Her Odyssey is a solo journaling game built on the Caltrop Core system. All you need to play it is at least 1 d4, though 5 is recommended, a full deck of playing cards including the jokers, and somewhere to write your story.

Her Odyssey is a solo journaling RPG about a wanderer trying to return home… or find a new home.

For now, this is more of a journal of my first play through than a review. Her Odyssey can be played in a few hours, or over the course of weeks. My review will be posted once I’ve played it for a while.

First thoughts:
The art and photography in it are both beautiful. It is well written with easy to understand rules and descriptions.

You start out by creating your wanderer.

You start with assigning your stat points. There are three stats in this game. You have eleven points to distribute between them, giving them between 1 and 5 points.

Who is your wanderer?

The next thing we do is describe our wanderer. The text is written with she/her pronouns, which coming from the broader ttrpg community, is refreshing. But, as I use he/him pronouns, that is what I will go with for my wanderer on this play through. I don’t know that I could do justice to playing a she/her character on my first play through.

My wanderer is Alex Havel. Alex uses he/him pronouns.
Alex seeks a place he can finally call home, where he can settle in, and quit looking over his shoulder all the time.
Alex left behind everything. His friends, his family. He sold or gave away all his belongings, and bought everything he needed to set off.
Many question why Alex chose this life. Though he probably wont tell you, the reason is guilt. Alex had it all. He had a good job, a good life, and a wonderful fiancé, Jane. But when Alex’s younger brother died in a bar fight gone wrong, when Alex failed to protect him, Alex crawled into the bottle and didn’t come back out until he lost everything and drove everyone away.

So, how is this game played?
Each day (or however often you play it, its up to you), you draw a card, this tells you what Hazard your wanderer will face for that day. Each suit represents a different group of hazards, there are a group of hazard prompts for each suit. Then the number of the card 1-13 tells you how difficult that days journey will be.
Then, you spend some time contemplating the hazard prompt you’ve received, you make some rolls, using the stats you feel are appropriate for the hazard, and see how your wanderer did.
There is more to it than that, but that is the basics of it.

I will be creating a new post for each day of this game, they will be linked below if you want to follow Alex’s journey.