Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Scarlet Heroes
Scarlet Heroes is an old-school tabletop role-playing game designed by Kevin Crawford and published by Sine Nomine Publishing in 2014. Built on the chassis of early fantasy role-playing games, it is explicitly engineered to support "duet" play (one Game Master and one player) or completely un-GMed solo play. The system functions both as a standalone game and as a mechanical conversion overlay, allowing a single player character to survive and conquer classic modules written for a full party of four to six adventurers without any structural modifications to the adventure itself.
Description
The default setting for Scarlet Heroes is the Red Tide, a dark, sword-and-sorcery fantasy world where the remnants of humanity have fled to an isolated archipelago known as the Sunset Isles to escape a world-devouring crimson mist. In this setting, players choose from traditional fantasy heritages and step into classic archetypes: the Fighter, Cleric, Thief, or Magic-User. However, the true focus of the ruleset is its revolutionary math-rebalancing engine. Traditional early-edition fantasy games are notoriously lethal for solo characters due to the "action economy" favoring groups of monsters. Scarlet Heroes alters how standard numbers are interpreted, transforming a single baseline character into a legendary epic hero who can cleave through hordes of lesser foes while preserving the danger of boss monsters.
Links
sine-nomine-publishing.myshopify.com - Official website
drivethrurpg.com - Drive Thru RPG shop page