In Dedboi – a solo RPG by Critical Kit and created by Tim Roberts – you wake up dead with no memories and 12 hours to piece together who you were in life and the circumstances of your death.

Each hour reveal 3 cards which send you to a new location in heaven, hell or the land of the living, with a new encounter and a new clue. After hour 12, present evidence to the Powers That Be to convince them to return your soul to the land of the living.

NOTE: my thoughts are from the perspective of a first-time solo RPG-er and how I found the experience, rather than a full critique as this was all new to me! If you’ve never played a solo RPG swipe keep scrolling for some advice I’d offer after my first experience! 

My thoughts

How to play is simple and clearly set out in the book which tells you your location, encounter and clue based on the cards flipped each hour, and includes reference tables to help you flesh out those elements. 

There’s no character creation at the start of the game, instead you discover your character’s traits and history as the story progresses. Having never created a character for an RPG before, this is something I think you miss if this is your first game and I’m not sure how well evolved my character became

You get to choose your own setting, so the world your character inhabits is yours to build, with the help of prompt tables if you get a little stuck

You have 3 abilities of varying strength – mind, body and spirit so as the story progresses you’ll learn your own strength and weaknesses…even if you do then forget to use them!

There’s a prompt table provided for Q&As, but I used the jab a finger in a book method which I found gave me and my complete lack of imagination more to work with

I loved how some of the clues and locations worked so well with my developing story – I even bumped into the same demon twice (whaddup, Quelthar). Similarly some things just didn’t click, but there’s no pressure to make them work and in those instances I just moved to the next hour. I found it fascinating how I was simultaneously creating the story but shocked by events that unfolded!

Advice for a first time solo RPG-er

As someone who loves rules and structure, Dedboi took me right out of my comfort zone. I want to know how to play a game, what are the strategies, how do I WIN and this gives you none of that. After my first game, these are my pieces of advice to anyone setting off on their first RPG journey, briefly summarised as: there are no rules here.

The thing I struggled with the most was my apparent complete lack of imagination. Sometimes I’d have several prompts which sparked nothing for me and felt that I was somehow failing at the game. What I learned though was that there are no rules – if a prompt doesn’t fit, don’t feel like you have to force it, just keep rolling and something will come along that moves your story forward. I used pointing a finger in a book and dragging it down the page until a word or phrase clicked and this worked better for me than the prompt table. Again – no rules.

While there’s also no right or wrong with speed, I think I took the story too slowly initially, spending 2 real world hours on my first 2 “hours” of the game, almost trying to solve the entire mystery in a single round rather than let it play out naturally. Find a pace and process that works for you – if that means spending an hour on one round, and 3 minutes on another, or journaling every thought or just the odd bullet – that’s absolutely fine.

Don’t forget your abilities! About 2 hours into my story, I realised I’d completely forgotten I was meant to discover and use abilities. How do I use my spirit? I should be doing something with my body?! While these were confusing to me at first and opportunities to use them didn’t come organically this improved as the story progressed and helped open the world up from purely interrogating my encounters.

Overall I’m still undecided on whether RPGs are for me. There were moments I got really excited about the story, or would find myself thinking about it outside of a session, but equally moments where I felt so lacking in direction that it felt more like work than fun. But I’ll be giving Dedboi another go at some point and see if my next adventure makes up my mind!

Disclaimer: Dedboi was gifted to me by the publisher for review purposes, but all thoughts are my own.