Why You Shouldn’t Read Past Page 21 of Undaunted
A procedurally written rulebook that reveals itself during play
When I wrote Undaunted, the solo rules for Adventurous, I made a very deliberate choice: you should not have to read the whole book before you can start playing.
In fact, you do not need to read past page 21 at all.
That might sound strange, because most TTRPG books are not written that way. Usually, you are expected to read a large chunk of the rules up front, understand how the systems fit together, and only then begin play. That makes sense when you have a GM, because someone at the table is carrying that burden for everyone else.
But solo play is different.
In solo play, you are the player, but you are also the one responsible for running the game. That means every bit of friction matters. Every time the rules make you stop, search, interpret, or prepare things you do not yet need, the game loses momentum. And in solo play, momentum is everything.
That is why Undaunted is written the way it is.
Pages 1-21 contain the rules you actually need to begin. After that, the book is designed to guide you to the right chapter, table, or procedure only when it becomes relevant. You do not need to study the rest in advance. You do not need to memorize the structure. You do not need to prepare the world in detail before you begin.
You just start, and the rules take over from there.
The Book Is Meant to Be Used, Not Read Cover to Cover
I think the best way to explain Undaunted is this: it is procedurally written.
Just like the world is procedurally generated as you play, the rules themselves are revealed as needed. You are not meant to absorb the entire system first. You are meant to follow it. That is a big difference.
When you begin a campaign, the world generation step gives you the outline of the world. You establish terrain, place settlements, draw rivers, and connect roads. But that is all. You do not stop and fully define every settlement. You do not need to know the name of each place, who rules it, what shops it contains, or what kind of people live there. That comes later, when it actually matters.
When you reach a new settlement in play, the system tells you to go to the settlement generation rules and fill in those blanks. That is when you roll for things like the settlement’s name, its type of rule, its establishments, and other important traits. Not before.
The same is true for dungeons.
You do not place a bunch of dungeons on the map during world creation. You discover points of interest through play. When you learn of a dungeon and travel there, that is when the system tells you to go to the dungeon chapter and generate what needs to be generated.
And even then, you are not preparing the dungeon in full before entering it. You explore it room by room.
Again, only when needed.
The same pattern continues through the entire ruleset. Wilderness travel is not something you prepare beforehand. You use the move; Travel the Lands, resolve the outcome, and the move tells you what happens next. Encounters are not something you need to read up on in advance. When a move, room, event, or mishap tells you to roll an encounter, that is when you flip to the Encounters chapter and do it. There is no need to read the encounters chapter beforehand.
That is the entire philosophy of the book.
It does not ask you to hold the whole game in your head. It carries that burden for you.
The Moves Are the Real Heart of the System
This structure only works because the moves do so much heavy lifting.
The moves are not just there to resolve uncertainty. They are also what drive the game forward and tell you what to do next. In many ways, they are the real engine of Undaunted.
One important design choice here is that I chose to build the solo rules around moves, rather than procedures. They are very similar concepts in many ways. Both are triggered in specific situations. Both tell you how to resolve what happens next. But there is a key difference, and it matters a lot in solo play.
Procedures require you to know that they exist and how to interact with them.
You need to have read the book, understood when each procedure applies, and remembered that it is something you should be using in a given situation. That creates friction. It forces you to carry a mental model of the system before you can even play it properly.
Moves remove that problem.
The moves are the heart of the system. Whenever you get stuck or wonder what to do, the answer is in the moves. You want to find opportunities in a settlement? Use Explore a Settlement. You want to uncover secrets in a dungeon room? Use Search & Discover. You want to advance to the next day? Use Rest & Recover.
It is much easier to glance at a list of 15 moves than it is to learn the ins and outs of a wide set of procedures, when to use them, how they interact, and how each one is resolved.
You do not need to hold the system in your head. You follow the moves.
They tell you what to roll, what happens, and often where to go next. Sometimes that means flipping to the dungeon generation chapter. Sometimes it leads you into the Bond system. Sometimes it simply tells you to take damage and move on.
That is why I chose moves over procedures, even if they share a lot of similarities.
They lower the barrier to play, and they keep the game moving.
There is a move for the core procedures and phases of play. There is a move for traveling through the wild. A move for exploring a settlement. A move for pressing deeper into a dungeon. A move for resting for the night. A move for searching a room or an area. A move for handling encounters. A move for progressing quests. A move for claiming treasure. A move for relationships and favors.
That is what makes the system work without frontloading the whole book.
You do not have to wonder which subsystem applies or remember some tucked-away rule from page 63. You look at the moves, identify what kind of situation you are in, roll, and follow the result.
And the best thing is, Undaunted only features 15 moves, that cover all the bases.
I have no interest in bloating that list. Too many moves defeats the purpose of writing the book this way. It becomes harder to scan, harder to remember, and harder to use in the moment.
The strength of the system is that you can glance at the moves and immediately understand what your options are. That breaks down if the list grows too large.
That said, I am open to expanding it slightly if something is clearly missing. But that bar is high. I might stretch it to a maximum of 20 moves, and only if each addition is well motivated and earns its place.
Here are the moves, and what they are for:
Face a Challenge
Used whenever you attempt something risky, difficult, or dangerous that is not already covered by a more specific move. This is the broad default move, and you will use it constantly.Suffer the Consequences
Used when failure leads to fallout that is not already specified. This handles the bad outcomes in a clear and concrete way.Face an Encounter
Used when you come across a creature or possible encounter and need to determine what kind of situation you are walking into.Explore a Dungeon
Used when you push forward into a new dungeon area. This is what drives room-by-room dungeon exploration.Explore a Settlement
Used when you spend the day looking for people, places, rumors, and opportunities in a settlement.Travel the Lands
Used when you move from one hex to another while traveling through the wilderness and looking for food and water along the way.Rest & Recover
Used when you rest for the night, whether in the wild or in a settlement.Search & Discover
Used when you search a dungeon room or a wilderness area for something useful, valuable, or interesting.Flee from the Enemy
Used when you attempt to escape from hostile forces.Strengthen a Bond
Used when you try to establish or improve a relationship after shared hardship or meaningful experiences.Test a Bond
Used when a relationship is put under strain by danger, betrayal, disagreement, or fallout.Ask a Favor
Used when you call in help from someone you share a bond with.Progress a Quest
Used when you fulfill a quest objective and want to see how much closer you are to completion.Complete a Quest
Used when all quest objectives are fulfilled and it is time to resolve the quest as a whole.Claim the Prize
Used when you finally lay eyes on a major treasure or reward and want to determine how great it really is.
When you look at that list, I think the intent becomes very clear. There is always a move to help you push forward. The rules are not asking you to improvise structure out of thin air. The structure is already there.
Clear Outcomes Make All the Difference
This is the part I am most proud of, and I think it is a major reason why this whole approach works.
The outcomes of the moves are very clear and very specific.
That matters a lot in solo play.
One of the things I often dislike in solo systems is vague move outcomes like “introduce a danger,” “create a complication,” or “something goes wrong.” I understand why those phrases exist, but I do not think they do enough. They create hesitation. They push too much interpretation back onto the player. And in solo play, the player is already carrying enough.
Undaunted works differently.
The moves tell you exactly what happens. You take damage (it actually tells you how much). You lose Luck. You gain a Condition. You trigger an encounter. You increase Doom. You generate a rumor. You discover a point of interest. You find food and water. You fail to reach the next hex.
That level of specificity makes all the difference, because it means you can trust the system.
You are not stopping to invent a fair consequence. You are not trying to decide what would be dramatic enough, but not too dramatic. You are not negotiating with yourself. The game resolves the outcome and hands it to you.
That clarity is also what allows the book to guide you so effectively. Because the outcomes are precise, they can point you directly to the next relevant rule, table, or chapter.
The system does not just say that something happened. It tells you what happened, and where to go next.
A Simple Example
Let’s say you have spent the day traveling through the wild. You reached a new hex, maybe gathered some useful herbs, maybe had a rough time getting there. Evening comes, and now you wonder: what are the rules for making camp?
In a more traditional book, that question might send you flipping through pages trying to remember where resting is handled. In Undaunted, you do not need to wonder. You just check the moves.
Resting for the night means you use Rest & Recover.
That move tells you what to roll depending on the situation. Camping in the wild uses one dice pool. Camping with a tent improves it. Resting at an inn improves it even further. The outcome then tells you exactly what happens. Maybe you recover some HP. Maybe you gain Luck. Maybe you strengthen a bond with a companion. Or maybe you recover, but a nightly encounter is triggered.
If that happens, the book has already told you what to do next. You roll an encounter and go to the encounter rules.
That is how the whole game is written.
Not as a giant body of rules you need to master first, but as a sequence of procedures that unfold when play reaches them.
Why I Wrote It This Way
The deeper reason is simple.
I want solo play to feel playable.
That might sound obvious, but I mean it in a very specific way. I want it to feel smooth. I want it to feel like the game is carrying some of the weight for you. I want you to spend your energy making decisions, taking risks, and reacting to what happens, not on trying to remember how the rulebook is organized.
Solo play already asks a lot from the player. You are engaging with the fiction, resolving mechanics, keeping track of procedures, and often surprising yourself along the way. The system should help with that, not make it harder.
That is why I think “don’t read past page 21” is not just a funny line. It gets at something real about how Undaunted is designed.
The book is built to meet you in the moment.
You do not need to know the settlement generation rules until you arrive at a new settlement. You do not need to know the dungeon generation rules until you discover a dungeon. You do not need to know the encounter tables until something tells you to roll on them.
You only need to know enough to begin.
After that, the procedures and moves take over.
Final Thought
If you buy Undaunted and immediately start reading deep into every later chapter, you are not doing anything wrong. But you are also not using the book the way it was designed to be used.
You really can stop at page 21. That is enough to start.
From there, the system will guide you to what you need, when you need it, one step at a time. And I think that is one of the things that makes Undaunted feel a little different from most other TTRPG books.
It is not just procedurally generated.
It is procedurally written.
Thank you for reading, I hope you got something of value from this post. If you are not yet subscribed, please consider doing so, just hit the button below.
And don’t forget to check out our games, modules and expansions on DriveThruRPG. There you’ll find Undaunted, but also Shadowdark modules and supplements, as well as system neutral adventure modules.
Only thing I would disagree with is that you don't chose a move. You trigger a move based on the actions you take. I decide that my character goes into the dungeon and that triggers the move. I find it's a small but important distinction to ensure a fiction first approach. Other than that, excited for my copy to arrive. I flipped through undaunted and I like it so far
Thank you for this gem!