Retro Review: Ghost of Lion Castle

An old school 1980's TSR Solo Module | The Lone Toad - Ribbiting Adventures Issue 9

Nov 15, 2024

Welcome to Ribbiting Adventures Issue 9!

Welcome readers to another Retro Reveiw! Solo RPGs are as old as RPGs themselves, and people have been playing D&D solo since the very start. Today we are taking a look at a classic solo module from the 1980’s, when many believe D&D was at it’s best.

Summary

🎲 - Ghost of Lion Castle

⏰ - Released in 1984

💵 - $5 for the PDF on DriveThruRPG

⚙️ - Basic D&D (Easily played with retro-clone of your choice such as Basic Fantasy or OSE)

🐸 - Made for Solo - Gamebook style

The Good

Well-developed ‘How to Play section’
Interesting living dungeon features with the magic journal and looting
Great maps and Pregens, so you can jump right in.
Excellent interior art

The Not Good

A convoluted story that tries to explain the ‘Solo’ aspect using in-game lore
Drastic rules change to certain spells and magical items may leave you a bit confused and disappointed
You can only bring magic-users or Elves to this fight.

Assessment

Ghost of Lion Castle is a decent enough gamebook (Choose your own adventure) style solo module for Basic D&D. It’s probably fun for a play-through or two but the rules change, and the fact that you can only use a magic-user or elf will reduce your desire to replay the module.

A trip into the murky past

One of my favourite things about the TTRPG hobby is that it’s very creation is still within living memory. There are people around today who play-tested the first version of Dungeons and Dragons with Gygax, or who played in the very first of Arenson’s Blackmoor campaign.

I mean, how cool is that?

There are a ton of games and modules made back in the 70s and 80s that are awsome and people swear by to this day. And today’s subject is one of those.

Ghost of Lion Castle, written by Merle M. Rasmussen and published in 1984, several years before yours truly entered this world. You might be thinking - what can we learn from this 40-year-old solo module? The answer? Quite a lot.

What is this thing?

Ghost of Lion Castle was created for Basic D&D, that amazing Red Box that so many fell in love with back in the early 80s. Made for Solo play, it’s code was BSOLO.

Code - Modules for D&D in the 70s to early 90s had codes, a simple text snippet that provided a unique identifier to the module and provided information. In the case of Ghost of Lion Castle, B refers to Basic D&D and SOLO means, well, you can figure that one out I think. Giving modules a Code is a tradition that extends to a lot of modern Indie RPGs today.

There was a bit of a push to make Solo modules for D&D in the early 80s, with a few experimental ideas. Ghost of Lion Castle is ‘traditional’ in the sense that it doesn’t need any fancy stuff like a magic marker or X-ray glasses.

Ghost of Lion Castle was reviewed at the time by C Mara Mallory, in Space Gamer 75. Mara’s review was less than glowing, for a few reasons I equally share. I think it’s good to show these contemporary reviews, because it shows what people were thinking about the game way back when.

What is going on here?

The adventure opens in a tavern because this is 1980s D&D. People are chatting about a great lion statue/temple, with a great treasure inside of it! A magic curse sits upon it, only allowing one adventurer inside at a time (isn’t that convenient?). Oh, and you had better be a magic user or an elf if you want any chance of making it through the temple (which is also convenient). Finally, all the adventures in the tavern draw straws to see who goes into the tavern first, and wouldn’t you know it? You’ve been selected. So convenient!

From here you travel to the Lion Castle which is split into two sections, The Courtyard and the Lion Castle itself (this is where things get serious). You’ll deal with the typical range of D&D traps and monsters, until you eventually get to the end, to defeat the big bad and carry away a truckload of treasure. Or you die.

What I like about Lion Castle

The ‘How to play section’

The how-to-play section is structured just like the game entries. So after you read R1, the first rules entry, it directs you to R2. Before you know it, you are already following the flow of the game. I thought that was a good design.

Living Dungeon

If you grab some valuable treasure from a room you are meant to cross it out of the book. When your character dies, you are also meant to mark that location in the book. This means when you come through with a new character, you’ll encounter rooms already looted, but find your old character’s body rotting in the desert sun. Jackpot!

Magic Journal

Lion Castle has room built into the module for writing notes to a future adventurer. The in-game rationale is a bit silly, the book just appears back at the tavern if the person holding it dies. What it does is allow you to write messages to future characters, giving them a better chance at success.

Mapping

One of the problems I had with an earlier module I reviewed (Buffalo Castle for Tunnels and Trolls) was that it was had to conceptualise where your character was in the castle. In Lion Castle, they’ve solved this by providing excellent maps. But just reading the maps won’t give everything away. The game tells you the maps are not complete.

Interior Art

Drawn by Bob Maurus, I love the interior art. I’m not a fan of the cover image though. This full-page spread is particularly evocative.

Pre Gens

Lion Castle provides six level 1-3 characters, magic-users and elves. This allows you to jump straight into the game, you don’t need to spend time creating characters. It is useful considering this module is pretty deadly.

However they are just stat blocks, I would have liked to see some background even if it was just a sentence or two.

What I don’t like about Lion Castle

Convoluted reasoning

The whole ‘only one person can step into Lion Castle because of magic!’ made me roll my eyes. I think it has to do with the time period this was made in and that designers felt the need to in-game explain the reasons why only one adventurer could attempt it.

Not the biggest issue I have (that is next) but just a bit silly I thought.

Drastic rule changes

Now this is the biggest knock to Ghost of Lion Castle. If you go to sections R16 (Altered Spell Effects) and R17 (Magic Items in Lion Castle) you’ll see a huge list of spells and items that are altered in Lion Castle. This was done by the designers in order to not ‘break’ the game.

It begs the question - Does a Choose Your Own Adventure style game work with D&D if you have to make so many alterations? I can’t say for certain but the way Lion Castle does it kind of sucks the fun out of the game.

And some items? You just can’t use it. Potions of Invisibility and Potions of Levitation do not work here.

Only certain characters

We also say this in Castle Buffalo. In Lion Castle, you can only bring Magic-Users or Elves. Clearly the designer wanted magic to be used here. No bringing Glogarg the Fighter into Lion Castle.

What we can learn from Ghost of Lion Castle

Exeunt Press

says - you can learn something from every game, even the bad ones. So what can modern designers and players learn from Ghost of Lion Castle?

Constraints reduces replayability

Constraining players to just two classes in a game that is all about choice reduces the desire to replay the adventure, at least for me. Something to think about, especially with gamebook-type adventures.

Replayability adds perceived value to a game when people are thinking about buying and playing one. So if you are making a gamebook-style adventure (like I am), how do you increase replayability? Something to think about.

Is D&D a good choice for this type of game?

Even back in the 80s, D&D was about choice. What class, what race, what weapons, what you want to do, etc. Now it is even more so. Gamebooks/Choose Your Adventure games by definition can’t offer that much choice. Normally 2-4 options per entry. Any more and the book would explode with entries and be unusable.

Like the above, I don’t have an answer to this but I feel like an open-ended D&D-style game just doesn’t work well. I’d have to take a look at how modern designer tackle this issue.

Player Aids are a must!

The biggest difference in this game and Buffalo Castle (10 years prior or so) is the inclusion of player aids. Pre-generated characters and maps (thank god) really make it easier to conceptualise the game and enjoy it from the start.

And there you have it. Ghost of Lion Castle. What do you think about it?

Cargoth: Ruinous Edition is released!

Cargoth: Ruinous Edition is released! Thanks to everyone who played the original version. Cargoth: Ruinous has a ton of content for your Ironsworn campaign. Enough to keep you going for session after session.

Cargoth: Ruinous Edition is an adventure to be used with Ironsworn. The game contains:

A 22-page fully designed adventure booklet.
An inciting incident to get your Ironsworn adventurer into the action.
An Extreme Vow to give you hours of gameplay.
Unique Pay the Price and Perils tables built for your journey through the Lost City
Individual exploration tables for the Lost City, The Ruins of the City and the Catacombs with over 30 evocative locations to explore.
A surprising twist that allows your Ironsworn adventurer the chance to make a decision that will affect the whole Ironlands.
8 potential foes and allies including beasts, the unnatural, and other adventurers.

Updated Content new to the Ruinous Edition Includes

Additional rules for traps and dangers
3 new storylines to provide hours of adventuring in the Lost City
Five 'assets' your character can use in future adventures.

Be sure to check out my other games here!

Next Month

Next edition of the Lone Toad I’ll be talking about my holiday solo plan. What I’ll be playing and what I’m doing with the Lone Toad.

Toad in next month!

Thanks to everyone who reads this and all my posts! I write because you read them, and I thank you for that.

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