# Loner *Created:* 2025-09-21, *Modified:* 2026-11-10 ![[Loner - Omnibus (4e) (cover).jpg]] **Loner** is a solo, fiction-first RPG that hands you a pair of dice and a question and expects you to do the rest of the work yourself. Roberto Bisceglie's minimalist engine — published by Zotiquest Games — strips roleplaying down to an oracle and your own imagination: you ask yes/no questions, roll, and then make sense of the answers. It's built on the same bones as Nathan Russell's *Freeform Universal*, and it's the quiet little engine that spawned a whole line of supplements, plus the multiplayer spin-off **[[Ensemble]]**. If you've ever wanted to play a game where the only other person at the table is you, this is it. The whole line ships open: the core rules, every genre supplement, and the SRD are released under a **Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 4.0)** license. ## Setting **Loner** has no fixed world, and that's the design rather than an omission. The fourth edition opens by telling you to choose a genre or setting — one from a favourite series, a genre you're curious about, a pile of randomly generated tropes, or one of the adventure packs — and then lets the world take shape around the character as you play. What it supplies instead of a map is a **premise**: you play one Protagonist, defined by a few descriptive tags and a goal, moving through an uncertain world with nobody else at the table to say what happens. The Oracle answers; you interpret. That makes the setting a question of tone more than geography. The core book's examples are modern and grounded — a bounty hunter forcing a security hatch, a scholar decrypting stolen files — but the same engine carries the line's adventure packs across feudal Japan, a mech-fractured 2300s, dungeon ruins, deep space, Norse sagas, the Cthulhu Mythos and 1980s network television. **[[Ensemble]]** takes the engine to the group table, and the core book's conversion notes say which parts of an Ensemble game port back. The solo premise is stated plainly and doesn't oversell itself: there is no pre-written story, the world is not fixed at the start, and the Oracle exists to introduce uncertainty where you might otherwise just decide the answer. No GM, no hidden information, no referee — the game asks you to be a fair narrator to yourself. ## Mechanics ### The Oracle Two pairs of differently coloured d6: two **Chance Dice** for you, two **Risk Dice** for the world. Ask a yes/no question and roll one of each. Chance higher is **Yes**, Risk higher is **No**, and equal dice are **Yes, but…** plus one point on the Twist Counter. When the dice aren't equal, read them together — both 3 or less adds a *but…*, both 4 or more adds an *and…* — which gives the full ladder from *Yes, and…* to *No, and…*. Questions are framed so that *Yes, and…* is the best possible outcome, from the Protagonist's point of view: *"Does Zahra slip past the guards undetected?"* rather than *"Is a guard blocking her path?"* ### Advantage and Disadvantage Tags do the work numbers do elsewhere. A relevant tag or circumstance grants **Advantage** (roll two Chance dice, keep the highest) or **Disadvantage** (two Risk dice, keep the highest). They cap at one die each and don't stack; having both cancels to a plain roll. The October 2026 revision of the Omnibus exists mostly to say that cap out loud. ### The Twist Doubles add one to the **Twist Counter**. At three, the counter resets to zero and you roll 2d6 on the Twist Table — a subject and an action — and interpret the turn through the fiction. **Twist Intensity** calibrates how hard it lands against the pressure the story has already built. Harm & Luck conflicts suspend the counter entirely: there, tension accumulates through Luck loss rather than doubles. ### Harm and Luck **Luck** is conflict-scoped resilience: 6 for every character, reset at the start and end of each conflict. Ask from the Protagonist's side — a *Yes, and…* deals 3 damage, *Yes* 2, *Yes, but…* 1, and the opposition's answers mirror it. At 0 Luck a character is defeated: knocked out, conceding, or losing the quarry. Withdrawing is always allowed and never free — the fiction sets the price, and the reset restores Luck, never position. ### Optional Modules The fourth edition's additions are all optional. **Challenge Tracks** are four-box records for arcs too big for one oracle throw, advanced only when something actually changes in the fiction. **Leverage** banks a *Yes, and…* to spend later as Advantage, or to turn a No into *No, but…*. The **Status Track** is three boxes of lasting harm with escalating tags across the physical, social and psychological. The **Living World** is a post-adventure pass over NPCs, locations and events so the world remembers what happened. ### Character Creation Eight steps: a name, a **Concept** as a one-line label, two **Skills** that grant narrative permission rather than bonuses, a **Frailty**, two pieces of **Gear**, a **Goal** and **Motive**, an optional **Nemesis**, and 6 Luck. Everything is a tag — characters, places, objects, even curses — and in 4e relationships with NPCs earn tags through play like any other. ### Scenes 4e formalizes the loop. Open with a **Dramatic Scene** dropped into the action, or **Build the Setup** from the 5W+H table; **frame** where you are, who's present and what the scene's goal is; ask questions until the goal is resolved, blocked or abandoned; then close the scene and roll the Scene Transition. The optional **Meanwhile** procedure cuts to whoever holds power, updates their tags, and asks whether an ally acts independently. ## Editions - **First edition** — the original short document, put online as-is. The third edition's afterword calls its tone rigid and overly technical. - **Second edition** — three times longer, with diagrams and examples, grown out of the Italian solo community's questions (*Ruolatori Solitari*). - **Third edition** — the rules unchanged but the presentation completely reworked for clarity; adds the **Companion**, **Character Builder's Guide** and **World Builder's Guide**, plus *Appendix A: Loner Diceless*, a decision-matrix resolution with no dice. - **Fourth edition (September 2026)** — the oracle, tags, Advantage, the Twist Counter and Luck all unchanged; adds scene framing and closing, Relationships, Dead Ends, Meanwhile, Twist Intensity, the optional Challenge Tracks, Leverage and Status Track, The Living World, and appendices including a Step Dice Oracle and a Resolution Matrix. Four volumes: **Core Rules**, **Companion**, **World Builder's Guide**, **Character Builder's Guide**. - **Fourth edition, revised (October 2026)** — the Omnibus grows from 279 to 287 pages, mostly the Advantage/Disadvantage cap. *Current.* The two fourth-edition builds are held side by side, because the library archives builds rather than overwriting them; the **Omnibus** is the four volumes in one file. ## The Loner Line **Loner** has grown into a small empire of supplements, each a genre dial on the same core engine. The core rules come as **Loner**, collected in 4e as the **Loner Omnibus** (Core Rules, Companion, World Builder's Guide, Character Builder's Guide in one volume); the rest are standalone adventure packs that bolt a genre onto the Oracle. Each pack now has its own standing entry in this reference directory — see the full write-ups below. ![[Loner - Cinematic Action (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner Cthulhu (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Dungeoneer (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Galaxy Drifter (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Kwaidan (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Kwaidan Revised (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Mech Requiem (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Norse Saga (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Paranormal Files (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Rocketpunk (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Prime Time Hero (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Spacer (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Steel & Sorcery (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - The Path Not Taken (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - The Shattered Reach (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Urban Fantasy (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - World Builder's Guide (4e) (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Omnibus (4e) (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Omnibus (3e) (cover).jpg]] ![[Loner - Concord Arcology (cover).jpg]] - **[[Loner]]** — the core rules (now 4th edition) and the **Loner Omnibus** compilation, which in 4e bundles all four volumes. - **[[Loner - Kwaidan|Loner: Kwaidan!]]** (2023) — feudal Japan steeped in Japanese folklore: ghosts, demons, and yokai haunting a world of warring clans. - **[[Loner - Mech Requiem|Loner: Mech Requiem]]** (2024) — a 2300s Earth fractured by proxy wars, fought through advanced mechs. - **[[Loner - Steel & Sorcery|Loner: Steel & Sorcery]]** (2025) — dark, gritty fantasy: ancient ruins, corrupt cities, and wild frontiers where magic is rare and dangerous. - **[[Loner - Dungeoneer|Loner: Dungeoneer]]** (2025) — solo dungeon crawling: delve into ruins and lairs, face traps and monsters, and haul out treasure. - **[[Loner - Spacer|Loner: Spacer]]** (2025) — a lone starfarer navigating the cosmos as trader, explorer, or outlaw. - **[[Loner - Paranormal Files|Loner: Paranormal Files]]** (2025) — paranormal investigation: conspiracies, classified incidents, and reality-warping anomalies. - **[[Loner - Concord Arcology|Loner: Concord Arcology]]** (2025) — an independent production by Dwarfmine Entertainment: the last bright city in a dead world, a sealed vertical metropolis where life is curated, monitored, and quietly timed out. - **[[Loner - Kwaidan Revised|Loner: Kwaidan Revised]]** (2025) — the revised edition of Kwaidan: wandering exorcists, cursed warriors, and lost souls in a realm of spirits, curses, and karmic fate. - **[[Loner - The Shattered Reach|Loner: The Shattered Reach]]** (2025) — a fractured sector of space where colonies struggle to survive political strife, environmental hazards, and an ancient alien presence. - **[[Loner - Galaxy Drifter|Loner: Galaxy Drifter]]** (2026) — far-future spacefaring: a lone wanderer crossing a galaxy of ancient ship routes, seeking passage to the next world. - **[[Loner - Urban Fantasy|Loner: Urban Fantasy]]** (2026) — contemporary cities where magic bleeds through the cracks of mundane reality. - **[[Loner - Norse Saga|Loner: Norse Saga]]** (2026) — the Viking Age: honor, blood feuds, raiding, settlement, and blood vengeance, reputation built through deeds. - **[[Loner - The Path Not Taken|Loner: The Path Not Taken]]** (2026) — adds Loop Mode (repeat a stretch of story for a better outcome) and Leap Mode (jump to an alternate timeline), tracked on a time-web. - **[[Loner - Cinematic Action|Loner: Cinematic Action]]** (2026) — action-movie heroics: Action Points, a stunt system, chases and pursuits, and momentum/pacing rules for physics-bending, over-the-top action. - **[[Loner - Cthulhu!|Loner: Cthulhu!]]** (2026) — cosmic horror; investigators who delve into mysteries that challenge their sanity and reveal humanity's place in an indifferent universe. - **[[Loner - Rocketpunk|Loner: Rocketpunk]]** (2026) — an alternate 2026 where the space race never ended; hard sci-fi with a retro aesthetic, the Cold War continuing in orbit. - **[[Loner - Prime Time Hero|Loner: Prime Time Hero]]** (2026) — 1980s network action-adventure: a hero with a code, a ride and a case of the week, played as an episode with Case Tracks, Harm & Luck conflicts, improvised gadgets, and a thriller's worth of generator tables. - **[[Loner - World Builder's Guide|Loner: World Builder's Guide]]** (2025–2026) — worldbuilding tools: settings, character archetypes, locations, and adapting existing worlds. > [!note] Editor's Note > > Other packs exist outside this collection (e.g. **Pulp Heroes**, **Savage Blades of Xylandra**, **Loner Files: Signal Zero**); they aren't in the library, so they don't have notes here yet. ## References - [Loner Official Website - Zotiquest Games](https://loner.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner SRD (free full text) - Zotiquest Games](https://lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner - Core Rules (4th Edition) - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/427674/loner-core-rules-4th-edition) - [Loner - All Products Bundle (Omnibus) - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/495049/loner-all-products-bundle) - [Loner Assistant (web app) - Zotiquest Games](https://lonerassistant.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner Assistant - GitHub (loner-obsidian)](https://github.com/zotiquestgames/loner-obsidian) - [Zotiquest Games - itch.io](https://zeruhur.itch.io/) - [Zotiquest Games Newsletter - Substack](https://zotiquest.substack.com/) > [!note] Editor's Note > > **Loner** is based on the mechanics found in **[[FU RPG|Freeform Universal]]**, which is pretty fantastic and you should probably check it out too.