# Loner: Prime Time Hero *Created:* 2026-10-27, *Modified:* 2026-10-27 ![[Loner - Prime Time Hero (cover).jpg|300]] **Loner: Prime Time Hero** is the network-television dial on **[[Loner]]**, set in the 1980s of action-adventure TV — the decade of *MacGyver*, *Knight Rider* and *Magnum P.I.*, where the car has opinions, the duct tape is load-bearing, and the problem gets solved about ninety seconds before the credits. It's a *Geared Towards Loner* game in the line's usual sense: complete on its own, no other Loner book required, two pairs of differently coloured d6 and something to write on. ## Setting The world is a **heightened 1980s**: technology is cutting edge and stubbornly analog (green screens, car phones, gadgets with blinking lights), heroes have codes they don't break, innocent people come first, and exotic locations are always one flight away. Problems are personal — a developer leaning on a fishing village, a forged Monet at a Monte Carlo auction — and the people who should help won't. Style is a tool of the trade: fast cars, designer suits, and hair with structural integrity. The book sketches the decade with a timeline of headlines the hero's world grew out of, then sets playable themes on top: heists and corporate espionage, international intrigue with Cold War leftovers, small-town corruption, the little guy against the machine, personal vendettas, and fame and its price. Locations come in four flavours — tropical paradises, international cities, remote wilderness, and American hotspots — and the book suggests picking one as the series' home base and treating the rest as guest locations. Six factions do the heavy lifting: the **Meridian Corporation** (a respectable multinational conglomerate), the **Prometheus Institute** (a private think tank with a basement floor missing from the fire plan), the **Golden Triangle Cartel** (a transpacific smuggling empire), the **Phoenix Syndicate** (former East and West case officers now running heists for hire), the **Aurelian Society** (a patriotic cultural foundation), and the **Aegis Group**. Each is written up as a character — concept, skills, frailty, gear, goal, motive, nemesis — and a **Diplomatic Relationship Matrix** decides how one faction reacts when another's business lands in the middle of a scene. The bestiary runs to sixty-six foes, from the corporate executive and the corrupt deputy minister through arms dealers, rogue intelligence agents, exotic assassins, mercenary commanders, energy barons, media moguls and Hollywood fixers — and ends at number 66 with **The Hurricane**, a category-four storm written up as a character — concept, skills, frailty (*Has an Eye: an Hour of Calm in the Middle*) and gear — with a note that it isn't a character with a will but plays like one. The book is entirely serious about it, which is the correct call. ## Mechanics The engine is **Loner**'s Oracle, unchanged: ask a closed question, roll one **Chance die** and one **Risk die**. Chance higher is Yes, Risk higher is No, and a tie is *Yes, but…* plus a tick on the **Twist Counter**. When the dice are unequal, a second look sets the band — both rolls 3 or lower adds a *but…*, both 4 or higher adds an *and…*, so you get the full six-answer spread. **Advantage** rolls two Chance dice and keeps the highest, **Disadvantage** rolls two Risk dice and keeps the highest, they never stack past two dice and opposing tags cancel. At Twist Counter 3 the answer stays *Yes, but…*, a Twist fires off a 2d6 subject-and-action table, and the counter resets. ### Scenes and the episode Scenes open after three framing questions (where the hero is and how it feels, who's present, what the goal is) and close when the goal resolves, gets blocked, or is abandoned. Then you roll the **Scene Transition** — a dramatic scene that carries the pressure forward, a quiet scene to breathe and heal, or a *meanwhile* that cuts to whoever holds power over the situation and updates their tags. The **episode** is the campaign unit, and it doesn't need new bookkeeping because the acts read off the case track: a Cold Open, a named title sequence, Act I until the hero knows what the case is, Act II until one box is left (closing on a cliffhanger), Act III for the confrontation, then an epilogue. If a *Yes, and…* jumps the track from two boxes to full, the case cracks wide open and the confrontation is narrated without a second roll. ### Case Tracks and Status **Case Tracks** are four empty boxes for cases too big for one scene: mark two on a *Yes, and…*, one on a *Yes* or *Yes, but…*, none on a *No, but…*, erase one on a *No* or *No, and…*. Four filled boxes resolve the case with no final roll, and a track can run in reverse as a villain's countdown. The optional **Status Track** gives lasting consequences somewhere to live: three boxes per track (Physical, Social, Psychological) where the active tag escalates — Hurt becomes Injured becomes Broken — and only clears when the fiction supports recovery. Vehicles get their own track, re-skinned as Dented, Smoking, Totaled. **Conflicts** can be a single question, a series of questions, or **Harm & Luck**: Luck starts at 6, the oracle band decides who takes 1, 2 or 3 damage, and a conflict ends at 0 Luck, a withdrawal, or a dissolved opposition. It's player-facing, so the hero both deals and takes damage on the same roll. ### Improvised gadgets and Leverage The genre's signature move gets its own procedure: say what the gadget must do and what it's made of, ask the Oracle whether it works (a relevant skill grants Advantage, working under fire imposes Disadvantage), then write it as a tag — *Microwave EMP*, *Fire-Extinguisher Slick* — which is Gear for that scene only and grants Advantage when it bears. On *Yes, but…* it works once and dies; a gadget that outlives the episode becomes real Gear. **Leverage** lets you bank a *Yes, and…* instead of narrating the bonus: hold one, spend it for Advantage on the same pursuit later or to soften a *No* into a *No, but…*. ### Character Creation and series play A protagonist is a handful of tags: **name**, **concept** (adjective-noun pairings like *Rogue CIA Agent* or *Hawaiian Private Eye*), **two skills**, one **frailty**, **two pieces of gear**, a **goal** and **motive**, an optional **nemesis**, and **Luck 6**. The book provides d66 grids for concepts, skills, frailties, gear, names, surnames and nicknames if you'd rather roll than decide. For a series rather than a one-shot, **Supporting Cast** rules run a team in the A-Team mould — the specialist NPCs are characters with their own sheets, and when their tags fit the job they hand the protagonist Advantage. Series play adds recurring characters, planted story arcs, a **Reputation** tag that cuts both ways, and one trait added or rewritten at the end of each episode. Afterwards the **Living World** procedure updates every NPC, faction and location that mattered, because the world doesn't reset between sessions. ### The tables Roughly two-thirds of the book is generator: thirty-nine tables covering case hooks, locations, NPCs, complications, vehicle encounters, gadget inspiration, cold opens, episode titles, cliffhangers, plot twists, climax settings, epilogue outcomes, evidence, information sources, red herrings, witnesses, chases, stunts, social events, cover identities, blackmail, high-tech threats, surveillance, weather, period detail, and the verb-adjective-noun inspiration grids for open-ended questions. Roll a case, a villain, an episode title and a cliffhanger and the session is already running. ## Editions **Loner: Prime Time Hero** (2026) — a single release: a PDF on DriveThruRPG and a softcover on Amazon, both on October 27, 2026. *In the library.* ## References - [Loner: Prime Time Hero - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/590679/Loner-Prime-Time-Hero) - [Loner: Prime Time Hero arrives October 27 - Zotiquest Games](https://zotiquest.substack.com/p/loner-prime-time-hero-arrives-october) - [Loner SRD (free full text) - Zotiquest Games](https://lonersrd.zotiquestgames.com/) - [Loner - Official Website](https://loner.zotiquestgames.com/)