Lone Horizons

  The Adventure Continues The handful of remaining peasants explore the dungeon under the keep. Turn 19 The sombre mood is broken by an ambush! Thick black tentacles suddenly whip out of the shallow water and thrash around. Tanti and Ibar are killed instantly, their necks broken by the thick black rubbery limbs. The others fight furiously but the thing moves three times as fast as they can, breaking bones and smashing faces in one after another. Daga and Nechta, seeing all the others cut down around them try to climb up the southern wall out of the pit but the thing plucks Daga from the wall and slams him into the ground, while last survivor Nechta loses her grip and falls. Getting to her feet, she roars out a warcry, gripping her spear and summoning all her elven bravery as she charges the monster. It rips the spear from her hands and pulls her into its beaked mouth, chomping her head off in one bite. My Thoughts Well, that's the way a funnel adventure goes sometimes. It's alw...

In this new part of my tutorial series on Scarlet Heroes solo RPG I covered character advancement and played through half an adventure using the rules for urban adventures, with the second half coming soon.

  The Adventure Continues The peasants continue to explore the aboveground ruins of the keep in their search for the Oracle. Turn 15 They enter a long hallway with what look like prison cells on each side, doors hanging open. Suddenly animated skeletons start running out of the cells towards the peasants. "Archers, loose!" shouts Anebrius. "Who do you think you are?" responds Tariad, sneering at him. Sabenn, Ingol, Daga, Bara and Gifu all shoot at the huge crowd of skeletons charging at them. Strangely, all the other ones rush past the peasants and out of the room. The last one slams the door behind it and they hear the rusty sliding bolt moving back into place. The ones they shot at stay and carry on fighting while the tapping of bony feet fades away down the corridors. Luckily the peasants are able to smash the four skeletons up without much trouble. Ibar the halfling vagrant runs to the door and pulls on it. "Oh no!" he cries, "We're trapped!...

  The Adventure Continues The peasants continue to explore the aboveground ruins of the keep in their search for the Oracle. Turn 11 Olnod turns the old key in the lock on the trapdoor and heaves it open. They look down into a shaft with a metal ladder on one wall. They can just about make out a stone floor about ten feet down when they light Kali's lantern. They climb down one by one and find themselves facing a stairway going down about twenty feet south. That leads to a flat landing, then turns west and goes down another twenty feet. They move slowly and carefully, checking for traps or any unsafe stairs. Turn 12 They enter a thirty by thirty foot room with an arched doorway in each wall. Do they go north, south or west? (1D3) South. They go to the south door, checking the room carefully. Olnod seems to have taken on the role of leader, so he pulls on the door but it's stuck fast. Anebrius, a rather muscular scribe pushes him aside and shoves the door hard. Strength check (D...

I shot another video in my How to Play Scarlet Heroes series. This time I ran a combat encounter four times: once for each character class.

  The Adventure Continues Continuing the funnel adventure. Our group of peasants keep exploring the exterior of the ruins. Turn 8 The peasants go back to the upper courtyard and choose... D3: 1. The first door of the east wall. This is a ruined old kitchen with a large fireplace. The room is filled with rusty pots and pans, rotten tables and chairs and other furniture. While exploring the characters uncover a poisonous adder. Who finds it? D14: 10. Bara the soldier. Bara cries out "Snake!" as the adder crawls out from under a smashed up wooden cabinet, but Tanti the dock worker rushes over, new shortsword in hand and chops it in half instantly. The others all slap him on the back and congratulate him, then they return to the courtyard. Turn 9 They go through the other doorway in the east wall which leads to an old room covered in cobwebs. Searching, they find a scrap of paper with a fragment of text on it: "...lies beneath the north tower in the Crystal Grotto." ...

The second part of my tutorial series is now up. This covers the campaign setting, the basic rules and character classes.

I really enjoy playing Scarlet Heroes solo and have done a lot of playing on this blog, but there aren't many resources on Youtube to help new players with the game. Most of the SH-related videos are brief overviews and flick-throughs of the rulebook without going into much detail. So I decided to start my own series teaching the rules of the game. This first video covers character creation and introduces the unique selling point of the game - that it can be used with any other OSR game to play solo. Later videos will cover the rules, combat and will include short actual plays of the three solo adventure types.

The Adventure Continues Continuing the funnel adventure. The peasants have reached the grounds of the ruined keep where they hope to find the Oracle of the Crystal Grotto, or something.   Turn 4 The peasants can see what looks like the remains of an old catapult off to the side of the keep, a few minutes' walk away. Do they vote to investigate it? D20: 7 out of 15. No, they presson to the keep itself. Approaching the southeast corner of the building they see two towers, both ruined. Between them is an archway leading to the inner courtyard. Do they investigate the south tower, courtyard or north tower? D3: 3. They head over to the north tower. Only the walls remain, the second floor missing along with the roof. Turn 5 DC8 Intelligence check to search the tower. Success. They hunt around and find a trapdoor hidden in the dirt. It's locked. Lera the barber takes out her thieves' tools and tries to get it open but it's DC15 and she can only roll a D10 as she's not a th...

Introduction Over on my Youtube channel the Dungeon Crawl Classics solo campaign is going well, but since I can't shoot the videos as often as I'd like I keep forgetting the rules and having to look them up during the sessions, leading to more editing time before I can get the videos online. I decided to start a DCC solo game in my free time, to play offline. This should help me get used to the rules and learn them a bit faster, plus I've been itching to play a traditional hexcrawl campaign lately too. This is a funnel adventure called The Ruined Keep. It's by Daniel J. Bishop and is available for free as part of Sanctum Secorum Episode 3 . I don't even know what that is, to be honest. I just googled free DCC funnels. I've already finished it but I'll transcribe it from my notebook here. The Adventure Twenty peasants of the small town of Grimbrook seek the Oracle of the Crystal Grotto, rumoured to be at the bottom of the nameless ruined keep near the town...

  I've released a zine! Last year I started making D100 encounter tables using the monsters from Basic Fantasy RPG. There are hundreds of monsters across the core rulebook and the two Field Guides (bestiaries), and while playing my Scarlet Heroes solo hexcrawl I thought it would be fun to try making a load of huge encounter tables organised by terrain type that would feature as many appropriate monsters as possible. It took me months of working on and off but eventually I had a massive Google spreadsheet filled with strange creatures. It looked terrible so I reformatted it into a zine and turned it into something that might actually be useful to other people too. I even made a little system for generating three types of travelling merchant players could encounter and determining what they had in stock, so that's in there too. Needless to say, with some minor conversion these encounters will work for any OSR-style game, not just BFRPG. I've now released it on itch.io:  https...

  Introduction When we left our six surviving dwarves they had decided to retreat from the dungeon, picking up their locked iron chest on the way. They'll go back to the closest human settlement, rest up and hire a cleric to act as their healer on their next trip. Unfortunately I've since learnt that in OSE, clerics don't even get any spells until they're second level, at which point they only get one per day. Hirelings have to be the same level or lower than PCs, which makes it pointless hiring a cleric for healing. The only way the dwarves can heal is by resting at an inn which will heal 3 HP per day. The Adventure Bardi, Bomli, Bomrek, Borri, Frodu and Urist need to backtrack through the dungeon to the exit, rolling for wandering monsters every two turns and taking the crowbar back from where they had wedged open a portcullis with it. Soon after starting their journey a pair of giant shrews approach them in the corridor. The mole-like animals seem quite friendly and ...

  Introduction That Old School Essentials session was quite fun, so I thought I'd try it again. This time I'm doing something a bit different - creating a party of seven dwarves! They won't be able to cast any spells, pick any locks or disable any traps. The best they can hope to do is kick down any stuck doors. I've been working on some new critical hit tables too, which should be fun to use. Our group have left their hall in search of The Forsaken Shrine of Ningudu the Sorceror (another Donjon  creation), as they heard it's supposed to be hiding a horde of treasure. Here are the dwarves themselves, all male. The descriptions were generated using the excellent Maze Rats character generator. Bardi STR: 9 INT: 7 WIS: 13 DEX: 15 CON: 11 CHA: 11 Description: Ugly Gear: Battleaxe, platemail, crossbow and 30 bolts, 50 ft rope, 2 oil flasks, backpack, 17GP Bomli STR: 13 INT: 7 WIS: 16 DEX: 12 CON: 10 CHA: 9 Description: Corpulent Gear: Warhammer, shield, platemail, crossb...

Introduction I recently got Old School Essentials  in a Humble Bundle and thought I'd try it out solo. I'm using the D20 dungeon generator on Donjon  which has generated The Dark Labyrinth of Meraie. As for characters, I rolled up some classic fantasy types. You roll 3D6 for each ability, and I decided to go hardcore and stick with the first results I got, which made some characters who might not actually be suited for their class, but it'll be fun to see how far they get. I've been reading a lot about OSR games lately, and while Scarlet Heroes is very much one, it's also quite forgiving. So I'm going to have to think laterally and untrain my brain which usually thinks in terms of skills and feats in a very videogamey way. Alinn Male elf STR: 10 INT: 13 WIS: 8 DEX: 9 CON: 9 CHA: 11 HP: 6 Sword Chainmail armour Equipment: Lantern, oil flask x1, tinderbox 1 spell: Sleep Durgan Male dwarf STR: 13 INT: 12 WIS: 10 DEX: 14 CON: 5 CHA: 9 HP: 6 Battleaxe Crossbow Platem...