I recently started playing Dragonbane solo. It’s my first attempt at playing TTRPGs solo (actually, the first time I’ve ever played TTRPGs period, I’ve only ever DM’d them). I’ve played a hundred or so video game RPGs over the course of my life, some of them several times, but I’m pretty new to TTRPGs.
It actually went pretty well, and I thought I would recap the adventure, sort of in the tradition of the Japanese published replays that led to the creation of Lodoss War.
I wasn’t really sure about the whole endeavor, or even if it would work, but it turned out fun.
In Dragonbane’s Starter Set, there is an included solo adventure. It concerns something called Deepfall Breach (by the way, this is Free League’s edition). In Deepfall Breach, you are given missions by a one eye’d wolfkin named Ingolfr “Stone-Gaze”, who resides in a Chapel at the entrance of the Breach and has gained some sort of mystical connection with it that allows him to see inside.
The first of the missions Stone-Gaze sends you on is one to find a band of demon cultists who are holding an orc, named Gorum, prisoner. Gorum knows the whearabouts of the World-Breaker Shard, which is the tip of the mythical Sathmog’s Spear that fell to earth in the war between dragons and demons in the olden days and which created the Breach on impact. The shard contains enormous power. Your job is to free Gorum and learn that location of the Shard so that you can steal it back from people who are using it for nefarious means (which continues in the next adventures, this first one is just about freeing Gorum).
I created a dwarf character named Brock who is thirty-five years old and an artisan. Most of my ability rolls were good, except for the constitution roll, which came out as ten (out of a max of eighteen). I didn’t catch on to the fact that my equipment only included a knife as my only weapon and I didn’t have an expertise in that skill, which would prove almost fatal with such a mediocre constitution (HP).
Having no idea what really to do, I read the solo adventure’s instruction booklet, and it says if you want to flesh out your given waypoints to roll on the included location detail tables. I did so and rolled a twenty, a demon, and the table says that I meet a “wandering adventurer” (this was in my first waypoint, which is only described in the adventure booklet as a descending hallway). Thinking this was an auspicious start, I made a PERSUASION roll to see if this adventurer wanted to join my quest. The roll succeeded.
Knowing that there were already premade characters included in the Starter Set, and having just gone through the character creation process and not wanting to do that whole thing again, I reached into the box and pulled out a random premade character sheet, of which I’d not really even scanned before.
The sheet I pulled out was for Archmaster Aodhan, an elemental mage.
This struck me as even more auspicious, considering Brock the artisan has no magic capabilities.
There were also supposed to be monsters lurking in the corridor, but I made a SNEAKING roll for both characters and it succeeded.
So, without further ado, our party increased by one, we set off further into the Breach.
The event dice turned to five. Each mission has a “mission threat”, an impending doom / ticking clock that you track by turning a D6. When the clock ticks down to one, the event happens. This one concerns a band of marauding goblins that are on your tail.
The second waypoint given in the adventure is a ruined mausoleum that has been destroyed by fire. In the ashes are a trio of somethings (I made them skeletons). You have to locate a door in one of the surviving coffins that leads further into the Breach.
Oh, and there’s a trap somewhere.
So, I basically just opened up the battle grid included in the Starter Set, and made some standee skeletons from the 2d standees that are included. I’ve also got some from the Arkand expansion. These standees add to the immersion greatly.
How I played out this scenario was as follows:
I had Aodham make a SPOT HIDDEN check. He discovered the location of the trap, which I then had to choose to locate. I put this in the middle of the room.
Then we made another SPOT HIDDEN check to locate the hidden door. It succeeded and I decided to put this directly behind the trap. Just in my mind, but with the battle map in front of me.
Why?
Well, I thought that was the most dramatic place. My characters were on one end of the room and so this way they couldn’t just make a bee line for the exit. They’d have to go around the trap at least.
It turns out that when you play solo, you have to make a lot of decisions. I just figured this was where an actual dungeon designer would put things.
Furthermore, I decided to make both characters pass a SNEAKING test after each round of movement. If there were skeletons scattered around the room, this made sense to me, because each time the PCs moved closer to the exit they would have to sneak.
They both passed the first check, but Aodham failed the second. Battle commenced.
I gave the skeleton a surprise attack, because it just seemed to make sense that he would get a swipe in before anyone could react if they woke him up.
But I also gave the skeleton the prone condition, because that also made sense. If he was going to stand up, then he wouldn’t surprise anyone. So, it would either be a surprise attack while lying on the ground, or he would get up and alert them to his presence. I also didn’t think he would have time to stand up before they attacked him after he’d attacked them, even though technically you are allowed to stand up or drop to the ground freely in Dragonbane without using either your action or your movement (although you can only do it once per turn).
So anyway, he got a good hit in with his shortsword on Aodhan, but because he was prone, the skeleton didn’t survive the round because this gave Brock both a boon on his attack roll (which mattered because his base skill in KNIVES is terrible), and an extra D6 of damage, plus the fact that his second heroic ability I had chosen at the outset was “Army of One” which allows him to attack twice. So bye bye skeleton.
But the scuffle obviously would have woken up the other skeletons, so Brock used his movement to run into the coffin and escape. Aodhan had to dash in order to get to the coffin, because being old (which is a meaningful attribute at character creation), his movement isn’t as great as Brock’s. Fortunately, he hadn’t used an action on his turn which allowed him to dash (which counts as an action) to double his movement. He got out before the skeletons’ turn.
The event dice turned to four.
The third waypoint was blank. I used the location tables to invent a location, per the instructions. What I ended up with was a well in the center of a room.
A well with a monster in it.
I thumbed through the bestiaries I have, both in the official rulebook and the Arkand expansion, looking for water-based monsters. Being my first time playing the game, I had no idea what monster would lurk in a well. I settled on the Naiad.
Naiads are sort of like sirens, beautiful females who lure unsuspecting victims to the water edge where they attack.
In this case, both Brock and Aodhan failed SPOT HIDDEN checks, so they peered over the edge of the well and came face to face with the Naiad.
They were surprised and the Naiad made a monster attack. I rolled a D6 and got a two, which means the attack was “Broken Heart”, where if the target fails a willpower check they will despair of ever having their love for the Naiad reciprocated and succumb to the fear condition.
Unfortunately for her, I’d already decided that Aodhan would be her target, and his willpower level is eighteen, the highest it can be.
He is, after all, a tough old mage and this type of attack would be unlikely to work on someone like him, and it didn’t. He passed the check and the Naiad’s attack failed.
Being so easily rebuffed, the Naiad disappeared back down into the well, and the duo continued on their way.
The event dice turned to three.
The fourth waypoint was also blank. So I rolled on the environment table again. These rolls came up with some interesting features.
First, there were acid pools everywhere. Second, there was an occupied structure at the location. Third, whoever was in it was a demon. And fourth, there was a magic mirror somewhere.
So I went back to the Arkand bestiary and came across the Chaos Demon, who can spit acid. I felt like that would explain the pools.
But instead of attacking the Chaos Demon outright, I decided to risk a rest. Both my characters needed to heal up a little, so I used a stretch to let them heal.
That turned the event dice to two.
Then I decided to make a gambit. I pounded on the door of the structure. When the Chaos Demon appeared outside, instead of attacking it with a surprise or something like that, which I could have done with two characters, I decided to make a PERSUASION check and try to convince it to help us fight the goblins. I gave myself a boon on this roll by using the magic mirror (which I just gathered to be some sort of magic reflected on the surface of the pool of acid that Aodhan created) to show the Chaos Demon the approaching goblins. I told him a story about how the goblins were terrorizing the denizens of the Breach. Which was all true in fact.
The roll was successful, even without the boon.
The event dice turned to one.
The goblins showed up. Four of them.
But instead of just facing Brock, they now had to also face an elemental mage and a Chaos Demon.
Battle ensued.
I won’t go into all of the details of this battle, because frankly, it was long. I will just say that they managed to reduce Brock to zero HP before they were defeated. His low base skill with KNIVES made him basically useless in this fight, as he missed every single attack. Although he did absorb all of their damage.
But the Chaos Demon’s “Unseen Force” attack took out all but one of the goblins in the end, even when the last one tried to run away, it got him. I literally kept rolling fives for him (which select his monster attack), and it hit almost every time.
The mage’s FIREBALL took out the other one. He used his HEALING skill to revive Brock after the battle.
They searched the bodies and found two treasures, which made sense because the goblins had been plundering the Breach. I drew two treasure cards out of the deck and they came out as a book called “Handbook of the Master Carpenter” and ten silver coins, which kind of sucked because you were supposed to roll a D6 and then multiply it by ten. I rolled a one. They also found a quiver of arrows on the bodies. The Carpentry book was pretty random but I used it to give Brock another heroic ability after the mission, considering he is an artisan and there is a MASTER CARPENTER ability. This went along with his MASTER TANNER heroic ability.
But the mission wasn’t quite over. The fifth and final waypoint was given by Stone-Gaze in the mission summary: it was an alter room where the Demon Cultists were about to sacrifice Gorum.
This was the moment of truth. But the description of the waypoint hinted that the Cultists were unlikely to stand their ground, so instead of attacking outright, I had the Chaos Demon (he was still with us) and Brock make INTIMIDATION (a kind of PERSUASION check that turns on Strength instead of Charisma) checks on two of the cultists. The mage has a weakness and that is that he is kind of a scaredy cat, so I didn’t think he would try and intimidate anyone.
But it didn’t matter, Brock and the Chaos Demon succeeded and the targeted cultists fled the alter room.
With their numbers diminished, the rest of the cultists broke and ran.
The party cut the orc’s bonds and freed him.
They thanked the Chaos Demon, who returned to his dwelling. But not before taking a picture.
So, mission accomplished.
I had them all return to the surface so Brock could buy a handaxe, because he does have skill in AXES, and sell his knife. And I made some mostly unremarkable advancement rolls for Aodhan.
Now, to find the Shard.
This first experience with solo play actually turned out more suspenseful than I would have thought. When you control everything, I wondered how the experience would actually work as a game, but there is so much randomness with the dice and the tables and even just the randomness of turning the pages in the bestiary, that everything sort of organically came together without all that much input from me. I just rolled with it, so to speak. And that seems to be the trick. At least so far.
Thanks for reading!