While playing in my solo OSE game I decided I was going to make some changes to the weapons in the game, which is compatible with both OSE and B/X. The core rules have all weapons doing a d6 damage, which I think works well but it's more fun to get to roll the different polyhedral dice. I think that's one of the places D&D originally introduced power creep with polearms doing a d10, and then trying to find ways to inflate character hit points to compensate ever since. 

It never made much sense to me that a spear would do d6 damage but add a small hook and suddenly it was doing d10 damage. Similarly swords should be back at the d6 baseline unless being used in two hands, and spears should be much closer to polearms. 

I removed the 'slow' quality from weapons. That was added to help balance out the high damage they gave certain weapons, which now isn't necessary with the maximum damage reduced to d8. In it's place I'm adding a 'reach' quality which gives the initiative to someone with a longer weapon. 

Finally, I made some adjustments to what kind of weapons halflings and goblins can wield. This makes more sense thematically as well as reducing the damage output of a common low level monster which helps with the problem of 1st-level character survivability without inflating all the numbers like we see in later editions. I think biggest change here is a 3 foot character can't use bows the way larger characters can. They can still use slings, which I like for the David and Goliath quality it encourages. I might let a PC discover a custom made "Tiny Bow" which uses the same stats as a sling, but I don't think a character who is 3 feet tall could use a 4-6 foot tall bow and get enough draw length to fire arrows at the same range for the same amounts of damage as other PCs.

Solo adventuring in the Grave of the Green Flame

My 1st level character, Theodor the Fighter, survived the greenwood of Grave of the Green Flame by Pacesetter Games.

I didn't explore all the location, but was successful in tracking down the bandits who attacked my character on the highway and retrieved his stolen belongings. What's more, the adventure recommends a 2nd level character and had some very tough combat encounters, so I feel this was a great success and I'm not sure whether to test my luck with more exploring. The evil Elf on the random encounter table looks like he would easily kill any low level character he encountered with ease.

In playing through this short solo adventure it reminded me of the importance of avoiding combat whenever possible in old school gaming. The dice will betray you, and if you leave life and death situations to chance sooner or later your character will pay the price. To survive this adventure I did my best to run, hide, or use trickery whenever I encountered enemies. Attacking from range, dropping treasure to lure enemies into traps, and thinking of ways to use all the items in my inventory were more important than to hit modifiers and armour class. Only the last encounter forced me to go sword-to-sword with the Bandits, and despite weakening them with a snare trap it still came down to luck where I rolled enough damage to kill the villains and they only did enough to bring me down to 1 hit point.

The module was fun and had some good encounters that I definitely enjoyed. There were some editing issues, and I think the layout might have been a bit better. A more traditional Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy style presentation might have worked better and kept readers from accidentally seeing the titles associated with some of the choices. I hadn't planned to go into the marsh, but I feel accidentally seeing the bolded title for that entry may have some part in influencing that decision as well. If decisions required you to turn to entirely different pages I think it might have been a lot better in that regard.

Probably the biggest critique I'd offer is that I was able to complete the scenario and return to the Inn where the text assumed I would have encountered a number of other enemies and returned with a specific piece of treasure. Having accomplished the goal of the scenario (kill the bandits) I saw some sinister looking locations, but nothing that would make me guaranteed to explore there unless it was out of a sense of completion. I didn't encounter the green flame, although I did see some green mist that looked like poison. That's not really that big a deal though, and I'd definitely recommend the game for anyone interested in trying out solo old school gaming. Who knows, once my character reaches 2nd level perhaps I'll return and explore the rest of these woods.

Solo Gaming with OSE

I've started a new solo campaign using the Old School Essentials rules where I'm going to play through BX6 Grave of the Green Flame by Pacesetter Games. When I started playing D&D in the 1980s I was already a fan of Choose Your Own Adventures and Fighting Fantasy novels, and enjoyed the short tutorial adventure in the Mentzer Basic D&D rules that used that format. Of course what makes roleplaying games compelling to me is the wider range of choices you can make as you explore the imaginary worlds of the game, which isn't something most solo games do that well. Still, I think it might be something fun to try and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

The first character I rolled up is what I'd consider a "Sub-Par Character" as per the OSE rules.

Strength: 7
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 7
Dexterity: 7
Constitution: 5
Charisma: 9

The rulebook says that the referee may allow you to discard the character and start again. Since the referee is me and it's a solo campaign I decided this sub-par character had already fallen victim to the enemies in Grave of the Green Flame and I'd roll up a second character who would be exploring the same environment.

Strength: 14 16
Intelligence: 10
Wisdom: 13 9
Dexterity: 9
Constitution: 8
Charisma: 13

This looked much better, although I was a bit concerned about that low Constitution score. I considered making a Dwarf so that I could reduce my Wisdom to increase Constitution which would be a prime requisite. I decided against that though since one of the things I like about Old School gaming is the more human-centric low-magic world. I also thought about making a Cleric, but that's what I'm playing in the Friday night face-to-face game my son is running for family and friends. I decided to make a Fighter and after some more consideration I reduced his Wisdom by 4 points to increase his Strength from 14 to 16.

I rolled a 5 for hit points, which was reduced by his low Constitution score to give me 4. Of course in old school games how many hit points you have doesn't make that much of a difference, and you need to avoid losing them as much as possible anyway. I rolled relatively well for starting coins getting a 12 for 120 starting gold pieces. I bought him plate armour, and decided it would be a Brigandine style coat of plates and that he was a soldier returning from a battle when the adventure begins.

Unlike a regular game where you need to keep things moving at a brisk pace, this solo campaign is deliberately slow and I'm going to limit gameplay to exploring one or two locations a day. This means no hurried decisions about what to do or how the rules work, and I can pick it up and put it down whenever I choose. I've started thinking of it as "slow D&D" where what I'd normally expect to play through in a few hours will likely take several weeks or more. In between these short sessions I find myself thinking about where I left off and what I planned to do next, just like I would in a regular game. The difference is that's almost every location now, which I find has me imagining the scenes in more detail than I would normally, and having more fun with the game than I expected.

The new slow D&D campaign has inspired me to start watching the BBC's Robin of Sherwood again, draw some maps, and do some sketches. I've also stopped looking at social media and dusted off the old gaming blog again. Just those things make me happy I decided to give this style of gaming a try.

The Scurrilous Garden

After switching to digital artwork a few years ago, I've started drawing and writing in notebooks and sketchbooks again. Inspired by Christian's Gath Campaign I'm going to post a series of hand written and drawn solo B/X D&D encounters for 1st level characters. The first one was inspired by the movie The Little Hours which I really enjoyed and does something really different with the medieval setting. As I continue posting these I'm hoping to develop the world and campaign setting in more detail.

Production Notes: This was also my first time writing and drawing with a fountain pen! I feel like it has more personality than a ballpoint pen, so hopefully my writing is legible. I really like it for pointillism shading and want to experiment with that more. The notebook has a light grey dot grid, and it's interesting to see that the dots don't scan with the rest of the content.