Black Blade of the Demon King – Session Zero (a Module Solo Experiment)

Gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted an actual play. Mostly, I just haven’t had time to play, though I’ve managed a few sessions with the kids (actually trying to play-test my own kid rules! … but I digress). I’ve also been distracted by real-life happenings, like Christmas, birthdays, work woes, and trying to relocate (I’m not sure which is worse, trying to buy a home or trying to sell one).

Excuses, all, I suppose.

Anyhow, I have at least been pondering on and reading about RPGs, so the desire and anticipation have been building for some time. I started out a couple of Scarlet Heroes play sessions, one with a completely new SH-based character — a roving apothecary (magic user) named Hisham. Another, earlier session was also a Scarlet Heroes game, attempting to continue the story of Vincent & Shira, with designs on world-building and campaigning with them, too. Unfortunately, I felt like I got mired down in the direction the story went, became frustrated, and sort of wandered off. Time rolled on…

A Published Module?

Enter Black Blade of the Demon King. I can hear you now: “A published adventure module?! Tell me you’re not going to solo a published adventure module?!”

Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahisma Kerp & Wind Lothamer

I am not sure why this one caught my eye, but it did. It’s aimed at the Lamentations of the Flame Princess crowd, which, while I truly appreciate a lot of what’s being done on that front and there’s some super-creative things going on there, it’s generally not my cup of tea, being either slightly too weird (giant hammerhead shark-elephants who live in a castle on a cloud) or — dare I say it — a tad distasteful. While I’m not personally offended by any of it, I don’t generally go out trying to bathe in it, either.

This one seems “gentler” in those regards, at least. And the module has some distinct elements that I think will make it fairly easy to solo without worrying too much about spoilers:

• Designed with a 3-act structure across 5 days of game time
• It has a “race against time/NPCs” sort of mini-game element to it
• There are lots of randomized aspects to the setup and progression:
  • Roll for dreams and rumors about the Blade for each character
  • Random NPCs are generated on a die-drop table, with a Knowledge table for what they know
  • Several important encounters are randomized as to when, where, how, etc.
  • 24 pre-generated NPCs to potentially interact with — 3 of them will be key players also seeking the Blade
  • There are multiple options for the major events throughout each act
  • A bestiary with a dozen or so unique monsters (including “Yeti Voltron”)

Those are all big pluses from a soloing front (and really from a GM’s perspective as well). I’ve skimmed through the thing, but have tried to avoid detailed reading other than the Intro and “Running the Game” sections. I also intended to keep this Session Zero post spoiler-free, but subsequent posts will be spoiler-heavy, though since many elements of the module are randomized and the fact that I’ll be using an oracle to change things up, maybe it won’t ruin the module for your solo play or as a GM, but I imagine it might be too much “insider info” for a player going into a GM’d session with a group.

With Rules Cyclopedia Characters

I can recall perusing the Rules Cyclopedia back in my limited D&D experiences in the early 90s. It seems to have become quite the object of desire in recent years, with eBay prices anywhere from $80-300USD. Luckily, the PDF has been available on DMs Guild, and very recently — and with great applause — a print-on-demand version has been made available. As soon as I saw the announcement, I jumped on the color hardcover right away.

If you aren’t familiar, the Rules Cyclopedia was kind of the end of the Basic D&D line, consolidating the rules from the previous Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master Sets (4/5 of what constitutes BECMI) into one reference volume. It’s basically got all the D&D you need in one place: classes (including Druid and Mystic), spells, equipment, movement, encounters, combat, mass combat, strongholds, monsters, and two official campaign settings — covering levels 1 through 36, with optional rules for weapon mastery and general skills. The only things you might want to change are Thief skills, which were “nerfed” in BECMI and spread across 36 levels instead of only 14. If you’d like more history on D&D and the OSR (ie. BECMI what?!), check out this post.

The Crew

We’ll be welcoming back Vincent, my warrior sell-sword from the Rolling Solo series, re-rolled as a BD&D fighter (formerly Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells). Don’t worry, though, he’ll be bringing along all the baggage from that story line, including Shira — the thief. It was a small matter to convert the magic-user Hisham from Scarlet Heroes to BD&D, so he’ll be tagging along, with a new character: Calleagh the priest (in memoriam of a good friend of mine). Here’s their stats (along with some “traits” that aren’t part of RC, but an aspect of Scarlet Heroes I enjoy), all humans:

And Whatever Else I Can Think Of…

I’m pretty optimistic that this module will lend itself to solo play as it’s written without too much hacking around. Regardless, I’ll be bringing the solo toolkit along for the ride. Probably the Mythic GME, Universal NPC Emulator, and anything else that seems useful (I certainly have accumulated enough stuff to try out…).

As far as tactics and procedures, I have read plenty on soloing published modules, but I don’t have a strict plan in place. Some options are setting “default behaviors” for the characters, using the solo engine to determine if what’s written in the module is “true” or not, things of that nature. So it could potentially go off-course from the actual plot of the module, but… as long as I’m having fun, I suppose that’s just fine.

Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll hopefully start things off on the right foot and keep the adventure rolling.

The Rules Cyclopedia is available at DMs Guild in PDF or print varieties (grab it now during the GM’s Day Sale while it’s 25% off print / 33% off PDF) and you can pick up your PDF copy of Black Blade at DriveThruRPG (not part of the sale) or get the print version for just a few bucks more on the Knight Owl Publishing website, with free shipping for a limited time. (Aside: Your mileage may vary, but I pre-ordered the softcover from the publisher site, then emailed them and asked politely for a PDF and they sent it free of charge through DTRPG!).

Black Blade of the Demon King