Words & Other Sorcery

I added in a mechanic to negotiate with a foe (and possibly recruit them) and to sneak past a foe to avoid any confrontation.

#7 Victorious Vanja

Meet Vanja, a farmer trained by a beggar, equipped with old knives and a lot of Luck. She heard a rumor about the Emerald Dagger of Vile Venom, and had to fend off a rabid dog to escape the tavern. Then she geared up and headed out.

At a crumbling aqueduct, she was accosted by a blind bandit. She convinced him to let her pass, but he needed to prove to his boss that he was doing his job, so she let him stab her a little to bloody his knife.

At a holy shrine, she found four diseased sailors praying for healing. She tried to be friendly, but in their sea-madness they attacked her! Vanja called out to the saint of the shrine to help her, and a ghostly sea captain appeared to help her subdue the sickly sailors. She took a well-made cloak from one of them and carried on.

She arrived at the hidden stone door of the Villain’s tower, which was guarded by a black unicorn. Hoping to gain its help, she spoke to it. It agreed to show her the secret door, but only if she gave up her new cloak so it could clean its hooves.

Inside the tower, Vanja found a winged albino lion prowling the cellars. She begged the lion for help, and the winged beast agreed to be her mount! Then Vanja confronted the decrepit lich that ruled the tower and possessed the Emerald Dagger. Her initial ambush failed, and the lich’s plague magic wounded her and destroyed her rations. But with the lion’s help, Vanja called upon the power of an earth elemental to thrash the lich, and then she set a series of traps to snare and impale the lich to death. Victory!

She returned to the city, where she found that the Emerald Dagger was genuine and enchanted. A priceless magical relic! (Vanja is the first adventurer to get this Best Ending.)

Notes: The mechanics to negotiate and recruit foes seem to work well. The fail-state for both is to enter combat. If you want to fight everything, you can. But you also have these alternatives. I also created more options for Plunder (2d6), which seems right for this little game. We’re still at about 15 pages.

#8 Fortunate Fiore

Meet Fiore, a fisher trained by a hunter, good with a spear. He heard a song about the Bronze Spear of Blinding Thunderbolts, knocked out a guard, and set off for adventure with a hired mercenary.

While crossing a foul trash knoll outside the city, Fiore encountered an occultist digging for trinkets. Fiore convinced the occultist to join his expedition as a high level ally [+2]!

As they crossed the burning sand dunes, they met five starving sailors who were wrecked on a nearby shore. Fiore tried to parley with them, but they were desperate for rations and attacked. Fiore defeated them, but lost his hired mercenary in the battle. But he did find a Chaos ring on one of them!

At the dark tower, Fiore and the occultist climbed a rotting bone stair guarded by a living marble statue. The occultist helped Fiore convince the statue to let them go inside, and the statue revealed a secret about the villain’s servants. In the dim passageways of the tower, they found the villain’s thrall, a swift-moving demon sorcerer, but using the statue’s secret information about the thrall’s habits and movements, they avoided a confrontation.

Then Fiore and the occultist confronted the villain, the Ruby-Eyed King armed with a deadly maul. The battle began poorly, costing Fiore several wounds (and a lost camel), but then he summoned the ghost of his grandfather to deal a devastating blow. And with the occultist’s help (and the Chaos ring), he slew the king and found the fabled Spear of Thunderbolts. They returned home and learned that the spear had no power, but was worth a month’s wages. Huzzah!

Notes: This was a great game! Being able to recruit foes as allies, sneaking past confrontations, having dynamic weird battles. Aces! I’m going to get rid of the mounts (bye bye, camels and gilasaurs) and just have allies. But otherwise, I think this game is super close to complete.

Question for you – As someone reading these playtests, is this sounding like a fun game? It’s basically a sword-and-sorcery version of Solitaire. It takes about 30 minutes to play. You probably have a better-than-average chance of winning each game, but the chance to lose (die) is very real. And I find it fun to roll the dice and then imagine how the results would manifest in a written short story (or movie!).

After refining a few tables and adding an encounter, I ran a new adventure with the Solo RPG. Again, it played for about 30 minutes, and conjured up a lot of exciting imagery for me.

Soldier of Fortune

Meet Jothi, son of a skilled artisan, but stolen away and raised by a soldier in the way of the spear. At the tavern, Jothi heard an old war story about the Grinning Shield of Arrow Eating and decided to go after it. But as he strode out of the bar, he ran afoul of a drunk guard and a vicious fight ensued. Jothi barely survived the opening scene!

Not feeling very tough, he then negotiated (poorly) to buy some dried rations, an old camel, and an even older guide name Voski.

As they left the city, they passed a hermit’s shack haunted by the ghosts of three cruel children that rose up and slaughtered the poor camel! Unable to fend them off with his spear, Jothi found a holy amulet in the shack and used it to subdue the ghosts one by one. Then he found a scrap of a breastplate and carried on.

Far out on a high grassy ridge, Jothi passed through two rows of statues, where he discovered a fire-breathing drake. The small dragon was amusing itself by destroying the statues. Jothi covered himself in dust and dirt and posed like a statue to wait in ambush. When the drake approached, Jothi rammed his spear down the creature’s throat, causing its fire glands to explode. He then took a claw as a trophy.

Arriving at a ruined tower, Jothi and Voski spotted a pair of armored skeletons guarding a drawbridge. Jothi rushed in and smashed one of them off the bridge into the rushing water below. But the other skeleton stabbed him the back. They smashed the remaining guard and limped into the ruins.

In a cluttered workroom full of weapons, they found a young duelist tinkering with his sword. Jothi fired a crossbow into the youth, pinning him to the wall. Then Jothi rushed in and finished off the fighter before he could call for help.

Then Jothi crept through a block of empty cells where he found more rusty old weapons. But as he entered a narrow passageway, four guards discovered him! A deadly battle broke out in the confined space, and Voski died cursing Jothi’s name. Two of the wounded guards fled, and Jothi ran the others through with his spear.

Injured and alone, Jothi returned to the empty cells only to find a huge white ape bursting through the wall to attack him! After a desperate exchange of blows that destroyed his armor, Jothi lured the wall-crawling ape into a cell and cast him down into a pit full of old broken spears.

Grievously wounded, Jothi staggered into a treasure vault. There he spotted the Grinning Shield, as well as the villain who owned it, an armless sorcerer with telekinetic powers! Jothi hurled his spear, scoring a shallow wound, but the sorcerer collapsed the doorway, trapping our hero. Jothi made a last desperate attack, but the sorcerer used his psychic power to yank the spear from Jothi’s hands and killed him with his own weapon…

Such is life!

Notes

This was a great run-through. It was fun and easy to play, the prompts and die rolls made for evocative scenes. I need to keep refining the tables for the encounters with a little more detail, and I need to keep balancing and tuning the Action table for combat. But overall, I think this game is working pretty well and should be done in the next couple of weeks.

Thoughts? Questions?

My current top secret project is a solo fantasy RPG! You get to play as a classic pulp Sword & Sorcery adventurer, like Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, or Elric. The game is structured to play out the standard scenes in a S&S short story, so if that’s your jam, then this is your jam.

You’re broke in a tavern when you hear about a fabulous treasure just waiting to be claimed. So you gather up your gear, and maybe a sidekick, and set off. You cross the rugged wilderness, overcome a few minor baddies or beasts. Then you enter a creepy ruin, sneak past the guards, fight a monster, defeat the villain, and claim the treasure. Then you roll for your denouement (how does the story really end?).

The first playtest

Meet Durga, the son of a trapper who lost his lover, and was inspired by a priest to travel the world with his trusty axe! One night in a tavern, he heard a rumor of the Black Iron Ring of Wall Walking, a treasure desired by all ambitious thieves!

So Durga stole some delicious provisions, wrangled a wild camel, and hired a mercenary named Tovia to travel with him. As they left the city and crossed a foul midden heap of waste and bones, a grim bounty hunter ambushed them. [ Meta-interpretation: Someone had accused Durga of killing his lover and put a price on his head! ] The hunter got the drop on them, but Durga slew him while only taking a minor wound.

A few days later, as they rode through a petrified forest of twisted cypress trees, a swarm of vipers surrounded them. Durga and Tovia climbed up into a tree while their camel galloped away. Unsure of how to defeat so many beasts, Durga cried out to the spirits to aid him. Suddenly the clouds darkened and a freezing rain poured down. The cold-blooded snakes slithered away for shelter, and Durga found a pouch of silver coins. They caught their camel and continued on.

The only approach to the villain’s lair was a narrow stone stair. Lurking in the caves under the stair, Durga spotted a sleeping witch and thousands of bats. They decided to sneak up the stairs in silence, but the witch awoke and unleashed the bats. Durga and Tovia sacrificed their camel to the bats, and entered the lair.

Creeping through a low tunnel, Durga found a maze of cellars under the lair. Terrified prisoners sat chained to the walls. Before he could help them, six (!) guards discovered the intruders. Durga attacked while Tovia protected his flank. They wounded two guards, but Tovia fell in battle! Durga dashed into the shadows and laid an ambush. When the guards walked by, he burst out and ran through the passage, slashing them all in the side. Two of the guards fled the battle, but the remaining four dealt Durga several more wounds, forcing him to flee up into the main building.

In a great hall full of mounted animal heads, Durga found Malak, a renowned trophy hunter. [ Meta-interpretation: Malak now hunted Man, as evidenced by the prisoners below! ] Malak unleashed a hail of arrows, forcing Durga to retreat to another room. There he set a quick trap using a crossbow and net. Malak burst into the room, taking an iron bolt in the belly and becoming tangled in the net. Durga then rushed in and slaughtered the cruel hunter.

Durga claimed the Black Iron Ring from Malak’s hand, and returned to the city. It only took him a few days to get back, but disaster struck on the road, costing him his left hand! And to make matters worse, when he reached the city, he discovered that his treasure was nothing more than a worthless fake! Oh well, back to the tavern…

Designer notes

It only took about 30 minutes to play through this adventure. At first my die rolls were massive and everything felt too easy, but then things turned against poor Durga quite a bit. The tables for creating encounters were pretty good, and the rules for running a battle worked well. I need to continue fine-tuning the roll results. And I made some upgrades to the character sheet / adventure chronicle as I went.

So I feel pretty good about all of that.

How does this game actually work?

The dice mechanic for this solo game is 2d6 + Trait with three possible outcomes: Miss, Weak Hit, or Strong Hit (similar to PbtA… or identical to PbtA). And I’m creating some detailed tables to help the player choose what to do and interpret rolls. For example, there are eight specific Actions you can take in combat, and each roll result is clearly stated in one table.

It’s turning out to be a neat little engine for creating Sword & Sorcery characters and short stories. It might be a good tool for creating a character concept you could play in other games (not the mechanics, but the back story). Maybe.

More as it develops!