Lone Horizons

Continuing my solo playthrough of the classic D&D adventure Night's Dark Terror, using the Scarlet Heroes rules. At this point I've decided to switch from the Scarlet Heroes XP rules to Old School Essentials. I don't know, I've just always preferred the crunchiness of those rules and how long it takes to level up. Beremud is a level 1 fighter (0 XP) and a level 3 cleric (3000 XP) - a kind of unofficial paladin. The OSE rulebook says multiclass characters track their progress towards levelling up in each class separately, so all XP awarded gets split between all their classes evenly. This means Beremud needs 2000 XP to become a level 2 fighter, plus 6000 XP to become a level 4 cleric. He currently has 11 out of 14 Scarlet Heroes XP to reach level 5 character level. We need to convert his 11 SH XP to OSE XP and divide it between his two classes. 8000 ÷ 14 = 571 (rounded to whole number) 11 x 571 = 6281 6281 ÷ 4 (his current character level) = 1570 1 (fighter lev...

I've started playing the classic D&D Basic/Expert campaign Night's Dark Terror (written by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris and Phil Gallagher) in Scarlet Heroes. I'm playing as Beremud Hilt, my level 4 fighter-cleric who featured in the Scarlet Heroes videos over on my Youtube channel. See the previous blog post for details on that. Beremud is a level 1 fighter, level 3 cleric who serves the god of honour and duty, Riramet. I played the previous campaign, Tales From the Skieg River in the area from that trilogy of adventures, and I've decided that the Grand Duchy of Karameikos lies just to the east of that region. I've converted the calendar to that of the Known World from BX D&D. This will be less verbose than my older campaign journals as I'm trying to make shorter notes in order to speed up play and get through adventures faster. I'm pasting each entry in here from Obsidian, which is what I'm using as a solo RPG journal now. I'll also be using m...

It's been quiet on the blog lately as parenting has taken up so much of my free time this year. I wanted to post a link to the full playlist of videos in my "How to Play Scarlet Heroes" series because I kept forgetting to post links to them each time one was published. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVO-BKbl8D70HIO0Ffi-dNXXYjeEsQYiU&si=1gE9fEp7m8UUqYpj The full list of episodes is here: Introduction & Character Creation Campaign Setting & Game Rules Combat Scenario Urban Adventures I Urban Adventures II Wilderness Adventures Dungeon Adventures Running a Published Adventure Solo Part 1 Running a Published Adventure Solo Part 2 One-On-One Actual Play: Stonehell Running a Published Adventure Solo Part 3

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.

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 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.

Wallet Dungeons is a tiny dungeon generator available as pay what you want from AwkwardTurtle. I grabbed it the other day and thought I'd try it out using Scarlet Heroes, my favourite game for solo play. The way Wallet Dungeons works is you roll "a handful" of D6s and push them together on the table so they're all touching. Each one represents a room of a dungeon and the numbers give you more info on those rooms. This is going to be a very quick dungeon crawl as I only own five D6s, so we'll get a classic five room dungeon. First let's make our hero. I don't have a cleric character in my long running Scarlet Heroes campaign so let's try making one. As usual for Scarlet Heroes we'll go down the line of attributes rolling 4D6 and dropping the lowest. Strength:  4 (-2) Dexterity:  8 (-1) Constitution:  12 Intelligence:  12 Wisdom:  12 Charisma:  12 Wow, not a great result. Luckily SH lets us rearrange those stats and says if no roll is 16 or better, ...

The battle in the temple storeroom I'm playing a mashup of  Scarlet Heroes  and  Basic Fantasy RPG  with a few supplements to turn it into a solo fantasy hexcrawl in the world of Eilobar, a doomed land entering its end times. I'm using the  Level 0 Character Tumbler , Hexcrawl Adventures, Mythic GME 2nd Edition and some homebrew rules. The characters started as level 0 peasants and have since levelled up to become heroes. Introduction The party are exploring the demonic temple built by beastmen close to the town of Seethorpe, while the dwarven scholar Thiri researches the strange symbol they keep finding in monster lairs. The Adventure After finding an empty box in the relic chamber the heroes look to door in the western wall. It opens into a rectangular room with eight stone slabs, rough blankets on top of them. There are several crudely made wooden cabinets containing herbs and primitive medicines, and the floor is covered in straw which seems to hav...

I'm playing a mashup of  Scarlet Heroes  and  Basic Fantasy RPG  with a few supplements to turn it into a solo fantasy hexcrawl in the world of Eilobar, a doomed land entering its end times. I'm using the  Level 0 Character Tumbler , Hexcrawl Adventures, Mythic GME 2nd Edition and some homebrew rules. The characters started as level 0 peasants and have since levelled up to become heroes. Introduction Last time the party met with Thiri the dwarven scholar in Seethorpe and gave him the goblin king's amulet with its strage sigil. He was certain it was the symbol of a powerfully evil creature related to the Nine Kings of Hell, and sent them looking for clues in the demonic temple near the town. The Adventure Stilda, Cyna, Bryne and Ellyn set off on horseback into the hills northeast of Seethorpe. They spend an uneventful day travelling, but along the way Bryne warns the others, "I've read about the Three Scourges in books you know. I don't think you should...

I'm playing a mashup of  Scarlet Heroes  and  Basic Fantasy RPG  with a few supplements to turn it into a solo fantasy hexcrawl in the world of Eilobar, a doomed land entering its end times. I'm using the  Level 0 Character Tumbler , Hexcrawl Adventures, Mythic GME 2nd Edition and some homebrew rules. The characters started as level 0 peasants and have since levelled up to become heroes. Introduction Life has got in the way of my solo RPG gaming this year but I've finally found time to return to the world of Eilobar. As a recap: In an era long after the fabled Age of Heroes, peasants Stilda, Cyna and Bryne decided to fight back against the monsters that were plagueing their village, Keyham. They slew Mothric, the local goblin dungeonmaster along with a goblin king who had taken another nearby village. Both were in possession of a mysterious rune. Yormath, the wizard of Keyham didn't recognise this rune but suuggested they show his old friend Thiri, a d...