Modules

Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 4

Spencer 2019-02-25 6960 Comments Off on Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 4
Actual Plays

  Session 3 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger. Just as Vincent and Shira had met The Wildcard, Karsten-doo, it seemed as though Hades was set loose when meteors began raining from the sky and an enraged ice giant appeared in the fjord, smashing the place up. Unfortunately, that’s not all… Act 1: Day 2 (Continued) Scene 3 (Continued) | Chaos 5 From the entrance of the Avonmore Arms, Vincent, Shira, Hisham, and Calleagh bear witness to two massive meteor strikes both South (in the ruins, 7 on the map) and North (in the obsidian trader village, 9 on the map) of…

Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 3

Spencer 2018-07-05 4753 Comments Off on Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 3
Actual Plays

  We left the party sleeping, warm and cozy in their bunks at the end of Day 1. A new day dawns, but first I wanted to retrospect a little bit on a.) what’s taking so long and b.) how things are progressing. Recap a.) Real life has been in the way of the blog, this actual play, and pretty much anything resembling free time or hobbies since the last post. A good 3+ months have passed in the real world and my day job has been a killer, we’ve sold our old home, bought a new one, packed, moved,…

Solo-A-Module Month

Spencer 2018-07-04 5028 Comments Off on Solo-A-Module Month
Community

Solo-A-Module Month If you weren’t aware, some of us inadvertently spawned an official Solo-A-Module Month over at the Lone Wolf Roleplaying G+ group, giving March a thematic focus on soloing published modules, sharing tactics for doing so, and publishing actual play reports. As you may know, my first solitaire role-playing experience was an attempt to solo a module, and, while it was entertaining, it wasn’t nearly as meaningful or immersive as the free-form, emergent play I’ve experienced since. I’d always hoped to return to module play with a better strategy for bringing it up to snuff with those emergent play…

Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 2

Spencer 2018-03-15 6580 Comments Off on Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 2
Actual Plays

  Last time was quite a bit of setup and a teeny weensy bit of actual play. This time ought to be the inverse, so sharpen your swords mates! Act 1: Day 1 Continued We left off with Hisham having a little investigative chat with one of the competing Blade seekers, Haruk. It occurred to me between sessions that I ought to see if Haruk and the other 10 seekers are in a party or parties, or acting on their own. We also need to make a roll to see if The Cold decide to attack… and I also thought…

Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 1

Spencer 2018-03-12 5058 Comments Off on Black Blade of the Demon King – Session 1
Actual Plays

  The Session Zero post will give a little more background, but here I’m attempting to solo a published adventure module with a standard party of four D&D characters, continuing the story of Vincent & Shira. Yeah, Yeah…. I’ve not really resolved the “debt to crime lord” storyline or the thing with the “alien orb”, so I’m not sure if this would be placed before or after that, time-wise — obviously I didn’t think that through too much, but I like these characters (we go way back) and I want to play them so nyyyeeaaahhhh! One thing I do want…

Thoughts on Soloing a Published Adventure Module

Spencer 2018-03-09 10379 2 Comments
Resources

My first solo play session was attempted using a published adventure module (the Hero Kids “Basement o’ Rats” introductory adventure). I had fun — I was able to use a simple d6 yes/no mechanic to pose questions and emulate GM responses — but I also had enough foreknowledge (and inexperience) that it was too confining compared to more free-form, generated-on-the-fly sort of play. And that’s the problem, right? Modules are published for GMs, so they’re chock full of great stuff that absolutely spoils things for the players if they come into such knowledge before the proper time. As a solo…