I was inspired by a post that Zachary Kline made about running a pre-published campaign solo. I have never even thought of doing such a thing, so of course I dusted off an old Solo character (Andrei, my vampire) and grabbed a pre-written adventure (Annabelle's Party, for Succubus Club) and ran him through it.
It was...interesting. Obviously, it was most enjoyable when things went sideways and he had to take a long digression away from the primary plot. But, all in all, I think it worked.
The only downside I can think of is that you really do need to "spoil" it to run it properly. I tried to avoid this, by going scene by scene through the adventure, not knowing what was supposed to happen next.
But of course, it's not written as a Solo game--it's meant for a GM. I kept having to take wild guesses to try and follow the link between Scenes, and at the end it seemed to come to a wall. Then I had to go back and actually read the background and a number of things clicked into place.
Has anyone else tried to Solo a published module? Anything from a shot module to something like the Great Pendragon Campaign (which is what Zachary Kline was originally talking about).
Thursday, November 17, 2016
I was inspired by a post that Zachary Kline made about running a pre-published campaign solo. I have never even thought of doing such a thing, so of course I dusted off an old Solo character (Andrei, my vampire) and grabbed a pre-written adventure (Annabelle's Party, for Succubus Club) and ran him through it.
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I haven't tried that technique myself. But, I have generally thought that 'play to find out' would trump printed content. If the Count was your friend and the book said he was a recluse, I would still go with the friendship as being the exception to the rule.
ReplyDeleteI played many published adventures using different solo rules. I think they work particularly well if you play as a solo GM. Many people complain that using published adventures spoils the surprise but playing as GM is still a Solo RPG and it can be very rewarding.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience I have also found that the outcome of the game depends a lot also by the structure of the published adventures: those with much railroading work well only in a Solo GM game, a sandbox and adventure seeds are more suitable as a solo player experience
I used to do it all the time. Sandboxy modules were always good, especially if you had decent Interaction rules in the game.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I'd say the best ones were set up in a somewhat modular fashion, and had GM advice on what to do if the players did A or B, or failed skill roll X or Y. Call of Cthulhu and 1st ed Shadowrun, and to a lesser extent d6 Star Wars were like this. If you were good at not reading too far ahead, it was almost like playing a published solo adventure at times.