A 40-Year old Dungeons and Dragons solo Adventure
The Lone Toad Newsletter - October 2023
Welcome to the October Newsletter of The Lone Toad. October is a huge month for The Lone Toad. I’m heading to PAX Australia to check out cool new TTRPGs, I’m playing through my D&D Basic Campaign The Ancient Way on the blog, and (hopefully) releasing a game jam game. Huge stuff!
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A ‘Basic’ Solo Adventure
The 1983 version of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic set, also known as the Red Box version, is 40 years old! Now the whole solo RPG trend may feel a bit new to a lot of us, and in many ways it is. With the advent of Ironsworn/Starforged, the explosion of independent solo RPGs, and large publishers such as Free League including solo games in their releases, it feels like we are in a golden age.
But solo RPGs are old, nearly as old as the hobby itself. Many people’s introduction to RPGs, and Solo RPGs, would have been the solo adventure at the start of the Red Box.
Now, you’ll probably tell I’m a huge fan of this version of DND. It’s easy to pick up and learn, easy to teach, and quick to resolve. I also like how the book is structured. It starts with a tutorial of sorts, and it jumps the reader straight into a solo adventure on page 2!
Your first (solo) Adventure
The adventure starts by describing the hero you will be playing, a fighter with some decent stats. It says you are hiking through the hills and decide a catch a wanted criminal to become a hero (pretty basic but remember this is for players who may have never heard of an RPG before, not even a computer game). You immediately get into a fight with a goblin and eventually, you hit it and it runs.
For the rest of this portion of the adventure, you will read along and roll some dice. It feels like a Choose your own adventure without the ability to choose what is next. New concepts like charisma, saving throws, health, alignment, and playing as a group are introduced.
At the end of this portion of the adventure, you come face to face with the fugitive, and depending on how you roll a saving throw, you get to your first branching of the story.
Either way, you are led eventually to a town where you learn about spending gold and equipping yourself.
Into the Caves
After the shopping scene, you get to dig into something that will feel familiar to a lot of us, a true Choose Your Own Adventure dungeon delve! Time to get out some graph paper and start mapping.
In this dungeon, you’ll face everything you expect to, monsters (Giant rats, skeletons, goblins, and a Rust Monster!), treasure (lots of gold and gems), traps (a magic blade trap), and puzzles (a giant mouth, if you answer the riddle incorrectly you lose all your treasure, ouch!).
If you die, which seems pretty likely, you can start again without any treasure.
What can we learn?
And that is it! I think we can learn quite a bit from this solo scenario; it has much to give to modern game design.
Tutorials - Slowly expand the rules for the players. That gives them the chance to internalize the rules and not be overwhelmed. What computer or video game requires you to understand every single rule the second you start playing? None, but often in RPGs players and GMs are expected to do that.
Get Players Playing - The great thing about the Red Box adventure is you are playing it almost as soon as you open the book. And before the players even think about character creation, they already know what a lot of the concepts are.
Solo Adventures As Teaching Tools - I’d love to see more solo adventures as teaching tools for RPGs. It gives players the chance to absorb rules at their own pace.
Well, that is our history lesson finished! I recommend taking a look at this version of D&D. It might be my favourite one.
You can grab the D&D Basic Set Player’s Manual on Drive Thru RPGs.
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Cool Solo Game I Haven’t Played Yet
There have been some great games coming out over the last month, including a ton from the one-page RPG jam. I’m aiming to try these three out when I get a chance!
Do you have a solo-game you’d like to highlight? Message me and let’s chat!
Caught in the Rain
Solve intense mysteries with Caught in the Rain, a solo roleplaying game focusing on mystery-based narratives. Made by a friend of the newsletter, Bardic Inquiry (whose other games include Golem and Grimoire). Caught in the Rain is a work in progress but jump in now to get in on the ground floor.
An Exodus
If you are feeling good about your life, try out An Exodus, a dark Choose Your Own Adventure for Mork Borg by UniSix. It looks to be a dark, brooding, bite-sized adventure.
Work in Progress
Lots of WIP this month. I got back into an old project I worked on at the start of the year called Sworn to Find Her. Based on Ironsworn and inspired by the excellent Sworn by Ghostlight, in Sworn to Find Her you play as a podcaster going into a small town to solve a cold case. I’ve started internal playtesting and I think it is going well! Lots of work left to do, but I’m excited about it.
It follows the Ironsworn formula for the most part but progress is focused around releasing podcast episodes. At the start, nobody listens but by the end of the case, you are gathering a huge audience.
Oh and the person who knows the secrets? They aren’t going to let you just solve the mystery. They are going to come after you for sure.
Also, I’m working on Dead Stick. A journaling RPG about being a ground crew member during a world war. It will be released later this month as Pay What You Want, so keep an eye out!
Other RPG Stuff
A cool Starforged Crew Sheet that can help you maintain several players and all your assets in one location. Great for Starforged group play! By Jade Ravens
My review of the great fantasy RPG Dragonbane by Free League. More from a solo play perspective.
Next Month for Croaker RPGs
I haven’t landed on my next solo campaign to play after I finish up with Ancient Way. Dead Stick will be published at the end of the month which is exciting!
Be sure to check out the League of Incredible Soloists.
Thank you for Reading!
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