Modification of solo rules

Sometimes it can become more of a challenge to find other players than it can to find cards. It would be a shame to let your cards to go to waste, wouldn't it? There's a solo variant in TWH rules (the booklet rules) near the very end. They go something like this:

"Play 10 Leagues per Quest attempted instead of the normal five.  Additionally, select the least convenient Base Camp, Treasure Leagues and objective Leagues for the Quest. Although you select your own Waylays, you must select a minimum number in points equal to your Quest's Waylay Rating.  If you can't evenly match the Waylay Rating with the ratings of cards available, you must exceed the Waylay Rating if possible.  Once selected, your Waylays are shuffled and placed face down in a pile.  Each time you move into a new League, draw the top Waylay Card from the pile.  If the Waylay can be played on the League's Terrain, you automatically encounter it there.  If the Waylay cannot be played, it goes to the bottom of the Waylay deck.  Of course, in Tests you must roll for both your character and the Waylay encountered."

There's a couple of problems with this version:

• Some cards require that your opponent make a choice...for instance, the Waylay Assjack, if failed, allows your opponent to choose which League to move you in. There are several other cards like this that require a decision to be made.
• The "Day" unit of measure becomes irrelevant. A Day signifies a player's turn ends and passes to the next player, so if there is no other player, it doesn't really matter whether you measure your actions in Days.
• Since you pick the Waylays you face, you know what's coming and can choose cards in your favor.
• Winning the game is based on one character completing their Quest before the other. If you're playing solo, how exactly do you win when your character is the only one? You basically "win" every time because there's nobody else who can!

How do we solve these problems?

• The first is most easily solved - whenever a card requires your opponent to make a choice, you analyze the possible choices, assign a number to each, and roll dice, accepting the outcome. 
• The irrelevance of the "day" can also be easily solved by imposing a time limit. You could use, say, 30 days as a maximum...if you have not completed your quest by the end of the 30th day, you lose!
• And thus we have solved the winning and losing problem as well. By making your victory dependent on days, you're basically in a race against time. You could also add another condition: if you ever exhaust all your Merits and then lose a Test, instead of discarding Merits, you lose the game. 
• The last problem unsolved is choosing your own Waylays. A better way would be to gather up the Waylays you possess and sort them into piles by cost...all the Waylays with a cost of 1 in the first pile, those with a cost of two in the second pile, etc (keep them face down). Shuffle each pile separately. Now pick out your Waylay points however you see fit. For instance, the Quest Prove Yourself has 14 points of Waylays, so you might select the top 2 cards of Deck 4 (cost of 8), the top card of Deck 3 (cost of 3), the top card of Deck 2 (cost of 2), and the top card of Deck 1 (cost of 1). You now hold 14 points of Waylays to match the Quest. These 5 cards are now shuffled, and Waylays are played as described in the solo rules above. 

I hope you find these modified rules more challenging and enjoyable. Feel free to tinker with the win conditions until they feel right. In my next post, we'll look at a very specific solo variant.