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Wandering Alone, Writing the Unknown

Frankencobbled: The Way of the Published Adventure, part 1

Introduction

I recently went on a deep dive into running published adventures solo. I spent a week plus researching what other people have done, what works for them, and areas to watch out for. After spending that time reading what I could find on the topic and taking a lot of notes, I spent another week cobbling it all together into something which I could use to run a published adventure. So this week–and at least the next–let’s look at what other people are doing, what I cobbled together, and what other steps I want to take towards running published adventures solo.

There are a lot of ways in which people approach soloing a published module and essentially they seem to be in either one of two camps. There is the read-it-all & mix-it-up method and the only-what-is-needed method. The read-it-all method can be boiled down to deconstruction, mix it up, and rearrange. While the only-what-is-needed method reads just enough to move the adventure along.

Characters

The first thing I’ve been doing when running a published adventure is to develop default behaviors for my character. I use three groups, General, Alignment-based, and Personality-based. I use the following list in order to think through my behaviors. I lean on these behaviors when there is a situation where I need to figure out what my character might do when I myself know what is about to happen. This saves me from rolling to ask an oracle for everything.

If I don’t already have a sense of who the character is, then I will usually roll on a couple adjective/noun tables to help me get a sense of what kind of character they are. This then helps me decide what their default behaviors will be.

General Default Behaviors.

  • Will not look for traps (maybe the character isn’t a rogue, so doing this is not instinctive for them).
  • Will not actively search for secret doors.
  • Will only explore as much of a dungeon as necessary to complete the main goal or quest.
  • Will use melee weapons rather than ranged weapons in combat whenever possible.
  • Will conserve spells and expendable resources unless they have no other option.
  • Will only acquire and search for treasure or items that are vital to the plot of an adventure.

Alignment-based Behaviors.

  • Lawful – will not take any treasure unless they are absolutely and totally positive that it doesn’t already belong to someone else or if it is given to them as a reward.
  • Lawful – will not loot bodies.
  • Lawful – will not sneak around or actively try to take enemies by surprise.
  • Lawful & Good – will accept payment and rewards from those they help, but only if it looks like they can truly afford it. Will not take items that have special significance to the person giving the reward.
  • Good – the goal of any quest taken must further the cause of good, otherwise it is refused. The character will avoid adventuring for the sake of adventuring or gathering treasure.
  • Good – will always help others without expecting or requesting payment, though may accept rewards if offered.

Personality-based Behaviors.

  • The character will generally hold back from attacking whenever they encounter another creature. If the creature attacks, they’ll retaliate (with a view to knocking it unconscious if it is not certain the creature is evil). If the creature is willing to talk, they’ll parley.
  • Due to not having much experience with the world, the character will not be skeptical of what other people say (will not use Wisdom (Insight) checks in any conversation).
  • If an NPC professes to be a worshipper of the same faith (or claims they are working towards being on good terms with his god) as the character then the character will trust them blindly. The exceptions are if the NPC is known to be irredeemably evil.
  • Hates undead: destroys them on sight unless conditions are unfavorable or the undead creature attempts to parley. In the latter case, they will not completely trust them (uses Wisdom (Insight) checks all the time during conversations with undead). The exception to this are ghosts, unless they are hostile.
  • Cautious – will use the dodge action in the first round of combat to gauge the strength of creatures they have never seen before. The exceptions are creatures that appear overwhelmingly powerful to them, in which case, they’ll look to avoid combat altogether until they has more information on the creature.
  • Alert – will always use Wisdom (Perception) checks instead of their passive Perception score.

One thing I try to do with each of these is put them on a Likert Scale of: 1. Not Likely; 2. Somewhat Not Likely; 3. Indifferent; 4. Somewhat Likely; 5. Likely. This makes it seem more real than just a simple yes or no.

Only-What-Is-Needed Method

The only-what-is-needed method is the most straightforward and is one that I have yet to try. (I might have started a short adventure using this method by the time this is published.) As I mentioned above, in this method you as the player read just enough of the adventure to give your character something to work with and no more. This takes discipline and a willingness to have things spoiled for you as you work through the adventure. Personally, I haven’t tried this method, because it feels like it would be just a tad bit too railroady, even with a sandbox adventure. One thing I love about solo games is that you can take the game wherever you want.

Read-It-All Method

This method is a little bit more complicated, because there are a lot of ways to handle it. I’ll talk about the ways I’ve read about and then share how I handled it.

Conclusion

That is part 1. Next week we will dive deeper into how I set up the adventure itself, how I run it, what others have suggested, and some experiments I plan to run down the road.

What about you? What is your preferred method for running published adventures?

Sources

I have been pulling stuff from a lot of different places but the main chassis of way I do it came from the following sources. You will see that I’m leaning heavily on the other of others and iterating upon it.

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