The Adventures Of Konnor - Chapter 2: The Ghost Of Lion Castle

Last night I played through Konnor's next solo adventure 'The Ghost Of Lion Castle'.  It was a roller-coaster of successes and failures but more on that in a bit.

The adventure is set in a small town that has a school of magic and is therefore heavily populated by apprentice wizards.  Konnor is one of the apprentices in  town and after a night of carousing at the local pub Konnor draws the lucky straw and gets to be the next adventurer to explore the (probably) abandoned and (supposedly) haunted Lion Castle.

The adventure is extremely well structured both for solo play and for replay-ability.  There are very few truly fixed encounter locations with most of the action and combat being driven by an innovative use of the wandering monster table.  The player starts with a partial map of the castle which helps with basic navigation but there are some areas that randomly teleport the character to new areas.  I found it to be a nice change from the traditional simple 'choose-your-own-adventure' format of solo play RPGs.  But how did Konnor do?

Konnor approached the castle from the southern side and unfortunately due to some poor spell choices had to circle around and enter through the trapped gate-house.  In spite of Konnor's Dexterity being one of his best attributes he triggered EVERY trap on his entry to the main building and had to camp out and heal up before even really getting started.  Once inside Konnor was able to freely explore the castle and started piling up quite the haul through defeating the creatures populating some of the castle's rooms and hallway.  Shortly before finding his way to the final chambers of Sargon (the castle's former master) Konnor made one poor choice (which I will omit to avoid spoiling it for anyone who plays the adventure) which resulted in him losing ALL the treasure he had acquired up to that point!  What had Konnor found and lost?  Here's the list:
-321 Gold
-5 gems totalling 1660 Gold value
-3 spell scrolls
-an Elven Cloak
For a third level character that is an unreal amount of treasure to have....and lose.
The final encounter with the ghost of Sargon replenished some of the monetary treasure but the Elven Cloak was gone forever.

So overall mechanically how was this play through?
It went a lot more smoothly than my previous attempt as every creature I encountered had a counterpart in the current Monster Manual so I didn't have to guess at any stats.  On the downside, some of the monsters were far less powerful than they had been in D&D Basic (I got the Elven Cloak and 135 Gold from a monster I defeated in a single round), while other monsters were almost invincible for a single level 3 character (I fought an Ogre that I had to use most of my special abilities to defeat and still ended up with 1 Hit Point when the fight was over).  Overall though it was easy and fun to play and translate.  The only downside I see is that if someone was going to use a character that played through this adventure in an ongoing campaign you could easily end up with an absurd amount of treasure and powerful items for a low level character.  I enjoyed it and if played as intended its a fun RPG diversion for a few hours.

So what does Konnor look like now?  Levelled up and ready for his next adventure:

One thing that worked really well is that the adventure (if fully successful) ends with the character automatically levelling up and then adding their earned XP on top of that so Konnor is now level 4 but has a head-start on his way to level 5.

Also a question for anyone with more experience with the current system of D&D than I have; I assumed that when a multi-classed character has a combined character level of 4 they get their first stat increase, is that correct?

Next up is Lathan's Gold by the same author as Ghost Of Lion Castle to I'm looking forward to that.  After that the well is dry unless anyone reading this can suggest any other solo adventures?

-Jay

The Adventures Of Konnor - Chapter 1: Rogue Mage

Today I managed to play through my first old solo adventure testing out the flexibility of the current D&D rules and I have to say I think it went fairly smoothly.

As I mentioned before my new 1st level Fighter; Konnor played through Rogue Mage an old solo adventure from Warlock Magazine.  During the course of the adventure I substituted Monster Manual stats for the common creatures (Goblins & Giant Snake) I encountered and made up some of the other creatures stats on the fly.  Where I needed to I generally substituted their Hit Dice as a bonus to be applied to every "to hit" roll save and stat test and that seemed to work reasonably well for the most part.  In addition I realised I would have to make up DCs for saves that I was required to make during the adventure so rather than making them variable I just decided at the outset that every save would have a DC of 15.  Again that seemed to work fairly well and I only failed the important saves during my play-through.

My gauge for saying it worked well is that I didn't have to figure out or change very much on the fly and when I did the current rules provided some pretty easy answers that didn't require me to break the flow of the game.  In hindsight my only challenge was that I shouldn't have chosen a non-TSR adventure first as it meant that I was dealing with a lot (eight) of creatures that weren't in the Monster Manual.  The thing I did like about using what was essentially a short Fighting Fantasy novel written for Basic D&D is that the treasure haul was fairly meagre and doesn't feel like it makes the character unusable or overpowered for my next adventure.

So without any further ado, how did Konnor do?

Rogue Mage starts out with Konnor having been tried and convicted for thievery after falling on hard times.  Before his sentence can be handed down the Guild Of Magicians takes Konnor into custody and offer him a pardon if he can track down a rogue mage from their order and recover an artifact stolen from the Guild.  It's that or the noose so Konnor is off to find the mage!
Outside of town the mage's lair is cut into the mountainside and guarded by goblins, after defeating the guards Konnor journeys into a maze stocked with dangerous monsters (acid spitting Ant-Men, Octopus/Man hybrids, Slime Monsters and a giant snake that can camouflage itself as a pile of treasure).  Once through the maze a chase begins with Konnor catching up to the evil wizard and after scorching him with a scroll that shoots fire, Konnor 'bravely' stabbed him in the back.
During the short adventure Konnor managed to acquire a +1 Short Sword and roughly 200 GP worth of treasure.  He also found 3 potions of healing scattered around but used all of them, plus the one he started with just to make it through to the end.
Mission accomplished, and Konnor walked out with 950 XP (enough for 3rd level) and 6 of his Hit Points left.  As an aside a 1st level Fighter with no CON bonus has 10 Hit Points and I burned through about 29 during this adventure so if Konnor had failed to find any of those healing potions he wouldn't have made it.

So let's see what Konnor looks like now, and why:

I levelled up twice and decided that I would increase Konnor's Fighter level because it seemed like those were the skills he had used, but I also multi-classed into Wizard because (meta-reason) my next adventure requires a level 1-3 Elf or Magic-User by the old Basic rules, and this seemed the best way to maintain continuity with one character.  I did fairly well on my Hit Point rolls thankfully (no CON bonus) but may become a bit squishier next adventure anyway.  I'm assuming that if Konnor is ready to spellcast at a moment's notice that he cannot carry his shield so his Armour Class will be moving in the wrong direction.

Konnor's next adventure will be "Ghost Of Lion Castle" another old school D&D solo adventure written by Top Secret game designer Merle Rasmussen.  I've got one more adventure planned (Lathan's Gold)  for after that and then my well will have run dry for D&D solo adventures.  If anyone can recommend any additional adventures (that I can actually get my hands on) please let me know.  

I'm also considering formally stat'ing up some of the Fighting Fantasy monsters I encountered if that's of any interest to anyone, let me know.

-Jay








 

Let the D&D experiment begin!

I've decided to give something a try based on a combination of nostalgia and some conversations I've had with friends about gaming (D&D specifically) over the past few weeks.

One of the features of the new/current editions of D&D is that the rules are open, simple and flexible enough that they seem to allow material from any previous edition of the game to be used with little to no adaption being necessary.  I thought this sounded great, and when I look at it it seems correct but I haven't really tried it.  I'm run a few adventures using the current rules but they've either been things I've written using the current rules or a published adventure.  I even dug out a few older modules thinking they'd by fun but then got distracted by Tales From The Yawning Portal taking two of those adventures and updating them to the current rules anyway.

So, I've decided to take the current rules, make a character and play through some old (not older, truly old) published SOLO D&D adventures and see how that works.  The biggest change I'm anticipating making is updating the monsters to use their current versions so that every successful attack from my character isn't an instant death blow to an old school 1HD monster.

I built my character (Konnor) with some insight and planning into what my first 3 adventures will be.  To that end rather than being statically primed I made his background fit the first adventure and set him up to be able to multi-class as I need for subsequent adventures as old school solo modules were typically written with a specific class or group of classes in mind.

So without any further ado let's meet Konnor!

Also, because it's me even though I'll be playing solo I had to paint an miniature.

The miniature is one of Darksword's modular Knight Watch soldiers and he fit perfectly for what I needed.  For my first adventure I needed an unarmoured warrior with a sword and shield (that's harder to find than I thought).

My first adventure will be "Rogue Mage" which was written by Graeme Davis and published way back in Warlock Magazine (the official Fighting Fantasy magazine).  What seems great and different about Rogue Mage is that it was written to use either the Fighting Fantasy gamebook rules system or D&D Basic edition with a 1st level fighter character.

I'm excited to try this out and will have a follow up on Konnor's first adventure later this week!

-Jay