Scherzo

Scherzo is a story-first OSR-compatible solo retroclone, inspired by World of Dungeons and Into the Odd, with a dash of Scarlet Heroes. It can also be run as a duet or with several players, with or without a GM.

Play is light and swingy, and often abruptly dangerous; expect reversals of fortune frequently. The core mechanic is roll under one or more stats, using pbta tiers of success. Character generation is quick, descriptive, and sentence-based. HP is minimal.

The core booklet has all the mechanics you need to play with a light adventure theme. Perfected First is a lyrical dungeon crawl, and Anomaly-Two is cargo-hauling blasters-and-mutants space fiction.

It was created for NaNo-make-a-game-O, entirely in the month of November, from inspiration to publication (including art, layout, and solo testing). The title is a reference to the musical term, for a light, playful work that can be occasionally surprisingly grim and weighty. Have fun!

Note: spreads are designed to be print-friendly, but the 1up version is probably better for digital reading!