Solo Dragon Warriors

This random encounter lacks balance

Currently I have time for one campaign. Prep time and play time enough for one session a week which is on a Sunday evening. As many of us would I would like to have more gaming time. My friend Alex is an advocate of playing solo RPG. I have been aware of this. For example The One Ring RPG has Strider Mode which is a supplement for you to play alone. 

Playing this way, as both player and GM, flies in the face of my preferred play style. I’m a traditional sort of gamer, I like the GM to provide the setting and the PCs to explore it. Having control of both sides of the equation is to have total authorial control of the game and we’re into the territory of the types of story games that are not to my taste. However I’m firmly of the opinion that unless you try something, your opinion on the matter is fairly inconsequential. For example when I was trying to get a game of BECMI D&D going at an RPG club in the city almost about ten years ago, I struggled for players. So instead I ended up joining a table playing FATE Accelerated every week for fourteen weeks. So I can unequivocally state: I despise FATE. 

So how does this solo thing work? I always want a Legend based game on the go. Dragon Warriors is in my blood after all. I mean for so many reasons, not just because it was my first RPG but the pull of nostalgia is strong. Also this is a setting that lives large in my brain, so imagining myself into it is less of a stretch than something more esoteric like Tékumel. 

In order to get started I took a lot of inspiration from Ironsworn, which is good and free; and conveniently also depicts a downbeat, pseudo Dark Age, low fantasy setting. For solo play Ironsworn uses Oracles, or random tables as I prefer to call to them, to provide prompts from

which to construct the scenario which your character is going to experience. I have conveniently created my own Spark Tables which will come into play here  Also as the themes on Ironsworn are somewhat similar to Dragon Warriors the tables therein don’t require much adaptation for Legend. Random Encounter tables and B/X D&D style reaction rolls are going to be extremely useful as well. 

For mechanics I’m intending on taking a fairly FKR approach to resolutions. There will already be potentially quite a lot of dice rolling involved in consulting tables for scenario construction and developing the environment. I don’t want to get bogged down with mechanics. Ironsworn uses a PBTA approach but fortunately the tables are system agnostic so I can divest myself of those rules and use my own. 

Basically I’ll keep everything to a 2d6 (with bonuses) roll as much as possible and add relevant rules as they come up. 

I’m going to journal the adventure as it transpires. It won’t be literature, or even a play report just recording what happens in whatever format suits at the time. The whole point of this is to be flexible, having short spells of gaming in random slots of free time and seeing where it goes. There is definitely space in my psyche for a game that doesn’t require too much thought or worry. I’m excited to see what happens. 

Expressing the Setting Through Play

I have this tendency to approach RPGs in a top down fashion. I generally decide on an aesthetic for a setting and then make lists of elements to include that match that setting, consider religion, cultures, ancient history, that sort of thing. Now I’m not talking about developing any of this things to any particular extent. I do not have for example reams of notes on any of this material but probably about enough to fit on the average blog post or sheet of A4 paper.

Then generally what happens is I will run games in this setting that do not really relate to any of the material I originally planned. For example if the woods are full of ruins from an ancient civilisation now overrun with beastmen of sorcerous origin and the players spend six sessions in the woods and over fifty in the city then they aren’t going to get the experience you had originally planned (and so I hang my head in a modicum of shame.)

Being beastman positive can only help the setting

I wholeheartedly accept that this is often a function of prep meets play, or no plan survives contact with the enemy... I mean players. However, for example if in my Grim North game there are ancient cultures that are the source of nearly all modern magical learning and I have magic user player characters that do not even know the names of these cultures then I have probably failed them in some way as a GM. Not to any great extent but nonetheless I at least should be doing better. After all, I don’t really expect that the players will be as interested in the nature of the GM’s carefully crafted basis for a game as they are in its gleeful destruction (I jest of course, I do not actually view the players in my games as the enemy, or as anarchic toddlers who only wish to destroy what I have painstakingly built.) However setting information can enrich play for those who are interested. If you want your players to be self motivated sand box protagonists, and this is to be encouraged (Dragonlance be damned,) then they need a flow of information on which to act.

Just say No: Metaplot and railroad ahoy.

That flow coming from rumours is good but the discovery of previously unknown setting elements provides hooks that tie the PCs closer to the game and allow them to interact better with what is out there. They need to know what’s on the table. Information dump is a poor way to communicate this. Show, don’t tell as the old RPG axiom dictates.

Therefore I should perhaps express my setting through the adventures that the players discover right from the off. Instead of the meta lists of setting elements to incorporate at a later date, these should immediately be turned into things the PCs can encounter. For example I like the idea of dinosaur men in the wilderness so I should write a big dinosaur men encounter. Maybe stick it in a prominent place on the encounter tables. Or have them be the antagonists in a dungeon or mystery or whatever adventure I’m planning for the next session. I should be getting my setting aesthetic front and centre through the challenges the PCs face. I mean I don’t want to beat them over the head with it but to hark back to my previous example, if they want to learn resurrection magic and they don’t know that the majority of necromantic wizardry originates with the ancient death magicians of accursed Xidia then they’re off to a bad start. However if they’ve bashed up a dungeon of Xidian origin and encounter all sorts of necromantic shenanigans then at least they know where to begin.

This way hopefully I’m better translating the feel I had for the setting to the players through their actual adventuring experiences than by just lecturing them about it in some GM soliloquy that sounds boring to me even before I’ve delivered it. Never mind having to sit through it as a player.

I guess the TL:DR version for me is, setting wise: top down creation, bottom up expression.

d100 Legs, or the Cult of the Centipede!

A lot of love is given to giant spiders and serpents in the sword and sorcery world. They're classic foes it would seem and play on those primeval fears. Everything from Conan to Lord of the Rings has them in the literature, they're even in Harry Potter. I fully intend to use them in my post magical apocalypse setting (which clearly needs a snappier name) but also I want something a bit different too.

Centipedes. Yes that's right, centipedes are the new spiders. Sort of.

Aaaargh! Run for your lives!

Having recently read Rafael Chandler's excellent Obscene Serpent Religion (which I recommend wholeheartedly) I hit on the idea of a centipede cult. The cult of the Many Legged God, or The Lord of One Hundred Things, as he is known.

One of the themes of the setting is that there are no "True Gods" necessarily. There are an almost limitless number of gods worshipped, some are real beings or creatures and others simply idols or fictional ideas. Either way, there is not much in the way of confirmation, only faith. However, I digress slightly.

Cultists of the Centipede God would carry out blasphemous rites using the four listed types of giant centipede in the S&W monsters chapter; cast centipede related spells; be obsessed with the number 100 and look with awe upon the blessed sons of their god, the centauripedes.

Centauripede

Basically a hybrid with the torso of a man and but the head and segmented body of a centipede. Characterised by ferocity and  terrifying speed, the centauripede is a dangerous foe similar to an ogre in strength but with a poisonous "bite" from its forcipules. It usually causes d10 weapon damage by whatever it's wielding in its human arms due to the swiftness and power of its strikes.

Hit Dice: 4+1
Armor Class: 5 [14]
Attacks: Weapon (d10), Bite (d8+poison)
Saving Throw: 13
Special: Lethal poison, +4 save
Move: 18
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 6/400

Like this but carrying a poleaxe

Perhaps they are at odds with the Praying Mantis Cult....

Things Encountered on the Road to Nox Aeterna

There are things in the woods. They hate you.

Things encountered on the road to Nox Aeterna (in note form):

Beastmen, Satyr, they might look like steroid using goat barbarians but they're flesh eaters and you look like a Sunday roast for the whole warherd.

The Teeth of Beoric, the Green Pearl of Vaxos, the Ivory and Iron Crown, the Skeleton Puppet, finding any of these things can only lead to grief and woe.

Peasants in trouble, faeries have stolen their wagon, an ogre has eaten their children, goblins have soured their milk cow or whatever.

Nothing, they get to the city without incident. Hahaha. As if.

A wizard hunter.

Flying things, pelgrane? Harpies? Dragon? Vores? Moths? Goblins riding moths? The actual Mothman?

Visions, a snow leopard that talks, the Horned Lord and his wolves, any of the other weird faerie-ish gods, a fat man towing a wagon on which sits a huge cauldron of porridge, a black dog with green eyes, a faerie cat, nine dead men hung from the branches of an ash tree.

Witch/witches, inhabiting abandoned huts, weaving or threading beads or sewing or being openly hostile, reading fortunes for silver.

A birchman, or colony thereof 4hd AC 5 (14) dmg 1d8, immune to blunt and piercing weapons, vulnerable to fire.

A rabbit hole, a rabbit hole is like a wormhole but a fantasy one. It leads to the otherworld or at least a pocket of it. It is small but everyone can fit in it.

A dead or wounded patrician.

A gold prospector. Guess what? He's mad. I did not see that coming...

A bridge. Not just an ordinary bridge. It depends on how you cross it. Or who built it. Or who lives under it. Or who disputes your right to pass over it. Or all of these things.