Horrendous Gaming’s Solo Tabletop Adventures System

 

A tabletop skirmish gaming system based around a single small team, unashamedly Solo, absolutely all about the Adventure and the Story, and unapologetically about fun.  There are other games that are Campaigns with armies, that you can find information about here - https://horrendousgaming.blogspot.com/p/horrendous-gamings-solo-military.html

How these came about

Early June 2025 and I was thinking about why I wasn’t excited about my next game session and trying to work out why.

It seems to me that games that try to be both head-to-head and solo are still really head-to-head, the crossover doesn’t work, the emphasis is on outfoxing your opponent and I don’t get any fun from that.

Then there is this whole thing about Adventure Wargaming or Narrative Wargaming, which I do get and really enjoy, but they seem to be trying to again be a crossover, this time between a wargame and a roleplay game, and that also is not working for me. I think it’s because wargames have always been seen as a simulation.  

What do they seem to have in common though that is causing me this angst? They try too hard to simulate the combat.  Roll to hit, ah yes you hit, but did you get past the armour? You got past the armour huh, yeah but did you actually disable them? Multiple rolls? All I want to know is whether the bad guy is down!

When I write a battle report, I don’t mention every dice roll that happens, I talk about the fun stuff, the whacky stuff, the unexpected, the calamities. So what am I playing for? Clearly for me I’m playing to see what happens, and what that means for my characters, and how that will influence what happens next. That’s what I play for.  

So, great, that all churned over, conclusion reached, go back to sleep right? Oh no, that’s not me at all. What do I have to do? Naturally, I have to go and create that thing that I want to play but doesn’t exist. Oh and if that’s just too easy I want it to work the same way in multiple settings so I can swap around as the mood takes me without having to learn new mechanics each time.

Challenge accepted, and the Horrendous Gaming solo tabletop adventure system was born. Truly solo, truly about the adventure, and a core set of mechanics across all the different Editions so you can switch between genres and still know how to play.

How they work

The games are not aiming to be in any way a detailed simulation of armed combat in a given period, instead they concentrate on getting to the action as quickly as possible. All rolls in battle are 1D10, with a natural 1 being bad and a natural 10 being good. A single roll takes into account hitting, penetrating, and wounding. Weapons are generic. It’s not a wargame, it’s an adventure, or that’s the intent anyway. 

The core of each Edition is a set of Story Arcs (campaigns), each creating a separate narrative around 15 linked games. 

Every game has markers for where the adversaries and bystanders might be and your team have to uncover the actual foes. The adversaries always “React” to the team, hence true solo play rather than trying to play both sides. The games also might involve looking for things, investigating things, and protecting the bystanders, so it’s not just about combat all the time.

Your team usually be six figures and will be fighting anywhere up to 15 enemy figures, plus there may be up to 12 bystanders wandering about.  A battle lasts 6 to 10 rounds, so you can set up  your table, play through the game, and pack it down again in under 3 hours, probably 2 once you are used to it.

Each Edition has a selection of different locations (and therefore table layouts) where the action takes place, a selection of different adversaries, and a slow but steady increase in difficulty to balance the improvements and added gear your team will get along the way. 

Each Edition starts with at least 6 Story Arcs, but more are being added all the time. They include full rules for gameplay, a Quick Reference for the battle tables, and an example campaign roster/tracker. You will of course need your own miniatures and terrain pieces, but the scenarios are as open as possible to enable you to use the stuff you already have, or give you an excuse to collect more.

Current releases and ongoing schedule as of August 2026

Each of the Adventures editions takes a different genre and applies the same basic structure and principles, with changes as needed to fit the background. The intention is also that as well as adding new editions, I will keep updating the existing ones (so make sure you sign up for updates at Wargame Vault). The next set of updates is in progress now and it’s big:

All the original Story Arcs are being re-written so that they no longer include randomly rolled scenarios, to make them completely focused on the narrative. There is also more use of objectives in scenarios, where you are locating things or investigating to find out information you need.

There’s an increased focus on bystanders, where they are now uncovered from the markers like the adversaries. They are now often under threat, making it more important that they leave the table, but your team can now encourage them to leave or decide to defend them.

After a scenario you will now determine specific injuries to your characters and use experience points for gaining skills, and there are now details for continuing a successful team onto another Arc.

I am also adding the option to fight a scenario with a single character when they were not available for the main incident, each with ten short scenarios.

HG01 - Space Station Edition - Call Security! 

Imagine a huge tin can, spinning in space, where some people actually live, but many more are just passing through. Like any frontier town there is a need for some level of order to be maintained or it will dissolve into chaos. 

The people who run the station, The Authorities, are willing to fund a small team to maintain the peace, if not tranquility, of the place, knowing full well that the very survival of its economy depends on people content to live and work there. So they appoint a Security Chief, and recruit a Security team, to keep watch and deal with any trouble before it gets out of hand. These are their stories.  

Purchase here - Call Security!

My own campaign can be found here - Call Security!

HG02 - Post Apocalypse Edition - Protect and Survive

Imagine a world where a combination of environmental effects forced the major nations into a war that just made things worse, and that everyone now refers to as The Calamity. A world where the human population has been hugely depleted, there are no governments, no cities, no power stations, and just small enclaves of people trying to fend off the ever encroaching threat of others who are just out to take whatever they can get. 

Not just people either, the animals seemed to have fared better in the aftermath of The Calamity than humans have as the sudden eradication of their soft, sheltered lives happens so suddenly. Packs of wild beasts run rampant from an explosion of breeding of escaped animals or sudden mutations of the natural wildlife, and there’s worse out there too now the most dangerous predators, man, are picking on each other instead.

Now picture one of these groups of survivours that don’t want to devolve into beasts themselves, they come together and look out for one another as they start to try and rebuild what they call The Community. 

They know that they need protection though, from the beasts around them, no matter how many legs they walk on. So some of them pick up a weapon and vow to keep the other safe. The Community appoints a Leader and calls them the Response Team. These are their stories.

Purchase here - Protect and Survive

There is a full 15 game campaign using these rules here.

HG03 - Swashbuckling Pirates Edition - Plunder and Fighting!

Imagine a time when colonisation and trade was a boon for some but not for all. When rogues would take to the high seas believing they could just take whatever they wanted, while the local authorities seemed unable to keep them in check, and a Pirate ship appearing on the horizon was something to be rightfully feared.

Now picture the wreckage of such a ship and four poor souls pitching up on a small island. One assumes the mantle of Captain and when a Merchantman moors too close leads a desperate but successful raid to take it over. Now they have a ship again and are ready to return to a life of plundering and fighting. These are their stories.

Purchase here - Plunder and Fighting

My own campaign with these rules is in progress here.

HG04 - Wild West Edition - Join the Posse!

Imagine a time when frontier towns were changing from lawless places into more civilised communities, but there were still plenty of threats to their peace and tranquility. A time when the peace between the incoming settlers and the indigenous peoples was unsettled at best. A time where bands of outlaws still prowled around the towns picking off unwary travellers.

Now think about those few willing to stand up for law and order. Who put on a tin star and made themselves a target. Or even those who had just had enough of the lawlessness and were willing to help out when needed. These are their stories.

Purchase here - Join the Posse!

HG05 - High Fantasy Edition - The Guild of Adventurers

Imagine a fantasy land full of heroes, villains, monsters, and magic. Any fantasy land you want, populated by whatever races you want.

Now picture one inhabitant of that world out to make a name for themselves. A capable fighter maybe, or good with a bow, maybe a dashing rogue, or a wielder of magics. They are not sure where to start but have heard of a network of places where likeminded individuals tend to congregate and where those in need of such people go to recruit them.

Our hero arrives, picks an opportunity they deem worthy of their attention, and then gathers some followers to them before setting off. The party are now on a quest, backed by the famous Guild of Adventurers and these are their stories.

Purchase here - The Guild of Adventurers

My own campaign with these rules is in progress here - here.

HG06 - SF Edition - We need your best squad

Imagine a future without conflict of any sort, seems unlikely doesn’t it? Indeed it is so much easier to imagine the opposite, with conflicts, and good guys versus bad guys, in multiple settings.

Now imagine one small group of combatants, hand picked for a particular purpose, well armed and ready to go. There are multiple different stories that span a wide range of science fiction settings, but no matter what they will face, they are your best squad, and these are their stories.

Purchase here - We need your best squad

HG08 - Time Travel Edition - The Wardens of History

Imagine a world where there are a very limited number of people that can travel back in time to try and preserve the historical timeline of Earth. They have what is known as the “translocation gene”. Then it seems logical that an organisation has been created to train and then transport these people through time to deal with anomalies that a very large group of archivists spend their time looking for.

The problem could be a purely historical one where trouble is brewing but the team are still within the known history of Earth, or it could be that a previous problem has disrupted Earth’s known history and leads them to somewhat weirder battles in what is known as a Broken Timeline.

Most of the time they will be facing the locals of the period, hired by whichever nefarious force is trying to mess with history, and these hirelings often don’t actually realise what is going on. There will also be other locals around who definitely won’t have any idea what is going on and will need convincing that things are ‘normal’ to avoid breaking the timeline, or indeed to fix it again if you already broke it. Of course eventually they will run into those nefarious forces behind the trouble head on and have to deal with them.

The very special leaders of the small groups of people that go through time to troubleshoot these anomalies are known as Wardens, there are only a handful of them, and they are the key to keeping the Earth safe. Each Warden forms their own team from the best people available and these are their stories.

 

Purchase here - The Wardens of History

My own campaign with these rules is in progress here.

HG11 - Superhero Edition - With great power…

Imagine a world where a small percentage of the population have started to develop extraordinary powers. There is no single cause, but it does seem to be on the rise. In such a world the rest of the population might well view such individuals with distrust, never sure what they might use those powers for. 

Now think about a few of these individuals who feel like they ought to be doing something “useful” with their new found abilities, but know they are not powerful to the point where they can take on all comers on their own. They see the dangers around them and are determined to help those unable to defend themselves, but know they can’t do it alone so some of them get together and start to patrol their local neighbourhood, they protect the innocent bystanders while they deal with the troublemakers, even when it starts to feel like maybe they are getting out of their depth. These are their stories.

Purchase here - With Great Power

HG12 - Urban Fantasy Edition - Department U 

Imagine that about five years before your story starts, law enforcement officials started to get reports of some very strange happenings, and the various police forces and intelligence agencies across the world started keeping their own very secret records, but of course secrets get attention and it wasn’t long before they all knew what the others knew. In an unprecedented move, this even got governments talking to each other and an uneasy understanding of the global need to guard against these “threats of the unknown” was born.

Now imagine that ever since, and no matter who is currently at war with whom, sometimes with official government backing but often as a completely clandestine operation, every major power on Earth has a unit that works for the Department of the Unknown Threats, or Department U.

This is not a military organisation, although military personnel are often moved there, usually under the warranted cover of dishonourable discharge. This is not a cross-border police or intelligence organisation, although the most capable and out-of-the-box thinking investigators often end up there. Indeed there are as many criminals as law abiding citizens in Department U, well probably more in fact if the rest of them had been caught. It’s just Department U and very few people who are not in it even know it exists.

When the brown stuff hits the spinning thing, the bodies start piling up, and normal law enforcement can’t wrap their heads around it, certain phone calls are made, and a team from Department U are assigned. They will be whispered about in the corridors of power and people will sleep easier in their beds, knowing a team of Fixers are on the case.

You now run one of these teams, and these are their stories.

HG14 - Dungeon Edition - Back to the Daylight

I started thinking about an underground adventure as part of the update for The Guild of Adventurers and realised that it could easily be a game in itself. So then I started thinking about whether it had legs as a complete Adventure Edition and of course soon had numerous ideas, so that’s the plan for next year some time.

HG15 - Cyberpunk Edition - Into the Sprawl 

It was on the list right from the start but I finally have my head around how I want it to feel, so it is officially part of the schedule. Think huge urban towers with the rich living at the top and the dregs at the bottom. You run a specialist team that is hired to go down into the Sprawl, the lowest levels of the tower, where even you don’t know what you might find. Where Technomages fight for control over security systems, cybernetic enhanced gangers in a drug fuelled rage will want to take your head off just for fun, and anyone you meet could turn against you, or for you.

HG16 - The Everything Else Edition!

I have it in mind to stop at twelve editions for the Adventure Series, and the plan is that this last one will have separate Arcs for individual genres that I want to do but don’t have enough differences or Arc ideas to need a separate Edition. On the list so far is a Musketeers type thing, Samurai, Artic exploration, and Spy Fi. The plan is to release this to coincide with the second anniversary of the series.

Get in touch

If you are playing any of the games and have ideas for additions, or you have some time to help out with playtesting new editions, I would love to hear from you, please send an email to hg.wargames@gmail.com

This Blog is mostly talk about my personal hobby activities, so painting minis, building terrain, and playing games. I don’t talk much about the publications themselves here. So if you want to stay up to date with progress, ask questions, or better yet share your own games, here’s where you should go - https://www.reddit.com/r/HG_AdventureSeries/s/JBdD3zxAOo.

If you use Boardgame Geek at all, please consider leaving a review or at least a rating if you have one of my games - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/60330/horrendous-gaming

Or of course directly on Wargame Vault - https://www.wargamevault.com/en/publisher/31603/horrendous-gaming?affiliate_id=4612915

I should also state, for the record, that no AI was used in creating these rules, all typos and other mistakes are definitely my own, and I’d appreciate you pointing them out!

Example games setup:

Call Security! being playtested on a very rough layout, to show how simple it can be.

Protect and Survive - Farmland

Plunder and Fighting - The Harbour

Call the Posse - The Ranch

The Guild of Adventurers - The Valley

We need your best squad - Desolation 

The Wardens of History - Dark Age Woodland