Lost at Sea is a tarot based game about a ship trying to find land in a vast and unforgiving ocean. You have until 4 setbacks or 5 successes to end your voyage.
This game doesn’t have any concrete prompts, instead you are given the interpretation of the tarot cards, both the Suits and the Rank, to choose what happens.
After you draw the card you roll 2d10, if both dice are higher than the rank of the card, you have a full success. If one die is higher, you gain spirit, and if both are under, you have a setback.
The Major Arcana and Face Cards are also interesting since you don’t roll for these cards. Instead if you draw the card Upright, it’s an automatic success. If you draw it Reverse, it’s a failure.
Throughout the game you can also gain spirit through mixed successes. At any time you can use your spirit to gain an equal amount points towards one of your dice rolls to change the roll to a success, but afterwards your spirit is reduced to 0.
This game is good for people who don’t want prompts that are set in stone and would like looser guidance for their story. I also really enjoyed the mechanics of rolling against the value of the card and I think it has really good potential to be used other solo TTRPGs.
I had a little trouble reading the font on the PDF, but there is a plain text version works perfect as a substitute.
Unfortunately my ship didn’t make it through its journey and was lost to sea after the crew mutinied against their captain. You can read the playthrough Here
Hey, I've only just seen this (2022 was a really crazy year for me) and I wanted to say I really appreciated your review and I thoroughly enjoyed reading your playthrough. The game is balanced towards failure so I'm not surprised your playthrough ended the way it did, but I thought your log and interpretation of the prompts was very thoughtfully handled. When I wrote the game I'd always envisioned the expedition as a lonely affair, a single soul aboard a ship no bigger than a life raft, so your take on it involving a full sailing ship and crew was refreshing to read.
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Lost at Sea is a tarot based game about a ship trying to find land in a vast and unforgiving ocean. You have until 4 setbacks or 5 successes to end your voyage.
This game doesn’t have any concrete prompts, instead you are given the interpretation of the tarot cards, both the Suits and the Rank, to choose what happens.
After you draw the card you roll 2d10, if both dice are higher than the rank of the card, you have a full success. If one die is higher, you gain spirit, and if both are under, you have a setback.
The Major Arcana and Face Cards are also interesting since you don’t roll for these cards. Instead if you draw the card Upright, it’s an automatic success. If you draw it Reverse, it’s a failure.
Throughout the game you can also gain spirit through mixed successes. At any time you can use your spirit to gain an equal amount points towards one of your dice rolls to change the roll to a success, but afterwards your spirit is reduced to 0.
This game is good for people who don’t want prompts that are set in stone and would like looser guidance for their story. I also really enjoyed the mechanics of rolling against the value of the card and I think it has really good potential to be used other solo TTRPGs.
I had a little trouble reading the font on the PDF, but there is a plain text version works perfect as a substitute.
Unfortunately my ship didn’t make it through its journey and was lost to sea after the crew mutinied against their captain. You can read the playthrough Here
Hey, I've only just seen this (2022 was a really crazy year for me) and I wanted to say I really appreciated your review and I thoroughly enjoyed reading your playthrough. The game is balanced towards failure so I'm not surprised your playthrough ended the way it did, but I thought your log and interpretation of the prompts was very thoughtfully handled. When I wrote the game I'd always envisioned the expedition as a lonely affair, a single soul aboard a ship no bigger than a life raft, so your take on it involving a full sailing ship and crew was refreshing to read.