A new “thing” is going around the Solo Gaming
community, the March Module Month or, the Solo-A-Module Month. Basically, a
couple of us were all playing modules at the same time (I was playing through
B2: Keep on the Borderlands), and suddenly it became a thing. Personally, I
blame +Tarcisio Lucas. Anyway, despite time
being somewhat tight right now (I won’t forget you, Terry!), it just sounds like too much fun for me to stay away.
So, here’s how I’m going to be handling this game. First off, the focus of this
is to play the damn module and the characters. I’ve done something similar
before, with my Alien
Hunger play-through. But THAT module I knew backwards
and forwards, so the focus was on the narrative and the characters actions,
more so than on the module itself. This time, I’m going in cold. Secondly, I
want to use this as an excuse to try a game system I have never actually played
before--Basic Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, the Mentzer edition of Basic
and Expert (they are the ones I have, so don’t @ me, Moldvay/Cook fans).Thirdly, I want to minimize the “other tools” I bring to this play through. Solo playing a module is a tricky thing. You either need a good sandbox (Like Alien Hunger for Vampire or X1 for D&D) or you need to do something else to make it work. Otherwise, you get stuck on a railroad and it really just comes down to binary “choose your own adventure” decisions (if you’re lucky) and skill checks. But, at the same time, my play through of B2 was a lot of fun, and used only the most basic of oracles. So, for now my plan is to just use the module, the D&D mechanics, and the CRGE for my game.
Oh, one last thing. Unlike my Vampire
playthroughs, I’m really going to try and minimize the narrative/creative
writing aspects of this game. I also assume that there is going to be a LOT of
combat (it is D&D, after all). Given that, I assume this will be more of a
recap, rather than a beat-by-beat game report. Like, when I play Vampire,
I am literally posting my rolls on the blog before I even think about what they
mean or what might come next.
Ok, enough setup. What module am I going to do?
Ok, enough setup. What module am I going to do?