - You’ve taken to licking the moisture from the walls wherever you can find a wet patch.

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - 7 OF CLUBS - You find a door, and your heart soars! But when you open it, there is only void beyond it. Not even your light can penetrate it. Darkness. Pull from the tower. Pull: Zero 1’s. One die remaining.

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 9 OF HEARTS - (This is actually the description for the 10 of Hearts per error back in turn 12.)  Those bones there look fresher than most. And blessedly not human. You’ve heard of eating the marrow before...time to give it a try. That rock there should do to crack them.

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - KING OF HEARTS - You have found a small cluster of pale green glowing mushrooms. Your hunger is so great that you can’t help but try them. Within minutes you are sick and throwing up. Darkness. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if all four Kings have been drawn, then the poison of the mushrooms has killed you.  Pull: Zero 1s.  One die remaining.

CARD 5: LIGHT OFF - QUEEN OF CLUBS - How is there an image of you carved into the stone? One clearly very, very old.

CARD 6: LIGHT OFF - KING OF CLUBS - Some...creature...is following you. You have seen a glimpse of it, but the horror of that quick glance almost drove you mad. All those legs...all those sightless eyes. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if all four Kings have been drawn, then the creature has caught you. You won’t want to be alive for what it’s about to do to you.

THE END

====================

THE AFTERPOST

The Final Board (at least the top portion)

I played every card in the deck. I eliminated every tower dice except for one. I logged every prompt. I think I got about as much out of this game as I could.

I do want to address the last couple of turns. Not that anyone has questioned this, but I do feel it needs some additional explanation. Back in turn 11, I was instructed to shuffle the King of Clubs back into the deck. The way I did this in my system was to put that card at the bottom of the card column, highlight it in black to cover it up, then use Google sheets “Randomize” function several times to rearrange the cards that were still unrevealed. I certainly didn’t expect that the King of Clubs would end up on the bottom of the column, making the final card to be drawn. As you might expect, it made me question whether or not the “Randomize” function actually worked.

So, in typical Tev style, I had to run some tests.

At that point in the game, I would have had 14 unrevealed cards, including the returned King. So, with all cards revealed and the King of Club at the bottom of the stack, I highlighted the last 14 cards and hit the “Randomize” function several times. All the cards did change places. However, the King of Clubs did reappear in the last cell several times during my test, frequently enough that I’m confident that my shuffle mechanic did indeed work, and, merely by chance, the final order left the King as the last card to be drawn.

I enjoyed the Wretched & Alone style of gameplay and the journaling nature of storytelling. I also had fun recording and producing the audio logs. As a result, I have built up a large library of journaling games, both W&A and other systems, and will certainly be playing and posting more in the future.

As always, thanks for reading (and listening). 

Matthew 8:11-12  What's this?

The Buried: A Wretched & Alone Game - Logs 5-9

(Listen to logs 1-4 here.)

Audio Log 5

DRAW: 6 CARDS I’m really burning through these cards. But when I think about it, until I draw the Ace of Hearts it doesn't really matter how many cards I draw. There is no advantage or disadvantage to drawing more or less cards on a turn. You are going to draw the exact same cards regardless of whether they are one or two in turn or five or six in a turn. And finally, the number of cards in the deck below the Ace of Hearts does not change. (I'll explain the importance of that later.) So in the end, drawing 6 cards doesn't really hurt me.

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - 10 OF DIAMONDS - You find a note, you think in Sam’s handwriting. All it says is ‘Watching You. Never Run.’

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - JACK OF DIAMONDS - You find Matt when you round a corner. Bastard survived the collapse, but it looks like they aren’t long for this world. They beg you to put them out of their misery. Pull from the tower.   Pull: Sixteen 1’s.   46 dice remaining.

CARD 3: LIGHT ON - 8 OF DIAMONDS - You hear laughing in the distance. It's impossible to tell from which direction it came from, but after hearing how unhinged that laugh sounds, you are just glad it's not there with you.

CARD 4: LIGHT ON - KING OF DIAMONDS - SIMON comes looming out of the darkness, a bloody pick in his hand, and madness in his eyes. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if all four Kings have been drawn, then your struggle with SIMON has failed, and you have died.   Pull: Six 1’s.   40 die remaining.

CARD 5: LIGHT OFF - ACE OF HEARTS - You are on the right path, you know it. The air seems just a little bit more fresh, and the tunnels seem to be trending upwards. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and place 10 tokens on it. Each day after writing in your diary roll a six-sided dice. On a roll of six, remove a token. If you remove all tokens, you have found the way out.

(Now the number of cards drawn each turn is important. Since each turn gives you another chance to remove a token, the greater number of turns, the more chance to remove tokens. To draw out the number of turns, now I want low card rolls.)

CARD 6: LIGHT OFF - 5 OF SPADES - The path forks...both ways look identical though. Which way do you go? Why? Did you choose right? Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 5   Pull: Five 1’s.    35 Die remaining.

Token Check Roll:  2  No Tokens are removed  Total Tokens: 10

======================

Audio Log 6

DRAW: 2 CARDS   That's better.

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - 4 OF HEARTS - You have found a small stash of food. A couple of granola bars, a bottle of water, a battery pack with 1 charge. Why were they left here? Who left them?

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - 3 OF CLUBS - There is something in the dark. It will hover around the edge of your light, but in darkness, it comes close. Sniffing. Following. Muttering. Cackling. Touching Darkness. Pull from the tower. Light on - NO PULL  

So far I’ve been doing a decent job of timing these darkness pulls.

Token Check Roll: 4  No Tokens are Removed.  Total Tokens: 10

======================

Audio Log 7

DRAW: 3 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - 4 OF CLUBS - Someone has scrawled, in blood: VOIDLIGHT! The SHAMBLER comes! Rejoice! DIE!

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - 3 OF DIAMONDS - In your sleep, someone robs you of a granola bar. How on earth could they manage that? You see their footprints in the dust, but you soon lose the trail. Pull from the tower.   Pull: Eleven 1’s.   24 dice remaining.

CARD 3: LIGHT ON - 9 OF SPADES - The tunnel narrows badly. Do you try to squeeze through? You can’t see how far it’s like this, it could slow you. But it could be the way. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 2 NO PULL

Token Check Roll: 3  No Tokens are Removed.  Total Tokens: 10

=========================

Audio Log 8

DRAW: 4 CARDS

CARD 1 - LIGHT OFF - 3 OF HEARTS - You wouldn’t eat human flesh, would you? It hasn’t gotten that bad yet, has it? The fact you are even considering it plays hell with your stress. Pull from the tower.   Pull: Six 1s.  18 dice remain.

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - KING OF SPADES - You round a corner, lost in thought, and are now teetering on the edge of a crevasse. Pull from the tower. Do not discard this card. Set it to the side, and if all four Kings have been drawn, then you have fallen into the crevasse, breaking both legs. Death soon follows.  Pull: Three 1s.  15 dice remain.

CARD 3: LIGHT ON - 8 OF HEARTS - You find a small pool of water, enough to refill your bottle even. Water has never tasted so clean and cool.

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - 4 OF SPADES - You stumble upon a crevice. Do you try to jump across, or find a way to go around? Darkness. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll 2. NO PULL.

Token Check Roll: 6  Remove a token.  Total tokens: 9

===========================

Audio Log 9

DRAW: 5 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - 2 OF DIAMONDS - Mark comes out of the darkness, catching you by surprise. Before you can react he has run past you, racing off in the direction you just came from. You can’t catch him, but do you follow?

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - JACK OF SPADES - You’re having a breakdown. You just need some light damn it. But you know you should save charge. Darkness. Pull from the tower. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower. Roll: 3  NO PULL. Heck, I’m rocking these pull rolls.

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 7 OF HEARTS - You find a rat, limping along. It’s been hurt somehow. It’s food...but at what cost? Pull from the tower.  Pull: Four 1s.   11 dice remaining

CARD 4: LIGHT ON - JACK OF HEARTS - Those bones there look fresher than most. And blessedly not human. You’ve heard of eating the marrow before...time to give it a try. That rock there should do to crack them.

CARD 5: LIGHT OFF - 6 OF CLUBS - Something has been visiting you as you sleep. It leaves you little presents. A severed rat head. A gnawed finger bone. An inky purple stone. Darkness. Pull from the tower.   Pull: Two 1s.   9 dice remaining.

Token Check Roll: 1  No Tokens are Removed.  Total Tokens: 9

To Be Continued . . . Here.

My Solo Roleplaying Journey

Recently, through some connections I have over at Geek To Geek media (the gaming website, not the dating site), I had the opportunity to write an article about my journey into solo roleplaying. You can read it by clicking on the link below. I hope you enjoy it and all the other content over at Geek To Geek. Thanks for reading.

Tev's Quest for a Solo RPG

The Buried: A Wretched & Alone Game - Logs 1-4

(Read the Introduction and hear the first log here.)

 Audio Log 1

DRAW: 3 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - QUEEN OF SPADES - One granola bar does little good. But if you could use it to catch rats...is it even worth trying though? Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 5  Pull: Eleven 1s.  89 Dice remaining.

CARD 2: LIGHT OFF - 2 OF CLUBS - You find a set of bloody footprints. As you follow them, they grow wider and wider apart, first as though they are leaping...then impossibly far apart...until they just vanish.

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 7 OF DIAMONDS  There are footprints in the dust, so you follow. They vanish though, and try as you might you can not find them. Not even the ones you followed here. Are you losing it? Pull from the tower.  Pull: Nineteen 1s - 70 Die remaining.

(Note about "Darkness" - Obviously, following some of the prompts while in utter darkness is incongruous. For example, how can you follow footprints in a pitch-black cave? The way I handled that was by considering the light to be turned off for at least some period of time during the events described for the card, if not its entirety. Should that particular card have a "darkness" penalty, the misfortune would naturally occur during one of the periods that the flashlight is turned off.)

===================

Audio Log 2

DRAW: 5 CARDS. Crap!

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - 6 OF DIAMONDS - You catch sight of Mark running around a corner. You chase after, but you quickly lose sight of him. Why was he running? Where did he go?

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - JACK OF CLUBS - It chitters, and skitters, and titters as it races towards you in the dark. It dances around the light, and when it's dark its claws touch you...sensuously. Darkness. Pull from the tower. (Does not apply as light is on.)

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 8 OF SPADES - You stumble upon some odd carvings. They make your eyes hurt to look at them, and they seem to glow. Do you try to read them? Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 1-No Pull

CARD 4: LIGHT OFF - 10 OF CLUBS - You see the spirit of all the dead members of your mining team. They watch you with dead, hollow eyes. Even though they are the dead ones, you feel that they look more sorry for you.

CARD 5: LIGHT ON - 8 OF CLUBS - You find a strange purple rock. You put it in your pocket. Later, you find an identical one, and pick it up too. Only when you reach into your pocket, there are now 4 stones. Later, they vanish.

===================

Audio Log 3

DRAW: 2 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT OFF - 4 OF DIAMONDS - You have found Jared, the poor soul seems to have been badly injured in the cave-in, and only made it this far to then die. You manage to find a battery pack with 3 charges.

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - 10 OF SPADES - The tunnel splits again. One way is as good as another, right? Probably not, but what choice do you have. Besides this one of course. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll:1 - NO PULL

===================

Audio Log 4 

DRAW: 3 CARDS

CARD 1: LIGHT ON - 5 OF DIAMONDS - You can’t tell who this is...because it looks like something has eaten their face. A foul stench, like burning tar fills the air. What happened to them? Pull from the tower.  Pull: Eight 1’s  - 62 Die remain.

CARD 2: LIGHT ON - 3 OF SPADES - You stumble upon a crevice. Do you try to jump across, or find a way to go around? Darkness. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower. I have the light on, no roll.

CARD 3: LIGHT OFF - 7 OF SPADES - You find some water, but it looks oily. Do you drink it? Did it hurt? If you make a darkness pull, you missed the rat carcass in it. Darkness. Roll a D6, and on a 4, 5, or 6 pull from the tower.  Roll: 3 - No Pull

(Listen to logs 5-9 here.)

The Buried: A Wretched & Alone Game - Introduction

 Before I get started I need to give credit to Semicolon, a fellow poster at RPGsolo.com, a solo-roleplaying forum that I frequent.

First of all, I’ve been aware of the game Wretched and the variations made using the Wretched & Alone SRD for over a year now, but it wasn’t until I read Semicolon’s playthroughs of Final Girl that I realized the game’s potential. I already owned a few W&A games and knew there were several others free on itch.io. I began looking through some of the rules a little more closely and immediately became interested in playing. (Another reason I never looked into them too closely before was that they required a tumbling block tower, something I didn’t own nor thought would work well with my play style and game environment.)

If you are not familiar with Wretched & Alone games, they are journaling games, which means the point of the game is to write a journal of your (or your character’s) personal experiences within the story. To create the story, the player uses a six-sided die, a deck of regular playing cards, and a tumbling block tower (like Jenga). For each day/turn, the player rolls the die and draws that many cards. Each card corresponds with a writing prompt for the journal. Some cards require you to pull a block from the tower, representing something or some kind of stress that is deteriorating throughout the game. After each turn, you are supposed to use the prompt from the cards to write a journal entry that moves the story forward. You lose the game when you draw all four Kings or the tower falls. There is a win condition, but it is very difficult and nearly impossible to achieve. But winning isn't the point. Creating a story/experience is.

The specific title I am playing for this thread is called “The Buried.” In this scenario, your character is trapped underground after a cave-in and needs to find your way out. I chose this game specifically because it addresses one of my greatest fears: being buried alive. I’m not a claustrophobic person. I have no problem with large crowds (except for the fact that it is generally uncomfortable to be in one) and I can get on a full elevator with no problem. However, the thought of being trapped in a very tight space with no easy way out (i.e. coffin, small diameter storm pipe, etc.) scares the dickens out of me. I even react poorly when simply reading about it. For example, if you are a Song of Fire and Ice fan, there is a point in the books where Tyrion makes a ship voyage while encased in a wooden barrel. I could feel my anxiety rise just reading about that. So I thought playing a game that explores some of those themes might help to create a more emotional game experience. (In the end, it didn’t, probably because the setting was an open cave system and not a tight space. A large part of my anxiety is having extremely limited movement.

As I mentioned before I do not own a tumbling block tower. Also, I typically play a game over multiple settings and those often not in the same location. Therefore, using a physical tower was out of the question. Officially, the games state use of a tower is optional, however, it is so much a part of the tension and failure cycle, not using that mechanic would be to cheat the player out of an integral part of the experience. Luckily, other players have come up with several alternatives (typically using dice) that statistically mimic the length of an average tumbling block game. The method I chose to use was what I call the 100-d6 method. You begin the game with 100 six-sided dice and each time you are required to pull from the tower you roll the dice instead. Any dice that come up with a “1” are removed from the pool. If at any time you run out of dice, the tower falls.

This leads me to mechanics and the second way in which RPGsolo user Semicolon inspired this thread. In another post, Semi had asked about using some type of computer mechanic to lay out playing cards on a computer screen in a particular pattern One of the suggestions I offered was to use a spreadsheet program and type card designations (Like 2S for 2 of spades) in the cells to represent their position on a table. That sparked an idea in my own head about using a spreadsheet for all kinds of game mechanics, such as shuffling and revealing cards and rolling dice. If I could make this work, it would allow me to play a game like W&A using a spreadsheet to simulate all the mechanics, keep track of the game, and allow me to access it whenever and wherever I might be.

For “The Buried,” I created a virtual tabletop using Google Sheets. First, I listed every card in a single column, one card per cell. Next, I highlighted each cell in black, covering up the text. To “shuffle” the cards, I used Google Sheet’s randomize tool, which mixes up the contents of a selected range of cells. Then, whenever I needed to reveal a card in the game, I simply selected the topmost unrevealed cell in the column and removed the highlighting.

For my dice tower, I drew a 10 cell x 10 cell border to designate an area of 100 cells. In each of those cells I placed a formula that randomly chose a number between 1 and 6. Whenever I had to pull from the tower I would force the spreadsheet to refresh and generate numbers in each of those cells. I selected all the “1s” and deleted the formula from those cells, leaving only the remaining “die.” I even jazzed it up a bit by programming the sheet to turn the cells that contained “1s” red so they were easier to spot. Additionally, I had another cell keep track of the number of squares/die remaining.

In case anyone is interested in playing or has played “The Buried,” I want to address a couple of changes I made to the original material for narrative purposes. For starters, I changed most of the names used in the game. Early on I noticed several of the original names were uncommon and I wanted to make them more mainstream. I did keep the Foreman's name and I used a name generator for my character. Beyond that, I renamed all the characters using names that held some sort of significance in my life.

The second change is with the light mechanic. “The Buried” gives your player a limited light source which you need to conserve. For each card you draw, you need to determine beforehand if your light will be on or off. Some cards present consequences if you are in the dark. What I altered was what light source itself. The original game describes it as a battery-powered helmet lamp. I decided to use the flashlight on a cell phone instead.

Finally, I am NOT an actor, so please offer me a little grace as you enjoy this playthrough.

Credits:

All sound effects used were found at the following sites. (See the full list of sounds here.

Freesound.org

and

www.zapsplat.com

============================

AUDIO LOG INTRODUCTION

Continued here.