Lone Horizons

 

 

The second episode of my solo DCC campaign is now up on the YouTube channel.

It's been a while since I've posted on here because I've been quite busy working on some multimedia-related stuff for Lone Horizons. The next session of The Bounty Hunter is in the works but not yet finished, and I've just launched a YouTube channel as an extension of the blog. I've got a few things planned for it including very basic graphical representations of ship to ship combat in The Bounty Hunter. Right now you can watch the first video in a series where I use Dungeon Crawl Classics to play through Dyson's Delve , a mini-megadungeon designed by Dyson around 2010. If you enjoy the blog it would be amazing if you want to subscribe over on YouTube, as it will help get the videos suggested to more people.

Day 22, Room 01.22 Choosing the door at the east of the T-junction in room 01.21, the party opens it into a large cave with doors in the north and south walls. Shambling around here are six corpses with ragged clothing hanging from them: zombies. Grobern charges the slow moving creatures and cuts down three of them in one go (exploding 6!). Rorri follows, smashing the head of another one. Malia sneaks around behind the remaining two and skewers their heads with her shortsword one after another (exploding 6!). They had no treasure so the heroes move on. Day 23, Room 01.23 The party opens the door to the north. More undead! There are nine skeletal rats in a short corridor here. Grobern charges in and smashes six of them in a frenzy (2x exploding 6!). Rorri destroys another, Malia kills one more and then Gerda gets the last one with her staff. They were vermin so they had no treasure. Day 24, Room 01.24 There's a door to the north but they follow the tunnel west around a curve. Day 25...

Day 15, Room 01.15 The party walks west down the tunnel into the darkness before reaching a crossroads. Day 16, Room 01.16 Taking the south tunnel at the crossroads they open a door into an L-shaped room. From here a door to the south opens into corridor 01.05, and another door leads east. In the centre of the room is another statue, this time of a half man half snake creature holding a pair of scimitars. Malia approaches this one and touches it like she did the other, but it starts moving and attacks the party! It's a level 4 boss with 4 life points, immune to magic. Grobern attacks it but it parries, then Rorri smashes his maul into it, cracking it a bit. Malia jams her shortsword into its arm joint and wrenches it, delivering another wound (exploding 6!). Gerda smacks it with her staff but it bounces off the hard stone. It fights back against Gerda but she nimbly dodges out of the way. Grobern is parried again, but then Rorri whirls his maul around and smashes the snake part of ...

The heroes arrive back at the nearest town and rest up for a few days. They visit the market to sell the gems they found. Grobern sells the green garnet and carnelian for 48 GP, and Rorri sells his two onyxs for 24 GP (they get 20% better prices on gems and jewellery due to Rorri's appraisal skills). Grobern buys a vial of holy water for 30 GP. A couple of house rules for life in the town: Let's say it costs 1 GP per day for food and lodging at the inn (per character), and they can heal 1 wound with each day's rest. Rorri needs to heal 4 wounds so they'll spend 4 days resting. Malia is broke now so she'll have to start getting involved in combat more often to earn her keep! They need to see who's available at the tavern to join them. I'm going to randomise things a bit and say we'll roll a D4 to check how many adventurers are hanging out that day, then a D8 to determine each one's class. Today there's a barbarian, a dwarf and a wizard. If they ta...

Session zero of this campaign is here . To see all the Dungeon23 posts click on the label in the sidebar. Day 1, Room 01.01 The heroes arrive at the entrance to Zozu's Domain, an unassuming cave mouth in a mountainous region. Grobern the warrior and Rorri the dwarf are in front with Malia the rogue and the wizard Brima behind them. They are immediately faced with two tunnels leading north into the gloom; one on the left and one on the right. Day 2, Room 01.02 The heroes choose the left hand tunnel, which leads to a door. Opening it the tunnel continues north. A black robed woman stands there, a hood obscuring her features. "I am Thonia of the Medusae, guardian of the domain of Zozu the Unmentionable." she says. "Somewhere on this floor is my rival, Lord Abag. Slay him. Bring me his head and thou shalt be greatly rewarded." A pair of snakes writhe out from under her hood; she is indeed a medusa. Grobern the warrior replies "Aye mi'lady, we will return wi...

Dungeon23 and Solo Gaming The creator of Mothership RPG, Sean McCoy wrote a blog post last month where he came up with the idea for Dungeon23, a challenge to create a megadungeon by drawing one room per day in a diary, with one dungeon level per month. Then at the end of the year you have a huge 365 room dungeon that you can run for players in 2024. I thought about ways to get involved with this and decided that instead of designing a dungeon I'd generate and play one in a solo RPG with random dungeon generation. Enter Four Against Darkness. It's a really quick and fun dungeoncrawler - it's a dungeoncrawler rather than an RPG as there's no roleplaying in it. It's more like Advanced Heroquest. It's quick to create characters, generate the dungeon and have fights, with monsters being slain left right and centre by your party of four adventurers. It also has a lot of expansions that add variety to the dungeons with new monsters and quests. I'll be using the fo...

  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...