Arion 1-05: The Turn of the Screw

"The first turn of the screw pays all debts."

Mongo, 1105 Week 7

One of the tradeoffs for the perks of being a detached duty scout is that the Service can decide to re-attach you at any time, and in short order Arion finds himself called to the scout base, reactivated, and given orders to load a cargo for Hollis and get it there, stat, but without passing through Zhodani space.

"Why me?" he asks.

"You've got a Gagarin-class detached duty scout. It has the extended jump range, so it doesn't have to follow jump-2 routes or pass through Zhodani space. It's also not part of our official complement, and nor are you, so I don't have to reschedule Klono knows how many ships and their crews to fit in a rush job."

"I had plans," Arion says, plaintively.

"Well, if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined."

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 8

Arion and Mr Osheen are in the hold, checking the power supplies to their cargo, as they do on a regular basis on this trip.

"Why are we carrying three people in low berths?" asks Mr Osheen.

"It'll take us nine months to get to Hollis," Arion explains. "Sending someone from Jewell to Capital would take more than two years. The Imperium wants to maximise the return on its training investment, get as much productive lifespan out of people as it can; so for longer trips it sends them in cryosleep. It's a lot cheaper than high passage, too."

"Then why not install low berths in our ship permanently?"

"Partly to save money, partly because space is at a premium on small ships, and partly because when you wake someone from cryosleep, they might die; low berths you can transfer from ship to ship mean you don't have to wake them so often, you can hand off the berth rather than wake the people, move them to a new ship, then freeze them again."

Mr Osheen digests this for a moment, then asks hopefully:

"If any of our passengers die, may I consume their bodily fluids for nourishment?"

"Probably best not to. Check with me first."

"You never let me have any fun," Mr Osheen complains.

Arion ignores him and wipes condensation from the low berth viewports with his sleeve. He gazes thoughtfully at his passengers.

"Why do you do that every time?" Mr Osheen asks. "They always look the same."

"This one I don't know," Arion says, gesturing at the leftmost berth. "This one is really cute, and I'm shallow like that," gesturing at the middle berth. "And this one," he says, looking into the final berth, "This one is Major Sheng. Now why is she going to Hollis? Come to that, why are any of them going to Hollis?"

And if getting them there is urgent, why couldn't they go through the Consulate and get there that much faster? That suggests the Service doesn't want the Consulate to find out about them, let alone have a chance to pick their brains. And sending three people instead of a message suggests there is something special about those people. He has never met the other two, but he knows Major Sheng.

Major Sheng is a slightly built artistic type who is also expert in military tactics and hand-to-hand combat, with side hustles in firearms and combat medic. Major Sheng is light enough that you could pick her up in your arms and carry her off easily, pretty enough that you'd want to, and lethal enough that doing it without her consent would get you folded, spindled and mutilated. Major Sheng is the sort of person you would want as a bodyguard or head of security for someone important. The man? The woman? Both? Probably the woman, he thinks, if only because Sheng could follow her into any gendered areas they might encounter, like freshers.

He checks his commlink. Only another 35 weeks to go. He has questions about his cargo, questions he knows will prey on his mind at least until he delivers them to Hollis, and probably long after that.

"If you can't take a joke," he reminds himself, "You shouldn't have joined."

GM Notes

It's been a minute, eh, Arion?

This is me setting up the next phase of the Arioniad. For those of you watching the Indiana Jones-style red line creeping across the Traveller Map, Arion's route is Jewell, Lysen, Utoland, Digitis, Edinina, Quare, Thanber, Faisal, Bael, Fessor 3119, Fessor 3020, Reidan 3021, Reidan 2822, Reidan 2623, and finally Hollis. That's 20 jumps over a 34 week period, and he has to invoke the Gagarin class' extra Jump-1 capability 5 times. An ordinary scoutship would have taken much longer, or had to go through Consulate space.

Major Sheng is Army character 2 from Supplement 1: 1001 Characters, because I can pull that off my reference shelf and pick the first character with the right rank faster than asking questions and rolling dice, and we've already established that Arion knows her well. I like to design my PCs, but I also like NPCs to be somewhat random so that I don't fall into the rut of using the same archetypes all the time. (He hasn't been introduced to the others yet, so no need to detail them yet.)

So, what's going on here? Well...

Setting: Jewell Subsector is not gelling for me. There are mountains of information generated about the Spinward Marches by multiple publishers, and even more authors, over the last half century. And it's highly detailed, but at the same time inconsistent. And even if I'm not using it, I know it's there and it preys on my mind. And if I do take my players there, as I originally intended, they will look at the masses of detail in the Traveller Wiki and expect it to be true. I can't cope with all that, so Arion needs to move. Until recently, this would have meant a change of setting or even game, but I am trying to control that urge, as it is counter-productive. Fortunately, Charted Space has the Foreven Sector, which is a rigidly defined area of doubt and uncertainty. I can drop PCs into it, and everything their players know about Charted Space remains true - or at least, as true as it ever was - but I can create worlds and local factions without being beholden to anyone or anything else. Even better, I can change my mind multiple times about whether I play in the official setting or not, and hop over the sector border to deal with that whenever I feel like it. I wish I'd thought of that 15 years ago, it would've saved me a lot of trouble.

Product set: I get antsy when I am not working from the minimum possible product set. I always need a core rulebook, a tailored setting guide, and character sheets. But I have a cycle where I gradually add other things, then get upset about the amount of stuff living on my hard drive and in my head rent-free, and want to burn it all down and start over. The cycle duration is getting shorter as I get older, and I've just shifted into a burn-it-all phase again.

Solo oracles: Classic Traveller is a slice of life game, in which ordinary people live ordinary lives punctuated by moments of world-shaking intrigue and stark terror. And Solo supports that very well. And that's all well and good, but at the moment I am looking for all killer, no filler; pulp adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones or Star Wars, which SWADE supports very well. This is why you will shortly see me shifting over to some of Richard Woolcock's oracles as an experiment.

Let's be about it.

Review: The Midlands Low-Magic Sandbox Setting

"Every time a GM reads boxed text, an ad-lib fairy dies, and we’ve too much blood on our hands already. Paraphrasing and natural speech from the GM keeps players guessing what’s pre-planned, and what’s off-the-cuff-I-totally-planned-that awesome. And we wants that awesome, precious. We wants it." - Stephen J. Grodzicki

In a nutshell: System-neutral OSR setting and scenarios, 365-page PDF from Low Fantasy Gaming, $10 here at time of writing.

Intentionality

When the Aslan Route campaign finishes, I'm thinking of turning to picaresque sword and sorcery for the next game, and for that I'll need a steady supply of short adventures. This has 50 of them, and is a very cost-effective way of buying them as a bundle.

Further, as it's written by the same author as Tales of Argosa, Stephen J. Grodzicki, I thought it would shed light on the Argosa setting, and it does.

What You Get

Three versions of the book, one with a parchment background, one with a plain white background, and one "update for Low Fantasy Gaming Deluxe"; I don't have LFG, but it appears to have been the precursor to Tales of Argosa.

The first third of the book covers the The Midlands low-magic, points of light sandbox setting; Argosa is the formal name of the region. It begins with the author's definition of what a sandbox campaign is, namely a mysterious open world where choices matter, adventures are episodic, and you can rotate the position of GM around the group if you like.

This part also contains names and common sayings in the various languages of the setting, details of the region's history, geography, cultures, religions, and main settlements, maps of the region and its cities, a discussion on the dark and dangerous nature of magic in the setting, random NPC quirk tables, and 50 NPCs to use on the fly. Also present are some player options such as preset gear by class, variant classes, party bonds, as well as GM tools, a settlement generator for lesser outposts, random encounter tables and homebrew monsters; at a glance, I'd say most of these were adopted into the later Tales of Argosa rulebook. I particularly like the table of random pre-generated taverns.

The latter two-thirds of the product contains 50 episodic adventure sites and situations, arranged by geography (forest, city, mountain etc.), backed up by a rumour table which lets you select randomly from the list.

Each adventure begins with a box of rumours and hooks to get the PCs involved, then details of the site or situation. Some have maps, NPC or monster stats, depending on what the GM needs to run the scenario. The maps have no grid, as the author argues it's easier to add a grid if you want it than remove it if you don't.

The adventures are a mixture of dungeon crawls, mysteries to solve, and so on. The author notes that they were mostly playtested with 3-4 players, which is what I usually have. In line with OSR principles, these adventures laugh in the face of encounter balance; you're expected to know when to talk, when to fight, and when to run. Looking at them in a couple of different ways...

• There are 6 set in cities, 8 in forests, 3 in ice and snow, 6 in jungles, 8 by lakes or rivers, 8 in hills or mountains, 7 on plains, and 6 in swamps.
• There are 5 out-and-out dungeon crawls, 6 manhunts or bounty hunts, a tournament, a heist, 2 missing persons cases, 12 treasure hunts, 5 escort missions, 4 clear out the monsters jobs, 4 mysteries/creature features, a mercenary ticket, a diplomatic mission, an escape, and one with a monolith in it that I couldn't quite classify.
• There are 30 that could be dropped into Hyboria or the Dread Sea Dominions as they are, 10 that could be modified for that purpose with a little effort, and 10 that I think are too much work; this last category generally includes monsters that I don't think Robert E Howard would have used, so I don't either, but YMMV.

What I Think

The setting is deliberately left unfinished, so that each GM can make it their own; add, drop or change whatever you like. However, the author has clearly been running this setting for a while; my impression is that he began with D&D, and at his table it gradually mutated into first a set of house rules, then Low Fantasy Gaming, and finally Tales of Argosa. The breadth and depth of his vision are impressive, and the GM tools rival those of Sine Nomine Publications - high praise indeed.

What I bought it for, however, were the adventures, and here I got 40 usable adventures, each good for a session or two, for roughly eight quid; call it 20p per adventure, and where else can you get an evening's entertainment for 4-5 people for that kind of money?

Aslan Route 16: Dances with Vargr

Now this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Law of the Jungle

Cordan, Week 51

Episode 16 came first in real-world time for scheduling reasons, but in game time it happens after episode 17 (next week). Think of it as a flash-forward.

It begins on an average evening, while Vila is buttoning up the ship ready for lift-off after the overhaul and test flights. Rex decides to make one last visit to the pub, and is having no truck with the local law level, so hangs both his laser SMGs under his coat.

He is pulled up by Customs, and growls in his most intimidating manner that the SMGs are part of his cultural heritage and anyway there will be trouble at the pub. Rather than have it out with him on the spot, or fill in a lot of paperwork this close to the end of their shift, the Customs agents steer Rex towards the bar where the Khuerga’s crew hang out, and once he is safely out of sight, they phone the bar to let them know he’s coming.

Mazun and Dr Matauranga realise this does not bode well, so after a quick check of the ship’s air/raft to make sure there are no identifying marks, they follow at a discreet distance and park up in a side alley with a clear view of the bar.

Rex enters, and mingles with the corsairs at the bar. He notes a human female and a vargr female in conversation at one of the tables, and a human male mixed in with the corsairs; as she is also from Umemii, he recognises the female vargr as the famous pirate Captain Onfu, and decides that both humans could be mistaken for Zhodani if one were so inclined; tall, lithe, dark-skinned. Belters, no doubt, shaped by a childhood in low gravity and harsh sunlight.

One of the corsairs engages Rex in conversation and each establishes which ship the other is from. They were on opposite sides in the fracas at the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne, but agree that was nothing personal, just business. The corsair sidles over to Captain Onfu, talks to her for a moment, then returns to say she would like a word with him. Rex takes his drink over to the table, where after initial pleasantries Onfu shows him a picture of a runic spike made of precious metals and asks if he has seen it. Rex allows that he has, on Pourne, but does not admit it is in Dr Matauranga’s possession. He feels unusually talkative under the gaze of the human female, but says truthfully that he doesn’t know where the spike is right now, nor where others might be found.

Captain Onfu notices the air/raft and sends two of her corsairs to ask them what they’re doing. They explain that they’re waiting for Rex to pass out from drinking to excess, after which they will take him back to their ship. As Rex spent much of last week drinking with them, this is entirely credible, and they head back to the bar, satisfied.

Inside, Rex apologises for not being able to help and returns to the bar, but Onfu follows, and invites him to join her aboard her ship for further discussion. The human woman is still concentrating on Rex, and he feels unusually weak-willed, but when two of the corsairs move to grab him and carry him off, he decides this is what he has been praying for all night, pulls out both laser SMGs and lets rip.

In the ensuing light show caused by in excess of forty laser bolts over a six-second period, Rex guns down Captain Onfu (on purpose), the four corsairs around him (on purpose), and the two heading back from the air/raft (by accident). He also grazes the human woman, who he suspects of foul (and probably psionic) play; she is shaken, but not badly wounded, unlike all the others who are now dead or bleeding out.

Mazun and Dr Matauranga leap out of the air/raft – of course it’s open-topped, how else are the arboreal pouncers going to get in? – and run for the bar, Dr Matauranga muttering that he doesn’t do house calls and he will of course charge Rex for this.

While the human male grabs the female and hustles her away from the fight, the surviving corsairs create a dogpile centred on Rex and lay into him with their fangs and claws. One of them misses badly and bites a bar stool by mistake, losing a tooth, while another takes Rex’s throat gently in his jaws and tries to rip it out.

Mazun charges the corsair with his face stuck in a bar stool and uses all his considerable martial arts training to ram head and stool into the bar, while Dr Matauranga removes the unwanted accessory from Rex’s throat with a taser.

The final corsair is easily despatched by Mazun while Dr Matauranga is stabilising Rex for a fast transfer back to the ship’s medbay. Mazun thoughtfully considers Captain Onfu, realising that laser bolts are self-cauterising and she can be carried off for interrogation. He and the good Doctor manage to smuggle the pair of them back into the ship without incident, the doctor pausing only to inject all the corsairs he can find with rohypnol to muddle their memories of the incident.

“Vila,” says Mazun, “While the rest of the corsairs are arguing about who is the new Captain, this might be a good time to sneak over to the Khuerga and disable her.”

“Sounds dangerous,” says Vila. “What’s in it for me?”

“It’s less dangerous than having a heavily-armed ship twice our size chasing us.”

“Still sounds risky,” Vila grumbles.

“I don’t want it coming after us,” Mazun muses. “If we can’t do it I’ll see what Prasad can manage. It’s at its most vulnerable and it would be cost effective to disable or impound it now.”

He calls Prasad.

“Ken? It’s me. Listen, the Khuerga’s crew just broke up a bar in a drug-fuelled rampage. Can the Port Authority seize it pending investigation?”

Prasad says he’ll see to it, and the Macavity lifts for the jump point.

“When the ship lifts,” Mazun says under his breath, “All debts are paid.”

Jumpspace, 1105 Week 52

The medbay is quite crowded, between Captain Onfu drifting in and out of consciousness buoyed on Dr Matauranga’s cocktail of painkillers and truth drugs, and Rex who is fully conscious and watching the readout of his credit balance being eroded in real time by Dr Matauranga’s fees – the good doctor has thoughtfully set up a display where Rex can see it easily.

Under interrogation, Captain Onfu reveals that the human woman is Captain Vipera of the Red Adder, who paid her crew to attack the House of Shrouded Mirrors to recover the spike. She gives them what little she knows of the Red Adder’s route and notes that Captain Vipera has a level of deference from her crew – who seem nervous, but not of her – that a vargr would kill for. And in her case has done.

Mazun decides that Captain Onfu is a mercenary who doesn’t know anything else useful; Dr Matauranga sadly informs the rest of the crew that she died of complications brought on by knowing too much, and she is buried in space without honours.

“It’s what she would’ve wanted,” Mazun assures them.

Later, in the medbay, Dr Matauranga has mixed news for Rex.

“I’ve had to rebuild your larynx and throat from scratch. Fortunately, I had a spare one lying around. Now, you may find your voice is a bit high-pitched initially, but it should settle down in a few weeks...”

GM Notes

Four critical failures in the space of an hour, plus Rex's overcharged laser SMGs hitting multiple innocent bystanders. I find the ridiculously extreme dice rolls a big part of the fun in Savage Worlds. Speaking of which, the bite to Rex’s throat did 43 damage, and thus 8 Wounds. Even with medical slow drug and Dr Matauranga’s skilled help, it’s going to take him several weeks to recover. Fortunately after the flashback in the next episode, I’m going to roll them back to Sink in fast travel mode as I don’t think anything very interesting will happen on the way.

As Dr Matauranga has used parts from Captain Onfu to rebuild Rex, Rex has the option of sounding like a lady vargr for as long as he finds it entertaining, but I won’t force that on him because it might not be entertaining at all, and I would understand that.

I'm going through a bad patch of anhedonia at the moment, and twice that day I convinced myself the game was rubbish and I should cancel both the session and the campaign; but one of the few advantages of getting older is recognising that these thoughts pass as quickly as they arise, so I went ahead anyway and we had a great time. I am noticing another effect, the gradual reduction of the number of people I'm happy running; ten years ago I found six players no problem at all, although nine was too many, but now I find four a challenge and am happier running three. Since it's the same people, the same setting, and the same set of rules, the change must be in me.

This was what I think of as a 'balestra' episode, one that adjusts pacing before the next main story beat. In this case, Vila's player is not available this week; he dislikes SWADE fights and Vila is optimised for heists, so this was a good chance to fit in a fight without making him play something he doesn't like or sit out half the session, even if he knew what he was signing up for when the campaign started.

Also, since the crew are obviously not going to touch the Fury with a barge pole, that needs to shift from being the A Plot to the B Plot, so Dr Matauranga's artefact needs to be repurposed (again); since he doesn't know what it does yet, I can change it without affecting the campaign. This led me to the Lazy DM's Checklist to spend half an hour preparing for the session...

• Review the characters. Flick through my copies of the character sheets, and consider who is attending and what kind of encounters they prefer. In this case, combat for Rex and a puzzle to solve for Dr M and Mazun.
• Strong start. Sly Flourish says "When in doubt, start with a fight." Since Vila's player missed this session, that works.
• Potential scenes. Bar brawl, talk to the corsair captain, talk to the Red Adder's captain, visit Baron Ferro's mansion. We only got to the first two of those.
• Define secrets and clues. Figure out why the corsairs hit the House of Shrouded Mirrors and what they want from the party. Figure out how the Red Adder is involved.
• Develop fantastic locations. As we play in Roll20, I mutate this step into selecting battlemats for the potential fights and exploration scenes from my collection of Loke Battlemats.
• Outline important NPCs. The captains of the vargr corsair and the Red Adder.
• Choose relevant monsters. This time people will be Soldier NPCs, with the captains being Wild Cards and the Red Adder's captain having a few Edges up her sleeve because she's a Zhodani intendant. By this stage I know what she's up to, and it doesn't necessarily conflict with the PCs' objectives, so we could see an honourable enemies thing going on later.
• Select magic item rewards. Dr M already has the spike, he should get a clue about it.

Job done.

Review: Interstellar Rebels

"Revolutionaries who come to power by force of arms usually have great crimes in their background. Leaders who survive campaigns by great powers to destroy them do not survive because they observe the niceties of law. Subversives who shape world events by covert action and violence work in shadows and detest the light of day." - Stephen Kinzer

In a nutshell: Obviously, this is nothing to do with Star Wars TM, (R), (C), DSO and Bar, and it would be remiss of me to suggest that it was. Even if the artwork might lead you to suspect that. Anyway: 14 page SWADE micro-setting with adventure, solo rules, and pregen characters from Richard Woolcock. $1 here at time of writing.

Intentionality

I'm struggling with the Arioniad at the moment, hence the pause in play, and knowing how effective the author's products are, I hoped the random tables and solo rules might inspire some positive change. So not quite an impulse purchase just yet, although it came close to breaking a second New Year's resolution for me.

What You Get

The download includes both full-colour and black-and-white versions, each containing:

• Cover, introduction and credits (2 pages). 'Nuff said. The introduction includes links to three other micro-settings by the same author which can be downloaded for free to expand this one. I might just do that.
• Micro-setting (2 pages). The interstellar empire has fallen, leaving a power vacuum filled by the newly-formed republic and former imperial officers turned warlord. The PCs are rebels, sworn to eradicate all remnants of the empire. The first page has a mission generator which uses 3d6 to determine what the rebels decide to do, where this takes them, and what obstacles are in their way. It also gives the statblocks for generic NPCs. The second page has paragraph descriptions of more objectives, locations and complications, plus a d66 twist generator based on icons; that reminded me of Rory's Story Cubes.
• Base Assault adventure (2 pages). The rebels learn of a secret imperial base designing a terrifying superweapon, and must deal with it. The two pages cover approaching the base, getting inside, searching it, confronting a boss monster, then escaping; it's essentially an SF dungeon crawl.
• Solo rules (2 pages). The first page has the yes/no and complex question oracles, and how to set up a solo session; use the mission generator for the main plot and the twist generator for two subplots. Play then proceeds in scenes, each of which is one of six different types of challenge (networking, chase, combat etc.) and awards Victory Points to you on a success or the Big Bad on a failure; first to 10 VP wins. The second page has random tables for events, species, worlds, and curveballs.
• Pre-generated characters (6 pages). Nine different characters at both Novice and Seasoned ranks - a lot of people prefer to start characters at Seasoned; one robot, four different aliens, and four humans. Each is fully statted with racial features, attributes, skills, Edges, Hindrances, derived stats and gear.

What I Think

Richard Woolcock, perhaps best known for the Saga of the Goblin Horde, is an author I will generally take a chance on, especially at this price. These days he often writes for the Tricube Tales RPG, but frequently releases a SWADE version of those products later; I prefer SWADE to Tricube Tales, so I usually get the ported version.

The layout, style, and some of the tables will be familiar to anyone who has looked at Mr. Woolcock's other micro-settings, which grow ever more numerous. The author is particularly good at two things; cramming a lot of usable content into a very small space, and creating concise but intriguing pre-generated PCs.

The solo oracle in particular has two features I expect to be useful. First, my main issue with Mythic and Solo is that they are not dramatic enough for the sort of stories I enjoy, at least not the way I use them; they naturally produce slow-burn stories which build the drama gradually. In contrast, IR takes the view that every scene is inherently dramatic, and the player need only decide which mechanism to use to resolve it. In this regard it's closer to the sort of scenario generators you see in skirmish wargames than the usual solo RPG oracle.

Second, I often struggle to come up with a mission for the characters. IR again dives straight in, dragging the characters straight from one adventure to another with a mission generator which states what the characters are trying to do, where, and what's stopping them. To be fair, Solo has that too, in the form of the patron tables; but I feel constrained to wade through the slice-of-life bits, waiting for the encounter tables to throw up a patron before rolling for a mission.

I can summarise the product by saying it's all killer, no filler. That's not for everyone, but it suits me for the moment. Let's try it out.

Review: Solo 2nd Edition

“The beauty of traveling solo is that you wander unexpectedly, but almost certainly into the direction you were meant to go.” - Shannon Ables

In a nutshell: Second edition of the solo gaming supplement for Traveller. 178 page PDF from Zozer games, written by Paul Elliott, $12 here at time of writing.

Intentionality

I went to DriveThruRPG to re-download Solo, and had three pleasant surprises; first, there is now a second edition of Solo; second, I have a free copy of it in my library, I assume because I bought the first edition some time back; and third, the first edition, while no longer available, is still in my library - I expected it to be overwritten by the new edition. The second and third surprises are very welcome and by no means as common as I would like, so full marks to Zozer for customer service there, as always.

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed was that the layout has been completely revamped. It has a more modern look, with better use of colour, and is just easier to read than the first edition. Also, the random tables have been collected together at the back of the book, rather than being scattered through the chapters; that addresses one of my key problems with the first edition, namely having to flip between sections so much in play - I eventually printed out the pages with the tables I needed, and arranged them in a binder in my preferred sequence.

The second big change is the addition of two new campaign types, mercenaries and scavengers. The scavengers campaign draws heavily on Zozer's Hostile Solo, and I suspect the mercenaries one draws on Zozer's Modern War, but I don't have that so that remains a suspicion.

How It Works

Solo approaches solitaire play a little differently than most solo RPG supplements. 

• Rather than the style of campaign emerging during play, or being predefined before you start, your first decision is which of the six types of campaign you're going to play; travellers, traders, scouts, naval officers on patrol, scavengers or mercenaries. Or you can make up your own campaign type by mixing and matching components.
• Rather than playing a single PC who picks up friends along the way, right from the beginning you're playing an entire band of adventurers; this is solo troupe play, and its purpose is to focus you on strategy and outcomes rather than the minutiae of individual dice rolls.
• Rather than playing through scenes in detail, you define a plan, rate it for chances of success and levels of danger, then resolve it with a couple of dice rolls. You then go back and construct a narrative to explain how things played out to get the team to that conclusion. This is a bit like resolving an entire scene, or even scenario, with a Traveller task chain or a SWADE Quick Encounter, and is a deliberate design choice made to avoid getting bogged down in setting up, and rolling for, hundreds of low-level decisions and effects.

So, a game consists of a setup phase in which you decide on a campaign, generate characters to suit, and assign them a world or subsector to adventure in (and maybe a ship). The campaign type defines the team's overall purpose and is the thematic skeleton out of which subplots and storylines will grow.

Then, you cycle round a core gameplay loop specific to that campaign type which generates events, encounters, and missions until a scenario emerges, let's say you need to rescue someone from kidnappers. You create a plan to handle the situation, and describe it in a few sentences. You rate the plan as flaky, solid or foolproof, and dangerous or not. You assess the characters and decide whether their skills and characteristics warrant applying any modifiers to dice rolls. Then you roll dice to determine the outcome, and finally write down what happened and how it generated that outcome, in whatever level of detail you think appropriate.

And then it's back to the core gameplay loop.

(Something I often forget personally is that there is nothing stopping you dropping out of resolving a plan to (say) play through a firefight using the standard rules.)

What You Get

The book opens with the best explanation I've seen yet of why you might want to play solo, then moves into an overview of how to do so, explaining how the rules gradually build plotlines and the various ways to resolve events. Each aspect of the 'how to' is further detailed in subsequent chapters.

The next section looks at characters in more detail; how many should there be, how are they connected, how to create them. Note that in Solo a fair amount of the game is driven by the bonds between characters, whether positive or negative, and random events invoking them. Note also that only the bare bones of personalities and bonds are created initially, the rest emerges during play; for this reason the author recommends not using Traveller's Connections rule during character generation.

Then, more detail on resolution; resolving tasks, scenes, yes/no questions, inspiration tables, and when not to use any of those methods. ('Scene resolution' used to be called 'the Plan', but it's the same thing.)

This is followed by 'Building Plot'; passage of time, random encounters, law level checks, NPCs, interactions between characters, and how all this creates emergent storylines. This is about the framework which moves you from scene to scene and links them into storylines.

There is a short section on the importance of 'writing it down'; partly this forces the player to commit to a decision, partly it allows you to set the game aside and return to it some time later. In the same way that first edition Mythic tells you to keep lists of NPCs and plot threads, Solo recommends maintaining lists of allies, enemies, other NPCs, ships, and storylines, all at the back of your campaign journal. (Personally, I have found the journaling aspect of solo play to be one of its most enjoyable aspects.)

There are six chapters on the different types of campaigns, each of which has specific, tailored encounter tables and rules - for example, the Scouts campaign has quite a bit of information on surveying planetary surfaces, which is not really required in other types of game. The star traders campaign relies on the starship operations and trade rules in the Traveller rulebook, and is perhaps the thinnest subsection; other campaigns introduce more mechanics for their specific requirements.

After those, a chapter on starships, which begins with a section on fast-play space combat, then moves into detailing six different types of starships; these include deck plans for a subsidised merchant, and shout-outs to several of the Moon Toad ship files.

The examples of play and random tables have been collected together and moved to the back of the book, and the example of play for a star trader campaign includes a map and world stats for a subsector of space. (The other examples of play are survey scouts and mercenaries.)

Finally we close with a selection of quick reference sheets and blank forms; character, ship and system survey sheets, plus subsector, hex and square grids.

What's New in Second Edition?

Quite a bit, actually. This edition is specifically aimed at Traveller, rather than Cepheus Engine as the first edition was, but that doesn't make much difference.

• Improved layout, with periodic colour artwork. Easier on the eyes, easier to use at the table. Although personally I preferred the minimalist styling of the first edition cover, which was reminiscent of the Classic Traveller Little Black Books.
• Two new campaign types, scavengers and mercenaries. The scavs have detailed rules for salvage and asteroid mining, and a random interior generator for abandoned ships and stations; the mercs have rules for acquiring and carrying out contracts, which may be one-off missions or longer deployments to a battle zone where they face multiple engagements, each with its own objectives, encounters and complications; in the case of battle zones, random events also happen when you are resting up at a base between missions, and the overall state of the war changes randomly around you.
• Quick animals. These are part of the Mercenaries chapter, but really you can use them anywhere.
• Inspiration tables, each containing 36 random words, for use when sparking ideas to do with ships, urban or wilderness environments, personnel, actions, themes, or personalities.
• Spotlights. If nothing much is happening, or the dice are ignoring some team members, generate two words as a prompt for what a character is doing, or thinking.
• Half a dozen starship types with statblocks and descriptive text. These are the sort of ships you would assign to a PC group, rather than encounter randomly.

What I Think

I've used the first edition of Solo on and off since about 2017, and I've kept coming back to it; based on that I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a Traveller or Cepheus Engine solo supplement. This second edition is better-looking and covers more campaign types, but at its heart it is the same engine as before and works the same way. It's also reasonably priced.

Solo is aimed at Traveller, but actually it works with any SF RPG so long as you know a few things about each world and whether your PCs are especially good or bad at particular tasks. I used it with Savage Worlds for years, and it worked just fine. I also used the naval officers campaign as the basis for a group Traveller game, in which the PCs were the senior crew of a patrol vessel, and I'm toying with the idea of using the star traders campaign as a way of injecting random events and further scenarios into the Aslan Route campaign, so you may see that pop up in a week or three.

I feel Solo is best suited to a slow-burn slice-of-life game where the plotlines emerge organically over time, rather than a slam-bang pulp action adventure. It also deliberately de-emphasises detailed combat, allowing you to run multiple characters without the game bogging down in hundreds of dice rolls. So, most of a campaign occurs between the action sequences, focussing instead on relationships within the party, and with the NPCs they meet and the environments they inhabit. It's cerebral rather than visceral.

If that sounds like the kind of game you want to play, Solo is definitely worth a look.

Aslan Route 15: Mistaken Identity

"I've never been disbarred, committed or convicted of moral turpitude, and the only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity... I didn't know the guy I hit was a cop." – Paul Levine

Cordan (A895347-9), 1105 Week 50

Mr Prasad

Mazun meets Mr Prasad and briefs him on the crew's encounters with the Fury, various aslan clans, and the Monastery on Sink, but carefully avoids mentioning the abandoned pirate base and the Android Liberation Front.

Prasad says that a pair of Imperial Navy gunboats that headed off towards Torpol in week 39 to investigate why the Florian Route has shut down; the earliest they could return would be week 51, but Mazun’s report suggests they’re not coming back. He will pass the full report up the line.

Mazun asks for further instructions. After a little deliberation, Prasad says the Navy has a lot of people who could investigate Torpol and Drinax, but it’s quite hard to get someone embedded in an aslan clan. He would like Mazun to focus the crew's attention on cementing their position in the clan, and in helping that clan advance in power and status, so that it becomes more useful to the Imperium. It goes without saying that the clan shouldn’t become aware of why they’re helping.

Mr Laarbak

Mazun returns to the Macavity to find Rex is back from the pub, being detoxed by Dr Matauranga, and Vila is riding herd on the assorted Port Authority engineers carrying out the overhaul. Two more people arrive with toolkits, and Mazun immediately recognises them by their tattoos as lowlifes masquerading as engineers; he leads them to Engineering by a circuitous route while alerting the rest of the crew.

As the iris valve at the end of the corridor opens to reveal an apparently unaware Vila, one of the thugs clobbers Mazun with a length of pipe, seriously injuring him, and the second runs past to engage Vila. Vila pulls a stun baton from his toolkit and uses it to incapacitate him, while Rex leaps out of the medbay and carves up the second with his ayloi. This gives the gravely wounded Mazun time to finish him off.

Dr Matauranga heals the wounded and the intruders are intimidated by Rex (supported by Mazun saying he wants to be nice, but he has a vargr and is not afraid to use it, and Dr Matauranga begging to be allowed to experiment on them). The captives reveal that Mr Laarbak’s boss wants Vila dead or alive so Laarbak sent them to bring back either Vila, or convincing proof of his death.

The thugs are released to inform Laarbak that Vila is not actually the person they’re looking for, and please don’t send any more thugs as the next group will not be treated so kindly. Laarbak asks for a meeting on neutral ground, and the crew accepts. Dr Matauranga disguises Vila as best he can in the time available, and attempts to predict and counter ways Laarbak might try to get DNA samples.

At the meeting, Laarbak explains that Vila Restal broke the code of the Shugaka Family and this is a matter of face; his superior, Gisuki Numgu, can’t let it go or he will be seen as weak and incompetent. Vila explains that the 'real' Vila sold him a fake ID to help him escape a jealous husband, he has never offended the crime family, and this is all a case of mistaken identity. Laarbak falls for this and offers the crew a sizeable reward for the ‘real’ Vila, should they come across him and bring him in. He advises them others are already looking.

Prasad Again

Prasad has another job for the crew. Baron Ferro, a member of the local ruling council, has guards who look as if they are Zhodani-trained, and has occasional connections with a ship called the Red Adder, whose crew look like Zhodani. Prasad would like the crew to break into the Baron’s mansion and find out what is going on, making it look like a robbery. The easiest way to do this is if it actually is a robbery…

Prasad has some intelligence on the mansion, which he shares, and the crew also manage to hack into the relevant construction company and get a copy of the mansion plans.

Meanwhile, Off-Camera...

In hindsight, trying to introduce the Fury (from the Bulldogs! campaign Heart of the Fury) was a bad move, but since I did, it needs to trundle away in the background as what Dungeon World calls a Front. Assimilating Torpol and everything that docks there means the Fury has made a big hole in the second biggest trade route in the Reach, and anyone who is interested and has the requisite power projection should react to that. I think the Imperium, the Hierate, and GeDeCo would send recon missions to Torpol, suspecting activity by the Oghmans (raiders), the Tyrant of Tyr (expansionists), the Glorious Empire (slavers), or the Florians (just plain weird). Nobody has connected Drinax to events just yet. So, the timeline so far:

• 1105 Week 09: Fall of Torpol.
• 1105 Week 23: News reaches Tobia and Tyokh (it has to go the long way round to Tyokh).
• 1105 Week 27: News reaches Vorito.
• 1105 Week 35: Everybody decides Torpol has been quiet too long and needs to be investigated. (Yes, all at the same time, because I'm lazy.)
• 1105 Week 43: Ahroay'if recon mission from Tyokh reaches Torpol and is annihilated. (I figure the first one would just barge right in. They're aslan.)
• 1105 Week 45: IN recon mission from Tobia reaches Torpol and is assimilated.
• 1105 Week 49: GeDeCo recon mission from Vorito reaches Torpol and is assimilated.

Prasad knows about the IN mission passing through, and Hteleitoirl knows about the Ahroay'if one. Nobody yet knows of their fate.

GM Notes

This week's adventure is brought to you by Sly Flourish's Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, and in particular by Chapter 2, the Lazy DM's Checklist.

PC Hindrances are a good way to entangle them in situations. In this case, it was about time the Shugaka crime syndicate made another attempt to kill or capture Vila.

Experiment 2: Tales of Argosa - Tower of the Eye Terror

"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game." - Gary Gygax

Time for Ruen to kill things and take their stuff. Or vice versa.

Setup

We begin by rolling on ToA pp. 218-219 to find out the adventure's basics.

• Site type: 2 = Tower. We're going straight in so I don't bother locating it on the  campaign hex map, not least because I don't have one.
• Size: Not necessary since we'll create the map as we go.
• Objective: 5,6 - several options here but I'll interpret it as Destroy Sacred Object.
• Reward: 1 = Performed out of obligation. No specific patron reward for us.
• Main opposition: 20 = HD 11+ monster! Good lord. I refer to the monster by HD chart (p. 167); 3 =  Eye Terror, that's a Beholder in old money. This could be a short, fast trip to a Total Party Kill. Theoretically there should be a bunch of them with an Eye Terror on acid as a boss, but I think one of them is enough to be going on with.

ToA's author wisely suggests that at this point you search online for a suitable map and just populate that as you go, but I want to see how the generator works. If I were using it in anger, I'd need to decide how big small, medium, and large rooms are, as well as how long and wide corridors are; but as this is a quick tryout, and we know the place is a tower, there will be four medium rooms stacked on top of each other, connected by stairways, with no subsidiary monsters.

I won't bother you with the actual dice rolls and table lookups for the generator, so let's get into the narrative. I'll drop back into the rules for any combats or other gameplay rolls, though.

Into the Tower

Ruen had learned from his mentor that the old ruined tower six leagues beyond the city had an altar on the top floor, which the old man persuaded him should be destroyed for the greater good. When Ruen asked why the old man hadn't done anything about it himself, decades ago, no satisfactory answer was forthcoming. There were, he was told, rumours of a dark presence; but then, he thought, there always are.

He approached the tower cautiously, fearful of brigands, and noticed that the main doorway was broken, as if from outside. Beyond, the ground floor had a pile of old mattresses, but no sign of any inhabitants otherwise. In one corner, a stairway led upwards.

The walls on the next floor were covered in murals, and when Ruen tried to use his tinderbox to light his torch, the better to see them, it slipped from his hands and fell into a crack in the floor, beyond his ability to reach it. Nothing for it but to continue upwards. 

The second floor featured a fountain centrepiece, no longer functional, but with a bowl still full of fetid water full of wriggling things he did not care to examine in the semi-darkness.

The top floor indeed had a central altar, where the sacred orb he sought sat on a wrought iron frame. Orbiting it slowly, floating some feet off the floor, was a bulbous sack of rubbery flesh with a slavering toothed maw and three eyes on stalks. As he entered, the creature turned to focus on him...

Combat

I don't think either side is surprised; Ruen knew there was something in the tower, and the Eye Terror probably saw him coming through the windows.

Ruen rolls 1d20 (18) vs Initiative (11) and misses by miles; this means the enemy goes first. The Eye Terror is currently too far away to bite (GM fiat) so it fires a random eye beam (Lightning Bolt) at Ruen. It rolls 1d20 (3) vs Int (19) - the roll is less than half its attribute, so it is a Great Success, meaning the spell is extra potent - damage (12d6 for an Eye Terror) is rolled with advantage. The roll is 88 damage, thanks to four exploding dice; Ruen tries to dodge, rolling Luck (12) and applying his Dex modifier (-1); with a roll of 4 he succeeds, halving the incoming damage. Unfortunately, this is still 44, and he only has 28 hit points; he falls unconscious, and is either dead or dying, but we don't know which until someone looks.

Idly curious, the Eye Terror levitates over to the scorched magic user and checks him out with its three eyes. Ruen makes a Death Save, rolling 1d20 (13) vs 10 + the higher of his Con or Will modifier (both 0); there's no-one to help and that is a failure, so he is dead.

The Eye Terror decides, waste not want not, and bites an arm off the corpse. They taste better warm, it thinks.

GM Notes

And now we know why Ruen's mentor didn't clear out the tower himself; there are old wizards, and there are bold wizards, but there are no old, bold wizards.

Combat is essentially B/X D&D with ascending armour class and a few house rules, and I think it's reasonable to assume my readership know how D&D combat operates. It works fluidly enough, but the reduced hit points make it even more deadly - even at maximum level and with all the solo PC benefits, Ruen would have topped out at 34 hit points. Mind you, the Eye Terror would only have had 50-60 as a 12th level monster. I think it would be equally fast in play once I'm used to it; this whole adventure took not much more than an hour, and bear in mind I was learning the system as I went, so lots of page flipping going on.

Each monster has a short custom reaction table as part of its statblock; Eye Terrors are grumpy, can't roll better than "vexed" and are most likely to be "hostile". If they use the same Spellcraft rules as PCs (I couldn't find anything to say they don't), then they would have 12 potential uses of their eye beams in a combat, but I think only one per round; this would make them more vulnerable to a party, as a couple of magic users with decent spells could toast one while it was vaporising the front rank.

The dungeon generator works better with an existing map, since it's good at telling you what's in a room, but leaves you to decide the room's size and shape with very little guidance. That's reasonable, as the author recommends up front that you find a map online. This dungeon wasn't big enough to trigger a Dungeon Event, which might be a random encounter or some other interesting occurrence, but in actual play there's a clock which counts down (actually up, but you know what I mean) as you move around, until something happens. As a bonus, I think this would make a nice group adventure; short, sweet, and requiring some thought as actually fighting the Eye Terror is inadvisable.

Having generated a PC and played through a very short scenario, I really like Tales of Argosa. It's close enough to B/X D&D to give that Old School vibe, but it also feels a lot more like gritty sword & sorcery than high fantasy. It also feels like something that will play really well solo.

I think we'll see this game again, but probably next year, as 2025 is the year of SWADE for me.

Experiment 1: Tales of Argosa - Character Generation

"In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard." - Billy Joel

The plan here is to create a random PC and then stuff him into a randomly-generated dungeon and see what happens.

Character Generation

Most of a ToA PC is randomly generated, partly for speed and partly because a suboptimal PC is one of the challenges to player skill baked into an OSR style game.

Race: 6 = Human. Background: 46 = Miner; +1 Str, Detection, pickaxe.

Attributes: 3d6 down the line gives us Str 11 (+1 for being a miner = 12), Dex 7, Con 11, Int 15, Per 13, Will 10, Cha 8. I already have a 13 and a 15, so I don't need to bump anything to those minimum values, and I decide not to swap two attribute scores. Being human gives me a +1 on one attribute of my choice; the only place I can use this to boost an attribute modifier is Cha, so I push that to 9 to eliminate the penalty.

Class: This is a free choice, and the high Int suggests a magic user.

Luck 11, Rerolls 2, and DDM 1 are standard values. Initiative is the average of Dex and Int, so 11. Hit points for a M-U are Con + Level, so 12. Death save is 10 + Con or Will modifier, so 10 either way.

Skills: Detection from being a miner, Arcane Lore and Apothecary for being a Magic User, then 3d10 from the M-U list; 2 = Deception, 6 = General Lore, 8 = Watercraft.

Weapon and armour proficiencies, attack bonus, and starting gear, are determined by class. Class abilities too, for a M-U. Spells known are determined randomly, one per point of Int bonus; starting with a whopping two spells there. 36 = Gabbling of the Jade Moon (that's Confusion in old money), 73 = Sever Arcanum (Dispel Magic).

Battle Gear slots are half Str (i.e. 6), with the same again for Pack Gear slots.

AC is 10 + armour bonus + Dex bonus, in this case the bonuses cancel out so that's a 10.

Bonus languages equal to Int bonus (+2), but I'll leave those for the moment so that I can be vague about which setting I'm using.

Age is 1d20 + 16 = 17, this guy's starting early.

Name, personality, optional physical trait: I decide to roll for these rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis and get Ruen, who is cynical and ugly. Well, that explains the Charisma, I suppose.

Finally, a random party bond: 46 = expedition to find a lost ruin. There's no party at the moment, since Ruen is a solo PC, so I decide the first time he meets a friendly NPC they will know each other from a previous expedition.

A little page flipping here, between the Characters, Attributes, Races and Classes sections, but not too much. It took me a bit of thought to understand how skills are allocated, but again not too much, and I know how that works now. The internal hyperlinks to later pages are useful.

Level Up

This year, I've decided to run only one full-blown PC at a time, so I invoke the Solo Rules for a Lone Wolf PC. This gives many advantages to offset the lack of numbers, but the two of interest here are that the Lone Wolf starts at level 3 with 25 HP plus class bonus (28 for Ruen). Update: Ruen's Luck should also increase to 12, missed that!

That boosts Ruen's Attack Bonus to +2, and gives him a new skill (2 = Deception, but he has that already and it can't stack, so 7 = Persuasion), mental apparatus (some kind of headgear which helps resist mental attacks), and a unique feature. One is supposed to make that up with the GM's approval, but without knowing the game system that will be hard, so I turn to pp. 45-50 and pick Pilfer Pouch from the list of examples, because it looks like fun; the PC is a kleptomaniac who steals and forgets about random objects, so once per adventure he can reach into a pouch and pull out one of those items.

I almost forgot; we might reasonably say he can roll for two more spells, one each time he increased his level. 74 = Sever Arcanum, he already has that so let's say that for some reason he didn't manage to learn another spell at level 2; 53 = Lightning Bolt, tasty.

OK, we're done.

Statblock

Ruen, 3rd level human magic-user

Cynical, ugly ex-miner.

Str 12, Dex 7 (-1), Con 11, Int 15 (+2), Per 13 (+1), Will 10, Cha 9.

Level 3. Luck 12, Rerolls 2, DDM 1, Init 11, HP 28, AB +2, AC 10.

Skills: Apothecary, Arcane Lore, Deception, Detection, General Lore, Watercraft.

Proficiencies: Light armour, one handed weapons, light crossbows, sling.

Class Abilities: Sense Magic, Spellcraft. Spells: Gabbling of the Jade Moon, Lightning Bolt, Sever Arcanum.

Unique Features: Pilfer Pouch.

Gear: Battle - spellbook, longsword, leather armour (+1 AC), mental apparatus; 2 free. Pack - torch, bedroll, rations, tinderbox, 10 sp, pickaxe.

GM Notes

Character creation took me a bit over half an hour, more than usual for an OSR game even allowing for unfamiliarity. I like what I've seen so far, but if I were introducing newbies to the game I'd pregenerate a number of PCs for them to choose from, and even for experienced players I'd want to hold their hands the first time or two. Pregens would be fine since the process is mostly random anyway, but I think you do lose something by not making the rolls yourself, and my current players greatly prefer to make their own PCs.

That resulted in a bigger word count than I expected, so let's do the dungeon crawl next time.

Aslan Route Interlude: Cordan

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” - Casablanca

Last time, on the Aslan Route, we pulled together a list of NPCs and open plot threads.

We know that the PCs will be on Cordan next session while their ship is overhauled, and that there is going to be a fight.

Published Material

Most of what we know about Cordan comes from The Pirates of Drinax and The Drinaxian Companion. Both of those have writeups which treat the world as if it had atmosphere type 8 (dense), whereas all the statblocks I've ever seen for it - including the ones in The Pirates of Drinax - show it as atmosphere type 9 (dense, tainted). This irks me, but is not a huge issue. Maybe someday I'll figure out a way to reconcile it, but for the time being we'll pretend the taint has no significant effects.

Cordan is important; a class A starport on a trade hub situated at the junction of the two main trade routes in the sector. It's also inside the Imperial Navy patrol radius - IN patrols go as far as Acrid - so it's relatively safe from pirates. It would, in fact, make a fine base world for the PCs in any campaign, but the PCs in the first campaign took a shine to Ace and worlds spinward of Drinax, while the current lot have put down roots on Sink. You really can't force this stuff, and it's best not to try; let them settle if and where they want.

We have the following scenario options from the published materials:

• The Cordan Conflict in The Drinaxian Companion deals with infighting among the three noble families of Cordan. This is one of the best of the Drinax scenarios, but three of the four players have already played it, so that's ruled out. What might be worth retaining is that the nobles are jockeying for position, but none of them dares call down Imperial wrath, so the skirmishing is relatively low-key.
• There are mole people left over from an old Solomani colony living underground. In the last campaign I replaced these with mind flayers, which terrified the players to the point that they ran away and never went back to Cordan for the rest of the game. Probably best to avoid that one, too much trauma.
• There's a throwaway line in the Cordan Conflict alluding to one of the noble families having Zhodani backing. We haven't used that yet, so that's a possibility.

Emergent Material

Looking at the lists from last week, it looks like there are three possibilities:

• Mazun will contact his handler (whom we shall call Kenneth Prasad) for information and to fence his loot; the player expects this to vanish into the handler's black fund. I think the handler should be embedded in the starport staff, and launder the money by using it to pay for the Macavity's overhaul. For further consideration: Is the handler legit, bent, or a double agent for the Zho (bearing in mind they are telepaths so he might not know)? We'll let that come out in play, on the principle of not prepping more than is necessary. However, we roll for a personality on the table for SWADE Allies (10, Young) and an objective on the One Page Mythic table (77 Object 81 Rotten).
• The Shugaka crime syndicate are obviously plugged in to the starport, with connections to smugglers and piracy. The questions here are first, how much of the port is under their control, and second, does that include Mazun's handler? We shall call the local boss Diideshur Laarbak, and give him a Mysterious personality and the objective of Decrease Dangerous.
• Vargr corsairs, which should be the ones from the raid on the House of Shrouded Mirrors. Meet Captain Okorzrourrg Onfu of the corsair Khuerga; a Bright female with the objective of Leave Extravagant.

Yes, I think I can see where this is going.

Review: Tales of Argosa

“I bought it so I could look at it and imagine what it would be like to have friends to play with.” – Wizard Deadloss

In a nutshell: D&D-adjacent swords and sorcery RPG from Pickpocket Press, which describes it as an "emergent play adventure game". 265 page PDF, $25 or so here at time of writing; hard and soft covers also available.

The introduction says "Adventures are short, sharp, and focused on dangerous wilds, treacherous cities, fierce battles, ruinous magic, fabulous treasures, & cosmic weird."

Intentionality

For a while now, I've been craving some Old School fantasy, likely to replace the 40-year-old OD&D game which recently petered out. I'm pretty much reconciled to that new game being solo; of my four current players, one will only play SF, and two won't have anything to do with class-and-level games, while attempts to set up or join another regular group have failed. Maybe some sort of open-table game night would work?

Meanwhile, earlier this year, I dabbled in SWADE plus the Fantasy Companion, and (off-camera) Shadowdark plus Solodark, and read/watched videos about Nimble, but none of those felt quite right.

Then I learned about Tales of Argosa from the Books, Bricks & Boards YouTube Channel, and the first couple of videos about it piqued my interest enough to download the assorted free samples from DriveThruRPG; the playtest rules, assorted pregen PCs, a couple of adventures, GM screen and character sheets. The freebies were enough to persuade me to buy the actual rules, at least as a PDF, and here we are.

What's Familiar?

The core game is a d20 variant with a collection of good ideas, some new, some pilfered from the many other D&D-a-likes that have cropped up over the decades.

• Mostly random character generation, mostly familiar characteristics, races, and classes, random backgrounds, standard gear allocation by character class.
• Mostly familiar gear, encumbrance using slots rather than actual weight, abstracted lifestyle expenses. Weapons made of special metals bypass resistances of certain monsters. Black powder weapons tucked away at the back as part of the naval combat rules.
• Mostly familiar checks for attributes, attacks, etc. Advantage and disadvantage on rolls. Fumbles and critical successes. Opposed checks.
• Mostly familiar d20 combat, with group initiative, morale checks, conditions, and healing. Slightly unusual, but less so these days: Range bands, "exploits" like cracking skulls together or throwing enemies off cliffs, "rescues" (once per adventure, negate an adverse event for another character).
• Mostly familiar spell lists, except the names are different. Fortunately, the "traditional" name is listed in the description, so you know that "Gaze of Beguilement" is actually "Charm Person", for example. You begin with a small number of spells and must research others between adventures to learn them.
• Extensive tables of random encounters and events, split by terrain type.
• Setting-specific deities and religions.
• Recruiting hirelings, with tables for their names, personalities, traits, gear, catchphrases, advancement and what they do for payback if mistreated.
• Mass battle and naval combat rules.
• Mostly familiar monsters and treasure, with guidelines for creating your own; statblocks and descriptions are pleasingly short. Some nice unique magic items.
• Evocative, and sometimes whimsical, black and white art sprinkled liberally throughout.

What's Different?

So, another day, another D&D variant. This is an OSR style low-fantasy game rather than 5E's Magical Muppet Show, but that niche is getting quite crowded. What makes this one special?

• Low magic. Even the biggest city only has a few spellcasters. Magic is dark and dangerous; roll a die after each casting to avoid backlash, the chance of backlash goes up each time you cast during an adventure. If you offend your god, there is a table of rites of atonement to roll on.
• No spell slots or spell levels, though you will know very few spells and can only cast each one a few times per adventure - limits are based on your character level and attribute modifiers. Ritual magic for imposing long term effects.
• Low power levels. 9th level cap (with explanations of how each class retires after 9th), PCs start with about 10 hit points and will struggle to get over 40 even at 9th level. "Unique Features" (Feat equivalents) every three levels regardless of class, including abilities from other classes; option to design your own feats.
• Eight (arguably nine) stats rather than six. No dump stats, because attribute/skill checks are d20 roll-under.
• Optional, random bonds between party members such as "prison cellmates".
• As well as the natural 20 critical hit, natural 19s to hit do cool stuff, and damage dice explode (once only).
• No saving rolls; instead you get a Luck attribute which gradually degrades during the course of an adventure. This gives players another resource to manage, builds tension as the game progresses, and incentivises the party to press on rather than rest (since luck recharges very slowly).
• Long rests are a week long.
• Options for advancement by XP, sessions, and downtime periods.
• Lots of rules built into the core game which you usually have to buy a supplement for; montages (much like SWADE Quick Encounters), downtime, escaping from encounters gone bad, chases, fast travel back to town for West Marches games, what the monsters are doing when you meet them, diseases, parasites, a table for why your new PC joins the party in media res after your old one dies, instant rival adventurers, solo rules, random dungeon generator (with extensive section on traps).
• Variant rules allowing you to dial a few things up or down; character customisation, combat deadliness, number of players, level cap. Also conversion rules for monsters, spells and treasure from other d20 material.
• The game text is under a Creative Commons Licence. That's becoming more common, but still rare enough to mention.

What I Think

This game is well suited to low-magic grimdark swords and sorcery, just how I like it. I expect to play it at some point, probably solo, but I'll drop the Artificer class and the demihuman races, as I prefer humanocentric games with no chainswords or black powder weapons. None of the changes to the core D&D rules is too significant on its own, at least not for an old grognard like myself, but the synergy between them makes this a really appealing set of rules, with GM tools ripe for plagiarising in other campaigns (and even genres).

One thing I don't like is the need to buy separate custom dice and a custom card deck to use the group or solo oracles. A link is provided to an online implementation of both, and there are short rules for replacing the dice with more normal ones, but "substitute your favourite open question oracle" is a bit of a cop-out, I feel.

That said, I find myself fighting the urge to play Tales of Argosa right away, which is usually a good sign. So let's try an experimental solo session and see what happens.

Aslan Route Interlude: A Tangled Web

"All of us are limited mortal creatures with finite amounts of time, energy and focus. We can't afford to spend it on trifles when there is more important and more satisfying work to be done. Instead, focus on what you need and what you enjoy." - Kevin Crawford, Worlds Without Number

Group schedules give me an excuse to pause the campaign for two weeks while I figure out what's going one and where to go next. The only thing I'm sure of at this point is that the next session has to involve a fight on Cordan; as an experiment I told the group that there would definitely be a fight next time, and there was less pushback than I expected given the amount of effort the PCs devote to avoiding any form of combat.

I need the break, as I'm very low on spoons and have no idea where the campaign is going next or how to plan it. Over the years I've tried and discarded a number of options for this:

• Published adventures. By the time I've ruled out the ones we've already played, the ones that don't fit the setting, and the ones that don't appeal, there's not much left.
• Flat-out sandbox. This group prefers a quest-giving patron who gives them an objective.
• Old School procedurally-generated encounters using Classic Traveller, Solo and 5150. These all work well for solo play, but there I can stop and think about the implications and logical next steps for days at a time; the pace of group games demands better improvisational skills than I have demonstrated of late.
• Stars Without Number factions. Great in principle, but I struggle to maintain the required discipline.

Now, in a typical campaign, I could throw in regular fights to buy time, but that doesn't work very well for this group.

NPCs and Plot Threads

1. Only Mazun knows about this one: IISS covert operations (Mazun's employer). They want intelligence on the Hierate, and may be behind the emergence of the Fury. Mazun's handler is on Cordan, probably embedded in the starport staff.
2. Only Vila knows about this one: The Shugaka crime syndicate (Vila's Enemy). They want to revenge themselves on Vila for his pre-campaign actions. The syndicate is more active the closer you get to Imperial space, but since Cordan is a trade hub situated where the two biggest trade routes in the sector join, it's reasonable for them to have connections with any smugglers or pirates nearby.
3. The Scientific Advisory Council of Tech-World (Dr Matauranga's rivals). They would like independence from GeDeCo, but we've already played out that thread in an earlier campaign so don’t expect it this time around. Matauranga wants to show them who the real scientist is, but having kicked him out, they seem content to leave him alone. Their indifference is probably more irritating than anything else they could do.
4. Only Rex knows about this one: Rex's pirate connections, based out of Umemii. The Law of Conservation of NPCs mandates that they should include the vargr corsairs who flattened the House of Shrouded Mirrors on Pourne. Rex has gone to some lengths to distance himself from the corsairs he knew in his misspent youth. Vargr corsairs could show up anywhere - if nothing else, they need to overhaul their ships too - and make mercury fulminate look stable.
5. The Fury, some sort of expansionist mind-controlling effect using the Sindalian Empire Reborn (i.e. Drinax) as a front, and possibly triggered by IISS activity.
6. The monastery on Sink, which is a front for some sort of giant psychic hive mind that lives in a swamp. It doesn't like the Fury and is pondering what to do about it.
7. The nymphomaniac Cult of Sindal on Blue. They want a Sindalian relic from Collace, and offered the Macavity a commission to recover it. The PCs are not sure if the cult blames them for the government raid that smoked them out of their temple.
8. The official government of Blue, who want to suppress the Cult of Sindal as it threatens their own dominance (and allying with Sindal didn't do them much good last time). The PCs are wanted on Blue for suspected aiding and abetting of terrorists and traffic violations.
9. The Rea’a Hrilkhir, an aslan organised crime syndicate based on Tyokh (and which thanks to the PCs' actions now has control of The World, it is unclear why they wanted this). This syndicate wants respectability through being able to sheep-dip its outcastes into a proper clan; expect them to try making the Prince an offer he can’t refuse. The PCs have met the syndicate’s leader, the female Okheai, also known as “the Alley Cat”
10. The Android Liberation Front, who wish to 'rescue' self-aware androids from Tech-World (the Scientific Advisory Council would call this 'theft'). This powerful organisation currently has six members, an abandoned pirate base in the Exe system, and a deal with the Macavity.
11. Clan Iuwoi, with which the PCs are aligned. A minor clan based on Tyokh, with an outpost on Sink. Notable members include Prince Hteleitoirl, who has claimed the PCs as his boon companions; and Ahoakhi, the starport authority on Sink.
12. Elehasei (“Ellie”) has an understanding with the Prince and they will marry once his exile ends (127-1106, i.e. week 19 or so). He is marrying up, she is from the wealthier Clan Aftei.
13. Clan Htyowao, clan Iuwoi's rival. A minor clan based on Tyokh, which has beef with Clan Iuwoi.
14. Sister Raquel, a hacker from Pourne who joined the monastery on Sink to get off-planet when authorities on Pourne got too close to her. Last seen on Tech-World after volunteering for missionary work there (episode 10).
15. Dr Matauranga has a curious spike made of precious metals and engraved with who-knows-what which he picked up on the way out of the House of Shrouded Mirrors (episode 11).

That's... more than I thought was going on. I should be able to work something out from that.

Behind the Curtain

The PCs know two things about the Fury which will combine to dispose of it eventually if they don't get rid of it first; the effect is expanding from Drinax at lightspeed, except where the Sindalian Empire Reborn places a menhir to relay it outside its current sphere of influence, and second, the field doesn't affect aslan, as they were never genetically manipulated by the Ancients.

The first of these is sheer laziness on my part, as the alternative was investing a lot of effort in playing out domain-level NPC-on-NPC action off-camera, and that didn't appeal to me at all. The second seemed a logical extension of the fact that IMTU ("In My Traveller Universe") aslan can never be psionic.

Consequently, if the PCs continue to ignore the Fury, sometime in early 1108 it will absorb Pourne, which will make the Fury too big a threat for the local aslan clans to ignore; they will gang up on it, probably stomp it flat in short order, and possibly trigger the big Imperium-Hierate war everyone is trying to avoid.

However, by that point I expect this campaign to be over, and if not, we will skip gaily off into another sector, our path lit by the Trojan Reach burning behind us; I don't expect us to keep playing in that sector after this campaign closes.

Worlds

For the foreseeable future, it seems likely the Macavity will be plying a jump-2 route anchored at one end by Mazun’s handler on Cordan, and at the other by the Clan Iuwoi landhold on Sink, with occasional visits to the clan’s main holding on Tyokh.

This means the primary worlds for the next few sessions will be Cordan, Exe, Paal, Sink, Tech-World, and Tyokh, so I will focus my attention on those for the short term.

For the second interlude, I'll take a look at who is knocking around on Cordan, and what interactions the PCs may stumble upon. More of that next week.

Arion Solo Checklists

"Familiarity with the worlds, the stable of merchant ships and the NPCs that are being created begins to create a setting with an increasing level of depth. To skip out to the adjacent subsector does tend to spoil the effect, and to be honest you gain nothing new except the chore of starting the work of fleshing out planets and people all over again." - Paul Elliot, Solo

I thought it might be helpful, or at least interesting, for some of you to take a peek behind the GM's screen for the Arioniad, and see a consolidated version of how I'm currently running the game.

Product Set

First, the product set I'm using. RPGs as a hobby are half a century old now; in the early days, games had a lot of holes, and a lot of the fun for the GM was making stuff up to fill them in; but by this stage, any decent set of rules covers almost everything you might want to begin with, and if there are things missing, somebody somewhere has likely already written something you can just pick up and use.

• The basic rules engine is Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, my current favourite RPG. This generally works well, but does not include a setting, nor is it designed for solo play, nor does it include anything but the most basic rules for random encounters and events. So we need a few extra items.
• The setting is the Official Traveller Universe, Charted Space. I expected to use a lot of the background material, but it turns out I can do what I want just with the maps and world profiles, easily available online at the Traveller Map. At the moment the action is in the Jewell Subsector of the Spinward Marches.
• Zozer Games' Solo is a supplement for Cepheus Engine (cough Traveller cough) which adds solitaire campaign rules, generating random events and encounters which gradually form emergent plotlines. It actually works with any SF RPG so long as you have starport types and law levels for worlds, and some idea of what tasks the PCs are good at.
• Veiled Fury Entertainment's Trader Voyages, a supplement which adds simple, straightforward and setting-agnostic rules for trade to Savage Worlds. I've been using this as Charted Space relies heavily on trade to drive play forward in the stereotypical campaign, but Savage Worlds really doesn't have any rules for it, and Traveller's rules are too much like my old day job to be fun for me these days.
• One Page Mythic for when none of the above has an obvious solution for my current problem, whatever it is.
• Moon Toad's Quick Ship Files for the Gagarin class scoutship. These aren't strictly necessary but it helps me to have a clear picture of what Arion's ship is like.

Gameplay Loops

Next, the core gameplay loops themselves, of which there are two; one for time spent on-planet, and another for travelling between planets. Normally I alternate between the two, a week on-planet and a week travelling, but sometimes the story suggests a different pattern, most often several weeks in a row on a single world. These loops are modified versions of the checklists from page 53 of Solo.

On-Planet

• Roll for Starport Encounter on arrival.
• Roll for World Encounter, then Patrons, Enemies, or Colourful Locals as directed.
• Draw cards/roll for cargo.
• Roll for Starport Encounter departing.

In Transit

• Roll for Ship Encounter departing.
• Roll for Onboard Event.
• Spirit roll for everyone aboard; failure invokes their biggest Hindrance somehow.
• Roll for Ship Encounter arriving.

In both cases, I have a tendency to juggle the game chronology a little to tell the most interesting story; often, events make more sense if you swap a couple of them around, and the complication associated with a cargo might logically become apparent right away, in transit, or at the next port of call.

Key Lessons for Solo Play

Keep written records of what you decide and what happens; this is one reason I blog about my solo games. No do-overs, which actually helps you as much as it hinders, since mistakes in applying the rules are to your benefit as much as not.

Don't be any harder on your solo PCs than you would be on anyone else's as the GM. There's a temptation to treat yourself much more harshly than you would treat anyone else in the name of "fairness", but trust me on this one, nobody cares except you.

Don't roll dice if the answer is already obvious; save them for when you're uncertain. (Come to think of it, this applies to group games as well.)

Don't force it. One of the big benefits of solo play is that if you need to take a minute, or a week, to think about what's happening, you can. There is nobody else waiting on you.

For Further Study

Changing things up is the main way I keep my solo campaigns fresh and interesting, and messing about with the rules is how I most often do that, with setting changes a close second. At the moment there are three things on my mind...

First, is Savage Worlds too complex for solo play? Would it be more fun to use a simpler system, and if so, which one? To be reviewed at the end of 2025, I decided early on that 2025 was going to be the year of Savage Worlds and I'll stick to that for the time being.

Second, how much of the current product set can I replace with the Mythic Game Master Emulator, and would the first edition of that be adequate? I'll experiment with that over the coming months.

Finally, is Jewell Subsector the best setting for this campaign? Would I be better off moving into the Trojan Reach (where my current group game is set) or Foreven Sector (which has a lot less baggage)? Experience teaches that the settings I choose are the biggest and most frequent source of my regrets about my solo games, so this is definitely a case of measure twice, cut once.

And that's before we even think about changing genre; dungeon crawling is always calling seductively from the wings.

Stay tuned for more shenanigans.