The Doug Alone

Prep is Play and Play is Prep

A man wanders through a liminal space with dice and dominos.

Month: July 2024 Page 1 of 2

Solo Advice: Consider Rolling TWICE

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On 2024-07-28

In Oracles and Tools, Solo Advice

Solo play is a spectrum and in that spectrum you tend to have different pieces that make up your engine:  some kind of yes/no style oracle, a series of prompts, some random content generators, a level of situational framework, and/or a base game that the above pieces are placed upon. When learning to play, oracles in the broad yes/no sense are “easy”. Is the door locked? Does she know what the secret is? Is the monster still following me? Yes. No. Yes, and… Maybe. Etc. 

Asking the question is usually the hard part of the yes/no layer but that is a different blog post from this one. 

This one addresses a different sort of problem that creeps up from time to time. In your prompts and random tables of events/people/dungeons/colors/clouds/whatever a lot of those seem definite in a way that yes/no + and/but are not. By this I mean, if I ask “Does she say yes?” and get a “Yes” then she says yes, sure but if I roll a random event table and get, “A farmer has lost his sheep and is seeking adventurer to track them down” then that feels much more contained. 

For the former question I could have asked “Is she excited?” or “Does she seem hesitant?” or “Does she already have a date?” or “Is she going to the dance already?” or a relative infinity of related but different questions and, in principle, the dice would have still said yes. Again, the question part is hard the answer part is much easier. Each variation of the question is a different angle you might get a snapshot of your world. 

But for that farmer that feels like a photo already taken. 

On the positive side, if you want a quest then you have a quest. If you want a snippet of something happening in a town (presumably one where a farmer and his sheep make sense) then you have an event. But while that yes/no oracle was about you the solo player exploring the world you are creating AND to which you are reacting, a lot of these tables to generate other elements are less about exploring and more about being told. 

A way to address that which I have been working on is to consider rolling twice on a lot of these tables. Roll two doors. Two sets of room features. Two quests. Two icons on the image table. Two emotional states. Two rumors around town. 

Then, as you see fit to what figures best into your world you can either

  1. Combine the two wholly
  2. Take elements from the two and fuse them together
  3. Pick the one that makes the most sense
  4. Make one primary and one secondary as a sort of background detail
  5. Make on primary and the other, or at least elements from the other, as a kind of answer to a question about the other
Let us look at a few examples of what I mean. Take the “Town Quests” table from The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. Let’s say you roll…
  • 4: “An arrogant noble has won the archery competition five years in a row. The town is ready to cast honors and glory on anyone who can beat him.” +
  • 57: “A string of burglaries has the city’s nobles on edge. The party is asked to investigate.”
Either of those might work as a quest just fine though if play a lot of sessions using that table you might get some repetition. Using the above, though, you might get something like this…
  1. There is a string of burglaries in [City] and PCs are asked to investigate. While there they find that [City] has an archery competition and there is a noble who always wins so PCs also might boost moral by showing up one of their nobles that hired them. 
  2. One noble has been challenging other nobles to compete and during these competitions things go missing so one of the losers wants PCs to investigate the one who keeps winning… OR PCs investigate a string of burglaries and while doing so find an underground archery contest where people compete for the things stolen. 
  3. It makes no sense to be involved in archery contest so you ignore that one and focus on the other. 
  4. The main focus is on the burglaries which started some years ago after a noble that had long run rigged archery contests was finally beaten.
  5. Something important was stolen from a noble and he is willing to pay good money to get it back. What was stolen? A bow his family used in some past war and which is considered to be a symbol of the house name.
Of course the #4 option and the #1 option might be pretty similar but the idea is that though you are using both, one is the actual quest while the other is more a background flavor or certain elements are brought over rather than the whole.
Another example might be the image oracle from the various Tricube Tales micro-settings. For instance, in “Arcane Agents”  you get one that looks like this (at least the first half):

Let us say you get the 1,4 (House on Fire) and 3,4 (People Talking) icons. In the context of Tricube Tales these are meant to be interpretive. The house on fire might mean a fire, a house where drama is taking place, a family breaking apart, a house “under fire”, or a literal house fire. Likewise the people talking could be a more literal conversation, a need to talk, a reference to language/words, a crowd, or some other interpretation. In that, they already offer a good deal of freedom. However, combined we might get things like:
  1. A house burns down and there are lots of rumors going around town (maybe about the house, maybe not).
  2. Inside a house you hear shouts and loud conversations OR a group of people are talking about starting a fire somewhere.
  3. You stick with just the house fire icon because you don’t want another talkie scene.
  4. Two people are getting together and having whispered conversations in a coffee shop…the twist is both of them were patients at a hospital that once shut down due to an investigation but otherwise seem to not know one another (until now).
  5. People keep seeing weird lights over an old hotel. What about them is weird? There lights make a strange buzzing sound as they sparkle… 
Because the nature of this second oracle is already meant to be more open to filling the blanks, some of the combinations are a bit more obvious but even then, having both images at once can spark connections that might not be immediate if you got one or the other (either one could lead to the details that matched all of these). 
The main benefit is that this method returns some of the self-exploration elements to the kind of tables that might be more about specific details or facts. Even if you need those set-in-stone details having two rolls in front of you means you have more control over which one is picked.
It also helps to extend the tables. If you play a lot of Tricube Tales like I do, you will quite likely get at least some of the image oracle results more than once. While they are open to broad interpretation, having two at the same time just makes it more interesting to me. 
In a cyberpunk game maybe you get “Corpo assassin is targeting laundromats in Old Town due to money owed” and the second time it comes up (being maybe a d20 style table) you end up rerolling it, maybe more than once if you had played even just four or five off that table. But if you take that and mix it with “Body of well known local boxer washes up at docks with all of her augmentations ripped out” you can slice and dice those together in a many different ways. Corpo assassin was blackmailing the gym the boxer worked at OR the boxer was the one shaking down the laundromats OR local boxer has become a corpo assassin AND so on. 
This can be applied to meaning tables. Prompt tables. Element tables. You can definitely do it across tables. 
It should not be applied to yes/no oracles since those are already pretty extensible based on how you ask the question and how you apply the results. 
Likewise, even for those rolls where it makes sense you might not want to do it more than 2-3 times because too many options and oracles just bogs the flow down. 
At any rate, give it a try and see if it helps spark some more joy out of your games. I like it and it might also work for you.

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 8 – The Monolith of the Cyclops Delve 2

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On 2024-07-27

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 [A Few Baseline Checks]

Doug, here. 

At the start of these “Monolith” sessions, there will be (currently) three basic checks to establish the flow of things and to add a little tension and uncertainty:

  • Repairing the Flow: D20 + # of Rooms *Cleared* + Rance’s INT bonus vs DC36
  • Secrecy of Project: Monolith Activity Level Die (currently d4) vs City Activity Level Die (always d20 unless something big happens).
  • Barrier Check: Barrier Die (currently d10) vs Threat Die (currently d10).
In the above, a failure/fumble does not mean the quest is loss while a critical success will not mean the quest is won, etc. An extreme result will be baked into the story. Likewise, a failure of the barrier check does not mean the barriers are just reset, just that they require extra work/activity/cost to keep up. Right now, Marius is covering that. Fact is, let’s say that House Marius has 30 House Points. Each failure will do 1d6 damage to those house points. Each success will allow 1d6 House Points to heal. If Marius runs out of HsP, then another quest might be required to help get funding/etc and restore them. I like that.

As for secrecy, once the secrecy check ends up with the secret being found out, it is also not end game, we’ll swap that for an interference roll each session. Other factions might end up claiming part of the Monolith. 

As for the Flow, the Ocean Water “Heart” of the system, once that is repaired, it should give some boons and bonuses to the team. There will be a similar system (brain, lungs, stomach) in each other quadrants and we’ll pull them in when it is time.

For this session, the results we get are 12 + 5 claimed rooms + 2INTBonus = failure to repair the Heart. Secrecy is well in hand (3 vs 14) The barriers lost the fight (6 vs 8) so Marius took 1 House Point worth of expenditure. Currently have 29 remaining. 

And now on with the show!

[Building a Stronghold]

Grusk, Rance, Inar, and Tom are talking to Nelf in the new “War Room” set up in the area where the old Monolith Crew kept some sort of zoo or menagerie. Inar, Cal, and Blkalkkbl had spent some time discussing the primordial slime entity’s experience. From Inar and Cal’s approximation, there seems to be a section to the east of here that rises up and so was above the water line the whole time. However, “Blick” (as Inar calls them) avoided that because there were some rather hostile creatures calling it home. 

“At least it is dry,” Rance says, “Which means that it might contain some paperwork or writings that were not destroyed by water. We can handle danger, guys.” Tom has been agreeing with Rance that it should be a priority. Grusk, though, feels they should go south and clear out some of the newly dried out portions first. 
“We can take these frogs an gators and slimes by surprise as they get used to cracked skin. Secure the other tunnels, and THEN we find out what might be lurking in those sealed off tunnels above us.”
Inar has generally sided with Grusk, figuring that dehydrating fish people are less a threat than the complete unknown. 
Nelf ends up casting the deciding vote. “We are precarious right now. Marius had to bring in more troops and retainers. Once those things below decide to come to the surface to find out why their home is turning into a desert, the barriers might not hold.”
And with that, Rance and Tom agree that a quick assault might be for the best. It has only been a week since the barrier to keep the tidal water out was built. The area will be flooded, still, but more accessible. Once that dries out, there will be some irate things that might risk pushing through the Grunce folk to get to the sea and that could be dangerous. 

[Tidepool Alice: The Terror of the Sea Hag]

Rance casts his light spell and attaches it once again to his staff [1]. The four push down the stairs where they could go no further last time. Now only the bottom two steps are underwater and as they walk into the sludgy water Tom keeps sweeping the floor with his pole to make sure they are not going into any surprise drop off. 
Shortly they come to a door on their left and stop to stare at it. It is less decayed than would expected by the surrounding area which was just, until recently, almost 60% submerged. Despite the water stained and brackish mildew on the surrounding walls, the door is actually a light creamy color. “Bone,” Tom marks, gently examining it. And in the middle of the bone door is a mask in the shape of an old woman from the Old Grunce theater. [2]
“I vote Inar goes first,” Tom says with a chuckle. A whispered chuckle. The team prepares. Rance summons Mage Armor around himself. Inar casts Holy Weapon on both his mace and Grusk’s axe. [3]
Tom starts to work on the lock, as quietly as he can. The mechanism is in the mask itself and with some work he has it solved. “Long fingers,” he quietly calls back. And then, with that, they push the door open and rush inside. 
To find a cowering youth inside. Strangely dry and looking a blinking their eyes at the sudden light coming in from Rance’s staff. “Oh…m..mmm…my. Are you…he…her…hhear. to help?” 
It is Rance who punches through the illusion first, though it is clear that most of the others are aware that something is up. “That’s not a person that’s a… SEA HAG!” At his cry, the Sea Hag roars out an inhuman gurgle and switches back into her true form, a warty dark shape with a crown of bone and carved skulls, and everyone (but Tom) is clearly shaken as she advances to tear them apart. [4]
Grusk goes to check her advance and to keep her back from the others. He sweeps up with his axe and with a bit of luck manages to land a good hit against her shoulder. Inar rushes in to close in the gap and protect the other two but does not get a hit with his mace, mostly slamming the stone at her feet. Tom’s arrow bounces off the brick wall behind her and Rance is forced to also rely on a bit of luck just to get Magic Arrow cast despite the fear quaking him and holding him back. 
In her rage she sweeps one claw towards Grusk and one towards Inar. The high + low assault by Grusk and Inar have definitely caught her off guard because she trips forward and misses both hits. This helps to cheer up the guys who push forward to press their luck. [5]
It also angers her because she goes first and continues to slash out at the Grusk and Inar. Her right claw tears a bit through Grusk’s armor and scratch his chest but the left one goes over Inar’s head. 
Grusk returns the favor by getting a solid hit against the arm holding him, nearly severing it from her body. The dodging Inar cannot land it. Rance screams “ACID ARROW” and gets a solid hit in her torso while Tom continues to fail to get any solid hits. 
The Hag drops to her knees and screeches “NO! WAIT!” to halt any further attacks, the Acid Arrow still burning inside her chest. “Please. Let me live. I can help you!” Looks from Grusk to Rance to Tom to Inar. I can tell you how to get past Garoshen and his stinking fish people! I know what they fear!” [6]
“Why should we trust you?” This from Tom, whose goblin blood absolutely does not like surprises. Rance, though, is absolutely sure they can. He knows that Sea Hags are usually not this close to the surface. Something drove her up here. 

“Why are you here at the edge of the ocean instead of below?” the young wizard asks, already cancelling his spell before it can finish her off. 
“My…coven…was overran by my sister’s and those who survived joined her. Drove her off. I fled up out of the temple that had been my home for centuries to find a safe place and to plot my revenge. Here worked as well as anywhere. It amused me to listen to all the petty talk of the people above. When the city soon falls, the above will be ripe for the taking and maybe something there will help me fight my sister.” 
“So, what do you need from us?”
“Free passage out of here, to let me find somewhere else. Some place I can lick my wounds and call out to my old coven sisters so we can get our home back from Specklesnout.” [7]
The team discusses it for a moment but all end up agreeing to help get her back to the ocean in exchange for information to help them speed up this process. [8] They find out that her name is Tidepool Alice and Specklesnout is her actual sister (the term sister and sister being a bit confusing in Common, one being a member of a cousin and being from the same brood). In exchange for her pointing out to where Garoshen lives on the map they in turn tell her about the Citadel and how it might be a spot worth for her to use to hide, at least some of the caves nearby. 
“The place with the bull man? Why should I go there? He’s a bigger a threat than you.”
Grusk holds up Bloodlust, “This was his axe. We have solved that problem.” Leaving out the part of slaughtering the tortured minotaur while he was sleeping.
Tidepool Alice laughs at this. “Oh you, you four are fun. It makes sense why I might have had trouble fighting you.”
After this she agrees and the group escort her, under guard, to the shipwreck. The Marius retainers and the Keepers are clearly nervous but Rance explains. Inar notes that there is some fear about the four youths in the eyes of their allies. Working with Sea Hags is strange business. She is warned if she ever returns that they will no longer protect her. If they hear any human settlements nearer the Citadel are attacked, they will come and find her. And if Sea Hag fights break out nearby they will intervene. Tidepool Alice agrees to these terms and goes to swim away.
“WAIT!” shouts Tom, “You haven’t told us what these fish folk fear!” 
“Why, my little goblin, they fear me. I have long feasted on their babies and their old. They have tried to appease me by driving slimes and beasts to my door. If they think you are sea hags, they might even pay you to get no closer.” And with that, she is gone.
Returning to Alice’s room, the party finds a golden statue meant to look like some deep sea isopod, a serrated coral sword that might have been Alice’s own, and a pearl in a strange green jar. [9]

[A Bit of Luck, a Bit of Ooze]

Pushing south into the Monolith, the party finds a large, long room that looks to be a gathering place. A massive area to one side has a stone throne upon it, the emblem of Marius nearly lost in the years of water and mold damage. Pillars wrapped in barnacles stand tall to either side. This appears to be some sort of court room of house Marius, possibly to discuss the everyday details. [10]
This is the first room in the place that was not actively trying to kill them so it gives them a moment to take a rest and regroup, with the throne being dry enough they can actually get out of the water for a minute.
After a quick sweep through this room (and a brief recasting of a light spell), the team pushes further south again and find sunlight in front of them. The room they enter was once a store room with a ladder to the surface but now a large hole leads to the air above while trash and detritus wash up below. The team are just starting to poke through the rubble when a large gray ooze (much bigger than the previous one) slithers out from the back wall and washes over Inar before the halfling can get out of the way. [11]
Tom misses and Rance stumbles over the words of his Magic Missile spell and feels the spell disappear from his mind.
Grusk, though, is able to splatter the ooze and pulls it from the enveloped halfling before chopping into little pieces. Tom gets a torch lit to help mark the room from above and the team works out a plan to back out for now and report this opening. And work out where it would be from the surface.  

Before heading back, though, they do find a suit of deeply rusted chainmail in the debris still wrapped around the bones of its owner. That same adventurer who died has a strange ironstone egg inside. [12]

[Another Connection to the Surface]

Tracking back outside, the team finds the opening is behind Baelur’s moneylending shop. Baelur is an elderly thief with a stubborn streak. The hole, from the surface looking like a cracked and busted well, has been used by years by Baelur to dump junk and people who have failed to pay him back. The irony being that until the water was drained from the Monolith, it would have actually functioned something like a well…just terrible brackish salt water. 

House Marius options to buy the shop out so they can lay claim to the hole (without it being obvious), claiming they are trying to just run the business. They are able to do this but Baelur makes it cost. 4 House Points (25 remaining) are spent to claim the area. With the slum area dismal vibe and Baelur’s own reputation, Marius has some privacy building a new ladder and trap door down into the area. [13]

[Wrapping Up]

The boys sell off their finds and then decide the spend the money from the pearl on a night of party. Down at The Jolly Dragon, know for the various young wizards who gather there, Rance ends up getting into a drunken knife throwing contest and wins. [14]

Doug’s Notes: the Blue is the “known” locations of the fuelstones. The Red is Garoshen/Gar Folk territory. Green represents areas controlled by the Keepers. yellow are areas that have been cleared but could be lost because no barriers help to protect them. “X” show alternate paths to the surface.

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Spell Check 11+4 clears the DC11. Note, I am not going to list out every single spell check/etc but will mostly just encapsulate it in the story though I’ll highlight a few rolls when it helps to explain.
  2. Used Knave 2‘s tables for this one. Color was 31 –> Cream. Symbol was 57 –> Mask. I had rolled room contents before the door and got 10 –> Boss monster. On my table I got “make or choose” and will go with a Sea Hag. So some care is given for her to take care of her lair. 
  3. Inar got a success on his first casting and a Crit on his second. Grusk’s Bloodlust has +2 to hit (total +9) and gets +2 to damage (+5 total). 
  4. Sea Hag was not surprised (had probably heard them talking, knew it was just a matter of time). So I went with her making herself into a (Random Realities) 6,2 –> Timid | 6,4–> Youth. However, her roll to cast the glamour was just a 3+2 = 5 and everyone’s WIL check was higher with Rance’s being highest. On the other end of the luck spectrum, only Tom made the DC15 CHA check to resist the terror effect so 2 rounds of combat the other three will be hitting at disadvantage. At least they get to go first in initiative.
  5. ShadowDark only has fumble tables on spells as far as I can tell however she rolled 1s for BOTH of her attacks. That’s the kind of bad luck that normally inflicts Rance trying to get his spells off so in this case I am going to say it dispels the terror a round early. Note, I had to spend a luck point just to not lose Magic Missile with Rance.
  6. She failed her morale check. Rolled twice on the SoloDark prompt and got “Start Plan” + “Secure Victory” which felt obvious. Did check the oracle and yes she is telling the truth. In exchange she wants “Fortify Order” and “Defeat Glory”. Slightly harder to full on explain but I have an idea. I also checked to see how forthcoming she will be and it’s decent. Besides, what good is it to hide details in a solo game for a completely optional side quest? I’d rather build the lore than punish myself.
  7. These names and a couple of the details are derived from Skerples’ The Monster Overhaul. If the Sea Hags ever return, I will use more details from that.
  8. This is the first time in this entire campaign that a vote roll ended up with everyone agreeing “yes”. Neat. 
  9. Since this could have been a proper boss fight in a world where the rolls didn’t speed run it so much, went for 3 treasures. Rolled a tapestry that made no sense so rerolled and got “jewel encrusted scarab” so made it more “oceanic” (45gp). Got a serrated great sword that I made into a coral sword (12gp), and a Kytherian Cog [+1 Luck at the start of the session] that I swapped into another deep-sea variation. This last is worth 300gp. All told, I’ll give them +5XP for this encounter and to make up for skipping out last time around, since there are treasures and boons and such [and I am purposely inflating the XP to help accelerate the campaign some]. Since +1 Luck is a bit weirder in SoloDark I rolled a random description for Alice’s Pearl and got that it allows the user to teleport a short distance away but gives the carrier disadvantage on CON checks. As useful as that is, they are probably going to just sell it.
  10. Room’s contents are empty and prompts were Pursue Victory and Push Mundane.
  11. Finally triggered the first passage to the surface. Rolled a “Treasure” room with a guardian monster. This one was marked as strong so I’ll give them +6HP and +2AC and +2 (+5 total) STR. There is just one, though, feasting on the animals (and unfortunate people) who get washed into tossed down from the hole above. Rance and Tom are not surprised, but Inar and Grusk are. The Ooze is attacking Inar. It hits with a crit but luckily only does 4 total damage. Then Tom misses, yet again, and Rance even with advantage whiffs (but not fumbles) the spell.
  12. Armor is worthless after being underwater so rolled again and got an egg of a cockatrice but Rance, for once, whiffed his knowledge roll and has no clue what it might be, yet. 
  13. A mixture of ShadowDark‘s own tables with Random Realities to get these results. Slum. Poor shop. Money Lender. Bael-us. Elderly. Stubborn. Thief. Since it’s a poor moneylender in a slum, rolled at advantage on oracle to see if Marius could purchase it. Got a 19 so very yes…with a but. The but was to roll on HP to see if they have to put in a good chunk of resources and they lost 4. 
  14. Carousing roll +2. Total = 8. Knife throwing contest. They get their luck token back and +4XP, bringing them all the way to Level 3 +17XP each. The name of the tavern was just generated using ShadowDark. 

DOUG’S NOTES

Combat continues to be basically a single monster versus the squad so I think next time I’m going to make it more 2+ or some such because have to scrap is part of the fun. Grusk is a danger and I’d like to see some sweat (besides Rance and/or Inar getting hit from behind).
Garoshen leads me wanting to make the “fish folk” into alligator gar derived. So, taller, thinner but with a worse bite. 1 trident +1 (1d6) and 1 bite +2 (1d8). AC and STR reduced by 1. 

I enjoyed the Sea Hag “fight” because it was exactly the sort of fight that could have gone south but it ended up adding some lore. It might be fun to bring the Hags back soonish. 
Otherwise I think the story mostly works for itself as is and look forward to the boys trying to work out some more territory and build up towards a big fight with the gar folk. Also, I’ve now set myself up to there being the “dry tunnels” with some danger inside. Have no idea what that is about but I’ll wait and figure it out once I get there. 

CREDITS AND RESOURCES

This game is played using Shadowdark and SoloDark, both by Arcane Library and Kelsey Dionne (et al). The map in this delve is “The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II” by Dyson Logos with added annotations and colors by me. 
Other resources used in this campaign are
  • Knave 2nd Edition by Ben Milton
  • Random Realities by Cezar Capacle
  • The Monster Overhaul by Skerples
  • Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation by Courtney C. Campbell and others.
  • The Book of Random Tables: Dungeons, The Great Book of Random Tables, and The Great Book of Random Tables: Quests by Matt & Erin Davids. 
  • The Solo Adventurer’s Toolkit One & Two by Paul Bimler
  • GM’s Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing by Raging Swan Press.
The illustrations for this delve were generated while testing the the new ChatGPT4o + Dall-E. It is partially an exercise at futility (heh) but I am using the weird glitch outs to add in another layer of oracle in this experiment.
The Alligator Gar photo is by Greg Hume – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30364231

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 7 – The Monolith of the Cyclops Delve 1

By

On 2024-07-25

In Actual Play, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

 [The First Trap and Wading Through] 

“Well, that answers the trap question,” Tom says, pointing out the trap. Which is pretty obviously just sitting there where even the worst trap-spotter in the world would have had to struggle to not see it. Also, it is pretty obviously broken. 

A decayed crossbow, string broken, gives the impression it should definitely be aimed at the door they just opened. The tripod system it is on leaning and half submerged in the knee deep water of the room. Knee deep on Grusk and Rance. Tom and Inar are going are quick up to their chest in it. 

When the Monolith was fully functional, a crisscross of light beams powered every part of this underground complex. Another use for the fuelstones. Now, though, that light is gone. “You can see how it would trigger when someone does this,” as the goblin waves his hand in front of the useless sensor. Dramatically. He’s disappointed by this. Rance at least studies that the strange twine that seems to have once directed the energy to towards the mechanism. [1]

“This is right outside the main entrance. Should be a guard station first, something to say ‘NO FOOLING AROUND’!” Inar seems legitimately disturbed by the fact the very first room they enter is already, in theory, trying to kill them.

Rance looks around, holding up his staff (glowing now with a light spell). The now familiar Marius icon of the setting/rising sun remains just visible on the grime caked walls. During high tides this room is half full of water. Until the Marius retainers behind them can get the tides checked, the party is going to be forced to move fast or swim. As it is, they may have only an hour or two before they will be very wet indeed.

“I think the trap was very late stage, as they were pulling out of here at the end. That bench over there, the one covered in barnacles and trash? That looks like an old work bench. Over there half melted into the wall is the world’s rustiest saw…or maybe the world’s sawiest rust. This was a repair and stocking station. They would have wanted people to come here at least until the last of the old Keepers fled. Probably though they would come back in a few years…” [2]

They spike the door entering the room open and wave at Nelf and Terk and the Marius folks outside, just about 10 yards away. The siblings twitch. The last time the Keepers sent someone this far, it went south very quickly. The only surviving member lapses in and out of a coma at the Lighthouse infirmary and Brother Olin does not expect him to make it. Tom takes the grease paint stick and makes a mark above the water line. The mark deems this room safe to enter and the plan is to get a places cleared so that the Keepers can have a full base of operations. 

Tom listens at the the door south and the door east. “I don’t hear anything to the south,” he whispers, “But there’s something over here behind the other one.” [3]

Almost like in perfect timing, a loud croaking sound can be heard. 

“That settles it,” says Grusk, pulling out his axe, “We go and meet the frog prince.” 

[Feeling Froggy and the Damned Crocodiles]

Grusk counts down using his left hand in a complicated series of motions: orcish finger counting. And then he slams through the door and rushes on into the darkness on the other side, the other three trying to keep up. A pale, large human sized frog with blind eyes wallows in the muck and mire, frog eggs floating nearby. 

Grusk leaps into the pool of water and brings Bloodlust down on the frog’s head. Blood splashes out into the pool as the now enraged mother frog swipes at the half orc and misses. By this time, the others manage to get into position and give assistance. 

The frog whips out its tongue towards the splashing sounds it hears in the distance and just misses Inar. Grusk gets another chop at the head of the frog and more blood splatters but the great beast is not dead yet. 

Rance chants a spell and let’s loose a magic missile which pierces the eye of the frog, dropping it into the now blood filled pool. “You know, Grusk, it was just a frog. We could probably have lured it out by convincing it that Tom was a fly.” [4]

“Shut up, Uffolt,” Grusk and Tom reply at the same time. 

The room they are in looks like it might have been a some sort of store room for papers and notes. “Ah, Cal is going to be sad about this,” quips Rance while Grusk and Tom descend into yet another argument. [5]

Grusk wants to pour out oil and set the frog eggs on fire and Tom is pointing out it is a few minutes walk…they could carry the frog eggs out there, not like they are the problem. As Inar is trying to wedge himself into the middle, somehow agreeing and disagreeing with both at the same time, Tom whips around and shouts… “RANNNCE!” 

Unfortunately the warning is too late as a large saltwater crocodile, attracted by the blood and the now unprotected food, erupts from the water and chomps the wizard’s arm and starts pulling him under the water. [6]

Tom starts shooting his bow as Grusk once more brings his axe to bear and Inar begins weaving a bless spell. Grusk is too nervous about striking Rance, missing wildly, and while Inar gets the spell off, is unable to find Rance under the churning, bloody water. Tom manages to embed an arrow into the beast but the fight is clearly on a clock. 

The team are not giving the croc any chance to get away with their friend and press the attack with a speed the croc can barely comprehend. Unfortunately, Rance’s light spell is currently on a staff slightly submerged so attacks will be difficult. [7]

This time, Grusk does not hesitate and lands a massive hit against the skull of the croc though Tom is having trouble seeing into the frothing water. At least Inar, trying his best to not get swiped, manages to get contact with Rance and heal the wizard back up to enough health that Rance can pull himself free (if quite bloody and very wet).  

Now the enraged crocodile is taking out his anger on Grusk. The first bite glances off of Grusk’s plate but the second sinks solidly in his arm. Grusk uses the locked jaws to lift the crocodile out of the water as Rance, still hoarse and coughing water from his mouth, screams as he brings down his staff on the crocodiles back, finishing it off. 

“Alright, Tom,” huffs Grusk, “You win. We’ll keep the eggs alive for now. Might make good bait to lure these damned crocs.” 

While Grusk is gathering up a few frog eggs to act as bait, a recovering Rance looks through the old papers and scrolls to see if anything survived the damp. Nothing did but even among the detritus he finds a few sigils and stamps that he jots down. A stylized skull shows up across some of the communications. [8]

[Down into the Slime]

As the party pushes further south, Tom notes that the water in here, a bit deeper than before, has a particular sheen to it and holds the others back. “That ain’t water.” 

Sure enough, the team can see portions of the water swirling around as something darker and…gooier, swirl around inside. “Ah,” says Rance, “an ooze”. 

“Can’t fault the name, so let’s burn it,” says Grusk as he pulls forth one of his oil flasks and gets ready to light it on fire. 

“Nah, don’t. Save your oil. According to the books I read, these things won’t burn. Also, according to Dendor Morsinbor’s On the Nature of Slimes, don’t hit them with metal. They eat that.” [9]

“Alright, then they can eat one of these eggs,” and with that Grusk tosses an egg in. Which the oozes ignore. 

“Maybe they are full,” says Tom from the back. 

Grusk pulls out his axe and ignoring Rance’s warning, chops down into the middle of the swirl and the water changes color and then dissipates.

“That is very strange.” 

The team keep clear of touching the slime in case it still is a danger while dead. [10]

[A Surprise for Sure]

Unfortunately, right past the slime the stairs descend down and that means the water will definitely be too deep for Tom and Inar. Even Rance will be feeling a bit drowned. Considering the dangers they have faced so far, they are not looking forward to stripping off armor and gear and diving down. Instead, the head to the side now trying to loop back towards the surface rather than going too deeply into the Monolith. 

The room before them is the largest of the side rooms that they have seen and it seems to have once been some sort of menagerie. Cages and tanks – empty, rusted, and cracked now – are lined up along the edges with a large table structure in the middle of the room that might have once been an aquarium. Currently filled to the brim with brown sludge. [11]

Once again, Tom’s goblin senses pick up the threat before the others and he points to the tank. Grusk trudges through the water and gets close to the tank before the thing in the tank stands up in a rough approximation of Grusk’s own shape. 

“Alright. Do. I. Hit. It?” 

Inar steps forwards, still well behind, Grusk, and tries talking to it in a variety of languages, finally finding some recognition when he lapses into Primordial. After adjusting some of the tenor and tone, he makes contact. [12]

The others wait with Rance glancing back down the previous hallway. 

“Blkalkkbl,” says Inar, “came here years ago to escape some of the horrors of the Bleak. Well, I think he was talking about The Bleak. It is fascinating is it not that a notion that I am pretty sure that would translate as to ‘the long sigh after the noise of insect wings’ would mean…”

“Gale. The Point. Find it.”

“Yes, well, um…he is…allergic? to water?” 

“A slime. Allergic to water.”

“Again, the thing you have to keep in mind is that…”

“No.”

“NO?”

“No, I am sorry I asked.”

After some discussion the adventurers work out that they would like to help Blkalkkbl but Grusk worries that this slime might eat his armor since, in principle, he will have to carry it. [13]

Rance pokes around at some of the other tanks and barrels and cages in the room and with a little work comes up with a feasible container good enough to get Blkalkkbl out of this flooded dungeon. However, the damage means they will need to go relatively quickly. [14]

“I say we get him in there and then Grusk runs like the devil is on his trail and tries to get him out of here. Give him to Nelf and tell her to take it to Senior Commander Grunkheart because the Lighthouse has lots of dry rooms this…visitor…can hang out in. Cal will love more company.”

Grusk sighs deeply but Blkalkkbl aggress to the plan and carefully climbs into the lashed together tank, the acidic skin starts to eat at the edges. Grusk braces as Inar runs north and opens the door, and the half orcs runs to get the slime creature to higher ground. 

Inar grins. “I knew he was a big softy!” 

Tom looks up from digging through some of the piles that Rance has disturbed. “It isn’t much, but it’s dishonest work,” and tosses a jade statue over to Inar. Some holy statue from the Barthic empire. Worth a bit, but not much. 

The three friends follow after their rough voiced companion. Wondering how well Cal will take the new guest.[15]

[Regrouping and Drying Out]

We will skip ahead a few days here. Rance, Grusk, and Tom are going to aid the Marius retainers to work on getting the tide barriers in place since the dungeon will be very underwater without them. They will also help to secure the rooms already explored, building barriers and guard stations. 

Back at the Lighthouse, Blkalkkbl will be given a very dry room and will have some long conversations with Cal and Inar. We will return to what info can be gleamed in the next civilization run. 

Cal does not recognize the stylistic skull icon found but will add it to his list of things to research. Perhaps another party involved in the construction of the Lighthouse (yes, signs point to yes…want me to roll on it? Ok… 14. So yes. That’s nice, actually, saves me having to work out another plot thread since the current one is quite….meaty). 

If you look at Michael Prescott’s depth analysis on the original Amon Gorloth Post, by the fiction many of the areas in the green and blue in the northeast quadrant will be from pretty deeply underwater to very deeply underwater. The system was mean to let water flow through so it drains off. BUT.. we’ll say that after a few days of draining, the green will be knee deep while the yellow will be damp and the red will be [still] dry. This might make some of the more slime and aquatic stuff less friendly. 

Once again, thanks to Dyson Logos for such awesome maps. I’ve enjoyed getting to use them. And thanks to Michael Prescott for making the depth map because while I will not be sticking to this depth too hard as we get past this initial aquatic style, it really helps me to keep it sorted in my head which portions are most impacted by the flooding sea water. 

MECHANICAL NOTES

  1. Room contents 3 –> Trap. Crossbow. Triggered by breaking light beam. Seems a nice time to set some lore/mechanics into place.
  2. Checked the oracle and got “Repair Mundane”. So it’s a workshop. The trap is definitely a poor attempt to protect the complex as the older keepers were retreating a couple of centuries back.
  3. Note: Rolled on both rooms. To the east is a solitary giant frog. To the south is a random boss monster who we will figure out when we get there. 
  4. This one was quick so I won’t go into too much detail on the combat but basically the frog got no hits and Grusk got two but they were relatively weak. Rance got magic missle off to finish it. I gave Grusk surprise bonus on his first swing because he got the door open in a single action. 
  5. Room contents are “sneak information” so we’ll just say it’s a place for missives.
  6. Random monster check hit. Crocodile. Tom is a goblin and cannot be surprised but he wasn’t the target. Gave Rance an INT check versus 9 to see if he could react in time but alas. Croc hit at advantage doing enough damage to take out poor Rance in a single hit. He has 5 turns to resurface but I’ll make his “death saves” at disadvantage since he is submerged.
  7. Init was 20 vs 1 so I’m going to roll that essentially a free attack round squeezed in. With the light being dim they would be on disadvantage but I’m having the two cancel out. 
  8. SD Oracle, at Disadvantage: “Does anything worthwhile survive?” No, but… used Random Realities to generate a rumor “Secret Societies” and an icon/mark: “Skull”. 
  9. DC15 INT check to see if Rance knew any information. Got a 21 total so, yeah, quite a bit of information. Knows that Gray Oozes are immune to fire and can eat normal weapon. 
  10. After the previous fight, a single gray ooze is kind of a nice change, especially with Grusk one shots it. 
  11. The room “clue” was “Reveal Animal”. Hence the trappings. So, rolling it up with it locked at a type of ooze, the monster is a level 2 ooze that can change shape, does extra damage from its acidic touch, and… thanks to a quick roll on Random Realities, explodes when damaged. It has AC13, 8HP, +2 to attack, 1d8 + 1d6 damage. When it explodes at 0HP it will do acid attack to everyone in… near. Ironically,  it’s threat is *water*. Which is probably why it was hiding out in the tank, eh? It *is* intelligent but is fairly alien in thought compared to humans. It is not aggressive but it is also highly frightened. There will be some good treasure in the room though since this will check at LV5. 
  12. Ok, Inar has Primordial which feels right for this. Gave him a DC15 check to see if he can establish some sort of contact. He made it so yes and I’ll give him +2 to his Reaction check which is only 5 (rolled) +2CHA +2 for 9. This put’s the creature at “neutral”. 
  13. Rolled 4d6 with 3+ being a vote for yes. Got 3 out of 4 for helping the strange slime being. I’ll put Grusk as the practical “nay” vote for a reason related to the just previous encounter.
  14. “Can Rance work out a container out of all the animal cages and tanks?” yes, but… they will break and spill out on a roll of 1:6. 
  15. Grusk made a DC12 check to run out of there in a timely manner and the tank did not break. On the oracle, rolled a 20 so Cal not only likes his new guest but absolutely loves having this being with some knowledge of the Monolith. Looks like the campaign just got a strange side character.

DOUG’S NOTES

Not many. It’s nice to swap mental mode from the more maudlin werewolf series to the more classic crawl mode. Just like it will be nice to swap mode back to what every I play next. I love this aspect of solo RPGs, the getting to shift my gears into whatever tickles the old fancy. Doug’s play styles, much like The Doug Himself, contain multitudes. 
I have never really gotten a chance to play in a flooded place and though I do not want to keep it up for too much because I want to give my boys a chance to shine, it is nice to just have to think about the flow of water and how it impacts their quest.
Crocodile fight is probably the sassiest fight I have gotten to set up in a good while. I enjoyed throwing some notable difficulties and I am glad the dice did not betray them too hard. That is pretty close to how I would have ran it as a player and how I would have played it as a GM…at the same time. 
The Blkalkkbl encounter was me being nasty but also give a few tells: exploding acid blooded acidic slime dude was going to go off. Then I love how a single “Is it intelligent?” question flavored that from “A Thing to Be Killed” to a “Maybe Try Talking” sequence. Setting up the puzzle of how could they get B out and then actually rolling dice to see if it all went to crap made it slightly spicy. 
This might come up to a shock to you, by the way, but Blkalkkbl were 100% just some random letters that I typed out that sounded…slime-ish. Never meet your heroes, people. 
Rance still seems to be the target of the dice. This is the third sneak attack in this whole campaign and the third time Rance has been a) targeted and b) one-shotted. He always manages to get back up before it is too late. Fun. On the other hand, every roll to see if he knows something about the monster at hand tends to come back with “Heck yeah he knows the monster at hand” with lots of DC18+ hits. 
Another shout out to Tom’s “Goblin’s Cannot Be Surprised” flavor. I’ve heard people argue that it is too weak an ability in SD and I don’t know if I just solo lots of surprise attacks or what but our goblin friendo has done some work. 
Until next time, when House Marius gets a stronger foothold and our poor brave fools go even deeper into the muck. 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark] Part 6, In Which History Is Discussed and Plans are Made

By

On 2024-07-24

In ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The group climbs past over the sea scoured rocks behind the shipwreck to stand before a large archway built in the years of The Bleak’s first encroachment. In the archway various symbols and crests were once carved to declare its purpose but most are lost to time. Channel winds wearing meaning from this old structure. 

A shape not unlike a lighthouse is next to a shape not unlike a rising sun. On the other side, perhaps an eye. Others are open to much wider interpretation. 

A woman breaks from the group and approaches the once great door in a bricked up wall under the arch. Now it has the general appearance of drift wood shackled together in an approximation of a door, a bad approximation at that. A large enough gap at the bottom to admit several people at once as long as slightly tall folks are willing to bend. 

Looking at it, it seems the whole door would collapse if someone actually tried opening it, possibly pulling down the wall and the archway with it. The woman gestures to the rest of the group and leads them inside. 

Her name is Nelf Haskins. She is a Lighthouse Keeper. Dressed in a sort of short dark felt robe, giving the appearance of an oversized shirt, strange goggles acting as a headdress, and an armband of various colors which signify duty and sub-rank. This is Cal Grunkheart’s attempt to give the Keepers a traditional uniform, despite the order being gone for two centuries. These new Keepers he has recruited over the past five years. True believers to his cause. The Lighthouse can shine fully again. The Bleak will go no further. 

Nelf is Senior Expedition Planner – armband green with three large yellow triangles – and has been tasked with restoring the so called “Monolith” to working order. “I prefer to call it Grunkheart’s Network,” she explained to the rest of the group as they set out to see what the Keepers have accomplished. Turns out to not be a whole lot. A single room out of plenty of rooms. 

Once inside, Nelf walks a few dozen feet down a wide hallway lit by too few torches into a chamber of some decent size. Light is better here. All the better to help pay more attention to the main three points of interest. 

The second most noticeable thing is a chubby man on scaffolding next to human sized statue seeming to have an argument between himself, the statue, a sizeable ring of metal in his hand, and the universe in general. Occasionally he tries to set the ring down on the statue’s head but sparks fly off.

The statue is in the likeness of a human in pre-Bleak clothing holding a tall spear, a mad grin on his face. Mad Del Marius, once Lord of House Marius. The “ring” is the Marius Diadem, once a relic of Marius rule. The man on the scaffolding is Terk Haskins, Nelf’s older brother, in a similar uniform though he lets his body hang out of it a bit more. His armband is blue with red eyes. Chief Investigator of the Monolith. Nelf and Terk were two of the original recruits. 

The third thing you notice is a group of men and women wearing armor, setting up a kind of makeshift camp. What seems to be a month’s worth of supplies. The tents and their armor emblazoned with a red setting (or rising) sun over a blue field. Retainers for House Marius who have agreed to help restore “The Network”. They will help choke off the sea water. They help protect the rooms that are cleared. They just will not go first. 

The first thing, though, before Terk or the retainers, you notice is the smell. “Ach, like the sea took a piss all over this place,” one of the group following Nelf says. This is Grusk Obe. Half-Orc. Currently suited up. Blood red axe, Bloodlust, on his belt. One of the many orphans raised by the Priests of Gede at the Blue Grove in the wild lands of the so called Pearl. “The Silt,” an untamable place and the refuge of free people until the Bleak can be drove back. Which is why he is here.

Beside him is Rance Uffolt, a human wizard. Holding back is Inar Gale (halfling priest) and Spotted Tom (he once had a last name assigned by the priests but has long stopped using it and the others barely recall). Tom and Inar are joking around and paying no attention. Too excited about the day’s delve. Like Grusk, these are more orphans raised by the Blue Grove, brought into the Bleak by Rance’s dreams. Dreams not even the young wizard understands. 

Rance is distracted by the activity of Terk and goes over to chat with the Senior Investigator. Leaving Grusk to carry on the conversation with Nelf. Grusk is not quite so good at conversation but does his best. Nelf seems nervous around the large man so unlike the Keepers she normally travels with. 

“We have not gotten far past this room. At…all, past this room. We tried but, um, a couple of Keepers did not come back. The third is in our infirmary ranting about “teeth.” The area past this is…dangerous,” Nelf rambles things that Grusk already knows. “I told Cal…I mean, Senior Keeper Grunkheart…I told him that we need a division trained in such but he feels it is at odds with our mandates to spend too much time dedicated to delving. So…”

“He asked us,” Grusk finishes off. No judgement in his voice. The orphans like Cal, quite a bit. Rance is convinced that fixing the Lighthouse will help them in their quest. Drive the Bleak back. Grusk does not know if it is true but he trusts Rance. They have traveled together for some time. Not one of the four will question the others. It is how they survived in The Pearl. It is how they now survive in the Bleak. Too bad Grunce is something else. But if Cal can get his Keepers to rebuild the Lighthouse, some of those problems will go away. 

Grusk and Nelf stare down a massive sloping hallway traveling down into the darkness. Pools of seawater catch in cracks and the whole area is caked in mold and crawling with insects. Occasionally strange splashes and grunts can be heard, somewhere in the distance. 

“Cal….SENIOR KEEPER Grunkheart…says that in the old days the flow of sea water into the structure at high tide was part of the process. Like a giant heart, an organic beast, the blood flowing through the veins. The Lighthouse practically a living thing powered by the city above and the land around it. By the five families that gave part of themselves to make it. Now, though, as the Network fades and collapses and the Bleak invades…you get junk in the system. It is rotting.” Nelf seems flustered to find the right words. Grusk really wishes that Rance or Inar were the ones doing the talking now but Rance is up on the scaffolding with Terk and Inar is back with Tom and the retainers telling jokes. 

“Rotting’s a right word, lass. That dead man down there attests to that.” Grusk shines the lantern he’s carrying down to a corpse. A corpse missing some chunks. Something feasted on a part of it. Something that might return. 

Nelf blanches a bit and steps back. Grusk is not great with social interaction and not particularly fond of weakness, but he does him allow himself a moment of sympathy for the Keepers. Academics and cast off nobles risking a lot to try and bring back a dream that the city itself has forgotten. 

Nelf continues her history lesson, only a bit of a shake now in her voice. “The reason it is so big seemed to serve two purposes. First, the structure of the Network is itself part of the generator. Second, Cal says that Jonias Grunkheart, his ancestor, intended it to be an evacuation place if Grunce ever fell to the Bleak. A place where people from all over the city could come and hide.” [1]

Seeing the eyebrows of the half-orc raise, she concedes, “Well, at least the people who were working for the five great houses. Their people especially. But Cal does say that there should be entrances and egresses all over. The Network and the City are one. Grunce was the powerhouse for the Lighthouse…until it wasn’t.” 

***

Cal had talked to Rance about the overall plan. They need to retake the Monolith (unlike Nelf, he uses his old Ancestor’s original name) and they have to purify it. “We have to drain the mildew and the water, Rance,” over pipes. 

“How?” 

“If we had genshel sponges, those can hold tons of water without gaining any weight.” 

“Do we?”

“Ah…no, but up north the Sherifan Enclave harvest them from…”

And so on and so on. Rance and Grusk ask 1-3 syllables and Cal responding with long winded talks and speeches. 

Like Nelf is doing now. Filling in the fear of getting started with words.

55 Keepers, now 52 after Mursy’s group ended the way it did. Brother Olin in the infimary says Mursy will likely never return to service. A rough map that Cal is trying to restore. A stack of legends from a city that constantly rebuilds itself. A network of tunnels and rooms and caves that once housed dozens or hundreds of people working on keeping the Lighthouse alive. A honeycomb of storehouses and armories and classrooms, all gone to rot. First the workers diminished until the five great houses got replaced by new greedier great houses that danced in the light they did not  maintain. 

So the Lighthouse ran itself. And now it is very nearly kaput.

“It is like a a tooth,” Cal had said that night, after the smoke and beer had made him maudlin. “Most of your life, your teeth are tough. Chewing the meat. Cracking the bone. Biting the coin. Then they get cracked. Decay gets in. The tooth turns black and falls apart. Strong on the surface but vulnerable underneath. My whole life I have watched that light grow dimmer year and year and now I want to do something. For Jonias. For….myself.”

Inar had asked if there were treasures. Tom had asked if there were traps. Rance asked how the magic worked. Grusk had asked how strong the creatures down in the Monolith were. To each of these, Cal had shaken his head…

“I don’t know.”

***

Faced with this great unknown, the only emotion Grusk really feels is impatience. The sooner they get Rance a good night sleep, the sooner they can go back home to The Pearl. “UFFORT!” the Half Orc shouts.

And with that timing the cursing and red faced Rance, next to an even louder and more red-faced Terk, slams down the Diadem and makes some necessary contact because instead of sparks they get a reaction. The eyes of the statue glow dull red as a mold covered marble chestplate burns away the gunk to show the Marius Sun Banner underneath. The tip of the sphere glows red hot and then shoots a beam down into the dark past the dead body Grusk was looking at earlier. 

Not very bright, or very large, yet. But a start. The Blue Grove Orphans can smell the air get cleaner. See the statue burning away the years of negligence before their eyes. 

In the distance, a loud roar screams in response to the subtle shift in the air. Grusk chuckles. 

“Alright, boys, time to go into the dark. We got that to kill for a start.” 

The Bleak and The Pearl [SoloDark]: Intermission 1, The Monolith of the Cyclops Overview

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On 2024-07-23

In Campaign Design, ShadowDark, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

The “Monolith of the Cyclops” will be something of the hub dungeon // wrap-around story for a few sessions in my SoloDark campaign: The Bleak the Pearl. I’ve dropped bits and dribbles here or there in the text already shared but the idea is that this dungeon (the “monolith” moniker makes no sense but it also sets a mood so I kept it, it was just randomly rolled as a title) is a mystical network of tunnels whose layout and composition were originally designed to channel energy into the “Lighthouse.” The Lighthouse which is used to the keep The Bleak at bay and to allow humanity to have a stronghold against the tide. Lately, the Light is failing and so The Bleak threatens to overrun the last great uncorrupted city…

And there are forces in the city that considers the fall of the Light to be a useful profit making opportunity. 

The map being used is The Halls of Amon-Gorloth II by Dyson Logos. I chose this one because it is big but not too unwieldly. It feels the right size to be a network covering the underground of what was essentially a “border city.”  It has some neat and varied features. And, frankly, it just sparked joy. 
The plan is to split it into rough quadrants and to give each quadrant its own encounter table and to give each one it’s own “fuelstone” (the mystical statues used to channel the energy towards the cyclops which then powers the Lighthouse). 
The four “flavors” are just to make it a bit varied but also to give me some experience in building up reasonable encounter lists for ShadowDark and to try out a few different enemy types.
  • Northeast: Marine/Sea Monsters + Slimes. This section will be flooded by sea water coming in from the large north-east entrance and have several rooms underwater with some care being spent to drain them using the resources and gadgets of the Lighthouse Keepers. The creatures here will be a mixture of fishy (Fishfolk, Saltwater Crocodiles, etc) and slimy (Black Puddings, etc). 
  • Southeast: Giant Insects and more Fungal Types. This section will have some of the icky from the first (so slimes are likely to repeat but I’ll toss in some mushroomy things) but will focus more on insects and insect type enemies. There will be giant cockroaches. A lot of giant cockroaches.
  • Southwest: Automatons, Golems, and Plant Types. This section will more “mechanical” with automatons and magical armor type enemies and I want to try and work in some plants and such, possibly created more on the fly with the creature generation rules. I’ll hold off any future predictions since I’ll need to scale this to something more level appropriate but golems and such will make an appearance. 
  • Northwest: Humans, Rats, and “Slum” enemies. will have some some human and various “fantasy slum” style encounters. A thieves guild setting up shop. Maybe some classic giant rats and such. 
The characters will have a rough map and a rough location of the five fuelstones. One in each quadrant plus the main “eye” which is the large statue in the lower left. Not necessarily a perfect map, and one that was made roughly 300 years ago but I’ll dial out some of the “which way to go” for this one to stop it from taking even longer. As I go, I’ll do something like roll a d20 per room/section and a roll of 20 (or maybe 19-20…or make it so each roll counts “down”…I like that, eventually there *will* be paths up) will indicate there is a passage up to the city of Grunce, above. 
The idea will be they will need to clear and purify the whole map before they are done, but as they go other adventures will crop based on various needs. They will extend out, make base camps, spread up supply stations, and generally retake the whole complex over several weeks or months in game time. Also retaking the city in the process.
Besides that, I will use the standard ShadowDark content generation d10 tables blended in with some of Philip Reed’s ShadowSpark cards, bits of a couple of other oracles, etc. The first quadrant, the NE/Sea-Themed one will have no boss monster. The other quadrants will likely have a boss monster set to the current level the adventurers are at. 
Once this is done, they will likely be level 6 or 7 and ready to venture deeper into the Bleak for a few hexcrawls and a build up to something like a final battle. If paced correctly it should give me plenty of experience with most of the elements available to explore in ShadowDark.
Part 7 will begin the actual delve where they work on reclaiming the first fuelstone (they already have the Marius Diadem) and cleaning out and confirming the next fuelstone which will launch on finding the relic they need to power it). 

Reconsidering Fairness in Solo RPGs: The tl;dr Version

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On 2024-07-17

In Reconsidering Fairness in Solo RPGs, Solo Advice, Solo Musings

Reconsidering Fairness in Solo RPGS: the tl;dr version 

When you are playing a solo RPG all the basic assumptions of fairness ultimately come down to your own sense of fun. 

When in doubt, play to your solo “table” as you want the table to play to you: an empowering and interesting story where you get to make the decision about what those terms mean. Ask yourself what you would do if you were running this campaign for someone else, what might you do to make their story better. Then do that for yourself. Even if that means ignoring some rules or adding some details not covered in the book.

Spend all the time mapping if you want. All the time making potions. All the time flying a space ship. Or run a tight dungeon crawl without distraction. The game’s tempo is your tempo. A lot of action limits and time balance are mostly there to stop you from hogging the spotlight. You are the spotlight now.

There is no cheating in the classic sense because the primary issue of cheating in group play is about stealing joy and focus from other players. 

Many group sessions involve talking out bad luck and offering chances to overcome it: a team takes a downed character to be healed, the GM gives clues to a deadly trap, an NPC gets inserted to help the characters. Group play often focuses on how to overcome conflict as a team. This can be difficult when it is just you so move away from the assumption that what is fair in one context must fair in another.

An RPG’s main goal as a set of rules and concepts is to enable roughly equal fun for everyone at the table and when you are the only one at the table then that changes the dynamic greatly. Metagaming becomes the norm. Spoiling the surprise is unavoidable. Retcons make more sense when character and player knowledge comes into play (do not believe? play a single journaling game). 

You are never wasting your own time as long as you are having fun. 

If you are not having fun, you can walk away and no one’s feelings will be hurt. Unless it hurts your feelings and then maybe ask what you need to bridge that gap and give it to yourself.

Solo play is about how to overcome conflict when you are running both sides of the table. This is a deeply divergent play style and can not be judged by classical concepts.

You should never be harsher on yourself than you would be to other players. Unless you want to be. It is a bonus, not a penalty, always. It is up to you. 

In solo play you have the space to give yourself grace.

Do not sweat the small things. When in the moment, it can be ok to ignore rules or concepts that bog down your play. You are doing it alone and it is easy to wear yourself down having to mentally run back and forth. Let the rules inform your game, shape your game, but also step back when you need. 

You get to decide your comfort line. 

If you get it wrong, you can go back and change it or just say “oops” and roll with it. 

Tweak the rules. Get creative with the oracles. That is often the point of having rules and oracles.

You have the only and all deciding vote about how strict the rules are for you and there is no inherent punishment if you change your mind, retcon, or do anything that might disrupt a multi-player game. Solo play is an empowering experience. You do not have to rely on other people to tell how to play. Not even me and I am writing this.

You can take all the loot. Unless the loot makes it boring, then throw it away.

You and your character are the star. All other rules to balance narrative weight mean nothing when all the narrative weight is yourself. It is up to you keep them in or forget them entirely.

Spark your own joy. 

The Sparking of a Series

I started out wanting to type out a quick blog post talking about some of my personal thoughts on fairness in solo play RPGs and then as I kept going and writing more and more notes to address many philosophical and mechanical considerations I kept summing up the important take aways as kind of a “tl;dr” [too long; didn’t read] aphorism-style version that itself was starting to get quite long. That’s what you see above.

Then I realized that outside of that quick summary, I had kind of a lot to say about the topic and it might be good to give myself space to go into more details.

So this is the kick off of my Reconsidering Fairness series. Sort of…one of the first articles I posted to this blog was STEAL THIS RULE: “DEATH IS PRIMARILY A NARRATIVE CONCEIT” and in all reality that is very much so in the vein of the rest of this so I’ll tag that one in. 

For those interested, the series will go on to talk about things like table balance with a single character, the loss of metagaming, the added stress that losing prep and downtime causes, campaign balance, reasons behind different types of fairness, similarities and differences, rules breaking vs homebrewing, and so forth. 

However, for now, the important take away of all of that will these concepts above. That’s the heart. The rest will be fluff. Sometimes with math. Also…I’m going to complain about how poorly they treated thieves.

My Favorite Solo Play Tool: Random Realities (revelations for the roving raconteur) by Cezar Capacle

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On 2024-07-16

In Oracles and Tools, Solo Advice, Solo Review

 Let’s say you are playing through your solo play campaign and you ask any of these questions:

  • What’s been spray painted on the walls?
  • What’s the innkeeper like?
  • What are they offering us to take up this quest?
  • Is it raining?
  • What time is it? 
  • What is the first thing my character notices about the forest?
  • What’s a fun plot twist that is happening?
There are stacks of books and decks and dice and other oracles that can answer these questions. I know. I have roughly 6 shelf-feet of space taken up, at least, of books and card decks and story dice that I draw from from time to time (not including snippets from other non-pure oracle resources that also help a lot, such as Vaults of Vaarn for a lot of my stranger stories). 
But then there is Random Realities: Revelations for the Rousing Raconteur by Cezar Capacle that does a lot of the work of that entire shelf in a relative tiny zine smaller than most in-flight catalogs. It is absolutely portable but it generates so many answers so quickly it is frankly a minor miracle to use it. 
Look at the same page as provided on the Itch page: 
As you can see, and to quote (again) the product page: “The idea is very simple: roll d66 (2d6, using one number as decimals and the other as units) to determine your page, and instantly access a unique combination of results from 60+ tables (the dice results are in the bottom right corner, along with a d4 and a d12 as well). Don’t feel like rolling dice every time? Simply flip the zine to a random page if you have a print copy, or click on the dice to go to another page.” 
You can get weather conditions, a random direction, a time of day. You get eight symbols that can be used to add details based on your interpretation – the owl might strike you as “wise” or “night” or a literal owl. You get a straight oracle yes/no answer. You get a prompt for a dice/fate type check. Lots of pairs. 
While you might wonder how it is a big deal to have these “66 realities” keep in mind that each page is built the same way. Let’s take another page from the book (and yes, I will randomly roll to see what pops up):
Do you see how genius this is?  That 1,1 and that 4,6 allows the solo player to mix and match a large number of details. To go back to my previous list of questions and using just these two pages we might end up with something like… 
  • What’s been spray painted on the walls? “The graffiti reads The Bug and the paint is made to look like flames coming out of the text…” [combining the beetle icon with the campfire icon]
  • What’s the innkeeper like? “Morador Seryn is a indifferent but respectful man. His unkempt beard frames a sad face, driven by some unspoken guilt he never shares…” [combining name prompts with other bits from the People fields and adding in some ideas]
  • What are they offering us to take up this quest? “A magic sword that allows the wielder to cast Knock once per day…” [combining the “weapon” rewards with the lock icon…]
  • Is it raining? “No, it is sunny day…” [just grabbing one of the weather icons
  • What time is it? “Afternoon…” [grabbing one of the clocks]
  • What is the first thing my character notices about the forest? “The air is hot and stuffy, here, and there is a definite silence, like everything is holding its breath and waiting for you to act…” [blending one detail prompt with a place: mood prompt]
  • What’s a fun plot twist that is happening? “Your mentor has been using you to try and get to the queen!” [combining the plot twist from one with the crown icon from another]
That’s just two pages. There are 36 of these pages. What’s better is that the prompts and symbols in one section can often map over as you see it. The event prompt under Exploration can be used to inform a quest or give backstory to a character as needed. The scene complication can be used in a variety of ways. 
So much time was spent in my campaigns just trying to figure what table I wanted to roll on that some sessions were basically unexpected prep to figure out enough details that next time around I might able to play…until another big question came up and I had to do it, again. 
“What symbol do the cultists use to represent their god…well, I guess I could use this table about generating a new religion and broadly go from there…or maybe I just look at the shirt my daughter is wearing and make it spookier… evil looking horses it is!”
You can roll between 1 and 4 times (2 times being my sweet spot), here, and answer, to some degree (often a good amount), nearly any question you might have. The twelve-sided die might be interpreted as room size and the four-sided die might be the number of exits, for instance with location/scene/exploration/symbols all adding in details. Factions might build off prompts in the People field (or one of the others). 
You will have to bridge some gaps and play the terms off of each other so that they fit into your context and focus, but my experience with this zine is that it hits the vibe the vast majority of the time while leaving me enough room that I am not having to convert or adapt too broadly.
I am a librarian. I am well used to telling people, “some resources are good for broad questions, others are better for specific questions,” and that can be true for oracles as well. Some folks do not want to know “Midnight – Resistance” when trying to figure out, “What do I see looking down the hall?” I get that. There is likely a 1d100 Things You See Looking Down the Hall in a Mid Level Dark Fantasy Campaign that would tell you exactly what you see (give or take five minutes of looking up stats or having to retcon the fact that absolutely no goblins was one of your starting rules). 
However, a well done oracle that gives me just enough paint and canvas to make any picture I want is invaluable to me. I don’t have to dig through 50+ PDFs or go through 19 zines or pull out three hardback volumes of random tables to try and answer a five second question. If I get to a question that I want something a little more pre-packaged or something a little more detailed: I still have those books and I will still use them. For all those questions where I just want a quick snapshot, just want a quick symbol, just need a few words to help me get from “I enter the edge of the forest” and “the stream flows gently down the slope,” then this book and its simple like 36 sets of quick words and phrases and symbols is amazing. Even the bigger questions get easier and easier to answer the more I use this book.
I have used it in all of the campaigns that I have played on this blog at least a little and plan to use it more and more. 
What’s even better, buying a copy grants you a zip of all the pages as PNGs which makes it possible to add three or four to your phone for an afternoon play AND it comes with a spreadsheet with all the possible options for those who want to make a script to pull just a few details from the list. It is about as user friendly and as widely applicable as a solo player could ever want. 
You know…besides those folk who like to keep much broader types of oracles in their pockets:
“Flip a coin, if it is heads then this means ‘fire, up, creativity, left, the taste of copper, growth’ and if its tails it means ‘water, down, acceptance, right, the stock market, pickles.'” 
I love those folk. 

The Bleak and The Pearl (SoloDark): Part 5 – Returning the Spear (Civilization Phase)

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On 2024-07-13

In Actual Play, Solo Campaigns, SoloDark, The Bleak and the Pearl

— Gathering Allies in Grunce —

Returning to Grunce after finishing up their dive into Mad Del Marius’s “Lost Citadel,” the team has two goals in mind: 
  • Return the spear of House Marius to the current ruling leader, Varren Marius, and ask for her help in the ongoing issues facing Grunce and the Lighthouse. [1]
  • Get prepped to start diving into the tunnels underneath Grunce and return the Marius Diadem to the first fuelstone. 
Rance and Cal (Grunkheart, chief Lighthouse Keeper) start pouring over the notes of each other’s research. Rance has connected the various items of power to restart the fuel stones. Cal has learned that the location of the final item, Jonias Grunkheart’s “Eye”, is in some place beyond the normal realm. [2] He now moves on research what this clue might mean and will try and locate a route to Mistamere’s domain. 
The meeting with Lady Varren goes well. She accepts the gift and pledges to aid Cal and his Keepers in their quest. This might be the chance to launch an offensive against the dark. [3] She will not return to the Citadel and try to retake it. “Let the dead stay dead”. 
Potential Wrinkle: Her urge towards a more militant approach means she might see the Lighthouse more as a weapon than a protection. A sword rather than a shield.

— The Free Merchants Plot —

Meanwhile, the Free Merchants have begun to muster their own forces. Their current goal is to disrupt the trade routes into Grunce and use the frustration against the Great Houses to profit. [4] Their plan is to primarily destroy the alliances between the Pearl shipyards and the Grunce ones by refusing shipments and slow rolling the process. The Bleak needs the Pearl more and if the merchants across the Gray Channel feel they are losing out, the number of ships will shrink. 
This will hit both House Allocius (who runs the Grunce docks) and House Marr (who handles many of the Grunce markets) in the pocketbooks, tightening the screws and forcing them to collaborate and compromise more with the Free Merchants. 

— Mechanical Notes —

  1. Varren Marius, the current Matriarch, strives to create unity among the Great Houses to wage war against the darkness and take by Barthus. However, the sheer greed of the upper houses, seeing The Bleak as a business venture, tends to silence her from doing much. (Note: Her name Var – Ren, and her drive, Unity – Challenge) were both generated with Random Realities. 
  2. Mythic Meaning Tables: Actions 59 Leave, 71 Physical. 
  3. “Does Varren accept the spear?” “Yes.” What does she want from it? Mythic Meaning Table: Character Motivations –> 11 Conflict, 97 Support. 
  4. Mythic Meaning Tables: Actions –> 9 Hindrance, 39 Attain. “Are they trying to hinder the Lighthouse?” No. 
  5. Random Realities. Quest, Mission –> 5, 6 Destroy + 5,2 Relationship

— Doug’s Notes — 

This one was shorter and a bit more awkward than intended. That’s a byproduct of some gear shifting that happened in the middle. Originally, when I decided I wanted a dungeon crawl centric solo game, I went with ShadowDark backed with Mythic. Then, with SoloDark out, there was an alternate oracle with a few other bits and pieces. The plan morphed into using SoloDark in the dungeons (to avoid some oddities of triggering a close thread type event just asking “are there still torches on the wall”) but then going back to a full Mythic campaign to figure out how stuff was going in the civilization part of the adventure.
This ended up being surprisingly awkward. Grunce is just the (current) backdrop. Threads about the various Great Houses fighting probably won’t mean much as the game gets going and the team goes deeper into the Bleak (which is, in theory, only around 10 delves from now). It felt weird and flow disruptive to have a lot of book keeping for a part of the storyline that should be more about weaving an exciting story and giving excuses to fight minotaurs, scarlet or otherwise. This campaign is about enjoying dungeon delves and (soon) hex crawls. 
In the middle of working out this civilization scene I realized I was going to do away with the two phase model (I might try again in the future, but not right now). Instead, it will be purely SoloDark. Civ scenes might be short and brief or they might be more detailed but they will largely just be in-ShadowDark rather than outside of it. I will then back up some of the SoloDark tables with Random Realities and with Mythic’s meaning tables. 
Take Doug’s Advice: Solo Play is only about satisfying one player at the table, YOU. If something is not working for YOU then it is not working. Move on, try again, rip out parts, shove in parts. Whatever YOU need. 

I’ll wrap this up here. Tomorrow I will try and work out the random tables for the next section of the “mega dungeon”. Then I’ll begin the next delve. 

THE BIG BARSTON BAKERSFIELD CHRONICLES RECAP, PART 3 (ADVANCED FIGHTING FANTASY)

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On 2024-07-08

In Actual Play, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Solo Campaigns, The Bakersfield Chronicles

 

In part 2 of this big recap, I discussed some of the various characters and elements that had shown up over the months of playing and the general BIGGITY [technical term] of playing out a campaign so deeply decided by random dice rolls. I also hinted that I was needing to parse some things and get back to the Barston Bakersfield core. 

Barston and company had cracked open a big conspiracy. I wanted to do one last dive into the Humb-issue quests and solve the problem of the missing people so I could be freed up to dial a few things back. But, before I could really do that, I had an issue inherent in the whole “always expanding” campaign world: what was meant to be the first or second quest, destroying the red warlocks, had never been attempted. It was time. By the lore of the campaign world, the warlocks were entangled with some of the missing people (*cough* zombies *cough*) but also controlled the northern paths. 

By returning to the campaign roots I would open doorways to more adventures, several which had been seeded and glimpsed in excursions. 

— The Return to the Forest Ick — 

Using the original Harper’s Quest 2 sessions, I had a rough map of Ick that I could use to track back towards the base (the same place that Shellyton died at the very start of this campaign). I did build up some random tables using Mythic’s Location Crafter and I built up some random encounters that made sense and worked out some various objects and complications I wanted to face. It was a way to control some the randomness while still not having a clear impression of what the team – being the now definite main team of Barston, Derron (street punk become something of monk type), and Astrid (elven bard who had developed into a fairly powerful nature mage). Derron has a backpack full of highly explosive fire oil. They plan to go full “goblin sapper”. 

It would honestly take 2 to 3 long posts to cover ALL the details of these sessions, so I will sum it up into six quickish sections…

– 1. The Sennas Faith – 

A growing theme hinted at in part 2 was the idea that Humb had somehow been tied to a now lost faith. This faith involved a god of beauty and art called Sennas, appearing as a supremely beautiful male youth and whose symbols was a gauntlet pouring a rainbow of colors. Humb and Ick were still connected to this faith, though most trappings related to it were missing. Barston has pledged to find out more and finds himself drawn to the mystery. He seeks to return a statue to the ancient Sennas temple (now a place full of bohemians and artists drawn to it).

During this adventure, Barston is deeply wounded and has to limp off into a safe spot to try and heal. An encounter leads to a meeting with wood elves (from Ick) who love that he is trying to take down the warlocks. The warlocks have been destroying large swaths of the forest in their spread while the elves have been trying guerilla warfare tactics but know if the warlocks learn too much about where the elves live that the elves will be outnumbered. Dice rolls and oracles lead to a plot twist here where the elves are followers of Sennas. They have kept the faith alive for generations while the humans have let it lapse. Barston is invited to seek out the village. When he is ready, he will be able, though there are some “conditions” initially applied.

– 2. The Warring Reds – 

I realized I had made a slight mistake in that the blue warlock tribe (once more powerful than the Reds) had been largely destroyed so technically the Reds should have been running rampant. I decided to take a side trip and run a short session from the viewpoint of the red warlocks, partially using Mythic Magazine #41’s Villain Crafter table to set some scenes, combined with a few Meaning Table rolls. The end result was that the Reds were at war with themselves. The powerful leader, focusing on demonology, had been deemed too theoretical in his tyranny and a younger upstart, focusing more on martial skills and rule-by-force, had started to push him out. Both considered themselves to be the true follower of Malakar Brite. 

On top of this, the remaining blue warlocks had decided to try and take over the Red territory. A few miles from Humb, a bloody war was going down, largely unnoticed. [At the end of each scene, day, etc…I would roll a basic opposed test and keep track of the relative damage each side was sustaining]. 

– 3. The Order’s True Place in the Tale – 

Towards the end of these sessions, another clump of plot twists revealed that a major player in backing both sides of the warlock war was The Order of Illkar. The cultists-pretending-to-be-merchants were behind not only the missing people but also behind the gutting of the Humb churches and temples. Barston is able to lay claim to many stolen artifacts (and later, Derron is able to return them) and help start a pretty massive healing project around town. 

– 4. Ick Is Fighting Back –

There is a scene where Ick shifts into a more primal version of itself, an ancient forest full of strange creatures and large mushrooms. A group of warlocks who had been torturing and killing another group of warlocks is trapped inside the event and killed. Barston realizes that the forest is far more deeply magical than he realized and something is reawakening in it to protect itself from the increased destruction by the warlocks. 

– 5. The Great Storm – 

Also near the end, the team gets caught up in a trap that threatens to bring both groups of warlocks down on them. Astrid burns off essentially all of her magic points to create a massive storm. Since the Blues are also decently powerful weather mages, they inadvertently join in and power the storm even more. Portions of the forest are flattened and many warlocks are outright destroyed in the hurricane force event. The entire forest is charged and the trees glow and pulse in the energy. This act weakens Astrid considerably but allows the team a chance to get closer to the warlock base and to try and carry out their mission. 

– 6. The Team Suffers a Loss and Barston Undergoes a Crisis of Faith – 

Right as they get near the warlock base, they find the warlocks in a final death struggle. Too distracted with killing each other to notice the team of heroes sneaking in. Alas, some terrible dice rolls reveals that a telegraphed threat – a wood demon summoned up by the Reds to guard their base – is actually worse than intended. Random rolls all go from bad to worse as Astrid is snatched off the path into the trees. While Barston and Derron try, and fail to free her, she is hit several times and crushed. Derron and Barston are both deeply injured before the dice suddenly “turn back on” and Derron just flips out and pummels the demon into woodchips. 

Barston snaps and takes the backpack from the very-nearly-fatally injured Derron and just runs full tilt into the warlock base (he was here before, it was wear his bow was found), lights all the fire oil, and tosses it in. 

For every dice roll that went poorly for Astrid (and the trapped team that led to her summoning a massive storm), every dice roll about the extent of this explosion agreed: kaboom. The Reds, who use fire magic as a base, have explosives built up in their own plan of wrecking everything. Except now Barston has intentionally but also accidentally set it off. 

The explosion flattens him, kills off many Red, destroys many of their “stored up” zombies, and knocks many tall trees down. 

We have an unconscious, 1-ish HP main hero, his best friend that has around 2hp, and a dead friend who had been a core of this campaign for months. 

– The Aftermath – 

While the team bled out at the doorway of victory, the wood elves they had met a few days before showed up and gathered our fallen heroes. They are all three taken into the secret village of the Ick wood elves – Tarlanei – and there Astrid is buried with her kingdom’s crown (used for some time by her as a magical focus) returned to her own elvish people. Derron recovers fairly quickly and returns to Humb with news. Barston stays in Tarlanei and dedicates himself to becoming the new high priest of Sennas. A process which will take months in game-world time. 

Astrid’s troupe, the Skipping Faun, has a new leader: Athella. She was taken from the solo adventure “Bringing Back the Princess” in The Warlock Returns #11. I adapted it as a stand alone scenario for Barston and it ended with her joining the Faun (as always, based on a lot of random oracle rolls). 

The Sennas temple, still infested with Bohemians in a now thriving art community, has many of its artifacts restored and awaits Barston to take on his new role as leader. 

Derron keeps the outward appearance of a street punk but is now much more mature and deeply dedicated to understanding himself. He will follow Barston when Barston is ready to lead.

Humb is now freed of the years-long warlock interference and the Order has been destroyed. The town is suddenly finding itself bustling again. 

— The End of Volume One and the “Truth” of Malakar Brite —

I had a problem on my hand. The main major threat of a year of playing seemed resolved EXCEPT we never got around to main baddie. And it felt like shoehorning in the big bad at this point would lessen what was actually a fairly upsetting (to the characters and to myself) death. Astrid was always a bit of a back up character but she was, inversely, kind of meant to be the one who lived on and told the story so future generations of Bakersfields (possibly half-elf Bakersfields since early meaning tables had essentially set up that her reasoning for following Barston was romantic interest) could follow along. In world terms, Barston and Derron got on people’s nerves even though people trusted them. Everyone, including some of the not-so-good people, loved Astrid. 

Prior to this point, I had Brite shoved into every random list, sometimes more than once, and the dice always avoided having him surface, so I basically decided to forget the oracles and just go with my gut.

Brite was an old man when Shellyton and the other Bakersfields fled Humb. That was now 41-years-ago. He would be in his 90s or even over 100. While fantasy wizards, especially evil ones, tend to outstay their welcome, the campaign had clearly painted him as a threat-by-proxy and never something more active. In fact, oracle type rolls to see if the warlocks had received missions “from him” had basically all come back as “no” or “exceptional no” type results ever since the Order was destroyed a couple of months back. 

To wit, my own interpretation of these too-many-rolls is that Malakar is gone. 

Dead? A man who got turned into a legend while being essentially innocent? Whatever. Just “left”. Maybe Ick absorbed him. Maybe he is in an alternate Humb painted on a different canvas. In his place, the Order had used warring bands of warlocks by pretending their missives were from Brite himself and had played them off of one another to fill their own pockets. For years. Maybe decades. The destruction of The Order led to the in-fighting led to the downfall. Brite himself might return but it is obvious that Shellyton’s beliefs of a Xagor-esque Warlock were the byproduct of a kid who had long processed the loss of his childhood home through some grief-tinged revenge fantasy. The warlocks were real but Shellyton’s take on Brite was, at best, outsized. Maybe. Maybe this is the long con. 

At any rate, it barely matters. A final scene played out in the aftermath with Barston and Athella (The Skipping Faun remains loyal in their support of Barston) ended up with the conclusion that Barston now wants to be himself. No longer a continuation of Shellyton’s quest. No longer a warlock smasher. A man who is finding his faith while refinding a lost faith for an entire region. 

All the characters tended to anti-adventurers. Barston was a book printer in training, a herbalist by hobby, who beat warlocks while wielding an old family mace. Derron was a kid who took care of animals and got into drunken bar fights. Astrid was a run away princess bride who now played music and hung out with a pair of losers. That theme kept going for all the heroes – the conman, the reformed warlock, the shaggy dog, the amateur detective, the struggling merchant, the crackpot professor, the bard play-acting a mayor, the great-and-powerful wizard who is also kind of a petty power player. 

Barston is now a priest in the proper fantasy sense of the word, struggling to reawaken a faith that is built into the lifeblood of the land. Derron, his best friend, takes on the role of a friar monk and right-hand-man. The two of them will return, eventually, in much more seriously minded storylines. For a campaign about un-heroes, the two of them are now full blown heroes of the realm. Yet, people have barely heard of these two men. I like that contrast. 

But the campaign does not merely end because its titular main character is less of of a main character and has now become an entire plot device. There are plans afoot. 

I had planned to wrap this Big Recap up in three parts, but there will be a part 4. We will finish this up talking about how the campaign will continue with four (or more) different faces: the new city guards, the treasure hunters, the con men, and the priests. And that’s not even getting to the grumpy goblins, the young rangers, the town beset by werewolves, the glowing figures in the hills. or the massive power struggle as Athella’s mom attempts to take over an entire dynasty. 

The Big Barston Bakersfield Chronicles Recap, Part 2 (Advanced Fighting Fantasy)

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On 2024-07-08

In Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Campaign Design, Solo Campaigns, The Bakersfield Chronicles

 

In Part 1 of this Big Recap, we saw how a simple Harper’s Quest 2 story blended with a too-large Troika campaign to become something in the middle: a simple-beginnings but unknown-endings Advanced Fighting Fantasy campaign. In this part, I will recap some of the ideas and sessions that began to set-up all the threads that I am still working on to this day…almost entirely in ways that I thought would go differently. 

— Step One: Advanced Fighting Barston —

How to take a character from one system – Harper’s Quest 2 uses the a similar STR/DEX/WIS loadout as Into the Odd‘s STR/DEX/WILL – and convert it into another: AFF’s Skill, Luck, Stamina, and Magic? I handled this mostly by starting with the basics. I made a character in the default way and then looked for ways to tweak and update him. He had been pretty good in fighting groups of enemies so he got the Combat Tactics talent that meant he had training in facing multiple foes. He had absolutely sucked at casting or using anything magical so not only did he start with no magical talent or score in AFF but one of the inherent mysteries was why he seemed to be anti-magical. There was no disadvantage like that for him to take but it was baked into his story that he tended to avoid magical items. Even for potions he brewed herbal concoctions. Priestly magic was ok, but he horked up more wizardly magic…for some reason. 

He had a whetstone in HQ2 that gave him +1 Damage. In this case, his AFF mace gets +1 damage but otherwise uses the AFF damage track. 

One of the more perplexing items was a bow found in the HQ2 segment. It was in a secret room in a red warlock base and was tied into a wizard named Yevony The Great who had some non-specific dealings with at least some of the Reds. “Is this bow magical?” “Exceptional No.” At the time I just played it as a very-mundane bow. Once the transition happened I wanted something more than that so ended up with it being anti-magic. The bow attracts magically inclined people and then destroys their magic ability when they use it. The supremely non-magical Barston just used it like a bow but it could even strip the magical nature out of entities over time. 

— Step Two: Building a City Brick by Brick —

Humb was a bustling commerce town…kind of. There were a lot of merchants’ guilds and a lot of commerce in potential, but for years the city had been increasingly having trouble reaching the outside world. To the north and west, the red warlocks choked off trade routes. To the south and east, it was the blue warlocks. Shipments got lost all the time. People visiting the city were under attack. Humb was in a long downfall state of decay.

I also rolled on a random table – I forget which one but it might have been something from Matt David’s The Great Book of Random Tables or one of his related Quest books – and got some basic hooks to generate some threads for Barston to solve. Outside of the long-term disruption to supplies that put a strain on all trade, there was

  1. A general lack of faith plaguing the churches and the people,
  2. A number of people had gone missing with no clear explanation,
  3. A local troupe was in town having troubles getting people to join. 
A big one with no clear ending, a big one with probably a clear ending once it is solved, and a smaller one for flavor. I liked it. 
I also threw some Rory’s Story Cubes to generate a few longer distance oddities to hook some adventures on and got there was a floating island related to missing livestock down south, a site where something had fallen from above and was altering the terrain (also down south), and a person who was trying to research stories of giants (in town, but focusing on the west). 
I plonked a few more threads in about a plague and another about folks turning into statues but both of those kind removed relatively soon [as in, immediately] because it was getting to be a bit too much. Both got just kind of summed up into “Humb has troubles and needs more supplies”. 
Using The Universal NPC Emulator to generate some details along with some other rolls on things like Meaning Tables I ended up with some not-so-grimdark hooks such as the current mayor – Mayor Elore Mardias in a direct Romancing SaGa Minstrel Song nod – was an ex-bard and had a lot of fans and groupies who basically elected him and still hung on to him because of that. A river spotted briefly during the HQ2 session became the River Eos – a joke about “End of Service” derived from an online community I am part of for SaGa’s Re;universe – and the major way to travel to and from Humb. There was a plotline about assassinating a shoemaker in Nallstay (an artisan city to the north alongside Lake Telos, another EOS joke). 
Barston was staying at the Dog and Duck Inn, near the Brite Green (the only remnant of Malakar Brite in the city’s history…a park named for the long serving family of which Malakar was a member). 
The sheer number of details generated over these couple of prep sessions was growing a bit out of hand so it was time to actually play the dang thing.

— A Grumpy Wizard, a Street Punk, a Reformed Warlock, an Elven Singer, a Con Man, and a Very Shaggy Dog Join a Journeyman Book Printer for Drinks —

Now having a working character, backed by AFF and Mythic GME 2, it was time to Barston to work. Why was Uncle Shell wrong? What actually happened forty-years ago when the Bakersfields fled Humb. How can Barston help all this chaos. The main goals were basically clear:

  1. Find out the truth of Uncle Shelltyon and Malakar Brite
  2. Punch out some Warlocks
  3. Help get supplies to Humb
The first adventure was a quick one. Barston is chilling in the Dog and Duck’s bar when he hears shouts. He calls out to see if someone will help and the person who answers the call turns out to be Yevony the Great, the same wizard who seemed to be helping the warlocks (turns out he had snuck the bow in to try and get it to Malakar to destroy Malakar’s magic, but that was found out later). The two of them temporarily team up to help the person shouting who is Derron Underhill, a young street punk character who prefers to his fists to any blade. Derron, a rebellious but spiritual teenager, becomes one of the main allies to Barston. At the time, Derron was working in the stables and trying to stop blue warlocks from stealing the horses. 
One of the Blues turns on the others and helps out the good guys. This ends up being Haig Raven: eventual reformed warlock and general digger into ruins and mystical mysteries. 
Besides these three, these early sessions introduced 
  • Astrid – runaway wood elf princess and current troupe leader of traveling performers The Skipping Faun who is intrigued by Barston, 
  • Nizel Torel – supposed Great Hero but actually a conman who told most of his own exploits to help with various schemes, and 
  • Gulwin – a great big shaggy dog that showed up during the HQ2 sessions but returned here to save Barston a couple of times. 

Nizel, by the way, was the one associated with the assassination plot at Nallstay, though this turned out to be a ruse by the Reds. 

It was a lot of characters already. Others got added as NPCs and townsfolk, including a Sheriff that was initially a main ally since the mayor always seemed dismissive of Barston. Our main group, swollen to capacity, eventually ended up tracking down the main base of the Blues and wrecking it, which freed up trade to the south and allowed Humb goods to reach the coast and Goldenbrook, a large coastal town with one hell of a political conflict going down. 
While I was doing a bang-up job of introducing characters and plots left and right – be it by oracle or meaning table to pulling some card or another, etc – one thing was clear: the campaign was losing focus and it was losing fun. The heart of this campaign was Barston and it was quickly becoming a group effort where there was no reason to believe that Barston was anything significant. 

— The Great Split and the Move from the Original Plot —

Early on, there were two main goals for Barston that had never really been approached or close to solved: find Malakar Brite and find Uncle Shell’s stuff. Taking care of Humb became the entire plotline, even greatly outpacing fighting off the warlocks. More and more people showed up. Bill Samford was a poor merchant and a worse guard. Bill had three friends with him (originally, before I made the whole circus, those three friends were going to be Barston’s buddies at the Dog and Duck and kind of a Greek Chorus to back up our lone adventurer but frankly I did not have time for them). This cast of a dozen and then dozens became kind of background noise. 
The great split started to happen. Nizel and Yevony (the conman fighter and the morally questionable wizard) got sent north to Nallstay to handle whatever was up with the assassination plot and take care of business up there. Haig and Gulwin (reformed Warlock and shaggy miracle dog) fled town and justice and eventually team up with Ali Ahussa, professor and archeologist who had tried to hire Barston early on to hunt down proof of giants, to go off and explore. Astrid gets about half her time with Barston and Derron, half her time with The Skipping Faun. 
The sheriff got several story beats, A storyline involving Derron and Barston tracking down some bandits ended up triggering some interrupt scenes in which a new character – Alice Hunter – hires the two of them to free her friend and maybe lover, Lun, a member of the Humb guard who has been captured while the rest of the guard look the other way. This introduced a whole new bad guy, The Order of Illkar, which was posing as a merchant’s guild specializing in religious supplies. This Order is the major instigator of many of Humb’s issues, playing temples against one another while also stealing supplies and kidnapping people. 
There ended up being a rescue mission, finding out that the Sheriff and many of the guards folk were in on this “kidnap people for profit” plot, and a huge fight in the street in which Barston, his allies, and the printer’s guild manages to win. The sheriff is arrested. Barston is an unsung hero. Alice and Lun are reunited. 
And absolutely none of these madcap and ever spiraling adventures had ever done anything to answer the question of Uncle Shellyton, the truth of Malakar Brite, or any of the things I assumed the story would be about. I could have reeled it in at any time. Haig had told Barston that Shellyton’s stuff was kept in the old Blue base which now was now the domain of a lamia: in session two or so. The plotline about the assassination and the trip up river got delayed until it no longer felt timely but I could have just sent them on up earlier. There was a simple plan, early on, to have the team run missions to disrupt the warlocks, to find out the truth of Malakar, but those kept taking backseat to all the other stuff going on. 

— A New Meta-Plot Slowly Develops —

While I was having fun, I was getting frustrated by my own allowing of things to keep building. Any attempt to hold myself back ended up with me going “ok, just one more”. The “to be played” pile in this campaign was piling up. 
I did find new hope, though, in a series of hints and concepts that were laying a groundwork for a possible way out. Ruins near Humb that emitted brightly colored water every midsummer. A missing statue from a religious temple that seemed to have significance to Barston. Hints that Ick is more than a mere forest. A grove in a swamp with giant fruit trees and giant bees. Glowing people in the hills.  A mask that made the wearers dream, and those dreams keep telling those people to find Barston. Reality was bending, like someone or something had painted on the canvas multiple times…
…and Barston’s own strange anti-magic nature might be the key to unraveling it all. 
But first, it was time to return to the original plotline. Barston wants to find the missing people the Order has sold off, but to do that he has to finish the Warlocks once and for all. Our now main three characters – Barston, Derron, and Astrid – set off on an outsized mission to bring volume one to a close. The Blues have been scattered, now it is time to break the Reds. And that mission ends….
Badly.
In Part 3, I will go into how an epic trio of sessions made the world a lot more FANTASY while also making the original plotline more a form of therapy for a lost man who finally finds himself. And I’ll go into how I plan to make sense of all these dang characters I could not stop myself from making.

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