Party of
One Alosar Emanli and the Creatures from
the Fallen Star (BB3) - Open
Design - by Matthew J.
Hanson
Description:
Solo text based adventure for one player. Pathfinder System
When a mysterious object falls from the night sky, apprentice druid
Alosar Emanli stands alone as evil creatures from the stars invade his forest.
Can he overcome the many dangers that lurk in the woods and defeat the alien
brood? That’s up to you, the choices you make, and the luck of the die…
This stand-alone Party of One adventure is designed for a single player
with no GM and basic rules. All you need to play is some dice (d6, d8, and 20),
a pencil, some paper, and this book.
... Alosar Emanli and the Creatures
from the Fallen Star includes both a 1st level and 3rd level character sheet
for Alosar, fully compatible for use with any beginning Pathfinder Roleplaying
Gameparty to continue your adventures!
1 PDF document, 15 pages, 65 sections and one sample
character (levels 2 and 3)
$2.99 on DTRPG/ RPGNow
Alosar' ticks many
boxes for what should make a really good solo adventure but I found myself very
reluctant to replay the adventure to see where else the situations led. Technically it has a high replayability
factor, in practice I found it a bit of a drag.
The solo games I grew up with were the Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks,
Sorcery! GrailQuest and Lone Wolf, which all used RPG styled systems. Most of the CYOA books which I saw at the
time didn't have dice systems, and had objectives like "Find all 25
different endings" which seemed less of a victory somehow. Alosar is third in a series of separately
published texts which (I believe) started as an article-mini-game in Kobold Quarterly. That article partly inferred or revisited the
solo adventure from 1983 "Red Box" D&D. The solo game in the red
box may have seemed very innovative to CYOA players, but to Fighting Fantasy
readers it was lacking in description, story and the epic-ness found in a
proper "quest". It was a
dungeon with a few rooms, a few monsters, a handful of acquisitions. As an introduction to the D&D xp slow-climb
of low level play it was perfect.
D&D and Pathfinder are balanced towards group play, so perhaps
introductory solos are in fact rigged so that group-play will always appear to
be more exciting. I mention all this
because when I buy or am leant a solitaire adventure I like to know its exact
context in relation to other products. In typing this I have yet to fully
explore the Pathfinder Beginner Box and perhaps there's a solo game in there
too, much like in the D&D Basic game of my youth. In some ways solo texts are brave move for
publishers whose meat and potatoes is often scenarios, new monsters, power
lists and new classes.
Although not implicitly stated, Alosar is almost certainly a
game for new players who wish to learn the core rules. The inclusion of the character sheets is for
group campaign play, and not as a record sheet for the text itself (which I at
first assumed it was). Alosar, as with
the two titles prior to this is absolutely perfect for a Dungeon Master to give
to a new player before a game, as a taster and familiariser with both a
character and basic rules. In fact, I'm
pretty sure that their aren't many Pathfinder Druid solos out there. I feel I
have to say this in case you're a Pathfinder player wanting a new challenge on
a rainy afternoon when friends are away - unless of course you enjoy the
nostalgia of being led through the rules with someone else's character (which
many of us do). I don't mind
introductory solos, it's just that I feel that the solo medium needs championing
for experienced play. Just for a moment
I thought Open Design were going to challenge this concept. No, it's definitely a low level introductory
solo. But hey, at least we know that the
Party of One products can be played by anyone from newbie players to the jaded
long-beards.
The reason why I mention gamebooks, is that for myself, the
more exciting games were the ones where the reader was able to relate to the
character as a detailed persona, like in the Lone Wolf. By contrast, in Fighting Fantasy and Tunnels
& Trolls solos, the protagonist is an invisible persona where the reader
fills in the gaps and stats. In the
latter, descriptions of the hero's weapons are absent because the character
might be of any class and armed accordingly.
Naturally with games where different types of characters have a
different skillset, it's very important to tailor the limited number of choices
to that character. Party of One BB3
totally succeeds in placing the reader firmly in the shoes of forest-alert
trainee-druid Alosar, whose sickle and select spells smack down the foes which
have entered into his locale. Alosar is
not yet a wandering adventurer, stumbling into random unknown caves (no doubt
that will be his future). He is defending his territory, the living woods, from
(literal) alien invaders. Therefore, the
writing style flows very well - the reader is both "you" and
"Alonsar", and is kept immersed in the situation in hand. I like this a lot. Unfortunately, the notion that (before
getting involved in real danger) Alonsar the Druid has to perform a set of
tasks or trials for his teacher feels a little hackneyed. In a larger text this would be appropriate,
but we only have a handful of sections (65) with which to complete the
game. Which brings me to a minor problem
I have with the ending ...
"You have
completed this adventure. If you would like to try for a different outcome,
return to
1 and begin
again."
There is a reason for this, because although the adventure
is fairly linear, there are a couple of "minor reveals" which mean
that as a reader you are rewarded with a somehow richer experience of the
adventure. I'm just a fan of survival
really, and that statement smacks of the CYOA books where the meta-game of
beating the book by seeking out all of the routes is actually a goal. If this text is an introductory text to
campaign play then a "one-time through" experience is all that should
be allowed unless the character is a time travelling quantum physics
specialist. This might be up to the DM of the campaign to decide. Again, I have to stress that I believe this
product is ideal for a DM to give to a learning player before a game, and that
it is not ideal as a one-off game for a player without a group.
I would like to see more of the Party of One texts produced
and then bundled together as a reduced pack for group players to collectively
build a party with a back story prior to their noble alliance as a party of
adventurers (starting at 2nd or 3rd level – which is perfect!).
I printed the text out.
When mentioning this to the editor of RC, the response was "Why the
heck are you printing that?" I
guess his foresight was better than mine...
Open Design produce some lush easy-on-the-eye products - Kobold Quarterly excels in this
way. The Party of One products wouldn't
look out of place in a glossy full colour rulebook or a coffee table magazine
for that matter. There's a marbled
background image and the choices of fonts are aesthetically balanced, the text
is well ordered, in easy to read double columns. Easy to read, that is - if it was a
magazine...
Experience has taught me that paper copies are the best way
to play solos with dice and a pencil, either at a table or in bed. If I want a solo-fantasy RPG experience on a
PC I'd probably play an actual PC game.
There are practical reasons for printing some PDFs out. One is that when combat occurs in a solo, a
separate sheet of paper is useful for scribbling HPs on, equipment found etc
-if you don't have a character sheet. I
mistook the two sheets at the back of the text as being working character
sheets, but they are not up to the task and are intended for the character's
life beyond the game text. So I printed
the PDF and my partner's inkjet really struggled. The marbled background does
the document no favours when in comes to low budget printing - it certainly
gets worse when any of the colours are running low. An alternative printer-friendly copy of the
text, or information about how to turn off the background would have been very
handy in this case.
Viewing the PDF on a tablet is a fair compromise and my old
school ways are slowly accepting that an iPads are less invasive at the gaming
table than a laptop or tower. Playing
the text on an iPad had it's own problems as the two column text made
navigating through the different numbered sections even more chaotic - zoom in,
out - flip forward and back a few pages - scan up, down ... what was the
passage number again?
A message to all publishers:
If you're selling a solo game PDF or ebook with numbered sections -
please include hotlinks.
It's bad enough that some publishers don't connect a Table
of Contents to the actual contents in purchasable documents. We are living in what could be a glorious new
age for interactive texts. Hyperlinking is what the web and simplest of PDFs do
best.
In summary, the PDF is beautiful to look at - but
unprintable and unreadable on paper, but it is also lacking in the basics in
terms of on screen navigation.
On the positive side, if you're collecting the Party of One
publications then this product is a genuine must have. If you're DM teaching players, or a player
wishing to learn some basics, this will be nice investment. If you play a lot of solo games you may find
Alosar' disappointing.
It's refreshing to play a druid and some of the encounters
are quite original, but overall I see this text as a pre-game tool and not
standing up well on it's own as a gaming experience in it's own right.
The following stats are using the Roleplayers Chronicle ratings:
Publication Quality: 3/5
- Well written. Looks: 5/5, but fails in actual play on
printed paper and screen.
Mechanics: 4/5
-Robust as a tutorial, very limited in terms of it's chosen
system.
Desire to Play: 4/5
-The pick-up-and-playability is a high 5/5 but it doesn't
thrill.
Overall: 3-4 /5
-The series itself is a great concept, but Alonsar' feels
slightly "hollow".
In Zseze's World The Sussurus Tomb Battlemap the quality of the computer art is arrestingly beautiful. Make sure you print onto something glossy which does these tiles justice! The sections in the PDFs have wide margins which is always a good thing if you don't want to fiddle too much with print settings. Extra poster size jpgs will be ideal for use in computer programs, tablets, and for your own modifications.
As mentioned in the previous post and others, Russ Nichsolson art style had formative effects upon my perception of fantasy worlds and gaming in general, notably his illustrations in Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos, which is apt to mention because it's 30 years since those interactive gamebooks first raised the standard of solo dungeoneering. AD&D fans will know him better from Fiend Folio -in which his black and white ink work truly shines. Gamebook fans have also been treated to his work yet again in the re-released of the Fabled Lands
books, which like, a handful of Fighting Fantasy titles are available to play on the iPhone and iPad (Fighting Fantasy is also sold in Kindle formats). 
One of the original reasons for wanting to post my scans of Russ Nicholson most fabulous drawings from Dicing With Dragons (by Ian Livingstone, 1982) was to share with the current generation of Fighting Fantasy readers images from what was the forerunner to Livingstone's Eye of the Dragon
, published in 2005. Since many of the younger readers of Eye of the Dragon may never have seen a copy of Dicing with Dragons, I felt that this would be a good opportunity to share some of the similar scenes taken from a different artistic perspective to the stylishly realistic dark sketches of Martin McKenna. Nicholson reminds me of Grimm's fairy tales grown-up, as if drawn by Beardsley with a touch of Rackham with a peppering of the Pre-Raphaelite. Wood grain and gem work abound, enemies dressed in swathes of cloth suggest the exotic and alien. The caves feel dirty and dusty. The gremlins, goblins and orcs always have a sinister cruel aspect - the teeth and curved knives feel sharp. 
