Horrendous Gaming’s Solo Tabletop Adventures System

A tabletop skirmish gaming system, unashamedly Solo, absolutely all about the Adventure and the Story, and unapologetically about fun.

This page is going to record current status as the project proceeds, in case anyone is at all interested, but I'll start by trying to explain why.

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 does it 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 of 15 games, that tell a story. Each Arc pulls 10 of the scenarios from a random pool 34 and has 5 specific ones that create the main story.

Every game has markers for where the adversaries 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. There are also often Bystanders getting in the way.

Your team usually be six figures and will be fighting anywhere up to 12 enemy figures, plus there may be up to 8 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 is 60+ pages and include 6 Story Arcs, full rules for gameplay, a 3 page 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.

The Editions - Current status (20 November 2025)

Each of the editions takes a different genre and applies the same basic structure and principles, with changes as needed to fit the background.

HG01 - Space Station Edition - Call Security!

Our heroes are the Security Officers sent to deal with various Incidents on a Space Station. Adversaries start with station workers using improvised weapons through criminal elements with slug-thrower weapons to alien military with energy weapons or even something more exotic. Opening doors and peering into rooms to find the badguys is currently unique to this version. Optional rules include incorporating gantries around the main areas and robots wandering about.

Published on Wargame Vault - 03 Aug 2025 (with a minor update 24 Aug 2025)

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/531471/Call-Security?affiliate_id=4612915

One of the original playtesters is now playing a campaign here - https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=150306.0

HG02 - Post Apocalypse Edition - Protect and Survive

Aimed at 1950s to current day, our heroes are the Response Team tasked with the security and survival of a small community struggling against rival survivour types or packs of beasts. Incidents include ambushes, raids on camps, and just happening across trouble while on patrol through woods, farms, ruins or outright desolation. Any replacement gear has to be found after a battle and options include big nasty beasts wandering into the middle of the battle.

Published on Wargame Vault - 24 Aug 2025

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/534433/Protect-and-Survive?affiliate_id=4612915

My own campaign with these rules is in progress here - Protect and Survive

HG03 - Swashbuckling Pirates Edition - Plunder and Fighting!

The golden age of piracy with our Captain and crew plundering their way to infamy, facing off against landlubber thugs, the local military, and even other pirates. Whether on land or at sea, our heroes find ways to make flamboyant moves that the enemy can’t, and cut their way through any opposition, building up their haul of doubloons and gaining a fearsome reputation.

Published on Wargame Vault - 26 Sep 2025

https://www.wargamevault.com/m/product/538293?affiliate_id=4612915

My own campaign with these rules is in progress here - Plunder and Fighting

HG04 - Wild West Edition - Join the Posse!

Your Sheriff seems to need help about once a week as some calamity befalls your small town. With one of the Deputies and a random selection of townsfolk and other locals, can you keep the town and the local area safe from unruly mobs, upset miners, troublemaking cowboys, while also having to deal with various levels of outlaws and even some trouble from the local tribe? Whether it’s in the town, out at the ranch or mine, or riding out into the wilds, there’s always a new challenge.

Published on Wargame Vault - 24 Oct 2025

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/541922/Join-the-Posse?affiliate_id=4612915

HG05 - High Fantasy Edition - The Guild of Adventurers

A Hero gathers a party of Fighters, Shooters, Rogues and Magic Users to embark on a Quest for the Adventurers’ Guild. They will have to also deal with the additional trials their journey throws at them. Ten different Story Arcs, each centred around different Adversaries, and with magic, sneaking Rogues, monsters, and a few other bits of fun, this is quite different from the others.

Complete - will be released December 3rd.

HG06 - SF Edition - We need your best squad

Ten separate campaign types set in the future, from a small team that gets dropped into battle and need to get the job done and get back to the retrieval point in time to be picked up, through a mercenary unit being paid to do all the dirty jobs, to a small band of rebels trying to win back their planet. You can even play on a planet where all the lifeforms are deadly, or where every game is in zero gravity. There’s something here for everyone, each Arc this time is self contained but adds new ideas which you can then mix and match to keep every campaign fresh.

In progress, will be the first release in 2026

HG07 - Time travel Edition - The Wardens of History

So here’s what happened, I had a load of great ideas but couldn’t work out 6 arcs for each, so instead how about 6 arcs that encompass all of them? This could then wrap up the Adventure series (unless I get the whim to revisit something). I kept thinking this through (you may have spotted the iterations on this very page) but ended up with something I actually really happy with and may be the one I keep expanding the most!

The six nefarious plots are:

Five aliens are lurking in history and you need to track them down.

Aliens are attempting to affect the Earth by targeting individuals they believe are pivotal to Earth’s history, sometimes correctly but sometimes having been misled by the Earth fiction they got their tentacles on.

Someone thinks it is highly amusing to pick points of Earth’s history and release the kind of horrifying creatures that the people of the time believed in. In fact you could argue that they were successful and that’s how the myths started in the first place!

A nebulous organisation directly opposed to you own, who instead of wanting to preserve history, want to bend it to their own will by trying to accelerate inventions by seeding them earlier into the timeline than they are supposed to be.

Alien shapeshifters are going back in time and running amok, trying to create rifts in the timeline.

The aliens have already succeeded, history has been changed, and the aliens have taken over. Your team was already in ‘transit’ back to base when the change kicked in and can still remember how things are supposed to be, and still have the technology needed to try and fix things, but now your access to special equipment and any replacement Team members is very limited.

Aiming for release by March 2026.

After that one I move on to what I’m calling Campaigns rather than Adventures - https://horrendousgaming.blogspot.com/p/horrendous-gamings-solo-military.html

If you are playing any of the games, I would love to hear from you, please send an email to hg.wargames@gmail.com

Other ways to follow Horrendous Gaming progress:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1307314304342804 - only a few people so far, please join if you are on Facebook.

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

Discord - ready to roll if enough people are interested.

Example games setup: